Patagonian Summer - pretty damn sweet

Miles Clark slaying Cerro Catedral during SASS Session 1 from Snow Sessions on Vimeo.

Bariloche, Argentina - The past three weeks down here with SASS have been pretty damn sweet. And by pretty damn sweet I mean that we’ve been ripping through old growth forest, hucking perfect granite cliffs, bushwhacking bamboo underbrush, getting twisted off backcountry booters, drinking free fernet & cokes, dominating rail jam comps (SASS took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place), and oh yeah…..skiing DEEP POW in the middle of summer! Crazy, right!? Wrong. I’m now realizing that I should have been doing this a long time ago.

The SASS crew has been down here since July 14th, and we’ve gotten a lot done: a week of avy, medical, and guide training, two weeks of ripping pow with the clients at Cerro Catedral, full-day backcountry missions, and we even have a team that is deep in the backcountry at Refugio Frey right now. Bariloche is having a stellar winter this year and we can't find any good reason to let it go to waste.

Skiing here everyday with James Heim has been pretty sweet. Trying to keep up with him has already affected my skiing for the better.

Patagonian Summer

SASS Session 1 Ski Podcast 2010 from Snow Sessions on Vimeo.

I've been down here in Bariloche, Argentina for two weeks now. In that time I've been fully reminded why I love this place so much. The people are cooler than we could ever hope to be in the US, the skiing is ridiculous, and the views are basically extraterrestrial.

During my first week here myself and two other guides were in charge of training all the SASS coaches in avalanche, medical, and guiding protocol. The training went well and once the campers came, we went through similar training with them as well. Since everyone has been dialed in, I've been able to ski what I want and push it a bit. The Patagonian winter has been helping us out a ton with about 6 inches of snow every couple days. Right now, we are getting our first big snow cycle and I'm super anxious to get up to the mountain and witness it's transformation. We already have a deeper snowpack than we ever did last year which sends my mind reeling into a fantasy world where un-doable cliffs and lines become commonplace reality.