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Shortly after the 15-km freestyle cross-country race ended, the wind picked up and the fog rolled in. Within a few hours, the snow was coming down en force. The temperature plummeted and the gusts howled through the buildings of the Chilean Warfare School. Out of the bay windows of the officers’ lounge, which face Tres Hermanos and Hotel Portillo, one could see only a few feet. All was gray and white.
After a nap and emerging out the door into this chaos, I figured it would be an awesome time to go for a classic ski! I co-opted Blake to come along on the adventure. We scraped off our red and silver klister and put on extra blue. Perfect! The wax, that was. The conditions weren’t all that inviting. Ice crystals pelted us and the wind was fierce and cold. A few times, we had to stop and squat facing away from the wind because it was so biting. And a few times, I led us astray from the actual ski course. Though getting lost wouldn’t have been easy. The meadow was surrounded by 20,000-ft-plus mountains.
The storm continued through the night.
When we awoke, the sun was bright and only the last bits of lazy fog hadn’t yet evaporated. The mountains were covered in white. Avalanches had brought some of the heaviest snow down a few chutes. Sensing pure pleasure, some alpine skiers were already busy turning the powder on the Portillo runs. The mountain pass had closed to traffic during the night. Many semi-trailers and their trucks were stranded, surrounded by snow drifts measured in feet.
At 9500 feet, we received about 6 inches. But it was hard to tell how much actually fell, because in some places it was wind-scarred ice, others it was 3 feet of wind-blown powder. Soon after we awoke, the trails began to be groomed. (Somehow, they still ended up with some staggering cants.) Perfect corduroy.
Because the patrol race was next up on the schedule for Friday, we had to practice the goofy shooting methods particular to the race. The patrol race is a 25-km biathlon competition with teams of four. The top ranked officer or NCO on each team does not shoot. Instead, he or she commands the other three to shoot, when they are in the range, at one target. Each shooter has three bullets to hit their one target.
There is some strategy involved in the race. First off, it’s 25-km, so you have to plan feeds. With four per team, that can take some logistics. (Last January, I saw the Italians task their fastest skier to pick up the feeds and pass them around.) Second, you don’t want the skiers to trip each other up, but you want them to benefit from drafting off one another. Yet, you don’t want the pace to be too fast for the slowest member. You have to consider the different technique styles of the team members, too, since tall people tend to have longer strides whereas shorter people have higher turnovers. Third, there are three rifles for four skiers, so one skier doesn’t have to carry a rifle. That advantage can be given to the slowest skier, or passed every so often, by simply passing the rifles around.
So we practiced doing the range procedure specific to the patrol race several times. I felt that I redeemed my prone shooting after a horrible day in the individual race two days earlier. After two hours of classic skiing on extra blue, I saw that the groomer had packed down the alpine slope that extends from the Portillo system to the warfare school. I herringboned to the top a few times and did some turns coming down. Bliss! Small consolation for not being able to do justice to all the new powder around me – in the Andes!
We had planned to do a Chilean bar-b-que in town that afternoon and then go to a nearby vineyard in the evening, but the road was still closed and our departure time kept getting pushed back. But it’s hard to be frustrated when there’s a clear blue sky overhead, new powder all around you, and the Andes tower over you. No, I could’ve broken my leg and I think I still would’ve had a smile on my face that day.
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