Portillo Skier Reviews, Skiing Magazines articles & industry awards

Rappelling in, bivying for the night, losing toes to frostbite… Sure, that all sounds harrowing. But what I’m doing right now—coercing my eight-year-old daughter down Plateau, in Portillo, Chile, in the waning light while hot tears fog her goggles—might just kill me. Though she, quite vocally I might add, clearly feels it will kill her first.

This is not a family magazine, evidenced in part by our liberal policy on four-letter words. But this is our Adventure Guide. And every skier who’s ever experienced his or her child, naked except for an Elmo diaper and one polka-dot sock, vibrating with anger, stomping her foot on the kitchen floor and screaming, “you are not the boss of me!” knows that there isn’t a crampon or ice ax or avy course out there that can prepare you for the most satisfying, most terrifying, most achingly beautiful adventure there is: raising a skier.

“Honey, you’re not going to die,” I say, leaning over my poles. I mean, lots of skiers have kids. Dav has kids who are probably, like, skiing the Grand now. Stian Hagen, Sage Cat- tabriga-Alosa, Hilaree O’Neill, Bode (though how many, we’re not sure). And both in spite of and because of my current parental crux on Plateau, I’ll say there’s no better place for real skiing families to go than Portillo, Chile.

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South America quickly became the focus of the ski world when a possible record breaking storm—think nearly 20 feet of powder—popped up on the radar late this summer. The Freeride World Tour even scheduled a last-minute qualifier in September to take advantage of the region’s snowfall.

Just a few hours from Chile’s capital Santiago, the ski retreat of Portillo was in the heart of the storm. Colorado-based photographer Liam Doran had been watching the Weather Channel and asked pro skiers Sven Brunso and Amie Engerbretson to make the trip. Pisco sours, mountain-side hot tubs, good meals, and bluebird days forecasted after the storm made the decision easy. Here, Doran shares a few of his favorite shots and shows what an August ski vacation is supposed to look like.

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At the end of Portillo’s surface lifts, we still had a two-hour hike. I’d snapped one of my lightweight backcountry skis when I’d collided with some avalanche debris a couple of days earlier and was now ascending with a pair of borrowed boards easily as big as waterskis.

Kalen Thorien, my friend, the 27-year-old professional skier and adventurer from Salt Lake City, high-fived me at the top, as did five new friends we’d made at dinner the night before. It was the culmination of one of the best ski weeks either of us had ever seen, and it was about to get better.

From Aug. 6 to 11, a single storm system had dumped seven feet of snow, and then the skies cleared to blue. We stood at the entrance to the Super C three days later, the first people to complete the hike to the top since the storm.

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As a full moon rose over the Andes last August, remote Portillo, Chile, might have been the quietest, loneliest resort on earth—if it weren’t for the club music blasting in the downstairs discoteca. As wind howled in the surrounding peaks, the skiers I’d met in the outdoor Jacuzzi—among them heli-skiing powder hounds from Japan, a trio of Ralph Lauren models, and recruits from the High Mountain School of the Chilean army—shook their base-layered booties to Cardi B. Soon enough, someone brought out the shotski, a ski adorned with six shot glasses for group guzzling.

And why not? Skiing in South America while everyone I knew was swatting mosquitoes up north was worth toasting. For me, it was the fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy, a pilgrimage to the end-of-the-earth summer home—at least by Northern Hemisphere standards—for the U.S., Austrian, Canadian, and Norwegian ski teams. But the reality of Ski Portillo, which has reached legendary status among dedicated year-round powder chasers, outdid even my snowiest expectations.

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It’s 11:30 p.m. I’m deep in the Chilean Andes, sashaying to a cover band’s Rolling Stones playlist with my alpine posse, a crew of spirited Argentines, a Brazilian who arrived by helicopter after lunch, and two fellow University of Michigan alums (all met hours ago in the hot tub) as Ralph Lauren models and a cross section of international ski aficionados take in my group’s Pisco Sour-infused antics. Later, over shot skis in the 70s-style discoteca, I realized that tiny Ski Portillo, even without a charming alpine town or any state of the art bells and whistles, had accomplished the unimaginable: usurping Aspen, at least in my mind, as the most epic party scene at 9,000 feet above sea level.

In August, while most Americans were basking in the final sun-drenched days of summer, I packed up my ski gear and flew to South America to see if the terrain was as terrifying, the views as staggeringly beautiful, and the lost-in-time-looking resort (a six-story canary yellow building that looks more Caribbean cruise ship than an iconic ski resort) as enchanting as friends and colleagues had reported.

But mostly I wanted to know if I, a passionate but solidly blue skier, could actually schuss down the legendary pistes without killing myself.

This spot emerged onto the world ski stage when it was chosen as the site of the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in 1966. Since, it’s served as off-season training terrain for the U.S., Austrian, and Canadian ski teams. It’s so hardcore that a friend, upon learning of my plans, asked if my insurance plan included medivac coverage.

While marquee ski resort towns like Jackson Hole, Aspen, and St. Moritz have a variety of luxury accommodations, shops, and restaurants, Ski Portillo is a single building (there are two much smaller, less expensive options next door) with one restaurant, one bar, a disco room that doubles as luggage storage by day, a large living room-style salon abutted by a wee library. A terrace provides the perfect place to take in the dreamy snow-sheathed Andes and their reflection in Laguna del Inca, the shimmering grey-blue lake at the base of the Aconcagua Valley. The other nuance is that at Portillo, you sign on for an entire all-inclusive week, not for a few days. There aren’t alternative offerings like dog sledding, fat tire bike riding, or evening meals in a candlelit cabin. Nobody wears fur. And with just 123 rooms, there are never more than 450 guests at one time. Therein lies the charm.

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Este tradicional centro de esquí celebra su 70 aniversario con una gran inversión en máquinas de producción de nieve y presenta sus nuevos departamentos familiares

“Pensando en los amantes del vino (…) Hotel Portillo va a celebrar sus 70 años inmerso en la majestuosidad de la Cordillera de los Andes organizando tres “Semanas del Vino”. Y gracias a la madre naturaleza, después del nevazón de este lunes, ya cuenta con lo más importante, después de una copa de vino, claro: una base de casi un metro de nieve.”

En sus pasillos se respira historia, en sus muros percibes la evolución del ski, es que Portillo ha sido cuna del deporte blanco de nuestro país por décadas. Su geografía es completamente salvaje, sus pendientes fuertes y bajas temperaturas logran una de más mejores calidades de nieve de los andes.

Entre el paisaje montañoso de Portillo se realizará durante diez días el Festival Internacional de Música Portillo 2020. El Hotel Portillo albergará a más de 50 jóvenes instrumentistas latinoamericanos quienes tendrán la oportunidad compartir los escenarios con la destacada directora de orquesta chilena, Alejandra Urrutia.

Un hotel donde esquiadores profesionales y amateurs se congregan para disfrutar de la nieve y las pistas más desafiantes, descansar en la naturaleza y deleitarse con una gastronomía única. Los invitamos a calzarse los esquíes y sumarse a esta aventura.

Un hotel donde esquiadores profesionales y amateurs se congregan para disfrutar de la nieve y las pistas más desafiantes, descansar en la naturaleza y deleitarse con una gastronomía única. Los invitamos a calzarse los esquíes y sumarse a esta aventura.