The Wall Street Journal did a piece on the Bearfire resort and produced this nifty video about it. All of the footage is cropped from other videos floating around the intarwebs, but the montage with narration tells the story well.
I’ve noticed a huge surge in search engine traffic related to the Bearfire Resort project. I decided to make my rounds and see if anything new or interesting hit the wire and my first stop, the office websites, popped up a special surprise. Instead of a website, I got a 509 error reporting that they’ve exceeded their bandwidth. While that’s a huge bummer, it is a sign that this project is getting more attention than they anticipated.
I was catching up over on DallasSnowboarders.com and ran across the following email reposted:
CASA Prez David Johnson and Tony Sponar of Valle El Arpa Greetings, skiers and snowboarders of the summer season!
Those of us in enjoying the South American winter want to make sure you know what you’re missing; record-breaking cold temperatures have helped a deep snowpack form right to the bottom of all ski areas across the continent, and well below in a lot of destinations.
With roadways closed to Farellones and Portillo this past weekend due to heavy snowfall, the staff of CASA Tours decided to check out the conditions at Valle Arpa, located 2 hours north of Santiago, South America’s only exclusively snowcat accessed ski area. The windy, 4×4-only access road had been cleared by staff in the morning, by Bobcat and shovels. The empty (as usual) parking lot had about 4″ of fresh, light snow, and the skies were bright blue.
We booted up in Toni’s warming hut, and bumped into the legend himself on his way back from warming up the cat. After a quick exchange on how our northern hemisphere winters had been, he decided not to wait for the other group that was supposed to have arrived for the first run of the day. Perfect… The 5 of us jumped on and we had the whole place to ourselves. The moonscape terrain of Valle Arpa was covered with a rippled layer of knee deep, low density Chilean champagne powder. I’d never seen the conditions so good here, during my 5 or 6 visits in the last 5 years.
Toni has big plans for his 2200 ha’s of terrain, which he’s owned since 1972, hoping to install lifts soon. But for now, it’s a paradise of uncrowded alpine bowls, with as much as 3500 ft. vertical per run, and more if you want to do some hiking.
This is definitely the best snow season I’ve seen since my first winter in Chile in ‘99. We’ve got limited space on trips in August, but plenty of room on our September tours. Come on down and beat the heat!
Contact us at 1 888 311 2272 or email us at casa@casatours.com to book your trip today! Be sure to ask us about last second deals going on now.
Mike Taylor
Big Powder in Chile
Summer Face Shots
Vertical Dry Pow
Sounds pretty exciting! I still can’t believe that this time next week I’ll be in Chile.
