We certainly won’t blame you for pulling out the bicycles, the golf clubs and the kayaks—heck, that’s what we did this weekend as temperatures in Boulder reached the upper 70s—but don’t write this year off as a wash just yet. There’s no correlation between winter weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere and those below the Equator, which means this might be the year to pack your bags and head south.

It’s easier than you might think, especially with help from American tour operators who will not only book your flights, hotels and ground transportation but, best of all, will also set you up with expert guides who speak the language and know where South America hides her best stashes. If that’s not enticing enough, how about a little star power, like personalized instruction from Warren Miller athletes Ingrid Backstrom and Wendy Fischer or SKI instruction contributor Chris Fellows? The pros know: When the going gets tough, the tough go to South America.

NASTC Summer Skiing Adventure
Ask anyone about Portillo, and your bound to hear how magical it is. Ask NASTC’s Chris Fellows, and you might never hear the end of it. He and his crew of top instructors have been leading clinics in Portillo for nearly 20 years. NASTC’s clinic is three-pronged, focusing on technique, fitness and equipment.

Areas visited: Portillo
When: Eight days, Aug 17–26, 2012
Price: $4,390
Trip includes: Roundtrip ground transportation from Santiago, seven nights of lodging, four meals per day, seven-day lift ticket, six days of instruction in groups of six or less
Book: skinastc.com

Check out this little girl – she is quite an inspiration.  A 10yr old bouldering champion.  If she inspires you to get out and learn how to climb, check out the climbing opportunities with NASTC. 

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Portillo Powder
Everett Potter, 05.21.12, 6:00 PM ET

The Hotel Portillo lies on the shores of the Lake of the Incas in the treeless Chilean Andes, 9,000-plus feet above sea level and a two-hour drive from Santiago. It is painted a jolting Crayola yellow and blue, possibly to catch your eye during a whiteout. It is the centerpiece of a remote and raw landscape of rock and snow, overseen by condors with 11-foot wingspans who slalom the thermals around 19,000-foot peaks.

There is no town, no boutique scene and nowhere to walk to except La Posada, a truckers’ brothel turned bar. Yet it is the social hub of Southern Hemisphere skiers. It attracts the hard-charging national ski teams of the U.S., Canada and Austria for training weeks. There are supermodels on photo shoots and trustafarians on holiday, along with well-heeled families from Buenos Aires and São Paulo. There are Germans and English, as well as Manhattan brokers on buddy trips, flying ten hours from JFK for a week of powder and a chance for international mingling.

This will seem even odder when you see the rooms, which predate minimalist and verge on the monastic. They lack TVs or radios, and have small windows with a view of the cobalt blue sky and blinding white terrain. That, of course, is why all social roads lead to the cavernous living room of the 450-guest hotel, which at times seems like the game board for a nonlethal game of Clue.

Portillo is indeed a cross between a club and a house party, where the buff and sometimes famed members of the ski teams (yes, that is Lindsey Vonn using her iPad in the lobby) hang out with average folk, assuming your definition of average folk includes Oxford-accented skiers and doe-eyed young women from upper-class Chilean homes.

“I come up every weekend from Santiago,” says Mario Lobo, the director of the Rothschild-owned winery Los Vascos, who laughs like Peter Lorre at the pleasurable thought.

But Portillo is also about family. There are kids underfoot–sometimes a lot of them, most of them well-behaved in a way that we’ve largely forgotten how to teach in North America. Once they’ve made friends, which should take all of half an hour, they roam around the 63-year-old property, exploring the subterranean basketball court, the movie ­theater and games room.

Ultimately, everyone is here for world-class skiing that requires hiking and nerves of steel on the Roca Jack lift, which shoots you up the mountain like a 1930s carnival ride. In a good snow year–remember, that’s June through October down here–there are three-day storms that leave 6 feet of snow. There are no lift lines–honest–because there are only 450 guests.

You’re assigned a table and a waiter for the week, by a staff that is professional and has likely worked at Portillo for decades. If your parents brought you here 40 years ago, the current bartender and maître d’ would have pinched your cheeks back then. Every night the Purcell family, the Americans who have owned the place since 1962, can be found at the second banquette on the right, friendly and approachable. The food is good in that simple Chilean way–think grilled meats and fish–and the wine list blessedly heavy on the country’s top vineyards.

You make generalizations at Portillo because they seem to be true. Brazilians tend to sleep in and are invariably the best dressed at any time of the day, Argentineans never lunch before 1 p.m., and Peruvians are the most formal guests of all. Since the disco closes at 3 or 4 or 5 a.m., “first tracks” means 10:30 a.m. or maybe 11.

Lunch is on the terrace at the rustic Tío Bob’s, with more grilled meats the rule. It has a panoramic view of the mountains and the cartoon-colored hotel below.

Après-ski you go for the babble of conversation in the large outdoor pool and the alfresco hot tub. Or a little afternoon tea. Or maybe a massage from Carmen Bequearelli, who may well have learned her trade from working on both local truckers and Lycra-clad athletes.

The first seating for dinner isn’t until 8, the second at 9:45. That gives you plenty of time for a Pisco sour in the bar, which was designed in 1965 by Patricio Guzman from Desilu Studios. You might not see Ricky and Lucy, but you will see a former ambassador chatting with a Swiss ski instructor, or perhaps an Argentinean winemaker talking with young Canadian skiers or Irish snowboarders. It feels classless, even if it is not. But it is truly as close to a genuinely international hotel as you’ll find anywhere in the world today.

Ever fancy what it would be like to summit a 14,180ft peak?  Right here in our extended backyard is Mt. Shasta, the second highest peak in the state of California.  NASTC and our newest partner Ski Madness – Mexico will be running a 3-day expedition style trip up Shasta.  Chris Fellows will be leading the group along with fellow guide Dane Brinkley.  The group will climb up to basecamp on Day 1.  There will be a mountaineering skills refresher in the afternoon.  Day 2 will be an acclimation day, the group will do a couple of short climbs, and learn how to work together as a team as well as how to walk together on a rope line.  Day 3 is Summit Day, the goal is to reach the summit before noon and then ski down as a group back to basecamp.  This will be an exciting trip, stay tuned for details and pics.

Being a part of the 2012 PSIA Alpine Team selection was a special experience, I’m not sure I have even come down from my high of participating in such a tough and rewarding event.  Snowbird is a BIG mountain, lots of terrain, lots of vertical and steep.  This is coming from a girl that skis Alpine Meadows & Squaw Valley on a regular basis!  The first few days before the tryout was spent getting the lay of the land, understanding how long it took the snow to get soft, which pitches got sun first and which ones stayed frozen (and then skied the frozen ones first), discovering how much acceleration you got or not out of certain pitches during different times of the day.  Much like inspecting a course in ski racing, we inspected the whole mountain.  There were pods of candidates skiing around and checking out the competition. 

The selection process began on Sunday, April 22 with a welcome reception in the Cliff Lodge.  At the reception we found out which group we would ski in, all the candidates were split into two skiing groups and then 4 smaller teaching groups for Days 1 & 2.  The reception was very low key, except you could feel everyone’s nerves and anxiety in the room.  The message was repeated several times that you had to be the best to simply be standing in the room.  Although encouraging, I don’t think it really eased anyone’s nerves. 

I fell into a shallow sleep that night as we were meeting at the tram plaza at 7:45, they opened the tram an hour earlier just for us.  The snow conditions were very tough as temperatures were shooting into record highs before noon and they wanted the skiing done shortly after lunch as the snow conditions were pretty sketchy.  At 8:00am, Monday morning all 42 candidates and 12 selectors loaded up the Tram.  There was so much excitement in the air, despite how early it was.  The group split up into their respective skiing groups and explored the terrain and snow as we did our warm up runs.  Everyone met at the bottom as we could not miss the 8:30am tram.  This tram was even tighter packed as PSIA staff members and bystanders and support crew loaded the tram with us. 

We split up into our skiing groups at the top and followed the selectors to our first station:  One legged garlands.  Everyone was nervous, the chatter diminished significantly as the first person stepped up to the starting point.  As it came to be my turn, my heart was thundering in my chest, my hands and legs felt shaky.  I took three deep breaths and then pushed off.  By the third set of garlands, I had calmed down and got into my groove.

The tension broke after that first task, and our whole group bonded around it.  From that moment on we cheered for eachother, encouraged one another and even cracked jokes to keep everyone loose and relaxed.  I gotta say I never laughed so much during a competition.  What it felt like to me, was that we were not competing with eachother but  with ourselves and everyone was encouraging each other to summon their best. 

Day 1 consisted of precision and accuracy tasks and a Movement Analysis session.  Later that afternoon our impromptu indoor sessions began.  You pulled a topic out of a hat for which you had 5min to prepare a talk on and then present to the group. 

Day 2 was the same schedule as the previous day, except the skiing tasks were different.  Our first task of the day was a dynamic medium radius turn on a frozen black diamond pitch.  It was certainly slick, and all I could do was trust in the tuning work of my skis.  I could hear echoes of the coaching I had received for this exact situation.  After a big deep breath, a double click of my poles, all I could hear was the sound of my skis on the snow, it was so loud.  That evening the indoor presentations began. 

Day 3 on the snow involved sharing one of your core beliefs about skiing through a 30 min on-hill teaching presentation.  What threw a wrench in the plans was that the mountain was only going to be open from 8:00am-2:00pm as the conditions were too dangerous in the afternoon.  The remainder of the indoor presentations were completed.  We were in the home stretch!

On Day 4 we were split up again into 4 groups of 10 or so.  Our mission was to crank out 10 minute impromptu teaching progression.  Again, we pulled topics out of a hat and worked our magic.  Our group was so motivated to get this over with that we knocked out all our teaching progressions by 11:30!!  We took a couple of victory laps, and wouldn’t you know it, headed straight for the mank on our first victory lap – as if we hadn’t had enough of it already! 

It was great to finally meet in person and get to know the names of so many people I had just heard of.  It was hard to not be starstruck at moments when meeting some true legends.  It was very moving to share such an experience with so many talented and warm hearted individuals.  There was not one person that I did not meet, that I wouldn’t want to be friends with.  We are blessed in our little community of ski instruction to have such kind, passionate and inspirational individuals.  Congratulations to the PSIA 2012-2016 Team Members, you guys are outstanding indviduals and I look forward to skiing and hanging out with you all in the future. 

By: Kim Mann