Random thoughts from Reed Purvis, our officially unofficial man in Argentina. First stop, Cerro Catedral...

Posted Feb 22, 2005

Interview by Holly Walker

Currently calling Whistler home, Huere Darquier of Argentina is out to take the Freeskiing World Tour by storm this year... starting with 2nd place at the 2005 Subaru US Freeskiing Nationals in Utah earlier this month.

After a few nights in the remote town of Caviahue, it was time to switch the pace for a while, so our arrival in San Carlos de Bariloche was a pleasant change. Home to the ski resort Catedral Alta Patagonia, Bariloche also has 100,000 busy residents working away in this lake front town full of chocolate factories, tourist shops, and restaurants. It's easily the most popular ski destination among Argentine and Brazilian skiers, so we thought we'd take a little taste test to find out why. After a long-winded string of email and hostel messages, I finally met up with fellow canuck Andre Charland who was fresh off the 3-day plane & bus journey from Vancouver, and our Argentina 2004 road trip had begun.

I hopped out of the bus at the end of the line before Chile, and looked around in awe of where they'd just dropped me. A small relic of a town sat behind me and vast snowy plateaus stretched as far as I could see in front of me, perched above a horseshoe lake in the foreground. While I stood dazed in the parking lot wondering how to meet my friends, the other skier I met on the bus offered me a lift to the nearby refugio/hostel. The 'other skier' on the bus was non-other-than World Freeski Champion Manu Gaidet, so I figured I'd come to the right place. Turned out we were both staying in the same refugio, and my 3 week ski trip in Argentina had begun...

It's 5 am, everyone's tweaked on speed, we haven't slept for 2 days, and tomorrow turns out to be a powder day. Oops, we bet wrong.

The dealer wins this hand. Fast forward 3 nights; every skier in town is riding a booze bus from the best party of the season to another night of pulsating techno-cheese. Bill is the last one home at 7:00, and the first up at 8:30 to rally the troops for another surprise pow day. At 11:00 he's on a stretcher. Dealer wins again.