Portillo, Chile: After nearly 20 hours of travel, our elite force of alpine scribes, retailers, athletes and assorted skiing underworld characters arrived in Santiago, loaded up into a not-quite-big-enough passenger van, survived aggressive tip-seeking porters, rallied up past a couple hours with of vineyards, the most ridiculous switchbacks on earth... and made it to one of South America's premier resorts. K2’s "Fall Training" was on. Jet-lag be damned, the crew, including Seth Morrison, Pep Fujas and Bryce Phillips, hit up the lifts. With sunny skies, soft but carvable snow and the granduer of the Andes around us, all agreed instantly that this trip was worth it.

Built in the earlier part of the last century on the foundations of German-immigrant estqablished ski camps, American ski developers purchased Portillo and eventually hosted an FIS World Cup in the late 60's

The vista is utterly spectacular with a large lake (Laguna del Inca) directly in front of a stately lodge built in the 1930's. Amazing terrain, and perfect spring conditions. We all gathered to watch Pep, Andy Mahre, and Eric Pollard's new film "Idea" last night in the cine. This film is really, really good and I can see that is has the potential to changes things. Taking progressive skiing from the park all the way to the gnar of Alaska.

Another day, more sun, more turns in Chile's version of March.

Skiing is believing.

JG