So my first night here in Portillo we were sitting in the hot tub and gazing up at roca jack which leads into a saddle that borders Super C, one of the acclaimed best lines in South America. We were all tired from the flight and from the afternoon of skiing but we reached the decision to skin the bowl up to Super C and drop in to this gnar couloir. It was one of the better lines I've skied in a while and I thought I'd share the stoke with NS
After a terrible night's sleep on the floor of the employee housing because my buddy forgot to book me in for the first night, I met our "crew" at breakfast. I was tired as fuck and had every intention of backing out of this skin/bootpack. But, everyone said it was so good that I pushed myself into doing it
The first photo shows the bowl you skin up to in order to get to Super C. Basically you take a 5 person poma sketch lift and then skin from there. The lift takes you right up the apron of the bowl and then stops abruptly. Once you're at the top of the bowl you traverse into a narrow couloir. The transition is called the crux and it's pretty damn sketchy at times, especially after people have bootpacked through the skin track
This photo shows the route we skinned, the track is even visible. The saddle that marks the beginning of Super C is circled in red. we skinned that whole main bowl and then transfered into the couloir leading to the saddle. the photo is zoomed in, the real thing seems much bigger /claim
This was right after we got off the poma lift and put our skins on...the JJ's say hi
The beginning of the skin up the bowl, it was hot as fuck. The 2 guys are people who bootpacked the whole thing, they started earlier but we ended up dusting them, if you guys do this definitely skin it if possible
Looking down on the lake from the middle of the bowl. The views here are pretty spectacular
We finally reached the crux after a long, brutal climb. The crux basically gets incredibly steep and narrow and then drops off into the couloir that leads to the saddle. It is a "fall you get seriously injured" situation. You have to traverse while holding on to rocks and it's sketchy. I was fucking tired but once you pass the crux there's no going back...
This next photo is the view up the couloir, this is where I switched to bootpacking
This one is looking down on the lake and 2 guys bootpacking behind us
When I was about 100 meters from the top my skin started to fall off and it got super steep and annoying. I threw the JJ's on my pack and bootpacked the rest. The snow was so deep it felt like i was swimming uphill. for most of it I was basically crawling instead of walking. After a long struggle and lots of hard breathing due to the altitude, I made it to the top. The top of Super C is 3940 meters which is fucking high. The actual descent is about 1500 meters which is fucking long. My legs were totally shot and it's not a good place to fall
I stopped before the narrowest part just to get a pic. This is also where the snow was best. You can see the infamous pass down on the right
This last pic is taken from across the Chile border on a skin we did today. It shows the whole deal from far away
Overall it took us about 5 hours to do the whole thing and we were all exhausted after it. The people who say it's a 2 hour gentle bootpack are very wrong unless so many people have booted it that there's a fucking highway going up. It was a super fun line and apparently at 16 i'm one of, if not the, youngest people to do Super C /CLAIM
The snow at the top was a bit crusty but down in the middle of the couloir it was amazing blower pow with faceshots the whole time. Then at the bottom it got pretty variable and wind blown but you could still charge it
So yeah, just thought I'd share some stoke, it's amazing here, everyone should save up to come at some point, you won't regret it
