The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3
ARID HORIZONS IN NORTHERN CHILE
Words and Captions: Marissa Krawczak. Photos: Patricio “Pato” Diaz. 2023-12-06 11:24:41
Pomerape and Parinacota, two volcanos known as Los Payachatas, define the border between Chile and Bolivia and are the highlight of Lauca National Park. Parinacota is the more recently active of the two volcanoes, having last erupted within the past 2,000 years.
My body lurches in the backseat of the rental truck as we weave around mounds of desert slough and dried lumps of grass. Reggaeton pounds over the radio and a dry cough escapes my lungs involuntarily. My eyelids feel heavy and swollen and I am nauseous from driving winding roads for hours, not acclimatized adequately to our current 15,800 feet of elevation. It’s only our second day in the high Andes of Northern Chile, after driving from the sea-level city of Arica.
After waking up at dawn at Lago Chungará, we had already done an unplanned hike to 16,800 feet this afternoon. The scenic lake sits at 14,820 feet and calmly reflects a snow-covered peak which rises proudly to 20,930 feet from the arid flats of the Atacama Desert: Volcán Parinacota. Beside it sits a second peak, Volcán Pomerope (20,610 feet). Together these two peaks are known as Los Payachatas, which in native Aymara culture means twins. We are here to summit and snowboard these two Lauca National Park volcanoes. I’m on this trip with the all-female splitboarding crew consisting of the Santiago native surfer and movie producer, Anto Galmez, Argentine multi-sport outdoorswoman Paula Carru, and fellow North American, boardercrosser-turned-freerider, Nelly Steinhoff.
Our truck comes to a halt as we pull up to the second rental truck where a media crew waits. I can barely speak, but I ask for the third time that day if we can descend. My request goes unfulfilled. Anto jumps out of the driver’s seat, walks to the other rig and speaks in fast and frantic Chilean Spanish with filmers Carlos ‘Musa’ Muslim and Xabier Azcarate, guide-in-training Victor Astete-Beltran and Pato Diaz, drone operator and photographer. Pato gets into the driver’s seat and again we head upwards to scout roads onto Parinacota.
We come to a stop again after losing traction. I escape the backseat to stand on the soft sand, a small comfort to my alarmingly deteriorating senses. The glow of the setting sun breaks through the blackness of my mind and finally, after yet another conversation I cannot understand, the crew decides we can head back down to the village we are using as base camp, Putre. My ailments gradually recede as we reach 11,483 feet at dark. Nelly tells me that the rest of the crew, except for her, has been taking altitude sickness medication. She also had a headache, so I don’t feel so alone regarding acclimatization.
The next morning I’m in bed reading climbing expedition stories, escaping the heat of the afternoon, and resting to try to kick the head cold I picked up on the flight here. The cough of the tiny girl sitting next to me on the plane echoes in my head as the crew walk in and out of our 12-by-12-foot room the four of us are sharing for the next two weeks. The door slams open and shut and the property gato sneaks in to snuggle in between her huntress jaunts on the grassy terrace of our casita. I try not to think about the wintery Oregon I have left behind. It is early April, a seemingly odd time to snowboard in South America, unless you want to ride the volcanoes of Northern Chile.
Los Payachatas stand near the border of Bolivia on the western margin of the Altiplano. In Spanish Altiplano means “high plane” and here in South America it refers to the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside of Tibet, which puts this entire region of Chile at an average altitude of 12,300 feet. The Altiplano has its own unique weather patterns, too. Most of Chile has a Mediterranean climate with rain falling mostly during winter, but here, the wet season lasts for seven to eight months with precipitation falling heavily throughout summer in a phenomenon called Altiplanic Winter. Guides tell me Altiplanic Winter falls between February and April. Other times of the year the mountains are icy, riddled with a maze of hardened ice towers, penitentes, or just rainy.
The rest of the crew is sitting in the communal kitchen, talking and watching TV. I don’t speak Spanish and with two weeks’ notice before the trip launched, I had little time to practice a foreign language. I am more a passenger than a leader on this trip, and all I can do to break the seriousness with the crew is sarcastically saying ‘Namaste’ as a greeting, which becomes a running joke the rest of the trip.
It’s our fourth day here in Putre and we are gearing up to summit Parinacota. For this mission, a local man named Vicente will guide us. We pick him up at his second home, a shepherd’s house at the base of the volcanoes, made from straw and mud with grazing donkeys and remnants of alpacas decorating the front yard. He greets us with a weathered smile, invites us in and makes us hot tea. I sit on the sullen couch across from the nudey calendar girls hanging on the wall. I sip my tea and admire the dirt floors and plastic tablecloths in the dark but comfortable space before I am summoned outside. Vicente throws his modest pack in the bed of the truck along with our stacks of more modern and colorful gear, then we head up. I’m in the driver’s seat this time, following the other truck where Vicente is guiding us on a straight-forward but very off-road route with sandy soil that threatens to suck the tires in if we lose momentum. Once it is impossible to drive any further, we park on the steep rock-screed slopes and chock the wheels, unload our gear and rig our splitboards to our heavy camping packs. We walk slowly but steadily a short distance to a flat hilltop just before snowline. At 16,900 feet, this is officially the highest most of us have ever been.
It’s cool and breezy up here and the crew sets up tents in the sandy, volcanic soil under the massive peak above us. I lay on my sleeping pad in full outerwear, legs crossed, writing in my journal. Clouds have moved in and out overhead, but Parinacota has stayed in the sun.
I share a tent with Nelly; we go to bed at 11:30 p.m. and wake only a few hours later at 1:30 a.m., then make hot water for instant coffee and tea. We pass around a bag of coca leaves, ibuprofen and altitude sickness medicine and walk a short distance from the tents to a vein of snow where we strap on our splitboards and begin our ascent under the nearly full moon. I was told this was one of the least light polluted places on the planet and am relieved to be moving around under the shelter of night and stars. The old snow is firm in the cold night, echoing the rhythmic clangs of our splitboard crampons as we walk. The slow and precise pace is interesting yet low consequence, the experience enhanced by sleep deprivation, elevation and a mixture of legal drugs. The sun begins to rise. I soak in the last bit of the sweet night. It’s a straightforward and sunny march to the summit, a consistent and non-technical hike. I practice control of my breath and use ‘rest steps,’ completely relaxing all of the muscles in one leg before bringing it forward. Although our acclimatization was rushed, this still feels like a good intro to high-elevation movement.
My feet sink into boot-deep snow a few hundred feet from the summit. Anto scurries ahead of me with Victor and we all arrive atop Parinacota after nine hours of hiking. The views from 20,900 feet are striking, especially down into the craggy summit crater. A few puffs of volcanic smoke rise into the arid sky. My throat is torched, and it hurts to speak, so I don’t. I just take in the views of the desert horizon spiked with white-capped volcanoes from here to Bolivia. We change over to snowboard mode and the four of us drop simultaneously. The snow is firm under my board but edge-able and there is no exposure for us to worry about. It’s not steep enough to be dangerous but it’s steep enough to be fun; there are barely any blind rollovers. We weave through a slushy gully bordered with walls of volcanic rock. I cruise behind Anto, linking turns until we dead-end at rock scree, unstrap and walk back to our tents. Thunderstorms loom around us so we hurriedly pack up camp to head down. At the truck I hack up thick yellow mucous.
Summiting Pomerape is out—the snowpack looks thin and there is far too much steep exposure in marginal snow for our crew. We rest in Putre as a thin layer of snow blankets the high country. We have a ceremony on the edge of town, led by a local woman named Gregoria, who burns brush, tosses shots of liquor over her shoulder, and waves smoke to the mountains, whom she asks to forgive us and provide us strength. When it is my turn to speak, I modestly request a fun passage.
It’s day nine here in Putre and again we are packing the trucks up with camping gear. This time we head towards Volcán Taapacá, the peak that has been overlooking us from 19,226 feet our whole stay. We drive into the town center where vendors have booths set up with colorful souvenirs and dogs roam about collarless but clearly at home. We park next to a brick wall topped with baskets of vegetables that block my door from opening. The girls jump out, I assume to go shopping but then realize they are visiting Gregoria’s souvenir stand. Some local women walk up to my open window since we are parked in front of their vegetable stand. They want to sell me some carrots, which look like they would be good hiking snacks and a fair purchase for our parking spot, so I oblige.
On a dirt road going towards the mountain, we stop and pick up our guides, Gonzalo and Bastian, who work for a local outfitter. They are young, dressed in modern mountaineering gear, and are happy to be joining us. It is starting to feel more like a party as they stuff themselves into the trucks. We aggressively off-road in-between lush green mounds of llareta, a soft, moss-like plant native to the area. I lean out the window taking pictures of the exotic landscape on my point-and-shoot.
We arrive at camp on the slope of Volcán Taapacá at 16,000 feet overlooking Putre and the alluvial fan we just rallied up. Nelly and I pick a scenic tent site nestled in the large boulders and sandy wash. We both have our eyes on a smooth apron of snow a short hike above us. We’re itching to snowboard and feel finally free from the confines of the casita. Pato is keen to join as are Bastian and Gonzalo, as they have never seen anyone ski or snowboard this mountain before. They are also excited to be on this side of the mountain as this isn’t the normal ascent route. We hike to the top of the apron, and I focus my attention on an aesthetic, clean line that starts from the summit. I watch it under the setting sun, mindsurfing and memorizing it turn by turn to ride it tomorrow. We ride to where snow meets rock and head to camp to join the rest of the group.
Standing in a circle discussing plans for tomorrow, I ask, “Can we summit?” There is a conversation in Spanish I don’t understand before ultimately getting the answer: “No.” We will just go to the West Ridge. Riding off the summit of Taapacá will have to wait for another trip.
We wake early and hike up the mountain to the top of the ridge. I feel more alive than I have since leaving North America. I eye a route down, wait for Nelly and Paula to drop first, and watch them both take big smooth turns around the volcanic rock features and out of sight. I drop in and cruise waves and ridges until the debris choke me out onto the apron. The snow here is most interesting, like deep, loose Styrofoam. I weave slow turns in between rocks and savor the moments on my snowboard above the Altiplano.
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