The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.2
MADE CONNECTIONS: A Local Tour Of El Fin Del Mundo
Words and Photos: Kevin Nolan 2023-10-24 09:16:26
“Federico Romano, Nicolas ‘Pampi’ Bredeston and Grant Giller enjoying some warm maté at Pampi’s house in between sessioning street spots. Southern Patagonia is known for its particularly unforgiving weather, and that day was probably the coldest I’ve ever been filming street snowboarding.”—Kevin Nolan
Someone once told me that you can get anywhere in the world in five flights, and to get to Ushuaia it took all five. Fifty-one hours to the end of the world starting from my house in Seattle.
I met up with Grant Giller at the Houston Airport with a plan of taking the easy way out—at least as far as snowboarding in Argentina goes—by setting a course to the well-trodden resort town of San Carlos de Bariloche. Two flights and a layover in Santiago, Chile, later we touched down to questionable conditions. Descriptions of “aggressively firm” and “bad all the way to the top” from friends on the ground were enough for us to book a last second flight to a city further south, a city all the way south: Ushuaia. We cleared customs, grabbed our board bags and headed straight back to the check-in counter to do it all over again. Two more flights and an overnight layover in the Buenos Aires airport later, we finally touched down at what Argentinians call “El Fin del Mundo.”
Situated below the 54th parallel south, Ushuaia claims to be the world’s southernmost city (although nearby Puerto Williams, Chile, population 2,874, is factually further south). Ushuaia is the last stop before Antarctica, and the de-facto launching point for expeditions heading to Earth’s southernmost and least-populated continent. One glimpse of the surrounding mountains was enough to convince me that all the hectic travel was worth it, and at the same time I wondered how I had never heard of this place before. The steep, craggy, glaciated Martial Mountains towered 4,300 feet above the ocean. It was as though someone had figured out how to merge the Canadian Rockies with Alaska. A short cab ride from the airport dropped us off, fittingly, on Patagonia Street, where a tall, smiling mid-30s Argentinian waited for us.
Grant had met Alfonso Lavado at Bariloche’s Cerro Catedral back in 2016 during during an International Ski and Snowboard Federation slopestyle event. Having traveled all the way to Argentina solo and without a plan, Grant had figured that entering a contest would be a good way to meet some local snowboarders. I’m not sure if winning the contest was part of his plan, but regardless, it worked. Alfonso was at the contest coaching a group of local kids through their first real competition and approached Grant after so the kids could meet the winner and take some photos with him. For the duration of a slow two-seater chairlift ride, Alfonso told Grant about where he was from. His tales of snow in the city, street spots and plentiful access to backcountry zones were more than enough to put Ushuaia on Grant’s radar. Seven years later he had finally made it there, and thankfully invited me along for the journey.
Alfonso might be the most interesting outdoorsman in Argentina. Splitboarder, climber, photographer, enduro mountain biker, pilot, former ATV racer, aspiring mountain guide—he does it all. He even lists acting on his resume, having starred in a music video for Don Omar, a Puerto Rican Reggaeton star, during a stint living in the Dominican Republic. His great grandparents immigrated to Ushuaia from Spain in 1911 and his family is one of 50 that have lived there for more than 100 years. Suffice to say he was a good guy to know in this port town of nearly 80,000 folks.
One glimpse of the surrounding mountains was enough to convince me that all the hectic travel was worth it...
Just north of the natural border with Chile of the Beagle Channel, Ushuaia is a relatively young town by South American standards. First populated by the Selk’nam and Yámana Indigenous peoples, the area was informally settled by foreigners—primarily British missionaries—before Commodore Augusto Lasserre established the town under Argentine governance in 1884. Soon thereafter, it became the capital of Tierra del Fuego. Sadly, foreigners brought with them epidemics, and the local indigenous population was decimated. For the most part, Ushuaia existed as a prison town and naval base for the first six or seven decades of Argentine occupation. Slowly, as Antarctic cruises came online, the town transformed into a remote tourist destination.
We had arrived amidst a major storm. Heavy snow and high winds would keep us out of the mountains for a few days. Lucky for us, this storm had also delivered a couple feet of snow in the city, which is apparently quite rare for sea-level Ushuaia. Grant was itching to ride, and a mellow down bar about 100 feet from our front door seemed like a good place to start. I’m still not sure if I’d recommend shoveling a few cubic meters of snow after over 50 straight hours of travel, but it was a good way to get the blood flowing.
The next day we linked up Federico Romano, another Ushuaian rider that Grant had met some years ago in Tahoe, and a local filmer, Nicolas “Pampi” Bredeston. Fede was on an RV trip through California with a crew of Argentinian riders, and just so happened to park for a night across the street from where Grant was living at the time. A few years removed from this chance introduction, Fede and Grant found themselves sessioning a perfect rail in the center of Ushuaia’s waterfront district amongst a large group of children sledding, which created some entertaining (and somewhat stressful) near misses. I’ve been fortunate to film street snowboarding in a handful of iconic locations—Helsinki, Minneapolis, etc.—but never once did I think I’d find myself filming a street clip at the southern tip of Patagonia. Sure, the weather in Minnesota in December is brutal, but standing at the bottom of a down bar with relentless wind from the Beagle Channel cutting through my outerwear was something else. Luckily, Fede kept the maté flowing through the whole session, adding warmth and energy.
...never once did I think I’d find myself filming a street clip at the southern tip of Patagonia.
After a few days in the streets, a weather window appeared in the forecast and we made plans to head into a backcountry zone that Alfonso and Fede frequent. After a quick skin through the subantarctic mix of deciduous and evergreen flora, I caught my first glimpse of the alpine. It was easy to see why these guys spend so much time in this particular valley. It held dozens of rideable couloirs alongside huge, open faces with clean runouts. The views of the surrounding mountains weren’t too bad either—big lines with serious exposure kept my eyes upwards as I spent the approach mind-surfing long white ribbons surrounded by jagged rock. After an hour or two we arrived in a stunning cirque with a promising jump spot, and we got to work cutting and stacking blocks while a lone condor circled high above us. Alfonso, the more big mountain minded of the three riders, continued onward with a partner to go ride a couple lines. We finished the jump with about an hour of light left, and not wanting to rush the session, we resolved to return tomorrow and hit it. Determined to not leave empty handed for the day, Fede and Grant found a good pat down spot right above the jump, perfect for a quick session before we had to head down.
I’ve ridden some pretty advanced runs with a 50-pound camera backpack in my time, but the line we took down to the car—a 1,000-foot pinner couloir with a small mandatory air at the bottom—probably takes the top spot. Fede was verbally surprised as I rode up to him after arcing large radius terms down a shady apron, and I responded with a classic American idiom that probably didn’t translate too well—this wasn’t my first rodeo, and a bonus Ushuaian couloir wasn’t something I would pass up. Eighteen hours later we were standing atop the jump in a whiteout. Luckily, we had built it a few hundred feet from a small hut (or “Doma” as the Argentinians called it), which turned out to be the perfect place to spend a few hours drinking maté and waiting on the weather to clear. Essentially a large dome tent with a wood floor, this hut is primarily used by local splitboarders and skiers to wait out Ushuaia’s notoriously fickle weather, as well as a spot to stay the night and launch missions deeper into the range. While established huts are fairly common up north in Bariloche, this one was a rare respite from the wilderness of southern Patagonia. With the exception of one ski resort about six miles east, we were in the middle of uninterrupted wilderness. Five or six cups of maté later, the sun broke through the clouds and we hustled back over to the jump under perfect evening light. Alfonso arrived with impeccable timing and as the freestyle contingent of our crew sessioned the kicker, he climbed the broad face directly above us. He dropped in right as the slope caught warm light, gracefully threading through cliffs that broke up the face, making perfectly placed turns all the way down without the slightest hesitation. After one more hit each for Fede and Grant, it was time to go. We exited the alpine just as the sun dipped below the horizon, and by the time we got back into the trees, it was dark. If you’re ever looking for a bit of excitement in your life, I would recommend riding down an icy skin track through dense trees in the dark without a headlamp—truly a riveting experience. But we made it back to Fede’s car without incident. Having caught wind of a party at the nearby alpine resort of Cerro Castor, we crammed all our gear into his small hatchback as quickly as we could and made haste. Snowboard boots still on, we walked into the base area lodge and found ourselves in the middle of an energetic group of ski area employees. Loud reggaeton music filled the room, and someone handed me a beer.
The views of the surrounding mountains weren’t too bad either— big lines with serious exposure kept my eyes upwards as I spent the approach mind-surfing long white ribbons surrounded by jagged rock.
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