Skiing and Trekking in Patagonia

Tom:  Right. You said you go down to Patagonia in the winter. Are you skiing or climbing down there? [22:39]

Christian:  We're climbing and actually mostly trekking down there.

Tom:  Oh, OK.

Christian:  We're going to do some more skiing down there. We've got a couple of expeditions planned in the next year. One that we want to take clients on is skiing the Chilean volcanoes in the Lake District. And the Lake District is very much like the Cascades in Oregon and Washington, where you've got these really big, beautiful volcanoes along the spine of the Andes and really beautiful forested areas with these crazy trees called araucaria trees, or monkey puzzle trees people know them as. They look like Dr. Seuss forests. And then hot springs, resorts and great food, and, you know, all the things that make up a really great ski vacation. We're going to do some trips like that in Chile.

And then also, another personal trip that I've been wanting to do, and we're going to do next September with a team from Men's Journal, including Corey Rich and Dan Duane, who's a longtime friend and author and a staff writer at Men's Journal. We're going to go and do a ski traverse of this island called Isla Riesco, which is an island that my grandmother and grandfather homesteaded in the very far south of Patagonia. And one part of the island is all agricultural and sheep and cattle, and the other, probably four-fifths of the island, is big mountains and glaciers, and it goes… it connects right out onto the Straits of Magellan. So, our idea is to just to sail in and get dropped off and do a traverse, a ski traverse of the island and then end up back on my family's ranch. [24:48]

Tom:  Oh, wow.

Christian:  So, that should be a lot of fun.

Tom:  How long is that?

Christian:  It'll probably be altogether a week, about a week, so maybe a four-day traverse, something like that. It's kind of a short trip.

Tom:  Sounds like a blast.

Christian:  Yeah. It should be really exciting. You know, it's just a really amazing part of the world, and really interesting because it's all fjords and canals, and so you're right next to the ocean. So, you're skiing, but you can hear seagulls and, you know, it's just a really incredible place.