Pros Scoring Deep Turns in South America This Week

The ski season in South America started with an incredible bang . Ski Portillo, Chile, hosted an earlier-than-usual weekends-only opening on June 1st and June 2nd, thanks to enormous amounts of fresh snow.

Then, it started storming too hard, forcing Portillo to delay its official opening date and suspend the rest of the planned pre-opening dates throughout June. Las Leñas, Argentina, also had to press the pause button on opening.

"It's close to the best start we have ever seen in our 25 years guiding here," said David Owen, the founder of guiding company PowderQuest , in a previous conversation with POWDER .

Those resorts are now open, though, and, unsurprisingly, the getting looks incredibly good. Earlier this week, professional skier Connery Lundin shared a mouth-watering video from Portillo.

Lundin wasn't done. Two days ago, he shared another clip, this time from Las Leñas.

"This spine line from today was our second run here… let's just say our expectations have been mucho exceeded," wrote Lundin. Our expectations have been exceeded, too.

Lundin's not the only pro taking advantage of the South American powder harvest. Tristan Brown's also been conducting a South American powder investigation, and his videos are similarly tantalizing. Here's one from Portillo.

There's plenty of time for more South American storms. Last year, the end of August delivered heavy snowfall to numerous Andes resorts. Portillo saw eight feet of powder. Las Leñas picked up between 11 and 13 feet .

By September, Portillo had decided to extend its ski season as well as opening some runs that typically remain closed, like Española, a narrow, rocky chute. I'd fire a shot in the dark, but the truth is, there's no way to say reliably if this August will end with another earth-shaking round of snowfall.

In the meantime, though, the likes of Lundin and Brown have delivered a more than adequate look at the South American ski scene. And, if all this La Niña business pays off, we might be scoring some North American powder in a few short months, too.

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