The Ski Journal • Volume 13, Issue 2 • USHUAIA

On the bay in Ushuaia, Argentina, is a carved wooden plaque that reads, “Here we get gathered around the fire, the hunters, the fishers and other liers (sic) from the most southern part of the world.”

To the south lies the Beagle Channel, gateway to hundreds of nautical miles of frozen waves before Antarctica. To the north is Cerro Castor, a young, windswept ski area where the Atlantic dumps clouds of snow. In Ushuaia, the streets rise so steeply from the sea that my friend Geoff Krill sometimes needed a hand getting his wheelchair up the sidewalks from the Albatros Hotel. That’s where the PSIA-AASI National Team stayed for Interski 2015, the international snowsports instruction symposium that takes place at some famous, or often emerging mountain destination on the planet every four years. In 2011 it was in St. Anton. In 2019, Pamprovo, Bulgaria. And in 2023, it will travel to Levi, Finland. The event has only taken place once in the United States, in Aspen in 1968, more than 50 years ago.

Krill, who is now coach of the PSIA-AASI Adaptive Team, carves slopes on a sit-ski like he is racing a motorcycle. In Ushuaia, he was a member of a 30-person-strong Team of U.S. ski, snowboard, cross-country and telemark instructors who came to share teaching tips and new techniques with hundreds of snow pros from countries as diverse as Australia, Austria, Japan, South Korea and Canada. I often shared dinner with him, David Oliver from the freestyle team, and free-heelers Ross Matlock out of Crested Butte and Scotty McGee from Jackson Hole.

We lived on steak and red wine for a week, watching the stray Jedi dogs of South America make their way through town, stopping to check for traffic, then nosing up to their favorite houses and restaurants in search of their next meal. At the only grocery store in town, where you could buy vacuums and lamps, rum and bottled water, the lines were 30 minutes long, and security kept clearing cash from the tills. With waiters and baristas we bartered for Argentine pesos, first eight, then nine, and finally 12 to a dollar (actually advertised on the menu board), at a carniceria where they brought back such crisp, pink 100 bills to the table you thought they were printed right there.

At Cerro Castor 30 minutes up the road, flamenco dancers opened the ceremonies on a snow-covered dance floor outdoors. Even when there was powder, the wind could scour untracked conditions to coral reef in an hour. It’s the only place I ever skied with a lodge at the bottom of each lift, complete with food and wine to wait out the cold. On the last day, I lapped untracked conditions off the Poma with a couple from Russia, worrying about my frozen fingers until I stopped at the refugio for a cheeseburger and beer, considered my 30-plus-hour trip back home and thought, “Maybe I should spend another week right here.”

Photo Caption: Often referred to as “The End of the World,” Ushuaia feels like a border town, with penguins, icecaps and stormy seas to the south, and to the north, jagged mountains, cold snow and the length of the Americas. Photo: Peter Kray

The Ski Journal - Volume 13, Issue 2

USHUAIA

Issue List