A Patagonian storm howls its arrival far above Lago Nahuel Huapi. The Nubes lift is shut down, but we are hiking the Cerro Catedral ridgeline at 7,800 feet and getting blown sideways by sustained 50-mph winds. It’s my first view of the southern Andes: mountain ridgelines stacked to the Chilean border and lush valleys feeding slender blue lakes. We’re skipping the popular La Laguna lift-accessed backcountry zone and aiming for a rotten bootpack above a 3,000-foot convex, rollover slope to access a notched entrance into millions of acres of national park backcountry.
For more than a century, San Carlos de Bariloche has drawn migrants to its mountains. Germans and Swiss came first at the turn of the 20th century, constructing a remote mountain town with the architectural and cultural influences of Bavaria. Italians and Slovenians followed after World War I, trading political and economic upheaval in Europe for rumors of a region that rivaled the Alps in sheer mountainous beauty.
In the 1930s, national park designation, construction of a Bavarianstyle timber-and-stone civic center, and the creation of the Llao Llao luxury hotel framed the town as a postcard destination. At the same time, Austrian ski champion Hans Nobl oversaw the construction of a tram and the Refugio Lynch at Cerro Catedral in 1939, creating Argentina’s first destination ski area before most visitors had metal edges. But it was the postwar influx—due to Argentina’s open-arms policy toward the defeated Axis powers—that made Bariloche both internationally famous as an alpine expat refuge and as a haven for former Nazis escaping capture.
Argentina thrives on both storm and chaos, so the first powder day in weeks represents a pure expression of that energy. Gunderson, Deane, and I hold our ground in the lift line then elbow forward as the Caballo chair at Catedral opens predictably late. The Red Bull Beyond The Line contest scene is in town, and at the top of the chair we find a pack of hungry freeriders eyeing the bootpack to La Laguna, which has been closed for the contest. Normally, the inbounds hike—a cat track—is open access, but the loose contest closure and the language barrier have created a gray area of confusion with ski patrol. Deane and I skin up and break trail around a stuck snowcat in order to stay one skin ahead of the madness. Laguna is the zone at Catedral, and our entrance has opened the morning floodgates.
I’ve stayed in tin or timber huts before, but the powerful architecture of Frey gives it a presence stronger than the full force of Patagonia’s worst weather, which is likely why it has stood strong at 5,577 feet for six decades. The permanence of the construction is the result of two Italian stonemasons—Giacommelli and Santonato—who carved the one-piece lintel and every single stone for the structure by hand.
We stack our gear in the sturdy glass-paned porch and enter the refugio. The half-door separates the narrow benched hallway from the kitchen, with a sign identifying it as the center of the universe. The care - taker does not take reservations at Frey, so we haul gear to the second floor and unroll sleeping bags atop foam mattresses to claim space. It’s a crammed two-story, four-room hut with a bunkroom that o fficially sleeps 40 shoulder-to-shoulder and seats fewer at three long wooden tables in the dining room.
The wind in the national park is silent and the Patagonian sky is a deep, dark blue as we rando race the Euros across frozen Laguna Toncek after a late breakfast of fresh baked bread and dulce de leche. Nothing happens early or quickly in Argentina, including breakfast, and Gunderson charges o ff afterward in a photographer’s panic without a plan. We hit the first switchback, gain vertical to Laguna Schmoll, and watch as Parker and Deane angle up for jagged spires of sketchy, rocky lines on Torre Piramidal.
We spend two more days deep in storm skiing, as well as the Argentinean après culture of Asado meals and Fernet-fueled mixers. Before we fly north, we drive the scenic route past the Llao Llao hotel to soaring cliffs above deep blue lakes. We stumble upon a cemetery at the base of Cerro Lopez and discover headstones of immigrant Italian, Slovenian, German, and Swiss mountaineers who built the foundations of the refugio system. We look skyward to the 3,600-foot vertical cliffs and see gathering condors circling directly overhead.
