The snow has arrived

This year is supposed to be an "El Niño" year, which normally means increased amounts of rainfall across the South American Pacific coast. Except this El Niño event seems to be a bit unusual, we´ve had hardly any rain at all in Central Chile, thus far.

Last weekend, finally, we got 40 millimeters or so over the course of 24 hours. Good thing it was on a weekend, normally Santiago starts falling apart when this happens during a workday, with traffic grid-lock even worse than on a "normal" day because traffic lights break down, some roads are flooded, and people are even more stressed and hostile towards each other.

The nice thing about the rain in Santiago is that the next day the air is clean (...though not for long). And in the winter it also means snow in the mountains, at the moment down to about 2000m above sea level, which makes for a good opportunity for a wintry hike. This is what we embarked on one of these days of our long weekend (Thu was a holiday).

Climbing up in the search for some snow

We didn´t feel like driving very far, so we went on one of our favourite hikes very close to Santiago, the climb to the top of Cerro Conchali, which starts only 20 minutes from our house. In the higher parts we had about 30cm of snow to play with. Mario quite clearly had a blast:

For better quality click here.

For the rest of us it varied from struggling a bit with cold feet (Christian and Patricia) to bordering hypothermia (Pfiffi). But working together as a team we all made it to the top, Pfiffi inside the backpack on the last bit.

View of the snow covered Cordillera from the top of Cerro Conchali 

Mario the snow dog at 2500m above sea level

A great day out was had by all, and even Pfiffi warmed up enough inside the backpack after a while to climb back down on her own. (o: No doubt we'll go on another hike again soon!