xcskiworld.com Exclusive! By Mathew Muir
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Photo by M. Muir: The Tres Lagunas Trail at the Francisco Jerman Trails, August 2002. Only minutes from Ushuaia, Argentina!
Editor's note: The author, a citizen skier and racer from the U.S., spent a great deal of time in Argentina's Tierra del Fuego during the summer of 2002. Fluent in Spanish and immediately impressed with the location, Mathew Muir was able to interact with local skiers and tourism officials on a level that few northern hemisphere skiers had ever managed before. The end result of this experience was not only the following resource outlining XC ski opportunities on Tierra del Fuego but also www.skifire.com which offers XC trips to the island during the northern hemisphere summer. Be sure to check it out to thank Mathew for sharing this info with the XC world!
Mainland Argentina: Groomed Nordic skiing is possible in the posh and popular Andes resort town of
Bariloche but it seems to be an afterthought to the alpine areas. The lack of trails and very high altitude make Bariloche only a fair
place to cross-country ski despite a local club that musters a small core of
enthusiasm for XC skiing in Bariloche, produces a few racers each year,
nurtures some juniors in the sport, and hosts the national championships
roughly every other year.
Tierra del Fuego: Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city, hosts the Argentine National Championships on the opposite years of Bariloche and both in and around Ushuaia, the Nordic skiing is very much worth the trip. Ushuaia has a relatively new international airport that the federal government helped finance in order to aid the local tourist economy (pretty sizable in the summer). In the winter the place is a ghost town except for mild activity at a new (and decent) downhill resort named Cerro Castor.
The Ushuaia cross-country activity centers on the Francisco Jerman ski area just 5-10 minutes outside of town. This area is operated by the local Andean club, "El Club Andino Ushuaia", and specifically, two gentlemen named Pablo Valcheff and Sebastian Mensi. Pablo generally grooms the 15-20K of trails with the club's old but operational Pisten Bully. The trails are good, the snow is reliable from July through early September (2002 saw skiing from May through October ), the weather is typically mild due to the seaside location, and other details are sufficient.
The Andino Ushuaia Club puts on a 21-22K race every August named the "Marchablanca" which is FIS sanctioned, well run, and features respectable citizen-level competition. Also in this region are a string of "winter resorts" that specialize in dogsledding, snowmobiling, downhill skiing, and some XC skiing in the Valley of Tierra Mayor. This is where the course for the Marchablanca is laid out once a year but otherwise the grooming in this valley is sporadic or limited in quality which is a shame because it possesses fantastic potential...the same potential that drew curious national teams and professional skiers here from the U.S. and Europe to train. The racecourse is drop-dead beautiful as it makes one large loop up and back down the low, long, wide valley floor at under 1000 feet which rises up to a maximum of 4500 feet at the surrounding peaks of the island (though the ski trails probably never get much above 1000 ft.).
Outside of the Club Andino Usuaia, other great sources of information and help include the tourist office in Ushuaia which has at least one fair English speaker and, for supplies, go to "Z Importacion", a ski store in town that carries all the necessities from many well known ski industry brands.
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