Life is always different when you sleep during transport. I got onto a bus with Shawn Mac (current travel buddy) in Santiago on Sept. 21 at 10:22 p.m—yeah right, in Chile it was more like a 10:20 bus with a chance of 10:45. We were supposed to arrive in Pucón at 8 a.m. and got there at 9 a.m. instead. Pucón is what the perfect mountain ski-town should be, small and funky with a background of an active volcano, just to keep things interesting.

We met Gustavo, owner of Etnico Hostel in Pucón and we headed up to the mountain (after a quick gear explosion in the hostel room trying to get everything together). By noon, Shawn and I were hiking up Villarrica. We fanagled a one-run pass–but got denied on the very lift we really wanted (the highest one). Had a quick safety check-up (you can never be too safe on volcanoes) in a valley before heading straight up the 9,341 foot volcano. We knew we were on the later side of the time frame, so we cranked it without switchbacks. During the discussion of how useless switchbacks are (although despite ourselves we employed them during the bootpack session toward the top), we also discovered that Shawn Mac is the new “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy” with endless amounts of common sense to ease the pain of modern life. The newest chapter will be out…soon.

On the ascent, we found a few abandoned pairs of skis. We were wondering where the people were who owned these skis. So we decided they must have forgotten them and so we decided to hike the skis to the summit for them!

We made it to the summit (a smokin’, tokin’, grumblin’ volcano) in about 4 hours. We stopped a bunch towards the top because there were about 40 people making a mess of the bootpack as they were sliding down on their behinds (with butt covers, of course). When we were up there we actually HAD to wear hankerchiefs over our faces because the smoke was just too much. It was so rad though! You can see 14 volcanoes from the summit of Villarrica.

And yes, of course, the ski down was INCREDIBLE! Challenging rime, ice, and corn conditions up top (truly psychedelic patterns!) but then we cut onto the north facing side and it was pretty glorious. Well worth it!