Volcan Llaima

Volcan Llaima, a beautiful volcano — Llaima, as seen as we drove towards the start of the route at Las Araucarias ski area.

The morning after our ski of Lonquimay, we were up early and making our way to Llaima. It was about a two-hour drive to reach the start of the route, at the Las Araucarias ski area. The resort was closed, and the base of the mountain was already melted out and dry. So we put our skis and boots on our backpacks, and began hiking up the ski hill.

Approaching Llaima — Now above the ski lifts, we had a clear view of the route to the summit, which climbed the left ridge and face in the photo.

It wasn’t long before we reached the snow line, and it wasn’t long after that when we passed the top of the chairlifts. From there, the west side of Llaima came into view, and we could see our route.

A map of our route on Llaima. — The topo map of our route of ascent. Click to enlarge.

You can see our route on the map, approaching from the west and moving a bit more to the northwest face as we neared the summit. The snow was firm, and we were skinning steep switchbacks with ski crampons for a while. Eventually, we switched to boot crampons as the angle steepened and the snow surface became harder, almost icy.

Christy Mahon booting up to the summit of Llaima. — Eventually the snow was really firm and skins no longer worked well. So we put our skis on our backs and crampons on our feet.

On a sunny, calm day, this would probably be a fantastic ski route once the sun warmed the snow. But today’s forecast called for an incoming storm later in the evening. We figured we had enough time to pull this off before the bad weather arrived. But what we didn’t count on were the high winds we encountered before the storm, which proved really challenging.

The view to the north from Llaima. — As clouds moved in and the winds picked up, we could see Lonquimay to the north (right in photo).

As we came within about 500 vertical feet of the crater rim, the winds picked up considerably. With our skis mounted on our backpacks in an A-frame, we were getting pushed around a lot. As we crested the crater rim, it was hard to stay upright, and we needed a ski pole and ice axe in our hands to keep from being blown over. It was pretty intense, probably in the 40+ mph range.

The crater of Llaima. — The view of the crater from the summit.

The crater rim offered some respite from the wind, and we didn’t take too long to transition to ski mode, carefully retracing our route of ascent. With the skis off our backs and on our feet, the wind wasn’t pushing us around as much. But the snow was still tough, with a lot of sastrugi to start. It wasn’t casual skiing at all; it required a lot of focus.

Skiing down Llaima. — The ski down was often in full whiteout conditions. It was so disorienting that even our iphone cameras were confused by the light, as you can see in its rendering of the moment.

To add to the situation, the clouds were rolling in, so we lost visibility as well. The three of us managed as best we could, eventually descending from the windy upper part of the volcano, down through the base of the clouds, to a calmer slope with corn snow and good visibility. We could only laugh at the adverse conditions we had to deal with as we followed our skin track back to the top of the ski area and back to the car.

Confused by the whiteout conditions. — Where are we?

The route of ascent was 4.5 miles with 5300 vertical feet gained.

At the base of Llaima after our ski descent. — Further down we eventually skied out of the whiteout conditions. You can see Llaima behind.

Llaima was a tough one. But this was the day we had for it on our itinerary and we were glad we stuck with our plan and persevered. That said, we would like to return here on a day with a better forecast and ski this aesthetic line in better conditions!

Next up was Lanin– a big one.

Check out the IG reel of the wind we encountered here, and on Villarrica.