So I looked around and found the dream of my childhood: a cyclocross bike - the correct machine for endurance and speed in muddy environment.

Or is it really? what do you think? - check out my qual der wahl survey on my favourite social shopping site www.edelight.de - looking forward to your answers!

A old friend of mine, Rainer Nootz, started his own ski company in Konstanz last year. Together with Werner Früh - a snowboard veteran and designer of various boards including the Jester series - he founded Powder Equipment. Powder Equipment specialises on Freeride and Big-Mountain skis and boards - hand made in Germany, with only the finest and laest materials.

Currently they have two product lines: Type A and Type B. Both series offer skies and snowboard - made for similar usage!

Type A is a ultralight series for Freeriding and Backcountry. The board is a Race-Snowboard.

Type B is a unique Big-Mountain ski and a Longboard. The board is available as a 3 piece Touringboard as well - very technical piece!

I am looking forward meeting Rainer and his skies the next weeks - and check them out in the mountains. Check back for
my reviews, once we have enough snow to test these guys.

For further details and shopping check out: www.powderequipment.de

Enjoy these pix - and sorry for the quality, they were taken with my Nokia-Cam:

So I looked around and found some contestants: Scarpa Tornado Thermo and two Garmonts, the Garmont Endorphin G-Fit and the Garmont Shaman. The first two a hybrids between randonee/hiking and freeride boots, the Shaman seems to be a pure race/ downhill/ freeride boots: no release or walk mechanism, but exchangeable soles (whoever that needs).

Ski Arpa is not a ski resort in the traditionell way - there are no lifts, no runs, no tracks, no hotels, no apres ski… Ski Arpa is pure freeskiing! The Austrian Toni Sponar founded it quite some of years ago, and after some backlashs, he runs the resorts with two snowcats now. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is great! First of all, there is pure open terrain and you are free to ride wherever you want to. Second, a ride in a snowcat up to the top is always fun. How did someone had the idea for such a resort - you may ask. Well we had plenty of time to talk to Toni (as he gave us a ride in his pickup). Toni used to design ski resorts and still is an active skiing instructor in Aspen. When he came to Chile some decades ago, he helped to design Portillo. Thus he was flying in a plane across the Andes. And he did not only found the place for Portillo, but even his own place for a perfect resort. So he bought the mountain and founded his own resort, that he runs in the Chilean winter, while he still works in Aspen in the North American winter.

But now some facts:

• Ski Arpa is situated some 1,5h driving out of Los Andes (approx. 2h driving from Santiago to the North)
• As the road is a very rough dirt road you should have 4×4 drive
• Take some 2-3 days for Ski Arpa. Even if you are a fast skier, you will not make more than 3-4 runs per day. It takes the cats roughly 45 minutes to drive up.
• Take your food and drinks with you as the is no restaurant.
• Quite a good place to stay is Termas de Corazon - a 50 years old wellness resort. It has nice rooms, plenty of pools - but don’t expect to much from the catering. And be prepared for Bingo, Sining, etc. at dinner - the atmosphere in the dinning room is more like a sanatorium
• If you can, take your hiking stuff with you. There is Valle Honda, a wide open bowl - that is perfect for some lines! You can reach it within half an hour hiking from the top from Alto del Arpa. On the map you can see our round-trip - allow 2-3 hours.
• Form Alto del Arpa you have awesome views towards the Aconcagua!

Here are some of our Ski Arpa pix

Skiing terrain and skiing map

And the wayfaring points for the runs

Dies ist die Map

So this time, we decided to give Chile a try, before skiing the famous Las Lenas. Therefore we flew directly to Santiago de Chile and directly organized transportation to the nearby skiing resorts: La Parva, El Condor and Sierra Nevado. You can see these resorts from town, and so it took us roughly one to two hours driving from the airport. Very nice, but also very steep road. There are plenty opportunities to stay, from cheap hostels to cabanas and luxurous 5-star hotels. After 5 days we had the more difficult task of getting to Los Andes. But again - with private transportation it is no problem. But allow at least 4 hours driving. Why Los Andes can rightly ask - the is no snow in Los Andes.

Correct, but there is Ski Arpa nearby! Ski Arpa is the perfect resort for freeskiing - no lifts, no tracks, no runs - just Toni and his snowcats. Due to the difficult access way, you may think about a good 4×4 rental car! We were lucky and Toni picked us up for the hotel - so we had some really interessting rides to the resort.

Back to the big resorts - After 3 days it was time to fly to Argentina and to Las Lenas. So we flew Santiago to Buenos Aires, took the bus to the national airport and a flew again to San Rafael. San Rafael is a small town in the Argentinian pampas - no mountains, no snow. So the bus trip took 4 hours to Las Lenas (pretty tiring hours, as the bus was a piece of garbage and was sometimes driving below 20mph! little advice: buy something to dink in advance, but zip only a little every once in a while, because there are no stops!). Las Lenas is a typical ski only resort - little like the French stations like Val Thorens, Avoriaz, or Tignes. You can normally book one week-packages - so we did as well.

So like on the first trip - after a 14 skiing intensive days - we enjoyed Buenos Aires again before flying back. Perfect to acclimatize again for the European summer

Stay tuned for the freeriding tips and details for Las Lenas, Ski Arpa, Valle Nevado!

The first of those trips took us to the Argentinian Andes. 3 weeks for Buenos Aires, Bariloche (Cerro Catedral), Chapelco and Cerro Castor in Tierra del Fuego. Altogether we had a dozen skiing days - the rest was travelling and enjoying the Argentinian way of life. Which is especially eating great steaks, drinking good red wine and enjoying perfect night life.

We went end of August/beginning of September - and the means Easter conditions. So a little advice: plan with enough flexibility to find the best snow. On the other hand, in order to be sure to manage 3 ski resorts in three different areas in three weeks, we did some planning ahead. Especially the flight form Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego/Ushuahia can be pretty crowded. But before going into details on the three resorts - here is our trip-schedule:

Couple of days enjyoing Buenos Aires. After that we took a flight to Bariloche. Form the airport you can easily take buses up to the skiing resort (if you stay up there, which we did).

From Cerro Catedral, we took a private transportation (that is Argentinian terms for driver with private car, but organized by hotel…) to San Martin de los Andes. San Martin is the base station for Chapelco. It took us roughly 4 hours driving, as the direct route is blocked in winter.

Because there was no direct flight connection possibility from San Martin to Ushuahia, we had to fly back to Buenos Aires and took the earliest flight the next morning to Ushuahia. The flight is really great - perfect views especially on Tierry del Fuego. We even saw the skiing resort before landing. There a dozens of hotels and opportunities to stay in Ushuahia, but only a couple of cabanas right next to the resort. So better organize transporation right away.

The next weeks, we will block on the skiing resorts - to give you some impressions and share some better runs and freesking opportunities.

Stay tuned!

1) go up Schneefernerkopf and keep on climbing towards the old chair lift (you can still see the top station) - going down you have a nice steep run
2) head towards top station of Weißes Tal and go down this nice open bowl towards Wetterwandeck
3) go up Wetterwandeck, at top leave to the left and head for the rocks right of you. Just behind the rocks opens a great bowl for perfect freeriding. At the end follow the tracks and head for Brunnthal. You have some nice terrain until you reach Brunnthal.
4) go up Brunnthal and Sonnenkar. Going up you can see your next spots: the open fields right of Sonnenkar and the moguls just below Sonnenkar!
All in all take your time and enjoy - do it twice in one day and you will love your Weissbier at the end
www.zugspitze.de