Together, Kevin Steen, Remi Meum, Bjoern Kaupang, Oliver Palmers, and filmmaker Morten Gjerstad migrated down south to the capital of Chile, Santiago. As we loaded our rental cars, we all soon were excited to see the looming snow covered mountains surrounding the city.

Our excitement only grew as we left the airport as we followed the curving roads all the way up to our first stop of our two-week adventure. We showed up to the major resort of El dorado. We unpacked our gear and headed up to the top of the mountain. It was here that we got our first taste of what conditions in Chile would be like. With the light winds we couldn’t do much other than cruise around the vast Chilean landscape. But, just the thought of snow kiting in August made the session one to remember.

With even lighter winds forecasted for the next couple days our crew made the decision to head back down to Santiago. We spent the next few days at the grocery store gathering up supplies and seeing the sights of Santiago. While visiting one of the local Chilean malls we were lucky enough to spend a few hours on and outdoor standing wave. We all decided to ride the wave but Morten the snowkite filmmaker was an absolute natural as he ripped up and down the wave. The next day we hoped in our cars and headed further south through the volcanic territory to our second snowkite location, Termas de Chillian. The drive was absolutely amazing as we left the modernized city of Santiago and headed into much more rural areas.

Although none of us spoke Spanish we were able to negotiate with a family to let us stay in a cabin that they had for rent. We spent the next few days snow kiting off the side of the ski resort and had a great time exploring this new terrain and getting shots for Morten’s new snowkite film Dimensions. The wind, which typically filled in most every evening, was a bit gusty here but the adverse terrain made it worthwhile to kite at this amazing spot. The sun setting behind the looming volcanoes each night was treat after our long days of snowkiting. We decided that because of the gusty winds we would head further south in search of smoother winds for the next few days.

After a night of relaxing in the natural hot springs formed by the near volcanoes we headed south. We spent the full next day driving until we arrived at the mountain of Corralco. This was by far the best snowkite spot that we encountered on our trip. It consisted of rolling hills for hundreds of miles with smooth winds and blue skies. We had some awesome sessions at this spot until we were forced off the mountain by a blizzard. We headed down the mountain a cozy cabin that we rented from another very nice family. We woke up the next day to a horrible sight, the blizzard of snow had turned into rain and had melted all the snow at this amazing snowkite location. We quickly looked at our options and noticed that up north at El Colorado, the elevation was near 4000M and that they had received almost 12 inches of new snow instead of the rain that we had gotten down south.

With our trip nearing its end we quickly packed up our cars and headed back to Santiago. Almost 10 hours later we were in Santiago where we slept for the night so that we could head up the mountain early the next day. The next morning as we were driving up the mountain Morten hit a patch of black ice and crashed off the road. It totaled one of our rental cars and really set us back on our day of snowkiting. Once we had dealt with our rental car dilemmas we made it to the snowkite spot where we got one last session before we needed to head home. It was one to remember as we kited the huge slopes of powder until sunset. Chile was truly an awesome trip and the extremely nice people, beautiful scenery, and snow made it well worth the travel down south.

Chile Tips:

Chile invented pizza, Not Italy. Best pizza of my life…
I would recommend going to Chile for water kiting because all of the local kiter’s talked about was the wave riding in Chile. Snowkiting was so so.
Rent Cabin’s from nice families, They are much cheaper than hotels.
Have someone that speaks Spanish with you.