There are better places to be a dog than in Chile. In just 20 minutes and about as many kilometers the dead dog tally had already reached twelve. And every couple of kilometres it rose a little more. Dogs of every conceivable size, shape, breed and colour all lying in eternal slumber by the roadside. Nobody cleared them away, they just stayed put in their resting place until either the sun or the rain reduced their bodies to a dirty brown stain on the tarmac.

There’s one main road in Chile and it stretches South over a thousand kilometres to a land of smoking Volcanos. Driving down it, you get to realise that there are a lot of dogs in Chile or atleast there probably were yesterday. Today of course, there are a few less. Dogs in Chile have a lot of bad luck and to our bunch of travelling gringos in search of summer powder, it was becoming clear that we had more in common with Chilean dogs than we’d ever imagined. The Spanish word for curse is "Taco", and somehow, somewhere we’d become "taco’d". Word was out and it looked like everyone (known to us or not) with any conceivable grudge to bear, was up for throwing a spanner in the works.

I peered between the windscreen wipers, squinting out over the pink and white lucky plastic "snow flowers" that adourned the dashboard of the van, and into the shroud of mist and rain that had swallowed up Pucon’s mountain. Where had those damn plastic flowers come from anyway? I looked around. Everyone was silent, except Gary for whom silence is some form of blasphemy. "Let’s go to Argentina" he said.

It’s not often you get to exchange the madness of the European summer camps for the chaos of South America, so when the idea got out, my manageable group of five soon became six then eight people, all doing their best to arrive in Chile on different flights and on different days. Meanwhile, conspiracy on the part of the airlines meant most landed without their luggage. While I perceviered with the sort of organisational tasks that earned me the respectful title of "Dad", our group of misfits, who between them spoke almost every european language except Spanish, wandered the streets in search of food, shelter and assorted Star Wars toys. The Scandinavian trio of Jacob Wilhelmson, Kai Arne Lien and Markku Koski, no doubt all taking time off from a whaling conference, were the last to join Neil McNab, Gary Greenshields and skier Chris Fecher and trust their safety and well being to the uncertainty of three weeks of South American roads. Soon realising the van wasn’t big enough, we bought a roof rack, loaded the vehicle up so that both cornering performance and ground clearance were at a minimum and set off in search of the winter wonderland that no doubt was awaiting us, somewhere.

Three days of unrelenting rain in the town of Pucon had left us cooped up in the coldest and draughtiest budget hotel we could find with cabin fever and an unpayable slate at the local casino. We hadn’t even seen the smoking peak of the local volcano, let alone ridden it. And so, with "Dad" at the wheel and a splutter from the overloaded Hyundai wonder van, we followed Gary’s tip and started up the road toward the Argentinian border and the refuge of trees in Chapelco. Next day with parakeets squalking overhead, we would be riding powder in a landscape of moss shrouded birch and bamboo. The storm would continue of course and we wouldn’t see for jack’ but hey! atleast it would be powder.

Our arrival at the border an hour and a half later was greeted by a stony faced guard who saw his sole mission in life was to foil our evacuation plan. His moment had come and having failed with his first two questions, he played his ace. "You have snow-chains?" he smiled, knowing that he finally had us beat, and with that, two more guards scuttled out from their hiding places and erected the "Snow-chains required" sign that had until then been lying face down in the mud and snow. He’d won, for now atleast. Undeterred we did the three hour loop to Pucon and back, returning with a shiny new set of chains in time to disrupt the guards lunch break. Once on the other side, all we had to contend with was not losing the van into one of the countless mud holes that punctuated the remaining hundred kilometres into Argentina and on to Chapelco. By morning, the five day storm appeared to be lifting, raising our hopes for actually capturing some of the trip on film. After the spectacle of a ‘Greenshields power breakfast’ scared us all off our own, we headed on up to the mountain. The Scandi’s instantly set about constructing a masterpiece of a kicker (the sort that launches you ten metres into space), while the Brit’s ran off in search of untracked on the upper mountain. Two hours went by and the king kicker was ready.. just in time for the mist to descend again. Visibility on the mountain went to zero and Gary went unusually quiet. A single hit on the kicker had shown its worthiness, but then it had become a tease like a piece of chocolate cake you’ve waited all day to enjoy only to find it’s gone stale.

Gary finally spoke, his voice trembling in nervous expectation of what, inevitably had to come. "Oh no, not back to Chile, not back to the rain". But this time it would be different, our lucky plastic snow-flowers would see to that I was sure. Wouldn’t they?

It wasn’t that Chile had been all bad, just that days of rain does has a psychological effect on people, even if they’re from the Britain. Further to the North, at the foot of Aconcagua the highest peak in the Americas, we’d ridden powder under a blue-bird sky. The snow was already days old but Portillo’s altitude ensures that there’ll always be some powder hiding away somewhere. The resort lies at the right end of enough switchbacks to make even the most hardened traveler want to throw, and after recovering in its eastern-Bloc styled bar, we scouted the area for possible powder stashes. It appears that Portillo is just a cover for large scale international espionage conspiracies that involve lakes opening up and rockets being launched from beneath them. There can be no other reason for anyone to construct a ski area around an as yet un-chartered lake high in the Andes. All around, the hiking terrain fell straight down to the beautiful ‘Lake of the Inca’. We’d have to hike, but boy, let’s hope no-one slips or it’ll mean a chilly bath. To make it easier the Portillo weather gods gave us sunshine, and for a laugh they threw in wind. A harsh, bitingly cold wind that whipped up spindrift, and threatened to pluck us from the rockface and deliver us to the deep blue of the lake below. After surviving the funkiest lift ever invented (a four person poma-drag) and a two hour hike we found the powder we’d spotted from what now felt a long way below, and set about trying to document on film our struggle against the forces of the Gods. With everyone scurrying off to ride distant lines, communication became more difficult. The radios emitted nothing but wind noise and our shouts were whipped away in the gale. Someone, somewhere far away on the other side of the border could probably hear our disembodied voices and was at that moment seeking psychiatric help. An hour went by and I lost my power of speech to the cold. Through wild gesturing that must have looked like I was being attacked by a swarm of killer bees, I conveyed my need to get off the mountain. Half an hour later found us soaking in the hotel’s hot pool and wondering what all the fuss had been about.

Down in the lobby my hotel phone bill was large. And it was large because I’d been trying to hook the Gnu/Lib Tech sponsored contingent up with Mica, who was down filming for a new Mervin movie. After leaving messages for each other all over Chile it seems, we’d successfully arranged to meet up at Valle Nevado, a resort an hour above Santiago’s smog choked streets. A week had gone by since the last snow fall but thanks to the Chilean skiers enthusiasm for pistes, much of it was still untouched. The Scandinavians had soon constructed another cheese wedge, which Jacob dutifully tested throwing down a switch-540 over the gap. The run-in was sketchy and despite complaints of being Scandinavian and thus unaccustomed to powder landings, the boys still managed to pull a bag of tricks out of the afternoon. The only thing they failed in it seemed was getting the sun to shine again. Eventually it did but not until we’d completed our little foray onto Argentinian soil.

The clearing weather on the drive back from Argentina lifted everyone’s spirits. Although we were returning to the notoriously damp little town of Pucon, Gary was talking again and peppered the conversation with comments like "See that mountain there, is that higher than Everest eh?". A wilderness of glowing volcanoes and sun-lit monkey puzzle trees sped past the windows. We breezed through border points and even the mud holes appeared smaller. Things were looking up. We got a neat little cabin on the outskirts of town and next morning awoke to the sight of the smoking Villarica volcano in all its glory. No rain, no clouds, nothing. Venturing outside we realised where the rain had gone; no cloud could ever hold its own against a wind like that. Up on the mountain, the chairlifts were closed by the ferocious wind, leaving us to hitch a ride on the back of a cat-track that deposited us huddled against the wind half way up a deserted live volcano. Damn this wind. Sometime our luck would have to change, but it had already been written that it wouldn’t be today. In the same afternoon, barely visible through the spindrift, Neil launched a backside air over a roller, got caught by the howling wind and landed with an audible crack. His ankle ligaments were shot. It was time to move on.

After riding the nearby Llaima volcano and packing Neil on the bus to Santiago, we crammed ourselves back into the so far unstoppable Hyundai wonder machine to search for powder further North again. After Gary and Markku finally finished their ‘who could be slowest to get their shit together’ contest, we were finally off stopping at every gas station on the way that looked like it could sustain Jacob’s habit for promotional star wars paraphernalia, or snack food, or both. At each he’d return to the van with as many packets of Dorito’s as could be bought for $5, and believe me, in Chile $5 buys a lot. Around about the same time as when the snack mountain had been reduced to a scattering of unappetising left overs, we rolled into the resort of Termas de Chillan. We rented our own cabin from a friendly woman with hair that goes with spending large amounts of time in windy locations, fed Jacob a Dorito-free meal and waxed the boards in readiness for the next day. The beauty of Chillan is that it gets blasted by a whole lot of wind, sculpting a hundred and one windlips and cornices to leap off. An amazing photo-free afternoon was had by all, including Gary who returned with a tale of being rugby-tackled by a liftie as he was attempting to jump on a drag that was as was explained after ‘out of bounds’ to snowboarders. That’s the downside of Chillan; it’s run by unfriendly losers. The grins that decorated the cabin that evening reflected the sort of day everyone had had. Either that or Gary was showing off his rugby bruise again.

Wind can also be the curse of Chillan and by the very next day the powder had become hard windpack. After a sketchy hike with Chris and Kai rewarded us with nothing more than a slope heavily loaded with windslab, we decided it was time to call it off. We met up with photographer Eric Bergeri, Tony Roose and Gilles Bodon who told us how they’d been at Chillan for two weeks and had enjoyed only one powder day. Instantly I enquired if they had their own plastic snow flowers with them. Of course, they hadn’t a clue what the hell I was talking about.

Had we been cursed? Or had our expectations just been too great? All along, we’d had the luck of a Chilean dog, but there again we’d survived to tell the tale. And that’s something. Hey! I’ve got some plastic snow-flowers for sale... eight careful owners.