The first two days at Valle Nevado/La Parva last month it dumped more than a foot of new powder. It was the tail end of back-to-back storms that swamped Chile’s mountains, including Portillo, with around 30 feet of snow in a few short weeks beginning in July, the start of their winter.

It was enough to close the road to Portillo until late August, while the road to Valle Nevado thankfully was open. There’s been so much snow that even Chile’s smaller resorts have extended the season through mid-October, at least, with discounts of up to 30%. The snow is likely to hold beyond that, since you are skiing at 10 thousand feet plus, where snow does not melt as quickly as at lower elevations and SPF50 is a must.

Valle Nevado hotels are all-inclusive, so your room, ski pass, breakfast and dinner are one price. There are three resort-owned hotels with different quality designations and a brand new condo-style unit, Aconcagua Ski Residences. Dinner is a choice of four restaurants, each with a long list of local Chilean wines.

The buffet-style eatery is popular with families, where kids can sugar-up on endless ice cream refills. It tends to be loud, with kids being kids, but the sushi and grill-to-order steaks make it worth the decibel level. My partner and I also enjoyed the quiet elegance of the French restaurant (my dinner one night was foie gras, lamb chops and creme brulee), the extensive antipasto bar and risottos at the Italian restaurant, and the Pisco sours and seviche at the Chilean restaurant.

But what about the skiing, you ask. It was –

Superb. Sublime. Silky. Fantabulous. Sweeping views of Andes peaks stretching 100+ miles in the distance on the five bluebird days which followed our two snowfall ones. You can even see Santiago in the distance from some runs.

Take the high-speed Andes Express to almost the top of Valle Nevado (there’s a long, steep Poma that goes further up, which I absolutely refused to board, even though it meant missing part of the back side) and zoom down Momia (Mummy). It’s a straight black run that made my teeth are cold from smiling in morning corduroy. It connects with Sol, a mile-long groomer so named because it’s in the sun consistently all day.

Mummy to Sol became our morning mantra, with several repeats, until other downhill diehards carved Mummy into hieroglyphical moguls and Sol got crowded with teenage snowboarders. So we switched to Diablada, or Devil’s Dance, another zoomer groomer, or danced our way down Samba. In addition to multiple chairlifts and Pomas, there’s also a gondola, which serves only green and blue runs but links to upper mountain lifts.

The Andes Express also connects with adjacent La Parva, formerly two separate areas now on a single pass, either the Ikon Pass or the Valle Nevada hotel guest pass. Ikon passholders get a 10% discount in Valle Nevado. In La Parva, it’s only private condos, so you are on your own for meals, and the pass to Valle Nevado is extra, too.

Together, they offer 2,000+ acres at VN and an additional 1,000 at La Parva, including large off-piste cirques and bowls of deep  powder in both. We saw members of the US Ski Team training here.

Take the 3100 trail, named for its altitude – in meters – from the connection trail to the long main four-seater and ski effortless groomers on Franciscano and Nevada before heading “home” to VN. The only way back is via a long Poma, which Dominique Rudloff, VN’s General Manager, told me will be replaced by a chair in the “near future”, perhaps even for next season.

The two areas were purchased a few years ago by US-based Mountain Capital Partners, which also owns more than a dozen small, locally popular areas in the West, including Purgatory, Colorado; Brian Head,Utah; and Sandia Peak, New Mexico.  This is their first overseas investment.

There’s still time to book a flight to Santiago, hire a skilled local driver to take you up the mountain road with more than 30 tight switchbacks, and then play in some of the best snow in the world.

See you on the slopes.