Fly in, take transit to Valle Nevado or Portillo resorts, stay and ski for a week or two, shuttle back to Santiago and boom — that’s a typical ski trip in the Chilean Andes for most. Not a bad trip either, honestly, especially on a banger winter like this one where Central Andes ski areas have been getting bombarded with meters of powder for weeks on end. But there’s a new way to ski the Andes of Chile that’s gaining popularity; a quieter, more expansive movement that’s taking hold and trading single-resort bubbles for multi-destination road trips that trace the country’s wildly diverse geography down through ancient forests, volcanic peaks, and deep Patagonian valleys.
To understand this evolution, SnowBrains sat down with Jimmy Ackerson. At 68 years old, Ackerson is a towering figure in South American snow sports, having spent eight years as president of the Chilean Skiers Association, managed Valle Nevado in the early 2000s, and worked under legendary Austrian-born Portillo director Sigi Grottendorfer. Ackerson first arrived to Portillo from Sugarbush, Vermont, as an eager 19-year-old in 1978, giving 20 years of his life to iconic hotel-resort. Today, Ackerson serves as the general manager of Corralco, a ski resort set on the flanks of the active Lonquimay Volcano in the Araucanía region, roughly 750 kilometers south of Santiago. In a country where the economy is driven overwhelmingly by copper mining and agriculture, Ackerson has spent decades advocating for tourism as a vital economic engine — and convincing both international visitors and Chilenos themselves that Chilean skiing extends far beyond the capital’s immediate backdrop.
As Ackerson observes, an increasing number of international travelers no longer want to fly thousands of miles just to stay inside one resort perimeter for a week. “There’s a strong tendency to a concept that is called ‘multi-destination vacations;’ that means, when a North American comes to South America, they don’t come just to spend seven days at Portillo, go from the airport to the ski area, and from the ski area to the airport,” Ackerson told SnowBrains. “They visit a number of destinations, and there really is something interesting here in terms of what the Central Andes are like versus what this part of the Andes is like.” South of Santiago, these multi-destination itineraries that Ackerson mentioned can include trips to Nevados de Chillán Ski Resort followed by visits to the prehistoric landscapes of Araucanía, where skiers carve around ancient araucaría or “monkey puzzle” trees that have stood for centuries. “Chile has such diverse geography that if you go from north to south, the skiing is radically different,” he says, gesturing toward the treeline. Further south, that same spirit of exploration leads spring skiers into deep Patagonia, where boutique operations run heli-skiing trips onto snow-capped coastal volcanoes through November. “[There are] interesting heli-skiing operations in September, October, November in the far south, in deep Patagonia, where they’re heli-skiing on volcanoes at that time of year,” Ackerson notes. “There are big names like Portillo and Valle Nevado, but the country has a lot more to offer.” It is a shift from isolated luxury to geographic adventure, combining high-alpine turns with authentic village life in places like Malalcahuello, a few kilometers down the road from Corralco.
The story of Corralco itself reads like a study in patient mountain development. In 2003, Chilean Wall Street investment banker Enrique Bascur, who had fallen in love with the Lonquimay Valley as a child, convinced the Chilean Forest Service to grant a historic 45-year concession within the Malalcahuello National Reserve. At the time, national park leases were capped at just 10 years — a short window that crippled long-term capital investment. Bascur fought for the extended concession, slowly building out infrastructure until Ackerson arrived as Corralco’s first official general manager in 2014. Back then, the neighboring village of Malalcahuello offered just 400 tourist beds; today, thanks to the resort’s growth and a rise in mountain lodging, that capacity has expanded to over 2,500 beds.
Physically, Lonquimay offers what Ackerson sees as a dream canvas for a ski area operator. Storm fronts originating in the Gulf of Arauco travel over hundreds of kilometers of dry land, losing excess moisture before striking the volcano. The resulting snow lands with highly faceted crystals that pile up effectively into soft powder across the resort’s south and southeastern exposures. Better yet, the entire mountain rests on a deep bed of fine volcanic sand rather than jagged alpine rock. When liquid precipitation occasionally falls, it decants directly through the snowpack into the porous sand below rather than freezing into a sheet of ice over topsoil. This unique geology allows Corralco to operate over 800 meters of continuous vertical drop — serviced by the high-speed Volcán Express detachable quad — and groom pristine runs without a single snowgun on the mountain.
Yet while the terrain boasts over 750 centimeters (300 inches) of annual snowfall, doesn’t rely on water-heavy artificial snowmaking, and has an 1,800-hectare (4,448-acre) operational footprint, Ackerson is equally focused on dismantling the social barriers that have historically defined Chilean skiing. In a country where winter sports were long viewed through a rigid, classist lens as an elitist pursuit, Corralco has pioneered a philosophy of “relational service.” Staff members, many of whom have been hired from local timber towns, are encouraged to bring their authentic, personal stories to guest interactions rather than adopting strict client-to-worker roles. The friendliness from employees is not only noticeable but it’s strongly promoted. To build deeper community roots, Corralco also directly partners with local municipalities to sponsor rural school programs, integrating skiing two days a week into the curriculum for 150 local children in Malalcahuello and expanding into four grammar schools in nearby Curacautín. The initiative provides local youth with a passion for the outdoors and a clear career path as patrollers, instructors, and resort managers.
That blend of community warmth and world-class mountain design is paying off. Corralco is currently targeting a sustainable growth trajectory toward 200,000 annual skier visits while serving as a premier spring training ground for the global race circuit. Every autumn from September to November, over 850 international athletes and coaches ranging from U.S. Speed Teams, European Ski Cross squads, and Asian national teams, converge on Lonquimay to train on a full-length, minute-and-a-half downhill course dropping off the volcano’s upper T-bar.
For Ackerson, who left Vermont for Chile decades ago and describes himself as having “an American accent but a Chilean heart,” watching the region evolve from a quiet forestry outpost into a thriving international sports hub represents the fulfillment of a lifelong calling. “We are but the sum of our experiences, and he or she who has the most experiences wins,” Ackerson says. By bridging local community life in Malalcahuello with world-class mountain development, he isn’t just growing a ski resort: he is creating a template for how mountain travel can empower local people while offering visitors a deeper connection to the terrain. As winter travelers increasingly look beyond single-resort vacations in Chile, the snow-draped volcanoes and ancient araucaría forests of Araucanía stand ready to show them just how vast, diverse, and authentic South American skiing can truly be.
