Portillo is a ski resort in South America, located in the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

mountains of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. In the Valparaíso Region, it is from Los Andes, the nearest city, and by vehicle from

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

. Its hotel sits at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

, and the highest lift reaches . The lowest lift loads at , yielding a vertical drop of . Ski Portillo has 35 named runs and 14 lifts. It is owned and operated by the Purcell family who have a chain of hotels in Chile, most noticeably the Tierra Hotels including Tierra Atacama in San Pedro de Atacama. Plans to build the ski area were drawn up in the 1930s. Construction began in 1942 and the ski area was opened in 1949. Several of the ski lifts on the west side of the valley were destroyed by avalanches in 1965 and were rebuilt in time for Portillo to host the Alpine World Ski Championships in August 1966. Those championships marked the emergence of Jean-Claude Killy, who won gold medals in the downhill and combined events. Portillo has since become one of the principal destinations for ski racers to train during the

northern hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar ...

summer and hosts the national ski teams of Austria, Italy, and the

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. The summit of the mountain ''(Ojos de Agua)'' climbs to . Nearby peaks include ''Los Tres Hermanos'' at and ''La Paraya'' at . '' Aconcagua'', the highest peak in the western and southern hemispheres, is nearby at , which exceeds any peak in

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Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, and

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; only the

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, Karakoram, Pamir and Tien Shan in

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are higher.

Location

Portillo lies close to the border between Chile and

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

at Paso Los Libertadores.

Season

The ski season at Portillo typically runs from mid-June to early-October, conditions permitting.

References

External links

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Chile - Portillo Ski Resort / Overview
{{Authority control Ski areas and resorts in Chile Sports venues in Valparaíso Region