Vallecitos
The first ski centre in Mendoza province, high on the Cordón del Plata, whose lifts last turned in 2007 after the snow stopped coming reliably; the site now works as Argentina's main mountaineering training ground.
- Region
- Mendoza
- Country
- Argentina
- Status
- abandoned
- Year closed
- 2007
- Reason for closure
- A run of winters without enough snow to open. The centre, also known as Valles del Plata, ran its lifts for the last time in 2007 and had been unable to operate for years before that; by 2016 it had been shut for over a decade.
History
Vallecitos sits about 80 km from the city of Mendoza on the flanks of the Cordón del Plata, with a base around 2,900 m and terrain to roughly 3,350 m - 450 m of vertical and a longest descent of about 2.4 km. It was the first ski centre in Mendoza province and, before Penitentes and Las Leñas existed, the winter destination for the region, with eleven marked runs graded five blue, four red and one black plus a cross-country circuit. Its altitude did not save it: the snowfalls it depended on became too unreliable to open on, and the lifts ran for the last time in 2007. The centre had already been effectively finished for some years by then, and the buildings and lift lines have sat unused since. The valley has found a second life as a mountain centre rather than a ski resort - it is the base for a cluster of refuges, the standard training and acclimatisation ground for Argentine mountaineers heading for Aconcagua, and the venue for the country's only ice climbing festival. The exact year the ski centre opened is not stated in any source found, and neither the lifts nor the individual pistes are documented by name.
Lifts
| Name | Type | Manufacturer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnamed lift | Sources disagree on the lift fleet - the Spanish Wikipedia entry gives a total of seven while separately listing four six-seat and six two-seat chairlifts, and no source found names any individual lift. The lifts have not run since 2007 |
Sources and further reading
More in Argentina
Location
-32.9744, -69.3586