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What’s in store with Anne-Flore

Burton photo shoot in Chile

Back in Chile for the Burton summer photo shoot, Victoria Jealouse, Natasza Zureck and I are going to Lonquimay, which is about a 10-hour drive from Santiago. I love to come down here for the Burton summer photo shoot because we team up with 2 Tiempos, a sled company pulled together by Christian Vahrhan (these guys are dope). The Andes are huge, deep mountains with volcanoes and the sleds make them easily accessible and they let you avoid extra hiking too.

The Orange Truck came to pick us up from Santiago airport for a long drive. We decided to stop at the ocean in Pichilemu on the way after hearing the waves were huge that day. Man, I’d never seen such big waves and by the time we got there, they were much smaller than we were told. Earlier that morning some Chilean surfers dropped into 12-meter high waves. One of the surfers even just paddled into it. That’s crazy. Last year one of them won the Billabong XXL Award on one of these waves. I’m glad we got to see that because traveling like mad I often don’t get the opportunity to see anything else besides mountains.

We got here to Lonquimay which is a very remote place with poor snow conditions. They had the worst conditions I’d actually ever seen. After a day of scoping and a day of studio shooting, we went to the market while waiting for the rain to stop. I got cool balaclavas for cold times, like sledding days or bike trips or anything like that. Victoria and I were on a mission. We love South American markets and any cultural shopping days. We also got tons of really dope earrings. Victoria always has crazy stories to tell and this time she came prepared with tons of DVDs and printed sheets. She’s rad.

Finally the weather cleared up for the last day. All excited and curious on what we would find, we first got stuck in the mud. The guys thought they had big muscles and could push us through the crazy dirt road. Only an hour later they admitted we wouldn’t make it. So we got on the sleds crossing the road bank from one side to the other, trying to find a way through the bush, the river, the houses and the dirt. Most of the snow had melted so it was hard to find the way.

We finally made it to the top of the mountain from where we could see a huge lava river from a volcano that exploded in 1988 (I think). It was crazy. We were right next to the crater that exploded so I decided to hike up and to check what was in there. It took me quite a while to get to the top. All rocks were falling under my feet and the heat coming out of the ground didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. I was scared I was going to blow up the next second but the crater was cool. There were caves sucked in the snow to a deeper level of the earth with smoke coming out from time to time. I felt blessed being up there. That’s probably the first and last time I was going to be on top of a volcano. I then strapped on my GTwin and rode the dirty black sticky snow down the volcano. I was stoked.

That’s it for Chile 2007—hopefully we’ll get better conditions next year.