I am planning four to five weeks to ski in these two countries. From the 5th of july to the 13th i will be on a ski tour. Has anyone skiied las lenas or valle nevado/portillo?

Yes, I have at all of these and some more.

Las Lenas is the best resort of the three. It offers good entertainment in the evening, good food and drink and the skiing there is awsome.

However, I prefer Portillo purely for skiing. The snow in Portillo is amazing and if you get Portillo on a sunny day after fresh snow I would argue that it is better than anywhere in Europe or North America that I have ever visited. I have skiied a lot in Europe and no where comes near in terms of the lightness of the snow and crowd fee slopes. To top it all there are some good steeps and lots of off piste through rocks if you are good. If you can afford a helicopter (which I strongly recommend) you will have an unbelievable time. The only problem with Portillo is that it is in the middle of nowhere and there is only really one hotel and so things become a bit boring after the third night in.

Valle Nevado is the best of the resorts near Santiago but there is not much going on in the evening and the skiing warrants no more than two days I would argue.

You are going at a good time. The snow might be a little dodgy occasionally to start with, but in August should be superb. The Argentines and Chileans all head to the mountains at the end of August so you will miss the rush which is good for skiing but a shame for your apres ski.

thanks so much for your response!
I am doing a ten day tour to the souther resorts with powder quest.
catedral and four other resorts.
I want to do the three I mentioned but feel like I am spreading myself thin.
valle nevado two days ....really? Are you including la prava and el colorado?
Can I drive to these three from santiago? The rates per night are rediculous at aroud four hundred a night since i am single probably. I am definetly doing las lenas for at least a week. Can I save money by booking directly with a hotel. I travel six to nine times a year and can not do the five star prices all the time. I want to ski about twenty days on my thirty three day trip. Ten are already on the tour I mentioned and i would love to get portillo in and las lenas and not miss the tri...valle nevado. Do you have any suggestions? I have so little time to spend researching all this.
thank you for any further responses.

You would want to spend no more than two days skiing Valle Nevado, two days at El Colorado and two days at La Parva. To be honest, El Colorado is not that great and so you may only want to do one day there.

You can drive up from Santiago or take a bus (I drove but understand the bus is really quite good and cheap). If you want to save money there is a town just below El Colorado and La Parva, just after the turn off to Valle Nevado. There is cheap accommodation there where the lift people and ski instructors live. But it is very very basic and you will want some very warm clothes if you stay there.

At Las Lenas, there is a town about 30 kms away called Malargue. It is a bit dead but there are some quite reasonable hotels that are perfectly adequate and much much cheaper than Lenas. If you have a car it is very easy to stay there. Also when you turn off the main road and drive up the lane (about 20KMs) to Lenas halfway up on your left is a hotel. It reminded me of the hotel in the film The Shining. It has sulphur baths. This hotel is cheap, if a little scary, and you can hitch up to Lenas with ease each day from there is you have no car. Hitching from malargue is possible but a bit of a hastle.

If you let me know how you are getting around Chile and Argentna, where and when your packages start and finish and how you are planning to cross the borders i can help more.

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