🇦🇷 Argentina · Cuyo
Las Leñas is one of the most important and most exclusive ski resorts in Argentina and in all of South America: a high-mountain complex set in the heart of the Andes, in southern Mendoza (Malargüe department). Famous for its dry snow, its demanding runs and its intense social life, it draws skiers and snowboarders from across the continent every winter.
With around 30 runs at different levels, a large skiable area of more than 17.000 hectares and some 14 lifts, Las Leñas offers everything from gentle beginner descents to extreme runs for experts, including the famous off-piste that made it legendary (the area served by the Marte chairlift is a world classic). It is also the only winter resort in South America offering night skiing under floodlights, one of its signature features, along with a Snow Park with sledding, snowshoeing, tubing and activities for the whole family.
But Las Leñas is not only winter. In summer, part of the resort opens and the valley turns into a destination for relaxation and adventure tourism: horseback riding, trekking, mountain biking and outings through unique mountain landscapes. With ski-in hotels, restaurants, a spa and a lively social calendar, Las Leñas combines high-altitude sport, nature and good living, in the deep south of Cuyo.
Las Leñas was born from the vision of the businessman Ernesto 'Tito' Lowenstein (the creator of Paty burgers), who opened the resort on 16 June 1983 after barely 17 months of building work, developing this high mountain valley of southern Mendoza, in the Malargüe department, as a first-class snow destination. Taking advantage of the altitude, the quality of the snow and the slopes, ski-in hotels, lifts and services were built, quickly turning it into one of the most prestigious ski resorts in South America and a meeting point for the jet set and for expert skiers. In recent decades, climate change and the variability of snowfall have raised new challenges for keeping the snow. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The land of sun and good wine: a Huarpe oasis at the foot of Aconcagua, cradle of San Martín's Army of the Andes, rebuilt after the 1861 earthquake and turned into the world capital of Malbec and the high mountains.
Read the history of Mendoza →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of Las Leñas begins in a queue. In the early 1970s, in Bariloche, a meat industry businessman called Ernesto 'Tito' Lowenstein — the creator of Paty burgers — was waiting in front of a chairlift among hundreds of impatient skiers when he realized that Argentina had an unmet market for snow. A decade later, that irritation turned into a bet that sounded crazy: to build from scratch, in the middle of nowhere, 340 kilometers from the nearest city, one of the most luxurious ski resorts in the southern hemisphere. There was no town, no fully paved road, nothing but a valley in the cordillera with dry snow and perfect slopes. Four decades on, Las Leñas is still a byword for extreme skiing, après-ski and mountain glamour in Argentina, and its history is that of a bet which, against all odds, paid off.
Las Leñas sits in a valley of the high Andes, in the Malargüe department, at the far south of Mendoza province. It is a region of imposing mountains, harsh winters and heavy snow, historically remote and thinly populated, where nature is in charge. The name 'Las Leñas' refers to the firewood from the high-altitude shrubs that grew in the area, in a rugged setting of peaks and meltwater streams, once frequented by drovers and puesteros who crossed the mountains with their livestock.
For centuries, this corner of southern Mendoza was a place of passage and rural work rather than tourism. Its great asset — the dry, high-quality snow that covers its slopes each winter, thanks to the altitude and the Andean climate — was only 'discovered' as a tourist resource in the 20th century, when skiing became popular in Argentina and people looked for valleys suitable for developing world-class snow resorts able to compete with the great destinations of Europe and North America.
The project took shape when Lowenstein bought the land of the Las Leñas Amarillas valley from Bunge & Born, the agro-export giant that had also considered building a ski resort there. Work began on 20 January 1982 and moved at an astonishing pace: it meant literally building a mountain village in a place with no prior infrastructure — roads, power lines, a water system, ski-in hotels and lifts went up almost at the same time. On 16 June 1983, ahead of schedule, Las Leñas opened with three chairlifts climbing to 3.400 meters and three hotels — Escorpio, Acuario and Géminis — with 480 beds between them. That same day the Malargüe airport opened too, receiving the first passenger flight from Aeroparque: the resort and its air gateway were born together.
The bet worked: in a short time, Las Leñas became one of the most prestigious ski resorts in South America. Its combination of demanding runs, plenty of off-piste terrain for experts, quality infrastructure and a lively social scene turned it into a meeting point for advanced skiers, for visitors from across the continent and, in its most glittering seasons — above all through the 1990s — for the Argentine and international jet set, who arrived on charter flights landing directly on the resort's own airstrip. The Las Leñas name became linked to upmarket skiing in Argentina, often compared to European resorts such as Chamonix or Val d'Isère for the quality of its snow and the toughness of its descents.
Over the years, Las Leñas built a particular reputation within the skiing world. On one hand, its fame as a paradise of extreme skiing and off-piste: steep slopes, deep snow and challenging descents that draw advanced skiers and snowboarders from across the Americas, alongside gentler runs for beginners and families. The Marte chairlift, which gives access to the highest and most technical sectors of the mountain, became a cult name among expert skiers across the continent, comparable to the great couloirs of Chamonix or Jackson Hole. It is also the only resort in South America offering night skiing, sliding under the lights with the cordillera and the stars behind, an experience few destinations in the southern hemisphere can match.
On the other hand, its intense social life: the après-ski, the bars, the parties and the cosmopolitan atmosphere made Las Leñas as much a place to meet and have fun as a sports destination. In its heyday, the Piscis hotel and its function rooms hosted parties that became legend in Buenos Aires social circles, with celebrities, business figures and athletes choosing Las Leñas for their winter holidays. That double identity — high-mountain sport and social scene — cemented its place among the great names of Argentine winter tourism, with hotels, a spa and restaurants that round out the experience, and a ski school that every season teaches thousands of beginners drawn by the myth of the place.
In recent decades, Las Leñas — like so many ski resorts around the world, from the Alps to the Rockies — has faced new challenges. The variability of snowfall and climate change have made keeping the snow difficult in some sectors, with lean seasons that forced a rethink of how the resort operates, to the point where relocating part of the runs was proposed to secure better skiing conditions in the higher sectors more sheltered from the sun. Snowmaking and smart terrain management — opening only the sectors with the best cover — became key tools for sustaining the winter season year after year, in a context where snow can no longer be taken for granted as it was in the resort's founding decades.
At the same time, the resort widened its offer beyond winter, understanding that depending exclusively on snow is increasingly risky as a business. In summer, part of Las Leñas opens and the valley offers itself as a destination for relaxation and adventure tourism, with horseback riding across the high meadows, trekking to lagoons and viewpoints, and mountain biking through mountain landscapes that in the white season lie completely hidden under the snow. The Valle Hermoso, with its meltwater streams and colorful rock formations, has become one of the great draws of the summer season, very different in spirit from the winter bustle but just as spectacular in scenic terms.
So the old valley of firewood and snow in southern Mendoza keeps reinventing itself to hold on to its privileged place among the great ski resorts of South America: from a risky bet in the middle of the cordillera in the 1980s, it became an icon of Argentine tourism, and today it faces the challenge of adapting to a changing climate without losing the essence that made it famous — the dry snow, the demanding runs and that social life which combines extreme sport with nights of après-ski at the foot of the highest mountains in the Americas.