🇦🇷 Argentina · Cuyo
Vallecitos is a small Mendoza mountain center set in the Cordón del Plata, about 75 km from the provincial capital, famous for having been Mendoza's first ski center and, above all, for being the classic acclimatisation and training base for Andean mountaineering. Ringed by peaks topping 5,000 meters, it is an accessible, rugged and authentic high-mountain destination: the closest gateway to the Andes from the city of Mendoza.
Unlike the big ski centers, Vallecitos keeps a rough-edged, adventurous profile: it is the starting point for climbs in the Cordón del Plata (peaks such as Plata, Vallecitos or Stepanek), a place where climbers acclimatise before taking on bigger challenges such as Aconcagua, and a setting for high-altitude trekking in summer. Its surroundings of glaciers, moraines and snowy peaks are imposing.
This guide covers the essentials of Vallecitos: what happened to the old ski center and how the snow is enjoyed today (sledging, ski touring, no lifts), high-altitude trekking in summer, the mountain refuges and their prices, how much an expedition to Cerro Plata or Cerro Vallecitos costs, and how to get there from Mendoza along the gravel road of RP 89. A destination for lovers of authentic high mountains, very close to the Mendoza capital.
Vallecitos is a mountain center in the Cordón del Plata, in the Mendoza Andes, which was the province's first ski center and established itself above all as an acclimatisation and training base for mountaineering. Ringed by peaks over 5,000 meters, it is the starting point for classic climbs and a setting for high-altitude trekking, a few hours from the city of Mendoza.
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 chairlifts at Vallecitos have stood still for almost two decades. They turned for the last time in 2007 and since then they have hung rusting over the slope, an unintended monument to Mendoza's first ski center: 11 runs, 450 meters of skiable vertical drop and skiers arriving from all over the world when neither Penitentes nor Las Leñas existed. Any other destination would have died with its lifts. Vallecitos, instead, is busier than ever.
The explanation lies in what this corner of the Cordón del Plata always was, underneath the skiing: a natural school of mountaineering. At 2,900 meters and only two and a half hours from the city of Mendoza, ringed by peaks brushing 6,000 meters, Vallecitos is where generations of Argentine climbers learned to walk in crampons, to sleep in a tent at 4,000 meters and to breathe air with half the oxygen. Today, when it snows, the old base fills with families on sledges and ski tourers who climb on foot what the chairlift used to carry. And in summer its refuges are packed with climbers from all over the planet who come to acclimatise before the big exam: Aconcagua. This is the story of that metamorphosis.
The sporting history of Vallecitos begins on 12 April 1935, when a group of enthusiasts led by Humberto Re founded the Club Alpinista Mendoza in the provincial capital, the parent institution of mountain sport in Cuyo. The name did not last long: in 1942, on the recommendation of the Argentine Academy of Letters — which suggested using 'andinismo' for sports practised in the Andes — it became the Club Andinista Mendoza (CAM), as it is still known today.
It was those pioneering members, with rudimentary kit and wooden skis, who explored the Vallecitos gorge and first recognized the potential of its snowy slopes, as they would later do with the future runs of Penitentes and Las Leñas. By the 1940s the club had already built infrastructure in the area and the Official Ski School was running at the San Bernardo site, where the people of Mendoza learned to ski a few hours from home. The CAM also built refuges that are still standing — the Mausy and the Re at Vallecitos, the Fellinger at El Salto — and that have been part of the human landscape of the Mendoza mountains for more than seven decades.
In 1951 a general meeting of the Club Andinista Mendoza settled the sporting fate of Vallecitos with a vote worthy of a film: the institution had to decide whether to give priority to climbers or to skiers, two tribes that were getting along ever worse under the same roof. The climbers won by just four votes. The result caused a mass exodus of skiing members, who left with their boards to found their own institution: the Esquí Club Mendoza.
Paradoxically, that split drove both of the place's vocations forward. The skiers developed the province's first ski center at Vallecitos, which in its golden age had lifts, 11 runs and 450 meters of vertical drop: for decades it was THE snow for the people of Mendoza, the closest to the city, and it drew skiers from all over the world before the big resorts existed (Penitentes only opened in the late 1970s and Las Leñas in 1983). The climbers, for their part, consolidated the high camps and the ascent routes that would turn the valley into the most important high-mountain school in western Argentina. Skiing by day, snow and ice courses at weekends: Vallecitos lived half a century with that double identity.
The decline of skiing at Vallecitos was a death foretold by climate and competition. Dry winters became more frequent and the snow line rose: at 2,900 meters and with no snow cannons, the center depended on generous snowfalls that came ever less reliably. At the same time Penitentes — on the international highway, higher and with better infrastructure — and the giant Las Leñas took the skiers looking for runs and services. The Vallecitos chairlifts turned for the last time in the 2007 season, and were never switched on again.
What followed could have been total abandonment, but the opposite happened. In 2011 the province declared the area a Protected Natural Area: some 175,500 hectares between Luján de Cuyo and Tupungato that today make up the Cordón del Plata Provincial Park, with public access and entry control for mountain activities. The refuges at the base — Ski & Montaña, Mausy, Universidad (run by the UNCuyo), La Roca, San Bernardo, San Antonio — stayed open, giving bed, food and warmth to a clientele that swapped skis for crampons. And every winter with good snowfall, the old base recovers its white soul for a few weeks: families with sledges, ski tourers and photographers head up to see the Cordón del Plata dressed as it was in the old days.
Today's Vallecitos lives off its deepest vocation: training mountaineers. Its geography seems designed for it. The base, at about 2,900 meters, lets you sleep at altitude without complex logistics; the approach camps at Las Veguitas and El Salto stagger the climb; and the amphitheater of Cordón del Plata peaks offers a perfect progression of objectives: Stepanek and Adolfo Calle for a first taste of altitude, Cerro Vallecitos (5,468 m) as a first serious five-thousander, and Cerro Plata (5,968 m), an almost-six-thousander whose normal route is considered the best rehearsal for Aconcagua there is.
So, between November and March, the refuges fill with accents from all over the world: climbers who come to acclimatise and test their kit before attempting the roof of the Americas, 80 km away as the crow flies to the northwest. Mendoza's mountain schools and guides run their snow, ice and rescue courses here, and many of the great figures of Argentine mountaineering took their first steps in crampons in this valley. The old ski center remains as vintage scenery for a destination that found its real role: to be the accessible, rugged gateway to the high Andes. Anyone who stands in Vallecitos on a clear dawn, with the ice crunching under their boots and the peaks glowing pink, understands why nobody mourns it as a ski center: it was too good to be only that.