The Valle Corralco Hotel and Spa has an activities desk and the guides provide a range of outdoor excursions to explore the Malalcahuello National Reserve. Some activities are just for a couple of hours, whilst others are full day excursions. The repertoire of activities on offer is quickly evolving, so check at the desk for their latest offerings. Below is just an example of some of the activities on offer.

The guides speak perfect English, so if your Spanish isn’t great, you’ll still be able to get the most out of this beautiful wilderness area.

Alpine Touring/Randonee Tours

There is plenty of backcountry terrain around Corralco so the world’s your oyster! The hotel activity guides can provide a range of randonée tours to suit your needs, fitness levels and skiing/snowboarding ability. In the future, the activities desk is likely to have alpine touring gear for rent but in the meantime you’ll need your own equipment ie touring bindings, skins, split board, beacon, shovel and probe. For some high altitude trips you may also need an ice axe and crampons (e.g. to go to the summit).

One relatively easy randonée trip they can take you on is to the Navidad (Christmas) Crater area. The Lonquimay Volcano awoke on Christmas Day of 1988, and this new vent on the northeast flank of the volcano sent tonnes of lava flowing down into the valley. The climbs aren’t too taxing and the descents fairly mellow too, so you don’t need to be an expert rider. This trip takes you to a lookout where you can see the top of the crater and you can also climb to the rim to peer inside depending on how icy it is. The views across the lava and snow covered valley are pretty cool – the striations almost make the valley look like a glacier.

The ascent to the top of the Lonquimay Volcano is also a popular trip, and a little more technical depending on the line taken on the way down. For an extra thrill it’s also possible to ski inside the crater because the main action of the volcano is now near the Navidad Crater.

Snowmobiling

Snowmobiling is another way to access the backcountry of the Malalcahuello National Reserve. The guides can either take you just snowmobiling or snowmobile accessed backcountry skiing and snowboarding.

Snowshoeing

A popular activity for many guests is snowshoeing. The hotel activities centre offers a variety of guided walks of varying difficulty to explore the strikingly beautiful Araucaria forest. One of the walks heads to a picturesque lagoon.

Relaxation Activities

The Valle Corralco Hotel & Spa has an amazing swimming pool and hot tub. The setting is beautiful with lots of relaxing lounges and views up towards the ski resort and the top of Lonquimay Volcano.

The hotel day spa offers a large range of massages and treatments at reasonable prices. We had a hot stone massage which was superb.

The Termas Malalcahuello (hot springs) are located a couple of kilometres from the town of Malalcahuello. The hot spring pools are indoors so if soaking in outdoor hot springs is more your thing, head another 10km to Termas Manzanar which are located in more of a natural landscape next to a rushing river.