Skiing Taos

Went skiing with Dan and Jon in Taos, NM on February 12-13, 2010. Our trip was so short, we didn't get to see much of the town. It was just under 3 hours from Albuquerque. We got into ABQ at 9pm Friday and to the Abominable Snowmansion hostel in Arroyo Seco outside of Taos just after midnight. We skied Saturday, ate dinner, went to sleep, skied Sunday, and went straight to the airport to come home on the last flight. I got in last night at 11pm. We only got into Taos to eat Saturday night, and of course drove thru it twice going to and from. It looks like a cool town though.

As far as the mountain, it is known as being one of the most technically challenging in the US. Most of the green runs are fairly narrow and many with dangerous drop offs. I felt like they were advanced greens or blues. Some of their blues I thought were easier because they were much wider without drop offs, but steeper of course. It isn't a great big mountain, and it was pretty busy due to President's day weekend.

It is the wrong place for a first time skier. For a good beginner skier on to advanced, it is a very good place. For snowboarders, you need to be a solid intermediate or better to have fun there. It is very hard to snowboard on narrow runs especially when there aren't buffers and it is busy. You have to stay on an edge at all times or you will fall, and transitioning to the other edge takes more space than a skier. The mountain also has many more shady parts, and gets darker quicker because of the mountain's positioning to the sun, compared to most of the places I've skied in Colorado and Salt Lake City.

When I was snowboarding I repeatedly fell because skiers flew by and startled me, causing me to catch an edge in the snow and go flying head over heels or face plant. I wasn't getting back up to speed as fast as I hoped, and the distraction of the skiers was making it harder. On the first day in the early afternoon a skier flew by me about 3 feet away when I was going relatively slow. I caught an edge as I tried to quickly turn, flew up in the air, and landed on my head and butt on hard packed snow. I saw stars for several minutes, and had a headache for about 20 minutes. After that I had enough of snowboarding, traded for skis, and had fun the rest of the trip.

They charged a $10 trade fee, which I have never heard of before. The lift passes were reasonable at $70/day. But I thought the equipment rental was high at the mountain ($40/day) for middle range skis or snowboard. They also didn't rent the snowboard separate from the boots, which almost all other places in the US do. So I didn't save anything by bringing my new snowboard boots.

I knew it was a good idea to wear a helmet snowboarding, and skiing probably. But I figured there was a very low probability of hitting my head hard when going slow. I figured it would probably eventually happen when I was trying to push my skills on a faster or harder run, or some idiot running into me. After that happened, I think I will try to get a helmet before I snowboard again.

The skiers there are very aggressive, to the point of being discourteous, much like snowboarders used to be accused of. Surprisingly they are not good about yielding down mountain, or out of courtesy checking up mountain. They fly by people very fast and very close on even the green runs, where they should know some people are still learning.