Taos Ski Week

Taos: If You Can Ski Here, You Can Ski Anywhere

By Carson Bennett, 2-18-08

	Sign at Taos Welcomes Visitors

I’ve been skiing since I was about four years old, but not consistently, and often not well. I didn’t start skiing regularly until college, and I learned in the same way most people do – I simply tried to keep up with my friend, who was much better than me, by mimicking his movements and following his advice. This method worked, to a point. Now, I can get down anything that Arapahoe Basin, Keystone, Vail, Wolf Creek, Taos can throw at me, but it’s not pretty, and I’m often spending more time searching for my skis, poles, and goggles than I am actually skiing. In the last few seasons, my skills have plateaued. I just can’t seem to get any better. So, I decided to look into the Taos Ski Week.

I first heard about the Taos Ski Week back in December when I attended a “ski clinic” at Albuquerque’s Sportz Outdoor shop, hosted by Jeff “Mugsey” Mugleston, the Taos Adult Ski School Manager. Taos is the only resort in the country that offers a Ski Week program every week of the season. It includes a two hour lesson every morning for six days, video analysis, and evening discussions on ski psychology, technology, and biomechanics. The class sizes are small, averaging about five students to every instructor. The Ski Week does not include lift tickets or lodging, but $225 for six lessons with some of the best instructors in the country (and, some argue, in the world) is still a bargain. In January the ski weeks cost only $75!

At Taos, unlike most ski areas in North America, the ski school has been a major component since Ernie Blake founded the mountain in 1956. Blake was one of the first certified ski instructors in the U.S. He founded the Ernie Blake Ski School in 1958 and hired his friend Jean Mayer, former chief of the American Army ski patrol, as the technical director. Jean still works on the mountain to this day. When he took over the school, he recruited the best instructors he could find from around the world, and the school quickly gained notoriety.

The Taos “Learn to Ski Week” also began in the late fifties. According to Ernie Blake (in “Ski Pioneers” by Rick Richards) “We needed Learn to Ski Week [because] the mountain forced you into having people in ski school … Some of [the visitors to Taos Ski Valley] are great skiers at home in Illinois or Wisconsin or Minneapolis or Boston, and when they come here, they are baffled by the tremendous mountain, and they would leave angry at us … if we didn’t force them to go into ski school. They learn so much because our ski school is built not as a business but as a service to the hotels and to the ski area to make people happy because they learn to handle our mountain.”

And “handling” this mountain is no easy feat. Nearly 1,300 acres of skiable terrain offer a vertical drop of 2,612 feet. If you count the hikeable terrain (and who wouldn’t, since the famous ridge hikes allow access to some of the steepest and sweetest snow in North America) you’ll have 3,274 vertical feet to play on. Kachina Peak’s coveted summit stands at 12,481 feet above sea level. Of the 110 runs in Taos, more than half of them are expert only. A sign at the base of lift one attempts to calm first-time visitors. “DON’T PANIC!” it says. “You’re looking at only 1/30 of Taos Ski Valley. We have many easy runs too!” The sign neglects to mention, however, that only 24% of the terrain is suitable for beginners. “This is a very honest mountain,” Mugsey told us at the ski clinic. “If you can ski here, you can ski anywhere in the world.”

One of the reasons Taos Ski School is so unique is that it does not attract recreational skiers who take lessons merely to cut lift lines. According to Mugsey, Taos looks at skiers as athletes rather than recreational skiers, which allows the instructors to focus on coaching rather than entertaining.

It sounded perfect to me. I didn’t want to be coddled, I wanted to improve my technique, and where better to do so than on Taos’ steeps, chutes and glades? On a cold January morning in Albuquerque, the day after my birthday, I treated myself to a gift. I loaded my car with ski gear, energy bars, a bag of apples and some clothes, and drove to Taos for Ski Week.

Check back often for my “Taos Ski Week” series updates.

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