Shaking the Snowglobe

After a great night of sleep, I woke up rested and pleased that I didn’t have to rush out the door before 7am. The whole nonsense at Alta/Snowbird of having to wake up at 6:30am to not be in dead stop traffic is bit of a bummer on the whole experience there. I woke up hungry though. There are two places to get breakfast burritos nearby in Taos: Abe’s Liquor Store and Taos Cow Ice Creamery. Taos Cow is always open early and the burritos hit the spot, but Abe’s burritos to me are mystically good and their fickle operating hours add to the flavor. They tend to not be open on weekends, and the past couple of years we’ve returned to Taos their “Open” sign was just no where to be seen. I swung by though and this morning, Lina was there bright and early. She told me the four breakfast burritos would take a while so I sat down and read the Taos newspaper (the Taos regional airport expansion has some people fired up!)

After eating I headed to the mountain. Taos got a bunch of snow in the first half of February, and the last storm was ~four days ago. This week will be dry and sunny, so we get to enjoy the snowpack with likely the whole mountain open! Everyone I talked to at the mountain was excited about the snow, saying that when the sun comes and softens up the runs everything is skiing amazing. Adding to the excitement, I talked with someone working at the mountain ski shop about the backcountry terrain in Taos, which I’ve heard is amazing but have seen very little information available about online. This guy Spencer told me it is awesome and that he had some friends out at that moment. His close friend is the forecaster for the area too, so he gets some helpful tips on when its a good time to go for a tour. We exchanged numbers and maybe during this trip I’ll get to kick off a morning with a Taos tour.

I chatted with an elderly Canadian couple on my first lift up, they were asking me if I knew of an area with a difficulty in between “that”, pointing at a steep rocky chute off of the West Basin Ridge hike, and “that” , pointing at a wide blue groomer. I told them at the top of the lift they should head over to the backside of the mountain where the sun was already hitting and they could enjoy some bumpier lines. “Sounds good to us, we should be plenty stoned by the time we get there!”, they declared. They were a funny couple, the Mrs. would say something a bit outlandish like, “Salt Lake City gives me the creeps!” And her husband would backtrack her statement with something like, “Not to say were anti-Mormon, or anti-religion. We just like to mind our own business.” This interaction and all the other smiles and small chats throughout the day had me excited to back here in Taos, where everyone is a little funky and very kind. Alta and Snowbird were beautiful, but I couldn’t quite find anything special about those mountains that had me excited to go back, even though every slope and turn was the softest I’ve ever skied. If anything the local skiers there seemed a little spoiled, upset if they weren’t in knee deep powder every time they hit the mountain.

Skiing was an absolute blast. Conditions were definitely not powdery all over the mountain but that made any discovery of a pocket of snow way more satisfying. After some warming up cruising around on the groomers, I headed up the Kachina lift to the peak of the mountain and reminded myself that Taos is not only the most special, but also the steepest and at times scariest place I’ve skied. With everything skied out and pretty firmly packed in the morning before the sun softened the snow, the skiing was also pretty challenging! Utah almost gave a false sense of confidence since no matter what kind of turn you make you were still on a cushiony cloud. Here the moguls were deeper and the grade more challenging.

I decided after a couple Kachina runs that I would try to do five ridge hikes, and ski each line that I could see from Lift 7a. Up on the ridge the snow was fantastic and even more satisfying to turn into after the ~15 minute boot pack each time. The Highline Ridge gate closes at 1:30pm, which meant to ski the five lines I scoped out I would have to not take any meaningful breaks and do them all consecutively! It was super fun to set a meaningless challenge, passing by the same lefties over and over again, going through the same uphill ski walk —> unfasten my boots and start hiking —> pass the gate —> proceed to the next line to ski down. On my third run I dropped in off a pretty steep, hard packed cornice to push myself a bit (in a safe way) and landed it well, but a ski popped off requiring a few minutes of climbing back up to get it. This made for a fun final fifth run, as I had completed all of the ridge runs I scoped out but I got to re-try the cornice drop with some anticipation to get it right this time. Landing the drop and turning through the well earned powder below was worth a loud “wohoo!”. I skied down to Lift 7, and made my way back to the mountain base to wrap up the day. Skiing solo is a fun mini version of solo traveling in some new country. You meet a few nice people, get to set your own course and see the main sights or go slightly off the beaten path, you’re free to make your own mistakes and discover your own special corners of the world.

I got back to the house around 2:45 and no one had eaten lunch yet. We made some sandwiches and Michael started prepping a black bean soup/quesadillas for dinner. Alex and I played some chess and passed the time relaxing, stretching, hanging out. I like playing chess against Alex, he’s a real thinker and our games always last a long time. The tension built up slowly; we had only taken one piece off each other in the first 30 minutes. By the time we finished the game it was pretty much time to get the table ready for dinner.

Michael crushed his black bean soup and quesadillas. We filled up and fueled ourselves for a fun night of games and gambling – Michael was the big winner and well deserved after a triumphant cooking effort. I was the big loser, a well timed heat-check after what’s felt like a week straight of victories.