EMSC
Well-known member
Unique
For the first day of the family trip to New Mexico I had thought about adding in a second resort because I like to check out new places and also figured the family would want more than just the very steep portions of Taos for 3 days in a row.
I checked out a couple possibilities including Red River, and was shocked to find that all the resorts near Taos were closing on March 24th for the season. It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t stay open until at least the last day of March… especially in a year with such good snow.
Anyway on the drive down Saturday afternoon I checked again while talking with the family and found the snow report page for Angel Fire touting $55 final day discounted lift tickets so the choice was made…
The drive over from Taos is about 40 minutes.
For all intents and purposes there are two lifts (ignoring beginner and terrain park double chairs). Basically a frontside and a backside. Both lifts are detachable quads and oh my goodness thank god the frontside is detachable. It’s one of the longest lifts out there, or certainly feels that way. Just over 2,000 verts but spread over nearly 2 miles in length. I can completely understand why they did the lift that way. There’s no way they probably can afford a 3rd major lift and staff it and etc… It gives them summer scenic rides and tons of MTB trails in the summer. However, it makes the front side ski super annoyingly for skiers.
The first 75% of the Chile Express is mostly low angle or even completely flat at times, then is suddenly pops upward over a nicely steep upper hump/section to the top. Probably 700+ vert is on the very last section of the lift…
The backside is a much more logically laid out lift with over 1300 verts serving a combination of trails from actual steeps to very low angle groomers.
The steep stuff was actually steep on the shorter trails, but probably only 500 verts (eg minder bender) or moderately steep for more like 800-900 (eg Nice Day). Angels Plunge was super interesting starting as a tree run before having a short steep slash cut in the trees for a steep section far from the other trails. I would guess in a good snow year like this you could ski many tree lines from that ridge back into the Hells Bells run. Unfortunately, several runs were closed including the black runs to lookers far left (Nitro, etc.. as well as Maxwells and Silver on front side). Based on the trail cuts for Nitro it seems they either had a lift over there or intended to put one there, but if they open them it appears to be a fairly long slog of an up-hill hike to them in todays era. No idea if they are worth it…
We spent more time on the backside without the super long run-out though also skied a number of laps on the front. The place was practically deserted and you could fairly easily find freshly groomed snow even in the mid-afternoon. It had been cold and 6” of new snow in recent days with it being winter snow top to bottom to start and then softening through the day with only a few sections of steeper and more north facing not turning by the end of the day.
Despite the low pitch of much of it, my family completely enjoyed having gone there for the day. And just enough steep-ish stuff to keep me interested for one day as well.
For the first day of the family trip to New Mexico I had thought about adding in a second resort because I like to check out new places and also figured the family would want more than just the very steep portions of Taos for 3 days in a row.
I checked out a couple possibilities including Red River, and was shocked to find that all the resorts near Taos were closing on March 24th for the season. It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t stay open until at least the last day of March… especially in a year with such good snow.
Anyway on the drive down Saturday afternoon I checked again while talking with the family and found the snow report page for Angel Fire touting $55 final day discounted lift tickets so the choice was made…
The drive over from Taos is about 40 minutes.
For all intents and purposes there are two lifts (ignoring beginner and terrain park double chairs). Basically a frontside and a backside. Both lifts are detachable quads and oh my goodness thank god the frontside is detachable. It’s one of the longest lifts out there, or certainly feels that way. Just over 2,000 verts but spread over nearly 2 miles in length. I can completely understand why they did the lift that way. There’s no way they probably can afford a 3rd major lift and staff it and etc… It gives them summer scenic rides and tons of MTB trails in the summer. However, it makes the front side ski super annoyingly for skiers.
The first 75% of the Chile Express is mostly low angle or even completely flat at times, then is suddenly pops upward over a nicely steep upper hump/section to the top. Probably 700+ vert is on the very last section of the lift…
The backside is a much more logically laid out lift with over 1300 verts serving a combination of trails from actual steeps to very low angle groomers.
The steep stuff was actually steep on the shorter trails, but probably only 500 verts (eg minder bender) or moderately steep for more like 800-900 (eg Nice Day). Angels Plunge was super interesting starting as a tree run before having a short steep slash cut in the trees for a steep section far from the other trails. I would guess in a good snow year like this you could ski many tree lines from that ridge back into the Hells Bells run. Unfortunately, several runs were closed including the black runs to lookers far left (Nitro, etc.. as well as Maxwells and Silver on front side). Based on the trail cuts for Nitro it seems they either had a lift over there or intended to put one there, but if they open them it appears to be a fairly long slog of an up-hill hike to them in todays era. No idea if they are worth it…
We spent more time on the backside without the super long run-out though also skied a number of laps on the front. The place was practically deserted and you could fairly easily find freshly groomed snow even in the mid-afternoon. It had been cold and 6” of new snow in recent days with it being winter snow top to bottom to start and then softening through the day with only a few sections of steeper and more north facing not turning by the end of the day.
Despite the low pitch of much of it, my family completely enjoyed having gone there for the day. And just enough steep-ish stuff to keep me interested for one day as well.