Taos: Kachina Peak

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
The website claims "Taos Ski Valley has also committed to preserving a majority of the hiking terrain that is currently available." I've only been up top during the summer -- when they say that most of the hike-to terrain will remain that way even with the new lift, what are they referring to?
http://www.skitaos.org/page/kachinapeak

The KOAT news piece claims that "upgrades to snowmaking will have Taos open by Thanksgiving every year." :-k
 
"Open by Thanksgiving" at Taos will never mean "worth skiing by Thanksgiving" for anyone living beyond easy daytrip distance.

Jamesdeluxe":12xdoeo3 said:
"Taos Ski Valley has also committed to preserving a majority of the hiking terrain that is currently available."
You can make semantic caveats here, but not really. 3 major "above the lift zones" before the new lift:
1) West Basin, basically unchanged. The traverse into these runs used to be just above lift 2; sometime in the last 10-15 years the traverses were moved up a bit so you now have to hike up about 5 minutes. Sort of like getting to Catherine's or Devil's Castle at Alta.
2) Kachina Peak itself. Now direct lift access, formerly a very tough for flatlanders hike of 45+ minutes at 12,000 feet, at least as hard as Highlands Bowl at Aspen Highlands.
3) Highline Ridge was formerly about 15 minutes on the same hike as to the West Basin traverse. Now most people will ski down to Highline Ridge from Kachina Peak.

For 95+% of advanced/expert visitors this is a big attraction, getting LCC-type high alpine terrain into the picture on a more than once-a-trip basis. The powder purists will not be pleased, as these areas will get packed down and not ski as powder on the typical 6-inch fluffy snowfalls of CO/NM as they did before and still do at Highlands Bowl.

The compromise position would have been to put a lift up to Highline Ridge, while leaving Kachina as a Highlands Bowl type trek. But Taos business is likely down from too many crummy snow years since 1999, and I can understand why the new ownership wants to make a big splash to get on more people's radar.

Unofficially I've heard that Taos is likely to host the NASJA annual meeting in 2-3 years, so I look forward to checking it out.
 
Tony Crocker":3625bawa said:
Taos business is likely down from too many crummy snow years since 1999, and I can understand why the new ownership wants to make a big splash to get on more people's radar.
Agreed, they had no choice.
 
I'm surprised. Somehow I had convinced myself back when it was announced that the new lift was ending on the side of Kachina Peak on lookers right somewhere. Instead straight up the gut...

So much for all those Powder articles back in the 90's and early 2000's proclaiming the cool factor of places like Taos, Alta, etc.. that would NEVER put in lifts to the top or high speed lifts or etc...
 
EMSC":2d29ymlj said:
So much for all those Powder articles back in the 90's and early 2000's proclaiming the cool factor of places like Taos, Alta, etc.. that would NEVER put in lifts to the top or high speed lifts or etc...
Alas, the word "never" knows nothing of market realities, skier visits, cash flow, ROI, debt servicing....
 
EMSC":hseu5jmg said:
So much for all those Powder articles back in the 90's and early 2000's proclaiming the cool factor of places like Taos, Alta, etc.. that would NEVER put in lifts to the top or high speed lifts or etc...
My first visit to Alta was Dec 2001 -- wasn't the high-speed Sugarloaf chair already in place at that point?
 
jamesdeluxe":s2icv5z7 said:
My first visit to Alta was Dec 2001 -- wasn't the high-speed Sugarloaf chair already in place at that point?
Probably, but it was high-speed Collins for 2004-05 that revolutionized skiing at Alta. This was a badly needed change IMHO as weekend liftlines before then were sufficient for me to avoid the place other than midweek.

Taos does not need high speed lifts as it's not that crowded and the lifts they have climb a lot of vertical within a relatively short distance. But it probably does need the terrain expansion to compete with other expert destinations.
 
Tony Crocker":18ts8lfn said:
"The powder purists will not be pleased, as these areas will get packed down and not ski as powder on the typical 6-inch fluffy snowfalls of CO/NM as they did before and still do at Highlands Bowl.
Tony, do you have precip figures for Kachina? Since there won't be snowmaking up top, I'm wondering how that newly lift-accessed terrain will fare with the increased traffic during Taos's not infrequent snow droughts.
 
jamesdeluxe":3kvwayos said:
Tony, do you have precip figures for Kachina? Since there won't be snowmaking up top, I'm wondering how that newly lift-accessed terrain will fare with the increased traffic during Taos's not infrequent snow droughts.
http://50.87.144.177/~bestsnow/swconet.htm
Taos' measuring stake is at 11,200 feet and the average snowfall is 261 inches. 31% of December-March months get less than 30 inches.

This kind of question depends on the terrain too. I checked it out on Google Earth:
kachina-summer.JPG

There are a handful of smooth entrances into the bowl below Kachina, but most of the top is rocky. Once through those entries, most of the summer surface is smooth gravel.

The other issue is snow stability. Skier access will help that a lot. It might also help to have a bootpacking program in November as at Silverton and Highlands Bowl to break up those initial weak layers and lessen the odds of mid-season avalanches breaking all the way to the ground.
 
Tony, your looking at the wrong peak in that Google earth screen shot. Kachina is the next peak to the north and it's quite a bit smoother.
 
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