Pajarito, NM 02/13/09

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
I've been waiting many moons to hit Pajarito (Little Bird). I mountain biked there in 1991, but had never managed to ski it:
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Jason e-mailed me this morning that Pajarito's trail map looked similar to Belleayre in the Catskills, which is true, but the fall-line trails are steeper and have more consistent pitch:
Pajarito-Trail-Map-lowres.jpg


Together with a modest vert (1,200), it does have a definite East Coast feel in the way the trails were cut, as did several of the ski areas on this trip. However, the views from the top are pure New Mexico. Unfortunately, my scenic pix do it very little justice:
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On the far skier's left, there's an incredible view of the Valles Caldera. If I understood correctly, it's a huge volcano that blew its top, creating a large crater.
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While Tuesday's storm dumped 20 inches on Santa Fe, Pajarito only got four -- everything was very localized. Conditions were hard and fast on the groomers, but the ungroomed trails had a nice dusting to glide through. I got a great tour from General Manager Tom Long and Ski School Supervisor John Viney.
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I was always under the impression that Mad River Glen was the only not-for-profit ski area that is run by its members, but the similarities between MRG and Pajarito are interesting:
LASC (Los Alamos Ski Club) is a not-for-profit organization with a membership of about 2000 - 3000, who elect a volunteer board of nine directors, serving three-year terms. By charter, memberships (voting season pass holders) are limited to persons who primarily live or work in the county. Non-voting season passes may be purchased by anyone. The area is open to day skiers, who have constituted about a third of the users since the early days at Pajarito.
 
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Always interesting to go back to where you once lived. I actually ran into a few people whom I hadn't seen/spoken to in 15 years, and heard reports from others who knew friends and colleagues of mine. Six degrees of separation and all that, but in NM it's more like two degrees.

I really miss certain things about New Mexico. I've said many times that moving out west again probably isn't in the cards, but being based in Santa Fe would be more than acceptable for me. Who knows...
:-k
 
James, thanks for the TR on the old hometown hill.
The history of the area is long and interesting, after getting started by Manhattan Project scientists in the 40's. Not too many other ski area have been as much a labor of love of its skiers/members as Pajarito Mtn.
In my teen years, a crew would cut a new run each year, and we'd have a big work party in the fall to stack slash and roll logs, which would be burned after the first snow.
 
Pajarito-Bred":grs6vhbu said:
The history of the area is long and interesting.
I'm sure you've seen it, but there's a great pictorial history of Pajarito in the lodge showing every phase of the ski area, from the very first trails to the present. I wish every mountain did something like that.

The next big step there appears to be snowmaking. I understand why they'd do something like that operations-wise, but I like the fact that it's 100% natural right now.
 
I'd never skied NM prior to hitting Taos last year. Until then I hadn't realized the proximity of so many of the NM resorts. My Wife & I talked about doing exactly what you just did, spending a week hitting all of them just to check them out. Not going to happen this year, but hopefully in another year or two. Did you use one hotel/motel/condo for the week? or did you move around a few times? Taos looks pretty central to many of them.
 
EMSC":1n2q0bpt said:
Did you use one hotel/motel/condo for the week? or did you move around a few times? Taos looks pretty central to many of them.
We stayed five nights in a hotel that was a five-minute walk from the Taos town plaza. The four "Enchanted Circle" ski areas -- TSV, Angel Fire, Red River, and Sipapu (which isn't geographically along the circle, but close enough) -- are all a 25- to 40-minute drive from the hotel…similar to staying in SLC and driving to the Cottonwoods or PC. For SF and Pajarito, we decamped to Santa Fe for the final two nights.

Lots of people asked us why we bothered going anywhere other than TSV, but this was planned as a trip for me and the wife to get away by ourselves for a week, ski a lot, see some interesting landscapes, eat great food, and stay in a cool place that doesn’t look like all the McSki resorts and villages out west.

Marc C said something about having no problem exchanging “quaint” for big terrain and deep snow, but NM turned out to be a good compromise. There ain’t no way my wife is going to hike Kachina Ridge, so RR, AF, Sipapu, SF, and Pajarito worked out perfectly. Even got her into the trees a bunch of times. Luckily, we arrived just as a high-pressure system was moving out and got fresh snow most of the days.

So that’s my story.
 
EMSC":28pbl668 said:
I'd never skied NM prior to hitting Taos... My Wife & I talked about doing exactly what you just did, spending a week hitting all of them just to check them out. ... Did you use one hotel/motel/condo for the week? or did you move around a few times? Taos looks pretty central to many of them.

Pajarito is one of the hidden small treasures of skiing. Back in the late-80's/early-90's I and my wife would stay Los Alamos with friends and ski Pajarito, Taos, and Santa Fe Ski Bowl from there. Back then the lodge was a primitive shack, which gave it the same feeling as Mad River Glen. Today, with the newer lodge the comparison still holds--but less so (Only MRG has a single chair and quad urinal). Back then (and likely now) Pajarito was only half open on Wed. and Fri., fully open on weekends and holidays, and closed otherwise. This gave the powder hound special opportunities. For example, when it dumped powder on Monday, one could ski Pajarito on Wed. and likely find untracked lines well into the afternoon--and on Friday/Sat the early birds could track Monday's powder in the newly opened half. AND...If you had a friend driving up for lunch on Wed., you could ski a the closed area down to the road and get a ride to the lodge. After one 17" dump, my wife and I skied our first powder 8's on a such a virgin-pow hill on Wed, and they were the only marks on that slope until Sat. morning.

But in answer to your question: Since our friends moved, we've settled on a middle ground. Typically, we fly into Albuquerque and stay overnight near the airport. THe next morning we'll drive to Los Alamos and ski, then we base ourselves in Santa Fe (Los Alamos has a lousy motel base), from which we'll ski Santa Fe SB and Pajarito. We then move our base to Taos (town). The drive up to Taos from Santa Fe is manageable, but if skiing Taos two or more days, the commute lengthens the day too much for us, and we don't like long daily drives in NM because large storms can leave one isolated--even in these days of cell communications. (Compared to the '80's, NM now feels downright crowded.) We haven't tried the Taos to Angel Fire drive because we always have such a good time at Taos.

Cheers,
Jeff
 
What a mess. As you drive up Pajarito's access road, you can see the burn from a fire that was right on the ski area's doorstep.
 
Weird, it has just appeared on the 2 minute BBC news between 2 TV programmes as I was reading this.

I loved my time in New Mexico where I skied a few resorts and stayed in Alamagordo and Santa Fe. Will definately go back some day.
 
Not to be a ghoul, and I sincerely hope this doesn't happen to Pajarito, but have there been any ski areas that came back after being destroyed by a fire?
 
jamesdeluxe":2q7o11g3 said:
What a mess. As you drive up Pajarito's access road, you can see the burn from a fire that was right on the ski area's doorstep.

That was the 2000 Cerro Grande fire. Unfortunately, fuels in Pajarito Canyon itself didn't burn in that fire.

I've just finished up the noon press conference and unfortunately there's more bad news - this fire did indeed burn the ski area:
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/2011/0 ... -ski-area/
 
Admin":2si7dy68 said:
jamesdeluxe":2si7dy68 said:
What a mess. As you drive up Pajarito's access road, you can see the burn from a fire that was right on the ski area's doorstep.

That was the 2000 Cerro Grande fire. Unfortunately, fuels in Pajarito Canyon itself didn't burn in that fire.

I've just finished up the noon press conference and unfortunately there's more bad news - this fire did indeed burn the ski area:
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/2011/0 ... -ski-area/
What a drag!
 
jamesdeluxe":21mkfwti said:
Not to be a ghoul, and I sincerely hope this doesn't happen to Pajarito, but have there been any ski areas that came back after being destroyed by a fire?

Has a ski area been 'destroyed' by fire? Everyone knows of the arson at Vail of course. And I recall just from memory a few ski areas using snow making water systems to douse fires right at the ski area boundary... A couple have had base lodges burn down (not necessarily forest fire caused)...

One would expect that most of the place is covered by insurance... At least for lifts, structures etc... But obviously not the trees that define and protect the runs from sun/wind, etc...
 
EMSC":3dw0rret said:
One would expect that most of the place is covered by insurance... At least for lifts, structures etc... But obviously not the trees that define and protect the runs from sun/wind, etc...

And Pajarito is entirely a tree-lined mountain:

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From the burn area map we've inserted in this story it appears that only the upper 25% or so of the mountain torched. However you've got to remember that this place has had a rough 2011 to begin with. In late January they closed due to lack of snow until more snow was received, but by the end of March when their season ended they'd racked up a whopping 57" (which of course is part of the reason it's so damned dry there this summer...)
 
jamesdeluxe":gxs35wa6 said:
On the far skier's left, there's an incredible view of the Valles Caldera... if I understood correctly, a huge volcano that blew its top, creating a large crater.
file.php

I've been doing a lot of research on this fire story today. I didn't know about the caldera before, but when you look on a terrain map it seems plainly obvious:

jemez_mountains_map.jpg


Here's another interesting photo looking west, showing the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the left, the town of Los Alamos at center and right, and the north-facing ski trails of Pajarito at the upper left.

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Kinda wild how the town and the lab are built on short, narrow mesas separated by deep canyons.
 
Thanks for staying on top of this, Admin. Unless my search skillz are lacking, neither the Albuquerque nor the Santa Fe dailies had any mention of Pajarito.
 
jamesdeluxe":1gik0qli said:
Thanks for staying on top of this, Admin. Unless my search skillz are lacking, neither the Albuquerque nor the Santa Fe dailies had any mention of Pajarito.

All I found was OnTheSnow which blatantly and unapologetically paraphrased our article.

Sent from my Android phone using Tapatalk
 
EMSC":3rue95r0 said:
Has a ski area been 'destroyed' by fire?
From admin's report it does not sound like any facilities have been damaged. If so it's a similar situation to Mt. Waterman with the Station Fire in 2009. A fire burned up the backside of Thunder Mt. at Baldy a few years back. A substantial fire burned the south and west sides of Sun Valley's main peak not long ago. The large snowmaking capacity was used to keep that fire out of the in-bounds ski area.
FTO News":3rue95r0 said:
its reported 125-inch average.
This is not a recipe for a reliable ski area, especially since New Mexico also has higher snowfall volatility than most of the Rockies. That's about the same natural snowfall as Mt. High, albeit with less traffic and higher altitude for better snow preservation. Nonetheless a 125-inch ski area with minimal snowmaking is a marginal proposition IMHO. I skied Sandia in February 2007 (similar average snowfall as Pajarito in a close to normal year) and it was quite similar to Mt. High in terms of natural cover and surfaces. Fortunately it was much better than that at Santa Fe and Taos.

New Mexico has had a bunch of low snow years since 1999. Only 4 above average seasons during that time and 4 real stinkers based on Taos data: 58% in 1999-2000, 56% in 2001-02, 58% in 2005-06 and 65% this year. The long term snow record is better than that though. I would still not advance book a trip until seeing at least an average November/December.
 
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