Mix of New and Old Enlivens Taos Ski Valley (Source: The New York Times)

I’d like to pass along a Technicolor Taos tease as featured yesterday in the The New York Times. Christopher Solomon’s “Mix of New and Old Enlivens Taos Ski Valley” is a stunning, well developed look at the current evolution of New Mexico’s prize cache for expert skiers. Solomon invites the reader on a virtual tour of some of the new (or, more accurately, now-more-accessible) adrenaline inducing terrain, and he seamlessly braids in the mountain’s unique history and culture.

The story of Taos’s founding, and the story of its visionary, Ernie Blake, are one of the most colorful strands in the fabric of America’s ski history: how a deft-skiing Swiss immigrant tried to join the 10th Mountain Division in World War II but was denied because of suspicions he was a spy; how the Army instead changed his surname from the Jewish “Bloch” to “Blake” and enlisted him as a translator, during which he interrogated some of the biggest names in the Third Reich; and how, after war’s end, he went looking for a place to start a ski resort. People said his choice, near the end of a lonesome valley in the shadow of 13,161-foot Wheeler Peak, the state’s roof, was too steep, too remote and too challenging. But Blake pursued his vision. With the help of a young wife and a mule named Lightning he hacked Taos Ski Valley into existence. (Source: Mix of New and Old Enlivens Taos Ski Valley – The New York Times)

Mix of New and Old Enlivens Taos Ski Valley (Source: The New York Times)