Picture it: 1955. Swiss-German ski pioneer Ernie Blake is buzzing over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in his small Cessna 170, flying between two ski areas he helped operate, when he looks down and sees it: the perfect mountain for a ski resort. Below him lies a steep, remote bowl in the Carson National Forest, a place that had once been the copper mining town of Twining back in the 1800s and then fallen silent when the mines played out.
What happened next has become northern New Mexico legend. Ernie and his wife Rhoda packed up the family and moved to the site, living in an eleven-foot camper parked on the mountain because there was nothing else there except the nearly finished Hondo Lodge, today the Snakedance Condominiums. The first ski lift, a J-bar, went in during 1956. At first the whole resort was a single run, Snakedance, until a second lift, a Poma platter, opened in 1957. The Blakes lived without electric power until 1963.
Ernie knew exactly what he wanted. He had managed the Santa Fe Ski Basin, and he sought two things: a remote location and real vertical. In the early days he personally answered the resort's telephone, giving prospective weekend visitors honest, first-hand snow reports. While infusing the place with their European roots, the Blakes honored the Native American and Spanish Colonial heritage that had shaped the valley for centuries, giving Taos a soul unlike any other American ski resort.
Taos Ski Valley is now one of the great anchors of the Enchanted Circle, the 83-mile scenic byway that loops around Wheeler Peak and through Red River, Questa, Eagle Nest, Angel Fire, and Taos. The mountain next door is protected by the Wheeler Peak Wilderness, established in 1964 as the first wilderness area in the Carson National Forest. Its 19,661 acres keep the circle wild, from the 13,161-foot summit of New Mexico's highest peak down to alpine Williams Lake, where marmots, elk, golden eagles, and bighorn sheep reintroduced in 1993 all make their home.
The Blake family sold Taos Ski Valley in December 2013, but the spirit Ernie built still rides every lift. So the next time you drive the Enchanted Circle, pause at the Taos Ski Valley turnoff and remember: it all began with one man's eye from a small airplane and a camper parked in the snow.