Skiing in Taos

I had a really cool friend. He and I were both telemark skiers, at about the same level. Chad invited me to go skiing in Taos, New Mexico. We had free passes for two days. I agreed to go. We were to sleep in the back of his truck. And we bought food from a supermarket to save expenses.

It was an enjoyable trip. We ate a lot of eggs and yogurt. Chad said that these were a cheap source of protein. It took about 6 hours to drive to Taos. The approach was a unique experience. The desert landscape had not even a trace of snow. For the most part everything was flat. These aren’t very good conditions for a ski trip but the mountains could be seen ahead so I held hope. We drove into town which is at the base of the mountain.

To understand my perspective you must understand my background. The kind of mountains that I am used to are more like what the Alps are like. There is mountain after mountain. One peak or ridge might start on top of another mountain. These mountains, however, seem to me like the ones in the bible. They are surrounded by desert, and just rise out of the plain. When the book of Exodus talks about Moses approaching the mountain it was probably something like what we were doing. Instead of an Israelite camp at the foot of the mountain there was the town of Taos. And instead of the Israelites worshiping a gold calf, there was a assortment of native american, new age, and hippie-style drug worshiping.

I had no clue where the ski resort was because there was still no snow. But we wound our way through the town and up the mountain. The road was laid along zig-zag valleys. It was a bit like entering an enormous fortress, one where you couldn’t just enter through a gate but you had to know the path, often hazardous, that made its way into the center of the fortress. After many hair pin turns and sections with a cliff on one side and a wall on the other, we had found the snow and the resort.

The first night we slept in the resort parking lot. The next morning we awoke, ate our egg and yogurt breakfast and hit the slopes. The resort at Taos was a unique one. It was one of the few resorts that banned snowboarding. This meant that there were plenty of moguls and the fresh snow wouldn’t get plowed off of the slope as quickly. (Snowboarders tend to destroy nicely laid out moguls because it is hard to turn a board on the same patterns as skis. Also many beginning snowboarders tend to slide down the slope on their edge, which is like taking an ice scraper to a frosted window, but on the slope.) The vision that kept snowboarders off of Taos’ slopes also incorporated a respect for the past. This meant that there were old chair lifts sitting right next to the new ones.

Chad and I did our best to find the good runs on unfamiliar slopes. We met a guy who was willing to show us around a bit. He skied alpine skis and could bomb hills at speeds that eluded us. We would meet up with him at the bottom and ride up the lift together. I think that eventually he got tired of waiting for us and just took off. Before that happened we got on the lift with an elderly man. He was a tele-skier like we were, but that was all we had in common. He had a pair of sun glasses on his face as well as a pair of goggles on his forehead. His long mustache and beard had a string of mucus that connected the two with this large protruding nose.

We started up a conversation. The elderly man, I don’t know his name, claimed that he knew Julia Roberts, who lives in Taos. He told us that he had written a song for her that was played on the local radio station. He then sang us the song. It was probably fourteen verses long and had all manner of pun, alliteration, and rhyme. The song was so convincingly sung that I fully believed him, after much skepticism.

Later, I don’t know how it came up but we began talking about smoking pot. The elderly man dominated the conversation. He began with saying that he would not be inclined to share a joint with anyone. He was just getting over the flu that he had gotten twice in a short amount of time. He had only had to go to the clinic twice for many years.

He then began an elaborate metaphor for how smoking a joint is like taking a girl out on a date. “First you bring a picnic. You don’t pull out one apple for her and one for yourself. No. You pull out the apple. Then take out a knife and cut her a slice, then you look deep into her eyes and tell her that you love her. So with the joint, you can’t bring out a joint for your friend and one for you. You have to pass it around. And that is why I don’t want a smoke, because I’m tired of getting the flu.” This is a paraphrase of what he said. He included more vulgarities.

So this odd gentleman decides to ski with us. He was older but not a bad skier. In the end he didn’t want to try to keep up with us any more. And as I said earlier, our guide liked to leave us in the lurch.

We ended a good and interesting day safely and went back to the truck. We chose to sleep in town tonight because it would be a little warmer. We also wanted to have dinner at a mexican place.

Driving through town we weren’t sure of where to stop. I tend to let people do what they want and I go along with it. This time Chad didn’t know what he wanted. So I suggested that we eat at a little place that looked a hole in the wall. We were the only non-hispanic people in the restaurant. To be honest there were only two other people in the place. A short old lady came out to us and took out orders. I had a fry bread chile or something similar. This lady walked to the back, cooked our orders and then brought them out to us. It was extremely delicious. I was very please that we had chosen this spot for dinner.

Later we found an empty parking lot to sleep in. We skied the next day and had a good time. That day a guy that rode the lift with us asked, “Do you guys huff herb?” We said no. And then wondered why he said it that way. We went to a school where pot was common and we had never heard anyone say anything like that before.

We made it home safely and had a good, if odd, trip.