… Or Taos Again?

Northern New Mexico has become our go-to escape hatch. After the humid flatlands of north central Texas for almost 20 years, the wide open vistas and mountains, dry air, and minimal population are like a cool drink of water. Not tired of it yet – will take a few (hundred) more trips to do that.

After a long, long, long year of camping out in home offices and generally avoiding the public, we managed to block a few days for skiing. We had patiently waited for New Mexico to move in and out of various phases of lockdown and quarantine requirements – we’d driven through but been unable to stop other than getting gas and coffee, and looking longingly at the southern end of the Rockies. As some sort of stability approached, our future home state began attempting to open up the resorts to revive the economy.  Having been over a year since we last saw mountains and snow, excitement was high, tempered by the worry of navigating mask requirements and protocols.

Past trips were in many ways simpler – rent or load up one of the bigger SUVs, cram everyone in, and drive. Personnel dispersal and scheduling gets complicated once the children began to flee the nest.

Determining who would be attending and when, arranging vacation days and time off from work, finding a property where determined attendees could sleep and bathe, logistics of fitting everyone into a house, getting them back and forth to Taos, planning food and beverages for party members (no open grocery stores or restaurants in reasonable distance from lodgings), and not going insane (with one party member’s birthday in the mix) was a challenge.  Evolving from a quick drive and stay to a full fledged expedition, the following plan emerged:

• The adults would drive from DFW to Arroyo Hondo in a single shot, either meeting children at airports, restaurants, or on the side of the highway between Albuquerque and Taos …
• The older offspring (technically an adult) would drive from Lubbock to Albuquerque, retrieve the younger sibling from conveniently arrived airline flight, and then start driving north …
• All would convene somewhere and caravan to the weekend house to save parties being lost and wandering through the cold, dark mountains in questionably appropriate driving equipment …

Friday 2021 03 12

Thanks to the power of the all-seeing Google and Apple equipment owned by travelers (and in some part due to navigation skills), all parties arrived at the comfortable beer and burger bar (The Burger House) of appropriate attitude:

After 3 reasonably paced humans witnessed a human hyena inhale a fully-loaded hotdog and duck fat fries (damn the torpedoes!), it was time to find lodgings.  The drive from Taos north was uneventful aside from the obligatory New-Mexican-DPS-roadblock-looking-for-intoxicated-Texans.  Momentary concerns about young adult answering questions from a police officer after a single low-ABV beer were unfounded …

Google guidance sent the party down a road that defined “windy dirt washboard” in the middle of the night. Finally arriving, we slowly traversed a working goji berry / alpaca / turkey / duck / cat farm down a road whose definition would be “bomb-cratered”.  The farm house at the end of this drive was slightly tinier in person than in the wide-angle Air BnB photos from our booking.

Sorting out sleeping arrangements ended up with the not-teen in a converted sleeping porch area (reminder – this is March at 6500 feet – outdoor temps, cold), the teen on a leather couch near an unlit fireplace, and the adults on a bed that had enough headward / leftward tilt to make sleepers thankful for the power of gravity.

Saturday 2021 03 13

After a long and complicated trip, skiing was finally on the agenda. Breakfast and prep started off a decent pace, calm and cold and clear at (and in) the farmhouse.  Warnings from ski resort about lack of dining or other on-mountain facilities were noted, which meant stuffing a day’s worth of drinks and food into bags, pockets, and pants.

Given the complete lack of snow in the Taos area, we anxiously headed up to the ski valley, parking, navigating the new COVID-induced gear checkout processes, sorting out lockers, and finally arrived at the lifts around 10:30AM.  Concerns about snow were unfounded, and with sunshine and smooth lift operations, we had a great day skiing. 

Wrapping up the day with some serious snow coming in, we had hopes for an exciting Sunday …

Sunday 2021 03 14

After navigating back to the farm and some additional exploration (teepees, sauna-in-a-barrel, grocery shopping), Sunday started with trepidation. The AWD Kia Sportage hadn’t failed us, but how heavy was the snow on the mountain? If we made it up to the ski area, could the trusty Kia navigate back out in the evening?  We weren’t going to skip the challenge …

A dusting of snow on the farm slowly thickened into accumulation on the cramped and windy two-lane road into the ski valley.  Signs of trouble picked up – poorly equipped flatlander vehicles, inexperienced drivers, congestion, wandering condo hunters in pickups, and bemused Taos locals with snow tires and chains all meeting in a two-lane wide icy path up a 5% grade.  While trying to stay on pavement and avoid stalling on the uphill climb, we swung wide around a stalled car and a strangely familiar minivan blocking 1.5 of 2 lanes … later learning that was two carloads of family members stuck sideways on the road. Ooops …

Arriving at the base again (over the thankfully redesigned pedestrian bridges – YAY!), snow had been falling so hard that 90% of the lifts were closed while crews tried to shovel the lanes clear.  We kept our eyes open for additional lifts while the first few hours of eager spring break skiers crowded the base.  Even the lower slopes were a brand new challenge – having spent most of our time either skiing groomed or re-frozen slopes, hitting heavy, fresh, and deep powder was a wake-up call. Being part of the first group to the top, normally hyper-speed greens were a undulating blanket of beautiful hip-deep powder waiting to steal skis and throw you into the drifts, setting quads and every other muscle on fire.  The visuals of normally crowded slopes under 2-3 feet of snow was a pretty amazing experience. As the still falling snow was eventually carved down from sketchy trenches across the faces of blue and black hills to more navigable fields, the remainder of the day was a full-body workout.

Taos on Sunday:

Having made it through deep-ass (by which I mean deep) snow, growing crowds, no bathrooms on the mountain, crammed base areas with dining (despite advertised closures), for the first time in recorded history, the adults in the party gave up before the very last lift – happy, but frozen and exhausted after a full day of amazing skiing. Sadly it was time to call it a weekend.  Lockers cleared, gear returned, time to head to the Kia and pray for sanded roads. The gods of punch-the-helpful-in-the-head had one last laugh at the expense of one of the party. Said person a) unwisely offered to carry skis for questionably injured not-teen, b) mentioned putting a helmet on (not for safety, just to have one less thing to carry) and then didn’t …

Said to the other adult who’d just slipped a bit on some ice “Careful!” …

Promptly slipped …

Fell flat on his back with a meaty thwack of skull on ice …

Followed immediately by smacking his un-helmeted head with …

A pair of solidly-built skis …

Gory streaks of blood rolling down said fool’s face startled the half-awake teenager in the Kia, and had the non-teen worrying about concussed and bleeding driver slaloming down icy roads to the ER with others closing eyes and praying.  Mopping blood out of the eyes and looking for dilated pupils, at least getting off the mountain seemed do-able.  A tense ride to the farm house on sloppy roads, follwed by ice and more (tentative) scalp cleanup helped determine that the ski slap merely made a mess, and wasn’t going to require hours-long waiting in the local urgent care facility for stitches.

Hoping for a full farmhouse experience after dinner, several unsuccessful attempts were made at making fire (something humans have been doing for tens of thousands of years now, but well beyond the abilities of Texas city-dwellers). Resorting to literally wheels-off electric space heaters to stay warm, we propped eyes open during a questionably entertaining psycho-slasher / dating-dysfunction / brutally crazy Swedish hillbilly movie with a depressing and grim twist at the end.

Monday 2021 03 15

After a solid night’s sleep, breakfast, coffee, and scrambling helped propel not-teen and teen towards the airport in Albuquerque with the hope that tight schedule would work out.  Braving a lot less oxygen and warmth than we were used to, we managed a short, gasping run up a nearby hill from the Goji berry fields, and gazed in wonder at the sunrise working its way over the mountains, and then wrapped up for a sad southbound drive.

Stopping for caffeine and calories at Taos Java, we had to pick our schedule. At the risk of a really long trip home, we decided to take the northbound route through Eagle Nest and Cimarron Pass – beautiful scenery all the way from Taos to Springer, and hard to say goodbye to, again. 

The familiar letdown of grinding the miles back to DFW before 3AM so the work week can start up at a dead run was less fun, but a questionably necessary stop at the legendary 575 Pizzeria broke up the monotony. As usual, stops, asides, and lack of urgency to see the metro sprawl at home tacked hours onto a looooong drive, but all parties survived to fight another day.