Summary
For Sara’s mid-winter break, we flew back to Taos to go skiing. For the last 4-5 years, we have only been back in Christmas or Thanksgiving so just having a solid base of snow was pretty awesome. We got 3 days of skiing in and one rest day. Sara again is progressing leaps and bounds - she is skiing double blacks like they are no big deal and she was starting to ski parallel on the greens/blues. I’m going to apologize in advance for being a bit of a show-off in this post - I’m very proud of Sara’s skiing and I know it comes through…
2/19/2024
First day skiing in Taos. We got on the slopes pretty early (9:30a) considering how late we got in last night. We did Lorelei twice (which was nostalgic for me, Derek and I used to ski it non-stop. One of my favorite runs on the hill).
We also did Ash pond twice, and a bunch of other runs all over the hill. No double blacks today, but at least a dozen regular blacks.
Sara has become quite the confident skier - It’s not always pretty, but she can ski anything from steeps to trees without being intimidated. We are very proud of the little lady.
She is also very proud of herself!
2/20/2024
Sara did 3 double black diamonds today! Upper castor, Main Street, and Pollux. The big one was main street - it’s a long run that comes down from Kachina peak and, while it’s not as difficult as some of the other doubles on the mountain, it’s very long and requires sustained effort. But she did it with ease.
Sorry for the last bit, this was actually a fairly tough run for me to do one handed.
The Peak used to be only accessible by hiking (which took a little over an hour) but they have a lift now and the feeling of the place has changed quite a bit. That being said, we still saw a bighorn sheep when we got to the top - which was very cool given how much more crowded it has become.
A far more difficult (but shorter) was Upper Pollux. It’s a fairly steep run through pretty dense trees, so it requires you to be very in control of when/where you turn.
When she is on these steep runs, she has a very aggressive snowplow, but it works for her. Here she is on the run:
2/21/2024
Rest day today - but we tried some very delicious mac and cheese with green chillies on a date night.
2/22/2024
Our last ski day of the trip and we pushed it a bit hard - we were quite tired by the end of the day. For starters, we found an adventure trail that you could ski and find these little placards on trees which you pulled down for facts about dinosaurs in New Mexico - a very fun place for a kid.
We did another lap on most of the runs we did in previous days. Unfortunately, the sun and no new snow was starting to show - lots of ice and bare spots showing through.
Ash pond was a favorite for Sara, so we did it a few times today.
We also did Lorelei trees, which is an off shoot of Lorelei that goes through the trees on the steep part. Sara for some reason loves skiing in the trees. She calls them all adventure trails. Note the aggressive snow plow on this one… :)
It started to get icy in the afternoon and right after doing a very challenging run, Sara was skiing back on the cat track, hit a patch of ice, and landed on her face. It was just a surface scrape, but it looked nasty. Thankfully, she healed fast and it was mostly gone by the time she went back to school. Thankfully, the hot tub cures all that ails you and she was feeling fine by the evening.
One last video - sorry again for showing off… :)