Ski Santa Fe
By Mary Jo Shelton, On Special Assignment
Monday, January 10, 2005
I first skied Ski Santa Fe the winter of 2001 and fell in love with the area. If you add the great food, shopping and night life you got………ROAD TRIP!!!
The key to enjoying a great ski day in Santa Fe is to stay away on weekends and check their website to see if the upper mountain is open. While a good deal of the intermediate skiing is on the lower mountain, the fact that the upper mountain is open indicates a good base (where’s Penelope Shagnasty…… Base Monitor???) and a significant amount of recent snows. That said, today 100% of the lower mountain was open and 95% of the upper and it was fantastic, plenty of snow.
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| The ceiling was low (like right over Mike’s head) and the Ski Santa Fe sign at the top of the Super Chief Quad Chair apparently was not used to seeing so much snow. Check out the I-25 corridor in the background as well as Sandia Peak. |
The area itself boasts 660 acres of skiing, roughly the size of Angel Fire, however Ski Santa Fe’s base starts where Angel Fire leaves off…….at 10,350 and tops off at 12,053!
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| MJ at the top of the Tesuque Chair at 12, 000 |
Ski Santa Fe also has hundreds of tree runs for the hard core expert tree bump skiers. The rest of the area is nicely treed as well………very picturesque.
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| You can’t see the summit due to low ceiling |
They have a quad chair but not a high speed detachable and another 5 lifts of various sizes. The lift tickets were reasonable at $47 for adults and $34 for seasoned skiers.
This area is strangely unpretentious, with very good older skiers by far out numbering the younger skiers and boarders. We had the privileged of doing some runs with an 80 year old WWII & Korean War Vet that had no problem keeping up with Mike on a groomed black diamond! Impressive.
We also skied in the clouds every time we got above about 11,000 ft. which gave the area a rather mystical and ethereal quality.
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| Did I mention that the views were huge??? |
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| Behind me, Santa Fe!!! |
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| Mike, with the Rio Grande Valley and Jemez mountains in the distance |
This, overall, was a very good skiing experience for the money…….I give it a B+!!!
Ski Apache
By Mary Jo Shelton, On Special Assignment
Monday, January 13, 2005
Well, what can I say? Ski Santa Fe was as good as Ski Apache was bad. This place woulda really had Penelope Shagnasty…..Base Monitor’s knickers in a bunch. Ski Apache, located in Ruidoso, reported a 60 inch base and what they had was wind blown, man made, chunky, icy boiler plate.
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| The view from the summit of Sierra Blanca (11,972) at Ski Apache was breath taking…that’s White Sands in the background flanked by the San Andres Mountains |
Ski Apache is about the size of Ski Santa Fe and I could see that the terrain could have been interesting if they had snow, upgraded the lifts, ditched the 30 year old 4 person very s.…l….o…w uncomfortable gondola, and widened the many catwalks connecting the 3 basic areas. The other thing that I want to mention is that the people that worked the mountain were either not doing their job or indifferent to the point of darn right unfriendly. One chair lift operator rarely came out of his booth to hold the chair when we loaded and we kept getting smacked in the calves by the chair. The lift tickets were $49 and way over priced for what you got for your buck. I give Ski Apache a D-. Ok, I know….tell me how you really feel, MJ. But it is all part of the journey and now that we skied there we never have to do it again. (grin)
Well that’s it from our Ski New Mexico Road trip………………
Remember to always finish your turns and NEVER, Never, never… eat hot green chili the night before skiing.
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