Taos
ski valley
I
n a remote corner of New
Mexico at the base of a
mountain. in the middle
of a snow storm, just days
before Christmas I made
an interesting discovery lounging
by the fire. While paging through
a coffee table book, “Ski Pioneers,”
left in our condo about the making
of Taos Ski Valley, I learned that the
ski area’s legendary founder, immigrated to America from Germany
in 1938.
24 ModernLifestyles.tv
Blake’s original name was Ernst
Hermann Bloch, and the family left
Nazi Germany on the eve of World
War II because he was Jewish. His
remarkable journey took him not
just from the Alps to the Rockies,
but from a life as an Olympics-caliber German athlete to an interrogator of Nazis in the United States
Army to founder of a world-class
ski area in a state better known for
its deserts.
With a number of initial obstacles, Taos Ski Valley gradually
took shape, from a ski hill with little
more than a rope tow and a couple
of steep runs to the world-class ski
area it is today, with 1,300 acres
spread over 110 trails serviced by
13 lifts (a new lift with additional
runs opens this year). The area, in
the Sangre de Cristo range of the
Rocky Mountains, averages about
300 inches of snow per year.