Taos Ski Valley -- Summer Tranquility

Navigation: Main page » Travel

 Print this page Submit articleComment article

Author: Tom Knutsen

Taos Ski Valley - Summer Tranquility

My wife and I drove away from Taos Ski Valley one weekday morning late in July discussing our plans to return the next year. We were rested after only four days and nights in the ski basin so popular in winter. A list of our activities would make it appear that we'd been busy, but we'd never felt that way. For in the off-season, the Ski Valley has few visitors and fewer full-time residents, so the pace is slow and easy, a perfect vacation site for our interests.

It was the second year that we'd headed up to the Ski Valley for its quiet, superb accommodations and low summer rates. Our first, exploratory visit had occurred in the summer of 2003. While working on a church mission in nearby Espanola, another couple from our church in Austin recommended that we look into staying in Taos Ski Valley afterwards. Expecting only cool mountain weather, we'd found a place where cultural events intertwine with outdoor activities. In our two visits, we've reveled in quiet, taken a horseback trail ride above timberline, attended concerts in Taos, thrilled at attending dinner and a concert rehearsal with the Chicago String Quartet, and gone hiking.

Staying at the Inn at Snakedance had given us the chance to explore the valley and its offerings. The inn, built on the location of the first lodge in the ski valley, afforded great food, peace, and attentive and personal service from its staff. The arrangement for our late arrivals both years illustrates the casual, personal touch. Driving up to the inn after its reservation desk had closed, we found by the door an envelope addressed to us with keys and instructions on how to enter the inn after hours. Truly, the staff had left the light on and the key under the mat. For only $55 a night we enjoyed a full breakfast each morning and stayed in a lovely room looking out on the main ski run on Taos Mountain.

For our second trip in 2004, we learned that the Snakedance was booked for a conference of physicists, so we stayed there two nights. We moved to the Columbine Inn, a mile down New Mexico's Route 150, the road that curves up into the ski area from Taos in the canyon of the Rio Hondo. Again we found an elegant room, personal attention, breakfast, and tranquility for $65 a night.

Finding accommodations and making reservations were made easy by the Taos Ski Valley's website. It lists the inns and hotels offering summer rates and special packages, and my brief phone calls for reservations for the Inn at Snakedance and the Columbine Inn were followed promptly by e-mail confirmations. When I called the Columbine, I also asked about finding a good horse trail ride.

"Call Big Al," said the Columbine's owner, Susie Geilenfeldt. "He's the best. It's A.A. Wilderness Adventures, and I'll send the phone number with your e-mail confirmation." She did, and the next day I telephoned the owner, Al Johnson. We played phone tag for a day, but when we connected, I knew I'd found the right guide because I heard a horse snort across the miles of cell phone connections. The wind carried away his voice, but we talked long enough to make a reservation and get instructions on when and where to meet him and how to pay - "I take cash or traveler's checks."

So, for the Western strand of our experience, we met Johnson about 8:45 a.m. on a July Monday as we waited next to the sunshine sign welcoming visitors to Taos Ski Valley. When a dusty red pickup roared up, I had no doubt that we'd met our wrangler. We greeted each other, and while Caroline and I read and signed a waiver saying essentially that it was too bad if we fell, Big Al pulled off his low-heeled driving boots and slid into his riding boots, set with spurs, that almost reached his knee. He was wearing full cowboy regalia, a neckerchief with a Lone Star slide, chaps, and a black hat. He wheeled around and turned up the dirt road that winds away from the valley towards the ridge to its east.

Soon we arrived at his camp high above Taos Ski Valley's 9,200 feet, where four horses saddled and bridled stood hitched to a line strung by the road. Big Al introduced us to another wrangler, Louis from Texline, Texas, a town on the New Mexico-Texas border not far south of Oklahoma. Louis won the Wild West Rig contest with knee-high boot shafts as red as shotgun shells. He watched the horses while Johnson led us to a true sawhorse, a wooden hobbyhorse with stirrups, reins, and a Western saddle's pommel set on it. He demonstrated how to sit, hang on, and steer the horse. His trail horses were trained for neck-reining, meaning that the rider lays the left rein against the horse's neck and presses his left knee into the horse to turn right, and vice versa. He also made sure we understood "Whoa." A nearby sign advised dude riders that horses and mules are large animals that can be skittish and dangerous.

Satisfied that we were ready, Louis and Johnson helped us leg up into our saddles. We rode in single file with us dudes sandwiched between Louis at point and Big Al as rear guard. Shortly we found ourselves on a high ridge between two deep valleys, Taos to the west and the path to Angel Fire to the east. We'd come out of the tree line as the horses plodded along the rocky trail. New Mexico's highest mountain, Wheeler Peak, jutted just above us to the south. In the morning's immaculately clear sky, we felt we should have been able to see all the way to Mexico and Montana. We paused for a break near a heap of old gold mine tailings that caused Louis to comment that anyone who'd work at that elevation, above 11,000 feet, must have really needed work.

The ride ended too quickly. Caroline and I could have enjoyed the quiet - the only sounds were the horses, the wind, and our conversation - and the view for much longer. On the way back, we spotted a single mule deer doe eyeing us from the thick evergreen timber. Back in camp, we dismounted, stretched, ate a snack, and headed back to the valley with Big Al in his pickup.

While the mountain trail ride took us high up the mountains, live classical music gave us a second, intellectual high. During our first stay in Taos Ski Valley, my wife learned that the Takacs String Quartet was performing on a Sunday at the Taos Community Auditorium. We reserved tickets and wound up sitting with the family of one of the performers. They told us that the Hotel St. Bernard, the ski lodge next to the Snakedance, in summer is the home of the Taos School of Music. College-aged string musicians compete for the opportunity to study there for a summer, and visiting performers teach for a time. We learned, too, that during the summer session, the Hotel St. Bernard's owner, ski instructor and chef Jean Mayer, offers weekly dinners for rehearsals and performances at the lodge.

Checking the music school's website in June, I learned that the Chicago String Quartet was visiting faculty for part of July. It was rehearsing on a Thursday mid-month at the St. Bernard and performing at Taos' auditorium the following Sunday. Ah, the utility of Internet reservations. The Hotel St. Bernard's website said space was available for the Thursday dinner, so I called about two weeks ahead of time for dinner reservations the night of the rehearsal. Leaving a voice mail message, I received a confirmation call from Jean Mayer within an hour.

Eager for the music, we left Espanola with another couple from our church mission for dinner and the string quartet rehearsal at the Hotel St. Bernard. Guests gathered in the inn's bar, chatting over cocktails until a member of the staff announced the meal was ready. We found our name on a table set for four with a liter of red wine at the wall end of the table and a fondue rack at the end facing an aisle. Hotel staff placed the serving dishes on the rack, first a hot potato and leek soup, next a fresh greens salad accompanied with bread rounds toasted with cheese, a main course of salmon and shellfish Provencal, and last, fresh berry tarts. Mayer and two others served the courses with the kind gracious ease we'd come to know in Taos in summer. Once coffee arrived, the music began.

The Chicago String Quartet's members had arranged chairs and music stands on a small dance floor in the St. Bernard's bar. For the next hour, we sat enthralled by the practice, as the group performed a little Mozart and Dvorak, and then worked step by step through pieces by Anton Webern. In the midst of a lively pizzicato section, the lead violinist stopped and said, "We have to stop because I've broken a string." He stepped away and came back quickly with a new string, tossing the failed one to a woman in the audience, who looked as delighted as a child catching a pop foul at a ball game. Their playing completed, the musicians fielded questions for about twenty minutes then broke away to eat. So, for $36 each, tip included, we had a night of superb food and exquisite music in a delightful setting.

Seeing the rehearsal made the next Sunday's full performance in Taos Community Auditorium almost personal, as if we were watching acquaintances instead of distant strangers. At the concert, we picked up flyers for the Taos Center for the Arts, which sponsors a full complement of live music performances throughout the summer, featuring not only students and faculty from the summer music school but also youth music groups, ballet troupes, and movies.

Of course no mountain vacation is complete without a good hike or two, and one of the valley's primary summer activities is hiking. Carson National Forest surrounds the ski valley whose Web site provides a link to the Carson website and its sources for maps. Trails are well marked. A popular hike leads from the ski valley to Williams Lake, about two miles from a parking lot above the valley or three miles from the ski lift. I'd hiked that trail in 2003. So the next time I wanted something more.

Strolling behind the Columbine one morning, I found one of the trails that start along N.M. 150 and crisscross streams as they ascend the ridge on the western side of the road. They meet other tracks that cross the ridge far above the road. The one I hiked was the Gavilan, leaving later in the day than I would have liked -- I got hot even in the cool air of higher altitude. The well-marked and maintained path broke out of timber into a series of alpine meadows, alive with wildflowers that had burst into bloom after the week's summer afternoon rains. During my two hours I encountered five other hiking parties going up or down. With better planning, I could have hiked up one trail and down another; I would have needed a topographic map and a compass as well as a couple more hours.

Our schedule and interests, of course, determined how we spent our time. Using the Inn at Snakedance's arrangements with a massage therapist, both of us scheduled relaxing massages. One morning while I read, my wife watched the young ballerinas practice nearby at the Jillana School of Ballet. The ski valley offers star gazing programs and barn dances on different weekends; restaurants and hotels have special summer packages and meals ranging from hiking with llamas to wine-tasting dinners. Trout fishing guides are available for fly-fishing expeditions. So we discovered that we could have filled a day with activities or simply sat and enjoyed the cool quiet. We chose a little of each.

Tom Knutsen works in the electric utility industry in Austin, Texas. He writes about his profession for trade journals and his avocations for travel and outdoor publications.

Contacts, Taos Ski Valley

Columbine Inn & Conference Center, www.columbineinntaos.com, Paul and Susie Geilenfeldt, (505) 776 - 5723

Horseback Mountain Trail Rides, Big Al Johnson, (505) 751 - 6051

Hotel St. Bernard, www.stbernardtaos.com, (505) 776 - 2251

The Inn at Snakedance, info@InnSnakedance.com, (800) 322 - 9815

Taos School of Music, www.taosschoolofmusic.com, (505) 776 - 2388

Taos Center for the Arts, www.tasocenterforthearts.org, (505) 758 - 2052