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Brought to you by Taos Ski Valley
An all-time winter skiing or snowboarding getaway is waiting for you at Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico.
Home to North America’s sole full-immersion camp, Ski Week at Taos is a standout program at a premier mountain paradise where you’ll cultivate the skills to slide right into skiing like an absolute legend.
Taos founder and all-around mountain-man icon, Ernie Blake was dipping his ski tips beside hosen-clad downhillers across the European Alps when he first noted the special brilliance behind the concept of a Ski Week. Ernie knew straight away that to transplant Ski Week to Taos Ski Valley was a recipe for success. All he needed was the ‘magic ingredient’ and it arrived in the form of Jean Mayer.
Himself a Frenchman Junior Ski Champion, Jean wasted no time in founding the Snowsports School at Taos. And it’s thanks to Jean’s and Ernie’s clever initiative that the Ski Week tradition thrives at Taos Ski Valley. In fact, those early golden days at Taos could only be accessed by booking a Ski Week, when keen-edged downhill enthusiasts signed-up to go full-send via a total-immersion mountain experience. Ernie even stopped the lift system over lunch so that each and everybody would take a meal together, and shared stories with hearty laughter, while also growing a healthy snow community, all around.
Nowadays, a general Ski Week is bookable at your pleasure or, for a more targeted approach, a spot can easily be secured during a date range with a specific focus such as Race Week or Women’s Ski Week, which drops February 25th (and fear not, there’s snowboarding too).
The set-up behind a Ski Week at Taos is all about convenience. Sessions span Sundays thru Fridays. And Taos Ski Valley has aligned with regional airway, JSX which provides direct flights from major hubs in the states of California as well as Texas. According to the team at Taos, JSX flight packages are basically “hassle-free” and included complimentary demo rentals from Taos Sports, meaning you benefit by the same gear, with the same instructor, for same epic Ski Week experience; day-in day-out for the whole of the session.
And holders of a season pass to Taos Ski Valley point to Ski Week as a great program at an undeniably outstanding value. There’s just under three-hours of instruction each morning, followed by an afternoon of free-skiing fun, and then the whole show wraps-up nicely with a “tech talk” over apres at the mythological marvel that is the Taos Martini Tree…if you know, you know 😉
Comradery is central because the aim, overall, is to keep the good times cruising, on-mountain or off it. Taos athletes not only saw their technique improve but participants commonly also formed life-long friendships along the way. That in-it-together awesomeness, developed over the course of a fantastic week often is a driving force behind a group planning their return, year after year.
Participants to the program often end up scheming next season’s mountain trips alongside the very buddies they met during their first Ski Week, because love for snow–and for Taos Ski Valley–are truly ties that bind.
Locals to these parts will be mighty glad to assure you, Taos Ski Valley is first and always a unique gem of old school, can-do attitude combined with top-to-bottom ripcord skiing or snowboarding. Here, the Rockies get rolling and mountain culture sets its roots.
Best of all, through booking a Ski Week the potential to advance your downhill abilities unfurls before your booted feet, in practically limitless fashion, because, at Taos Ski Valley Mother Nature loves to let her hair down…and wrap her friends inside big ol’ powdery hugs.
For an undisputed all-time mountain experience–stretched across one epic Ski Week–seek no further than the unrivaled beauty, streamline access, and unforgettable thrill of Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico.
