In the early 1950s, Ernie Blake had an unusual commute. The Swiss-German skier was managing the Santa Fe Ski Basin and a sister resort in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and rather than driving between them, he flew his own Cessna 170 — about six hours of driving saved each way. But the flights gave him something better than time: a bird's-eye view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and a growing obsession with finding the perfect mountain for a ski area of his own.
From the cockpit, he found it — a steep, north-facing snow basin north of Wheeler Peak, in the abandoned copper-mining town of Twining, about twenty miles from Taos. In 1954 he bought an old mining claim and moved his family there: his wife Rhoda and their children took up residence in a camper at what would become the base of the mountain, and the Blakes began clearing land by hand and with the help of a mule.
Taos Ski Valley opened to skiers in 1955, and the first lifts went in fast by modern standards — a J-bar in 1956, a platter lift in 1957. But the early years were spartan. The family lived at the base for years before modern conveniences arrived, and Rhoda — a World War II aircraft mechanic, according to her son Mickey — mounted and tuned the rental skis while Ernie carved runs like Snakedance out of the mountainside. The Blakes wove their European heritage together with the Native American and Spanish Colonial culture of the region, creating a ski village unlike any other in America.
The mountain they built became legendary for its steep, technical terrain — Kachina Peak, the chutes and steeps of the West Basin, terrain that has drawn expert skiers for generations. It stayed in the Blake family for nearly six decades, until 2013, when the family sold the resort to conservationist Louis Bacon. Through every ownership change, the soul of the place has remained what Ernie Blake saw from his Cessna: a remote, beautiful, demanding mountain, built by a family that believed the mountain life was worth everything.
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