For the Aspen Times Weekly
The Taos Pueblo, which lies on the north boundary of town, was built somewhere between 1000 and 1450 A.D. and is considered to be one ofthe oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.
Courtesy Taos Ski Valley
You’ll cross over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which lies about 600 feet above the river, before arriving in downtown Taos.
Craig Turpin/Rising Sun Photog
The view heading north on Highway 285 just past Alamosa, looking at Methodist Mountain, on the way home from Taos.
Craig Turpin/Rising Sun Photog
Over the past year, I felt like I was existing among two conflicting realities of travel enthusiasts: those who still went and those who sorely stayed home.
03/10/2021
| By Snowsports Journalist Daniel Gibson |
A fun, new, short film I ran across online, the Solomon-produced 12-minute documentary titled “The Chairlift,” got me thinking about these mechanical devices that are so essential to downhill skiing as we know it.
While self-powered backcountry skiing is growing by leaps and bounds, almost every skier or snowboarder first stoked their snow passions by riding chairlifts and skiing within developed areas. It is probably the single greatest invention related to skiing, and did more to popularize the sport than any other development.
James Curran created the first at Sun Valley, Idaho, for the 1936–37 season with financing by Averell Harriman, the former governor of New York. Curran, who never skied, was an engineer with Union Pacific Railroad, which then owned the fledgling ski area. The single-seaters were modified from banana conveyor systems built to load cargo ships in the tropics. The basic design remains in effect tod