It’s been a busy ski season for us and we just finished our 3rd and 4th trips away from our home Tahoe resorts.  We have an aggressive schedule this year with the plan to ski 8 new resorts.  So far the plan has worked out perfectly with 6 down, 20 ski days for me and 17 for AiRung.

January 9-13 was our trip to New Mexico to ski the last 2 resorts that are typically accessed from Albuquerque:  Taos and Wolf Creek.  We had to plan this one pretty far in advance so we had to cross our fingers for good weather and we definitely got it.  There were 3 storms that came through the state the week before we arrived and then cold temps kept the snow soft for all 3 days of skiing.

Taos New Mexico, January 2016

We will have a full report later, but for now we will say that Taos was very challenging so it’s a good thing we waited to ski it until AiRung was a very good skier.  It was very beautiful and we will remember this one for a long time.  It was also the 50th resort on our list, so we are half-way through the project!

After 2 days at Taos, we headed back up to Colorado to hit Wolf Creek.  Wolf Creek is known for having the most snow in Colorado and they had received 269″ of snow by mid-January so we weren’t disappointed (in the snow at least).  However, we found Wolf Creek very lacking in terrain quality and we were bored by 1:30PM.

Blue run at Wolf Creek Colorado, January 2016

The best part about Wolf Creek was staying in the historic Windsor Hotel in Del Norte, Colorado.  The hotel was built in the 1870’s and recently reopened after an extensive remodel.  The valley where Del Norte is located is notorious for very cold temps and we experience a little of that with -11F in the morning.

We only had 3 days at home before we hit our 52nd resort, China Peak in California.  This was a quick day trip from our house since it is only 209 miles away.  This is the last resort on our list in day-trip distance, and also the last resort in California.  It was a good day to head down south for skiing because it was raining in Tahoe up to 8,000+ ft., but the rain did not go that far south so we actually had really good conditions.  Our passes were blacked out in Tahoe anyway.

China Peak California, January 2016

China Peak was another pleasant surprise, with varied, consistent terrain, a decent vertical, lots of acreage, and great grooming.  We thought this was going to be the worst resort on our California list, but that wasn’t the case at all and we will definitely return some day.

So now we can rank the California resorts we have skied:

The next trip is Aspen in early March, so for the next 7 weeks we will be skiing our home resorts in Tahoe.