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Taos blinks, allows snowboards

Only three major U.S. ski resorts now ban devices

By Hannah Karp, The Wall Street Journal

Published December 25, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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One thing that was always quite noticeable at Taos Ski Valley was the lack of snowboards.

Photo by The Rocky / 2006

One thing that was always quite noticeable at Taos Ski Valley was the lack of snowboards.

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And then there were three.

Taos Ski Valley, one of the last bastions of snowboard-free skiing, caved to commercial pressure last week and said it will allow snowboarders on the slopes starting at the end of the season.

For the family that owns the storied resort, it's an effort to expand the business and retain customers whose children or grandchildren prefer snowboards to downhill skis.

But it's a crushing defeat for some lifelong Taos fans, who now are threatening to pack up and sell their New Mexico real estate. It leaves just three major resorts standing against the snowboarding juggernaut: Alta and Deer Valley in Utah and Vermont's Mad River Glen.

Taos, built to resemble Switzerland's St. Moritz, opened in 1955 and is known for its steep terrain, gorgeous scenery and laid-back vibe. Skiers fuel the local economy, buying art, real estate and fancy dinners; some locals say boarders won't bring the same kind of money to town. "They bring their lunch to the mountain instead of buying it," says Liz Jamison, a real-estate agent and ski instructor at Taos for 22 years.

The announcement "Opens to Snowboarding March 19, 2008" appeared last week in red letters on Taos Ski Valley's Web site; a snowboarder's silhouette obscures the word "ski" in the slogan "Ski Taos."

Within hours, hundreds of people had posted comments, ranging from "How can this happen?" and "NNNOOOOOO!!!!" to "'Bout time!" and "This world is so full of prejudice and hate, why bring it into the world of snow sports?"

But with ski revenue sliding and offspring of even the most hard-core skiers gravitating to boards, skiers-only destinations find it hard to keep refusing. Skier and snowboarder visits dropped in the 2006-2007 season to a combined 55 million, from close to 59 million in 2005-2006, the national ski areas group says. Industry revenue of $4.9 billion in 2005-2006 was down slightly from the previous season, according to the latest data.

To boost sales, Aspen Mountain began allowing snowboards in 2001; now 10 percent of visitors there come to snowboard. Keystone, Park City Mountain Resort in Utah and California's Alpine Meadows began admitting snowboarders more than 10 years ago; now 30 percent of visitors to Alpine Meadows are snowboarders.

The nation's remaining three public resorts that ban snowboarders haven't ruled out a change of heart. Deer Valley says an overwhelming majority of guests still prefer the ski-only experience, but it re-evaluates the issue every year. Mad River Glen says it would take a two-thirds vote of the co-op's shareholders to change its ban. Alta says the snowboard ban is a business decision.

With a ski-only policy, "you're not just losing the snowboarder. You're losing the family or in some cases the whole ski club," says Gordon Briner, general manager of Taos Ski Valley.

His answer to local real-estate investors' complaints is that "in every community that's adopted snowboarding, the real-estate values go up significantly."

Dianne Robbins says she plans to put her Taos ski home on the market at the end of the season because of the policy change. She and her husband, Larry, who owns a Pensacola, Fla., swimming-pool company, bought a 10,000-square-foot chalet in 2005 for slightly more than $1 million, with an indoor pool, steam room, sauna and a two-minute walk through the woods to the lifts.

The Robbinses invested $1 million more in remodeling, a project Robbins says they won't continue.

"The whole reason for buying and investing there was the no-snowboarding policy," says Robbins, a 38-year-old dance instructor. Snowboarders, she says, "are careless a little bit."

Alejandro Blake, events coordinator and a grandson of Ernie Blake, the resort's founder, says Taos Ski Valley has been weighing the change for seven years.

"It is a business at the end of the day," says Blake. "We weren't forced into this, but we needed to do it in order to grow."

Jake Burton, founder of snowboard company Burton, based in Burlington, Vt., says, "I feel the same way about a 15-year-old out of control on a pair of skis. And poles are pretty dangerous, too, especially when they're swinging them up the stairs."

The facts

* Skiers: The majority of skiers who skied more than a day at a U.S. resort this past year were older than 25.

* Snowboarders: The majority of snowboarders weren't old enough to rent a car.

The views

* Skiers: Boarders are young, reckless and rowdy.

* Boarder: Skiers are old, stuffy and conservative.

Bans

These are the only remaining ski areas that don't allow snowboarding:

* Alta and Deer Valley in Utah

UP Vermont's Mad River Glen