NORDHAUS: Skiers, boarders can coexist at Taos

By Hannah Nordhaus, Special to the Rocky

Published March 25, 2008 at 12:45 a.m.

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On Wednesday, after years of stonewalling and segregation, Taos Ski Valley opened to snowboarding.

The predictions had been dire for the fateful day and Taos finally opened its lifts to boarders. A gaggle of police units had been called to oversee the mayhem. A flock of Forest Service snow rangers suited up. On the resort's Web site, vitriol ruled, with skiers threatening to boycott Taos forever.

On the deck of the St. Bernard, the lodge at the base of Al's Run, there were plans for a baggy-pants contest and daylong serenade of punk-metal bands. Would Taos ever be the same?

I learned to ski in Taos. I visited there often as a kid and lived there after college, and because it didn't admit snowboarders, I had very little exposure to the fearsome, baggy-garbed, tongue-pierced, one-planked rebels whom skiers in Taos so feared. While boarders coexisted with skiers at resorts across the country, in Taos they stared at each other across a vast cultural divide.

But that all changed Wednesday morning, when I drove to witness the quantum shift.

At 8:30, we spotted our first pair of snowboarders in the parking lot. They were drinking a beer. On the shuttle to the base area, we saw even more. Now, besides the usual bibs and jester hats you see during spring break in Taos, there was a full complement of oversize hounds- tooth and low-slung pants.

In the lift line, things were rau- cous. A rider who'd spent the night camped out at the chairlift loaded first; then boarder after boarder followed him up the hill.

But here's the thing. Besides the 9 a.m. crush of fired-up riders, the baggy clothes, the celebrity snowboarders, the promo tents, the redesigned terrain park and the skier with the protest sign showing the resort's founder weeping tears of blood, it was just like any other busy day at Taos Ski Valley.

Sure, there were 2,000 snowboarders, but there were no major collisions, no fisticuffs, no stink- eye standoffs.

The snowboarders were respectful and, for the most part, quite skilled. The skiers were good-humored - perhaps all those curmudgeonly Web-site posters already fled.

The slopes were crowded, but all my close calls that day came with other skiers.

Even the culture shift defied the doubters' calamitous expectations. There were lots of young people, more than I'd seen in years. But no one entered the baggy-pants contest. While the punk bands were way too loud, that wasn't the boarders' fault. Even snowboarders like to hear themselves think, so most headed to quieter locales.

At the end of the day, we took a long traverse to the front of the mountain - a flat run-out that skiers predicted would be impossible on a snowboard. But everybody made it without having to undo bindings, except on one uphill.

As I stood at the top of that rise waiting for my snowboarding companions to walk up, a more ambitious boarder jumped up the small uphill with his feet locked in. As he tired at the top, I offered him a pole and pulled him the rest of the way up.

"See," he said, "skiers and snowboarders can get along."

We may wear different pants, but we hold common hopes.

Hannah Nordhaus covers the outdoors and the environment from her home in Boulder.

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