Northern New Mexico Resorts Keep Installing New Chairlifts
The pace of new lift construction slowed this summer across the West, but a quartet of resorts in northern New Mexico have bucked that trend.
Two new chairlifts went up to add seats to existing lines, one went up to replace a 50-year-old surface platter, and another refilled a lift line that had been abandoned for 27 years.
At Taos Ski Valley (1,294 a., 3,131 vert.) the seventh new lift since new ownership in 2012 went in on the backside. A triple fixed-grip is now Lift 7, replacing 40-year-old two-seater that performs multiple tasks from its central location on the backside. It is the prime mover for Taos' full-length Maxie's terrain park, and it catches powerhounds off Walkyrie's, Lorelei Trees and Sir Arnold Lunn.
Plus, it hooks up with Lift 7A that connects the backside to the top of the front -- an alternative to the long cat track that runs from bottom of backside to bottom of front.
Over the hill, crews put up Angel Fire's (560 a., 1,077 vert.) first new lift since 1999. Fixed-grip quad Rake's Rider tracks the same route as old Lift 6, one of the mountain's original lifts that started spinning in 1966.
Rake's Rider will reinvigorate a number of the favorite black runs on the mountain -- Hell's Bells, Angel Plunge and Nice Day -- that previously took long traverses to reach. Vertical drop off the new lift is about 1,000 feet, with access to Lift 5 and front side.
To the southwest, Sipapu Ski & Summer Resort (215 a., 1,055 vert.) has ordered up its first new lift since 2015. As part of a master development plan, upper-mountain Lift 3 has been upgraded from a surface platter to a fixed-grip double.
With a gentle 200-foot vertical rise, Lift 3 gives novices and leisure set a couple of easy greens and two terrain park setups. Meander Sassafras provides a safe green way to the base.
And finally, Ski Santa Fe (660 a., 1,725 vert.) doubles the seating capacity on its novice Easy Street chair, in hopes of relieving some of the bottlenecking at the base on weekend, holiday and powder days. The new Easy Street chair has four seats and tracks up 1,500 feet with 170 vertical rise -- on the same route as its predecessor that begin in 1988.
The new novice chair is the second lift get upgrades recently, both aimed to handle high demand from nearby fast-growing Santa Fe. Running out of the base area, the high-speed Santa Fe Express replaces a fixed-grip version in 2024.
