Taos, NM and Pagosa Springs, CO

Taos, New Mexico

Our next stop was in Taos Ski Valley! We skied for a total of three days there. It was definitely on the colder side, just over ten degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, most of the black runs were all covered in moguls (about 3 foot mounds that you ski between), not fun & very tiring on your legs. On the last day my dad and I took a chairlift all the way to the top of the mountain. We had beautiful views, but thick snow and tons of moguls. One black run that we skied was called Pycho Path, it was a little icy but not too bad.

As we were leaving Taos, we stopped at San Fransisco de Assisi; it is the oldest church in the area! It is an adobe building and every year the parishioners of the church reapply the adobe. Adobe is a mixture of mud and grasses.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

We stayed a night near Great Sand Dunes National Park; you could see the massive sand dunes from our patio! The Great Sand Dunes are situated at the edge of a big plain and are right in front of a mountain, making the sand dunes a very high wind area.

The next day we drove to the dunes and went hiking in them. We climbed to the top of the tallest front-line dune roughly 650 feet tall! It was a three-mile round trip. Unlike the white sands dunes we visited previously, these sand dunes are made of actual sand. As I said before, the area we were in is a very windy area, so while we were walking up the sand, it was blowing in our eyes, noses, and mouths (not super fun).

Pagosa Springs and Wolf Creek, Colorado

While we were in Pagosa Springs we stayed in two different places. The first place was just outside Pagosa Springs and closer to Wolf Creek ski mountain. We skied there for two days and found a black diamond ski run called Star Wars!

The second place we stayed in Pagosa Springs was at the Pagosa Springs Resort and Spa. It is home to the largest geothermal hotspring. The “mother” spring is 131 degrees (fahrenheit), just on the surface and gets hotter as you go down. Obviously a good reason people are not allowed to swim in it. Back in 2011 they tried to measure the depth of the hot spring, but ran out of heat proof tubing at 1002 feet! The hot spring water is siphoned off into over twenty mini hot spring pools which people are allowed to swim in.