Powder Pioneers
New Mexico’s ski legends: Pete Totemoff, Ben Abruzzo, Robert Nordhaus, Ernie Blake, and Buzz Bainbridge (c. 1980). Photo courtesy of Sandia Peak Ski Company
Humble Beginnings
The pioneering families of New Mexico’s ski areas are responsible for our laid-back ski culture.
Friends and Family
In 1935, Robert Nordhaus founded the Albuquerque Ski Club. An Albuquerque native and Yale-educated lawyer, Nordhaus had discovered the wonders of skiing at Andover, a boy’s prep school back east. He was determined to bring an organized form of the sport to the Land of Enchantment.
Thanks to the enthusiastic support of the Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Sandia Peak got its first trail—a narrow swath of cleared forest just past the 6,500-foot mark in La Madera Canyon—the following winter. With a few cleared trails in place, the club built its first rope tow in 1937 with a second one appearing in 1939. But during World War II, growth slowed to a crawl. Nordhaus joined the National Guard and in 1941, transferred to the legendary 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colorado. There he discovered the wonders of the T-bar. When the war ended in 1945, Nordhaus returned to Albuquerque and convinced the ski club to go public in order to raise the $40,000 needed to install a 4,200-ft. Constam T-bar—the longest in the nation. An additional $60,000 was budgeted for five miles of trails, a lodge, and minimal overnight lodging.
Billie Cotter, Pat Abruzzo, Katy Eckert, Dona Boyden (c. 1960). Photo courtesy of Sandia Peak Ski Company |
In 1952, Nordhaus partnered with Ben Abruzzo, a local businessman and developer, and a chairlift was installed to carry skiers to the summit. Then, for the 1966-67 season, Nordhaus and Abruzzo took a big risk with the construction of the Sandia Peak Tramway.
The project cost over $2 million and took two years to complete, but from the moment the first passengers took the breathtaking trip up to the crest of Sandia Peak, it was clear that Nordhaus and Abruzzo’s big risk would pay off. With easy access to the summit, Sandia’s popularity exploded as a Southwestern ski institution.
“They had incredible energy and they have an incredible track record. Today we are the keepers of this record ... I grew up with chore lists my entire life. Everything was calculated, orchestrated and reduced to lists. First my dad would show us how to do something and we would work beside him. Then we’d do it on our own,” Abruzzo said in Sandia Peak: A History of the Sandia Peak Tramway and Ski Area, by Pamela Salmon.
In early 1984, Abruzzo and his sons, Louis and Benny, added the Santa Fe Ski Basin to the Abruzzo family business. Sadly, on Feb. 11, 1985,
tragedy struck. Abruzzo Sr., his wife, Pat, and four other Albuquerque women died in a plane crash while leaving Albuquerque for a ski trip to Aspen. Abruzzo’s three sons, Benny, Louis, and Richard, and his daughter, Mary Pat, pulled together to cope with the tragedy.
“In the ski business, you open the doors and you keep it running,” Benny Abruzzo said in Sandia Peak. “Because of our family, we weren’t about to stop doing what we were responsible for.”
Ernie Blake. Photo courtesy of Blake Family collection |
Today, all three brothers are actively involved in Ski Santa Fe and Sandia Peak.
The Blake Family’s Legacy
Ernie Blake immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1938 after reading about Aspen and the American West in a ski manual. He settled in Santa Fe as general manager of the Santa Fe Ski Basin. At that time, Joe T. Juhan owned both Santa Fe and the Glenwood Springs ski resort in Colorado. Blake invested in a Cessna 170 to travel between the two resorts.
On his regular flights between Santa Fe and Glenwood Springs, Blake began searching for suitable terrain for his own ski mountain. And in 1951, he finally found the spot—a long-abandoned silver mining town named Twining, nestled in a near-inaccessible basin beneath Wheeler Peak in the northern Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A 1954 exploratory trip with legendary snow ranger Pete Totemoff convinced Blake that this was indeed the place for his new resort.
That first season, Blake hauled skiers to the top in a snow cat. Taos’ first lift, a Bridger-Boseman J-Bar, was installed in the fall of 1956 with the help of 16 men from Taos Pueblo and a mule named Lightening. Story has it, however, that the mule quit after the first day. By 1960, Taos Ski Valley had electricity, telephones, chair lifts and even a few intermediate runs.
During those early years, Blake, his wife Rhoda, and their three children lived in a 16-foot trailer in the woods before settling down in the apartment above the ski lodge. For the next 20 years, Blake watched his dream resort grow from a fledgling adventure base to a destination resort that regularly ranks in the top 10 ski resorts in the country.
Thanks largely to the ongoing effort of Blake’s three children and 13 grandchildren, Taos remains one of the sport’s most revered destinations–while continuing to foster a homey feel. “We didn’t know we were growing up in a ski family,” recalls Adriana Blake, the resort’s director of marketing. “To us, he [Ernie] was just a grandfather.”
The Bolander Spirit
A contemporary of Ernie Blake, Sipapu founder Lloyd Bolander had a similar vision of what a ski area should be about. In 1950, Lloyd and his wife, Olive, bought an old adobe homestead in a high mountain valley just 22 miles south of Taos inside the Carson National Forest, and set about developing their own resort.
The Bolanders cut a few narrow runs into the slope above their homestead. In 1952, Lloyd installed a 100-foot-long portable rope tow. Olive and Lloyd dubbed their new resort Sipapu, after the Tewa word for “spirit place.” That same year, the couple welcomed their first son, Bruce.
The Bolanders imported 30 used rental skis with bear trap bindings and charged locals 75 cents for lifts, lessons and rentals. For the next 50 years, the Bolander family—mother, father, son, and daughter—built, re-tooled and tended the resort with a singular vision: to cater to families. Although the resort is under different ownership, that goal and the atmosphere remain unchanged.
Drew Judycki. Photo courtesy of Judycki Family Collection |
The Judyckis of Red River
Red River began as a mining town, and became one of the favorite summer retreats of Texans and Oklahomans looking for an escape from the heat. In 1958, an Oklahoma oilman named Stokes E. Bolton decided the town was in need of a winter attraction to keep tourist revenue coming in. Having recently visited the Santa Fe Ski Basin, Bolton decided that a ski area was just what the town needed. That year, he and his wife, Billie, constructed Red River’s first chairlift from the surplus steel of old oil derricks. The resort has grown steadily ever since.
In the mid-1980s, Drew Judycki, a former ski school director from Massachusetts, and a few others decided to purchase the resort. Judycki bought out his original partners in 1998, and his family has been running the resort ever since. “We’re not quite as generational as Taos,” says Lauren Judycki House, Drew’s daughter and the resort’s marketing director, “but that’s definitely one of our goals. That, and carrying on our dad’s vision of what a ski area should be.” Drew Judycki passed away last year.
Lauren began skiing at age two and by age 14 she had earned her PSIA level one certification. “What better place to grow up than a ski resort,” she recalls. “I could just walk out the back door and onto the slopes.”
With all runs ending up just a short walk from Main Street, the resort is a perfect place to give older kids a chance to explore the mountain on their own, and a great spot for families with non-skiing members. “Being family-owned makes Red River so much more intimate,” says Lauren. “Guests get to see, meet, and ultimately know the family that owns the business. We can really identify with our clientele, and they identify with us.”
In the Footsteps of Family
In 1954, the LeBus family of Wichita Falls, Texas, purchased a 9,000-acre ranch in northeastern New Mexico and began grazing beef cattle in the valley below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Two years later they purchased another 14,000 acres but soon gave up on cattle ranching. Instead, the family decided to turn the ranch into a resort. In 1964, the family founded Angel Fire Resort, a place fellow Texans and vacationers from Oklahoma, Kansas, and, of course, New Mexico, could enjoy the snow.
Using proceeds from the family cattle ranching business, they replaced pastures with ski trails and built a dirt airstrip (now Angel Fire Airport).
While the LeBus family sold Angel Fire in 1972, the resort has never lost its family-run atmosphere, or its dedication to serving families. As Skiing Magazine notes, “You’ll ski Angel Fire because you want an affordable family destination or a place where all of your friends, experts and beginners, can find terrain and a resort experience.”
