NAASF Ski Week
Taos, NM
January, 2022

Our first NAASF event of the 2022 season saw us returning to a mountain we first visited in 2016. While we experienced a bit of early-season type coverage on the mountain, this was not terribly unusual for a season that got a seriously late start on building a base for the snowpack!

The short version is, the parts of the mountain that were open gave up some amazing skiing for the week, with the race hill hard and fast every morning as we began inspecting the course, and it held up incredibly well throughout a long day with both A's and B's racing there. After the races were over, most of us enjoyed exploring the mountain, usually ending up at the Bavarian Restaurant for super authentic brats, beer, and pretzels - at least until the sun went behind the peaks and the temperatures dropped about 20 degrees!

We also had the pleasure of dealing with one of the best race crews we've worked with anywhere! If you got to meet Alain during the week, it was hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm and love of the sport, and his race crewmembers - every one of them - were friendly and helpful. It also didn't hurt that Alain set what most of us agreed were some of the most fun courses we've seen in a while - and with the Snowboard, the A's and the B's all racing on the same hill this year, we got to enjoy cheering each other on as well! Some of us even got to practice our French on poor Alain, who remained gracious throughout the week in spite of this.

Since the last time we were there, Taos had also made some serious upgrades to their mountain! New high-speed detachable chairs had replaced many of the same fixed chairlifts I had first skied on in 1978(!!) ...and last in 2016! And the new on-mountain lodging at The Blake was absolutely the nicest I've ever stayed in at a NAASF ski week. Many of the local restaurants and businesses were still shuttered due to rigorous COVID restrictions in the state of NM and, to a certain extent, lack of staffing, but what was open was great! We found the staff at The Blake to be some of the best we've encountered - if there is a condominium hotel version of "The Delta Difference", this place has nailed it. 

We held our Tuesday night Club Dinner in the town of Taos, at the Taos Ale House/Burger Stand (no, really) along with the JetBlue Ski & Snowboard Club and had a really great time. Our members got their first chance to try on our new club jackets before ordering, and we did some catching up after not seeing everyone for the last two seasons! We also got to finally award Gary Krasnov the 2020 Len Rossman Award IN PERSON after being denied the opportunity when the 2020 season was cut short. We also got to meet some of our new members from the previous season and this one - Megan Cross, Glenn DeGraf, Madisson Lank, Jason Rozneck, and Shandry Wilckens all got to attend their very first Club Dinner!

The Wednesday night theme was "Mask-erade Ball" and provided many of us an opportunity to get dressed up for the first time in a couple years to party with our friends again. There were a lot of different takes on the theme, which is always fun to see. 

It was during this first event that we got a peek at the possibilities ahead of us for the season results - and I think it lit a bit of a fire in our members' bellies! We had some outstanding individual performances, combined with some surprises from our noobies - and a little "help" from some of our competition blowing out, if we're being honest. Delta ended up in First Place at the end of the week! Some of results follow: