The best place to ski in the U.S.A.

I'm going to fast forward past our drive from Dubois to Taos as it wasn't very exciting besides the food. At around 4 PM on Saturday, we made it to Taos Ski Valley. My great aunt and uncle, Mary and Conrad were nice enough to let Mason and I join them for a ski week in Taos.

What is a ski week? For starters, a ski week at Taos destroys the idea that ski lessons are only for beginners. It is a longstanding tradition at Taos where you get six 2 hour group lessons for the price of a 1 day lesson over the course of six ski days. Essentially it is the best way to improve your skiing both on and off piste in one shot. For me, ski weeks are all about improving my skiing in moguls, trees, chutes, and extremely steep terrain where errors are not an option.

Before the first lesson. Everyone taking a ski week is required to do a ski off. Basically you make a few turns down an easy hill as everyone is watching and judging you. The head of the ski school pulls you aside and puts you in a group somewhere between level 1 and 10. Mason and I were placed in the highest level group for the week. Our group consisted of our instructor, Michael Chandler, and 3 other people besides Mason and I. The downside of coming in January is the age of most the other skiers in lessons. Besides one other person in our group, almost everyone else at Taos ski week was a good 20-50 years older than us.