Taos Ski Valley’s forged path
Since 2020, the Taos Ski Valley Via Ferrata has offered a new way to experience the steep rugged terrain found in the mountains overlooking Taos in the summertime, and can serve as an introduction to an activity that is neither rock climbing nor mountaineering, but rather somewhere in between those two sports.
In the wintertime, seasoned skiers familiar with the K Chutes on Kachina Peak know about the nerve-racking descents of the Dahl-Bredine runs, where the only way down is through mandatory air sends. At least on one occasion, a snowboarder wearing a hockey jersey hesitated to jump and was cliffed out. After mulling over his exit strategy, he made the decision to throw his board down below and jump off the cliff about forty feet below on a steep pitch. The stratagem worked then, but other times, people have been rescued out by ski patrollers.
The Via Ferrata, on the other hand, offers skiers and snowboarders familiar with this terrain when it’s laden with snow to see it in a different light, and provides a route up the cliffs they’re used to sending in winter time.
Via Ferrata, which translates from Italian into the “iron path,” was developed in the Dolomites in Italy during World War I as a way to allow soldiers into strategic positions.
In Taos Ski Valley’s version, through the assistance of a harness equipped with energy-absorbing lanyards and specialized springlocked carabiners, a relatively
inexperienced rock climber can negotiate dramatic vertical terrains, such as the Taos Ski Valley K Chutes, with the help of fixtures such as iron rungs and cables that have been added to the rock face to remove some of the dangers of rock climbing. The rungs create both stable handholds and stable footholds, which, on easier paths, create a basic pathway up a rock face. On more advanced climbs, you have to utilize a mixture of natural rock features and the rungs. The links of cables — known colloquially as bellies — are spaced close enough together that you are not falling steep distances if you happen to lose your footing or your grip.
But this doesn’t mean the activity is entirely without danger, as you are still dealing with gravity and all the harms associated with falling and getting thwacked against the rocks if you’re not careful, similar to rock climbing with ropes. There is also the danger of human error, of not clipping onto the cables, when transferring from one belly to another belly and then slipping off. To ensure as safe an environment as possible, however, all guests must have a guide to climb on the routes. Tours take approximately three hours and can have a maximum of five guests, plus a guide. An element of the Taos Via Ferrata experience is that people of disparate climb
ing experience or athletic ability can go on the same climb with minimal preparation. After filling out a waiver, putting on your gear and riding to the top of lift 4, you quickly come face-to-face with a steep rock climbing opportunity.
On Thursday (Sept. 1), biologist and Taos Ski Valley ski patroller Nano Lucero agreed to take the Taos News on a tour to the top of a gnarly crag resembling a cubist Braque painting, known as the Rosy Buttress and another intimidating section known as “Fin for yourself.”
Lucero took time to describe, as well as lay out a game plan for overcoming these sections, “The Rosy Buttress is kind-of named after that rosy-colored rock. This next pitch that we’re going to, we call it ‘Fin for yourself.’ ... We want to keep that kind-of in the back of your mind that there’s this big right-hand aréte [an edge or ridge of a cliff or boulder]. So that big fin just to the right of the cable. So yeah, it’s named Fin for yourself because we want people to keep in mind that the handholds for this route, this is where we start moving away from just using rungs. We’re going to be using a mix here. So it’s really kind of a harder route to do if you just use rungs or use a cable. It lends itself really well to like, big right-hand reaches for that aréte. So that aréte is what we’re going to use for handholds. The rungs are what we’re gonna use for footholds.”
Lucero also talked about the double cable catwalk, “And then we have our cable. Yeah, our clothesline is what we casually refer to this as. It’s not quite a Tyrolean
traverse. A Tyrolean traverse would be like a rope — just one. Just one where you throw your feet up. This one, we have another table below, so it’s closer to slacklining with an assist.”
For some, walking across that double catwalk, which is suspended 20 feet over jagged rock,
is probably the closest they’ll get to recreating Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
With the help of Lucero’s expertise and guidance, the climbs running through the Dahl-Bredines were completed safely. A chunky
yellow-bellied marmot scurried away from the group on one of the trails during the down climb back to the lift.
Taos Via Ferrata tours are available seven days a week. Weekday tours start at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tickets ($275 for 1-2 guests; $375 for 3 guests; $475 for 4 guests; $575
for 5 guests) include the price of a rental harness, Via Ferrata lanyard and helmet. Guides also give a new sunset tour on weekends, with higher rates. More ticket information can be found at skitaos.com/ tickets-passes/summer-22-daytickets.