Remembering a ‘powder hound and fearless pilot’
Fred Fair lived a life full of adventure. In the process of flying, skiing, rafting, biking, and many other pursuits, he took his friends and family along for the ride, in many cases changing their lives. Fair passed away Jan. 11 at his home in El Prado.
His life story reads like an Indiana Jones tale, complete with narrow escapes, near plane crashes into mountain peaks and passes and brushes with death. From swimming across the Nile, to almost landing his plane on a downtown Denver street during rush hour, to rafting nearly impassable parts of the upper Taos Box, Fair always survived to go on to his next adventure.
Fair was born in 1937 in British Columbia, Canada and first arrived in Taos in early 1959. He made his way to the Taos Ski Valley. Arriving late, in the middle of a snowstorm, he couldn’t see any lights or signs of life when he arrived. Fair slept in his car overnight and awoke to find so much snow that he couldn’t open the door of the car and had to climb out of the car’s window. After struggling through the snow, he found the old Hondo Lodge where he met a French man cooking crepes in front of the huge stone fireplace: early ski pioneer Jean Mayer. The two spent the day skiing powder and became lifelong friends.
Fair returned in the winter of 1963-64 to teach skiing and was hired by Taos Ski Valley founder Ernie Blake, who reportedly hired and fired him several times. In
Rick Richard’s “Ski Pioneers: Ernie Blake, his friends, and the making of Taos Ski Valley,”
Blake is quoted as saying, “He is a tremendous mountain flyer and an excellent skier in powder snow, but he is totally unreliable and sometimes he skis when he is not supposed to. I hired him but quickly fired him.” So began Fair’s lifetime of living in Taos as his base for adventures that included heli-skiing, whitewater rafting, mountain biking, boating, and piloting helicopters and planes to destinations around the hemisphere.
Good friend and local builder Rick Edelman remembered Fair this way: “I had so many exciting adventures with Fred. He invited me to go heli-skiing 30 years ago and it changed the way I look at skiing and life. Personally, Fred opened up an appreciation for adventure and travel I found extremely rewarding. I flew all over the mountain West to go skiing and biking with Fred and I feel so honored and fortunate to have had those experiences. He was always on the move and thinking about the next adventure. He was a sailor and captain. He ventured in the Caribbean, off Long Island, the waters off San Diego and Mexico and in the waters of British Columbia. He knew the best restaurants and the best meals in all these places as well as the ski and mountain towns of Intermountain West.”
Edelman described Fair as a man who was very accomplished but never acted so, although he was an amazing pilot and could fly anything. According to Edelman, Fair flew under the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and down Al’s Run at Taos Ski Valley at least once.
In “Ski Pioneers,” Richards described Fair as a “powder hound and fearless pilot [and p]erpetrator of many wild stories.”
In addition to his skills as a pilot, Edelman said Fair was a superb skier, mountain biker and early runner of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, a route of epic rapids he is said to have run more than a dozen times. “His sense of adventure was astonishing, but he didn’t make a big deal of it, he just did it,” Edelman said.
Fair’s wife, Brigid Meier, explained, “Lady Luck has smiled on few people to the degree that she graced Fred Fair throughout his long, adventurous life. Fred lived large and given the choice, he always went for it, full tilt. In the early days he would ski Al’s Run at TSV (where he was said to be the fastest, most graceful skier on the mountain) then go raft The Box on the Rio Grande in the afternoon. Fred seemed to have had unlimited energy (and appetite for adrenaline) and he wanted to experience Life to its fullest.”
In Fair’s own words taken from his memoir, “Surviving Myself: The True-Life Adventures of a Lucky, Risk-Taking Voluptuary,” he said the book was “a collection of true stories about the times I’ve nearly missed maiming or killing myself during one adventure or another. While I like to think it’s been skill that’s cheated death, I know in my heart it’s been pure dumb luck.”
Fair is survived by his five children, four grandchildren, partner of 25 years and wife of 17, Brigid Meier, as well as cousins in Canada and many friends, who cherish the memories of adventures with the man they called a dear friend.