TAOS, N.M. —

There’s a sign at the foot of a mountain wall in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Range that reads: “DON’T PANIC! You’re looking at only 1/30 of Taos Ski Valley.”

That could be good news or bad. The 3.3 percent of developed territory that is visible from the resort’s base area is challenging indeed. The balance of the terrain — rising from 9,207 feet to the summit of 12,481-foot Kachina Peak — doesn’t appear to be a whole lot easier.

Adriana Blake assuaged my fears. The granddaughter of the legendary Ernie Blake, who founded Taos Ski Valley in 1955, Blake grew up skiing Taos and little else. Today, as a member of the third generation of Blake family owners, she is the marketing director and the biggest champion of a resort long regarded as one of the finest in North America.

Blake led me and my friend Nicholas Sveslosky on a tour of the mountain, traversing from one lift to another — eight in all — as we tracked down runs with names like Porcupine and Lorelei, Inferno and El Funko. Blake and I were on skis; Sveslosky kicked up rooster tails on his snowboard.

When our day on the slopes ended, we put our differences aside over dinner at the Hotel St. Bernard. There our ebullient French-born host, Jean Mayer, a Taos resident for more than 50 years, served us fine Bordeaux wines with delicious continental cuisine.

Over the better part of a week, skiing at three of northern New Mexico’s leading resorts — Taos Ski Valley, Ski Santa Fe and Red River — I discovered a winter recreational experience unlike anywhere else I’ve visited.

I found a sense of intimacy, even at world-class Taos: These are family-owned and operated ski areas, without major corporate management, and we were able to take turns and raise glasses with the people responsible for putting these resorts on the map.

What’s more, skiing in New Mexico is an immersive cultural experience. Here in the pastel heights of the Sangre de Cristo, the “Blood of Christ” mountains, a Hispanic heritage embedded for more than four centuries overlies a far older Pueblo Indian culture. The result is seen in the food, the arts, the architecture and nearly every other aspect of northern New Mexico life. A visitor can’t help but feel a part of it.

Santa Fe

Although flights arrive at Albuquerque International Airport, at the edge of New Mexico’s largest city (high-tech Albuquerque boasts a population of around 560,000), it’s the state capital of Santa Fe, an hour’s drive northeast, that is the heart of the region.

Founded in 1610 by Spanish colonists, a full decade before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, Santa Fe is the longest continually occupied capital city in the United States. It remains stuck in a time warp between the 17th and 21st centuries.

Here in the purified air of 7,000 feet elevation, Native Americans sit cross-legged hawking their wares to eager shoppers beneath the portico of the ancient Palace of the Governors. They face a broad Plaza, a once-walled presidio that in times past was the terminus of the fabled Santa Fe Trail. Today it is the hub of the city, a grassy square surrounded by shops and restaurants, focused upon a central fountain.

But this was a winter visit, and I wasn’t spending all my time on foot in Santa Fe. My preferred method of mobility was skis. So I headed east, 16 miles via Hyde Park Road, to a resort simply called Ski Santa Fe.

Benny Abruzzo is the owner and general manager. He was in his early 20s when his parents bought the ski area in 1984. That first season was a joy — until mid-February, when his mother and father died together in the crash of a small plane.

Suddenly, Abruzzo was thrust into an unexpected role as primary owner and general manager.

Thirty years later, his resort has five chairlifts serving 660 acres — and it’s been so successful that Abruzzo now also owns a heli-skiing operation in remote British Columbia. His own son, Ben, is being groomed to take over the business in a year or two or 10.

Abruzzo told me this story as we rode together up the Millennium Chair, above Big Rocks Glade. Chutes of snow ran through carefully groomed woodland and around huge boulders that framed Richard’s Run — named for Benny’s older brother, who died in 2010 while ballooning across the Adriatic Sea.

When Sveslosky and I voted against that double-black-diamond descent, we swooped down a trail called Lobo to the foot of the Tesuque Peak chair. Atop that lift, the Upper Parachute slope revealed a view across hundreds of square miles of northern New Mexico, all the way to Colorado.

Some might call this nosebleed territory, as the summit is more than 12,000 feet above sea level. (Base elevation is 10,350 feet.) But Ski Santa Fe has no difficulty attracting Santa Fe and Albuquerque families. They like the user-friendly design of La Casa day lodge, especially for those renting equipment and/or using lockers. The resort’s adaptive ski program is one of the best in the country, and its midmountain bar and grill, Totemoff’s, is a great place to finish the day. There’s no lodging, but the resort couples with Santa Fe hotels to offer vacation packages.

Another good reason to visit Ski Santa Fe, I discovered, is that 10,000 Waves is more than halfway down the hill toward Santa Fe. This Japanese-style hot-springs spa has outdoor hot tubs and private soaking suites to relax weary muscles, as well as private lodging and an acclaimed restaurant, Izanami, for those who want to stay longer.

Taos Ski Valley

The 90-minute drive from Santa Fe to Taos follows a 70-mile road with scenery that mimics that of John Nichols’ classic 1974 novel, “The Milagro Beanfield War.” Tiny shack-like homes with barely sustainable fields line state Highway 68, which skirts several pueblo villages — such as Santa Clara and San Juan — whose economy is now carried by roadside casinos rather than the traditional black-on-black pottery so widely sought by collectors.

Taos Pueblo has been the home of Tiwa Indians for well over 900 years. The northernmost of New Mexico’s 19 pueblo communities, its two massive, multistoried adobe structures appear much the same today as they did in 1540, when they were first observed by a Coronado’s conquistadors. The distinctive, flowing lines of shaped mud with a straw-and-mud exterior plaster are typical of pueblo architecture. Visitors are welcome, although you’ll be charged for photography in addition to admission.

The pueblo is about 5 miles north of the town of Taos itself. With a population around 5,000 today, Taos was settled by the Spanish at the end of the 16th century and grew to become an important trade center. Among its champions were early American “mountain men,” including Kit Carson, who lived here for 42 years until his death in 1868.

A circa-1900 art colony helped to place the town on the international cultural map. Drawn by the desert light, throngs of creative types followed, among them author D.H. Lawrence, whose ranch and shrine are 20 miles north. Today the main sights in Taos, apart from the pueblo itself, are its half-dozen art museums and historic homes.

By the time Ernie Blake, Adriana Blake’s Swiss-German grandfather, arrived in northern New Mexico in late 1952 — as mountain manager at what is now Ski Santa Fe — the former frontier town had settled into its serenity. Ernie Blake, however, was determined to find the perfect location for his own ski resort, one equal to those of his native Alps. For two years, he flew his Cessna over the mountains between Santa Fe and the Colorado border until he discovered the perfect basin.

Blake found it at the abandoned copper-mining site of Twining, just beneath the state’s highest summit, Wheeler Peak. He opened Taos Ski Valley, a 19-mile drive from the town of Taos, for the 1954-55 winter season. Now internationally renowned for its ample dumps of light, dry powder, it is one of the last American resorts of its kind, offering cozy on-the-hill lodging at half a dozen inns and a convivial ambiance free of the snobbery that may be seen elsewhere.

Many of the resort’s most daring chutes and best powder caches, such as Stauffenberg and Juarez — Blake, who died in 1989, honored freedom fighters in naming several of Taos’ runs — are accessed from ridgelines that require a hike from upper lift terminals. It’s a more rigorous climb, at least 45 minutes for athletic skiers, to the apex of Kachina Peak. But the reward is a powder ski down a bowl known as Main Street, Taos Ski Valley’s signature descent. It will soon be accessible to everyone: More on that later.

Red River

Adriana Blake estimates that one-third of skier days at Taos Ski Valley are registered by visitors from Texas. That’s only half of what is claimed by the Red River Ski Area, 36 miles north of Taos and a stone’s throw from the Colorado border.

The vibe in Red River is far more frontier village than Spanish Pueblo, a factor of its relative proximity to Dallas, Oklahoma City and other large cities of the Great Plains. You’re far more likely to dine on char-grilled steak than on blue-corn enchiladas, and the best breakfast joint in this community of 500 is Shotgun Willie’s. During my visit, the Red River Songwriters’ Festival attracted dozens of musicians from Austin and other Texas towns.

But what I liked best about Red River was this: I could walk out the door of my condo and climb onto a chairlift to take me up the slopes.

There’s a strong family orientation to this resort, whose appearance is less intimidating to inexperienced skiers than Taos Ski Valley or Ski Santa Fe. It’s smaller than the others — 285 acres of terrain with a vertical of a mere 1,600 feet — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good steeps. Deputy general manager Walt Foley, who once worked at Stevens Pass, Wash., took me down challenging terrain on Catskinner and Airplane. But he was also pleased to show me a gentle, upper-elevation alpine “back side” (kids love Cow Patty Lane) with a re-created pioneer village, called Moonstar Mining Camp, that even features ski-through tunnels.

Like its counterparts, Red River dates its modern resort history to the 1950s. Although it has the best snowmaking facilities in the state, it ends its ski season each year after school vacations in late March. But even within that limited window, there’s plenty to keep everyone happy, such as a nightly dinner at the mountaintop Ski Tip restaurant with transportation provided by a sturdy snow coach.

The master plan

George Brooks, the longtime former ski coach at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, is now the executive director of Ski New Mexico, an umbrella marketing agency that counts each of the state’s eight alpine resorts as members. Brooks confirmed my observation that, by modern industry standards, New Mexico is an anomaly: Even its largest resorts are not owned by absentee corporations.

“Anywhere else, how often do you ski with the owners of a ski resort?” he pointed out. “Here, ski resort owners may arrive late for appointments because they were out grooming trails or running chair lifts.”

Changes are on the horizon, as changes always are, but they still don’t involve a corporate entity. When Adriana Blake and the rest of her family, including her father and grandmother, relinquish ownership of Taos Ski Valley on the last day of this winter season — April 6, 2014 — it will put an end to nearly 60 years of single-family ownership.

“We’ve all been part of the plan,” she said. “It’s all we know.”

The new owner is Louis Bacon, a New York hedge-fund operator and active conservationist, with a local partner in Peter Talty. “We’ve known him and his group for a long time,” Blake said. “We wouldn’t have sold it if we didn’t feel comfortable.”

The Bacon partnership, she said, is more financially able to boost a master development plan for the Ski Valley that has been in the works for several years. The immediate result will be a high-speed lift up previously remote Kachina Peak, and a renovation of the resort’s base area.

Of Taos Ski Valley’s 686 employees, Blake said, about 125 have been with the family for more than 20 years. She will retire after 31 years with the company, she said, not including the days she spent serving hot chocolate as a child.

I have a hunch that Blake will never be far from her mountain.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com.