The Blake family unloads Taos

wow.....incredible.......yes, an end of an era........a fascinating family that just truly loved to ski.......

the only thing constant is change.............
 
Sad to hear,not surprised though,Taos needs deep pocket ownership.A big thank you to the Blake family and everyone else who helped make Taos one of Americas great ski areas.
I read about Ernie as kid in the 60's, and was excited when my father worked sales for Amtrack and worked with Ernie on ski/train packages.Sales were so good Ernie invited our family to ski at Easter1973?. My grades were bad and Dad put his foot
down and took the family without me.Ullr screwed everyone, snowed 10 feet in six days and closed the hill.
My business partner and I skied there in 1976 drought year.They had a 35" base and we had a blast!
In the El Nina 1997/1998 year I rented Elsa Mayer's cabin at the base of chair 1 and had great winter! Mickey Blake took
my pass for skiing outside the ropes.Oops.Two weeks later I got it back by playing the victim in an avalanche / dog rescue burial.Got my pass back and made a few patrol friends.Taos has always had a close knit community of skiers and I don't think that will change.Best wishes to the Blake family.
 
My initial reaction was sadness. In 2012 I visited Taos for the first time in 20+ years and besides the great terrain, really enjoyed that it remained a mom and pop ski area on steroids with a quirky non-corporate vibe. However, I understand the place has not been that profitable in recent years and the sale seemed to be something the Blake family had to do or risk high debt and/or failure due to tough competition in the ski biz. If the new owner is a deep-pocketed Earl Holding type who makes thoughtful upgrades that enhance capacity and viability without turning Taos into Vail that would be an acceptable outcome.
 
lono":2n472uvn said:
Easter1973?. .......Ullr screwed everyone, snowed 10 feet in six days and closed the hill.
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Still the record season at Taos with 458 inches, and the only season over 400. Too bad there's no data from Wolf Creek that year, must have been amazing.

Hopefully the Blakes found the right owner. It sounds like they took their best shot at it. It's a bit reminiscent of when Dave McCoy had to phase out at Mammoth. At age 83 he let Intrawest in to invest the $$$ to upgrade the lifts/facilities but retained 51% control of ski operations. At age 91 he finally sold, leaving protege Rusty Gregory as COO. Overall I approve of most of Rusty's stewardship, though he has had some constraints with the debt service. Hopefully the purchase of Taos is not excessively leveraged.
 
Tony Crocker":6jx1ebhl said:
Hopefully the purchase of Taos is not excessively leveraged.
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Doubtful if the guy's worth $1.6B, especially in light of the Blakes' philosophy to not carry much if any debt load.
 
There were/are very deep pockets behind the private equity buyout of Mammoth. Nonetheless debt capital is much cheaper than equity capital so they chose to leverage it anyway. As Rusty told me last spring, if there were a multi-year sustained period of low revenue, the equity partners would be on the hook for a cash call to prevent default.

One would hope that the Taos buyers, looking at a weather riskier mountain than Mammoth, would be more conservative in their capital structure.
 
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