Kendra Ruminer's Two Cents of Real Estate

Take A Peek At Los Alamos, New Mexico

Tag: Ski Los Alamos

The Beautiful Snow in Los Alamos!

January 19, 2024 /

I’ve really enjoyed taking a tour back through some of the early (pre LANL) history of Los Alamos. I know you guys have enjoyed this too because I’ve been hearing great positive things about the blog, which is so wonderful! Thanks for that, by the way! It is SO good to hear your stories and comments and shared memories!

However, as we’ve had some pretty interesting “ski hill” moments in our house in the last few weeks, I wanted to give everybody a heads up about some really cool winter programs here in Los Alamos.

I’m not a skier and I didn’t grow up on skis like many of my local friends did. This means I wasn’t taking my kiddos out to ski before they could walk. Not experiencing this activity at an early age means there’s a pretty steep learning curve if someone decides to try it later on. Let’s just say that I really wish I’d taken advantage of some of the programs we have today to teach local kiddos to ski!

Bluebird Ski Camp

The first session of Camp Bluebird at Pajarito Mountain is just wrapping up, but the second session is still to come! The camp teaches kiddos ages 7-12 how to downhill ski. This is a huge camp with tons of participation and a lot of great teaching! Even if you don’t ski, this can be a fantastic opportunity for your kids to give it a try in a fun environment that is likely full of their school friends.

Camp Bluebird has options for skiing and snowboarding. The cost includes the lesson, equipment rental, lunch, and even a season pass for the kiddo! Camp sessions are four weeks long and are only on Saturday. It’s a really great opportunity to get your kiddo started or sharpen up their skills. It might even be a great way for a snowboarder to try skis or vice versa.

If you’re interested in getting your kids into lessons even after Camp Bluebird is done for the season, you’d probably be surprised at the number of options available. Private, group, and even custom groups are available for both skiing and snowboarding. In fact, you could get your kids, your neighbor’s kids, or a whole party of them up there for a custom group lesson. This might actually be the coolest winter thing to do for out of town guests with no ski experience.

Pajarito Mountain has come up with one more interesting way to pick up the sport. Learn to Ski Thursdays and Learn to Ski Spring Break offer a really fun way to experience something new! For folks who have never ever tried skiing or snowboarding, a two hour complimentary lesson is available with lift ticket and equipment rental. Check out the website here for details on this fun thing to do!

Southwest Nordic Ski Club

If downhill skiing seems too limited for you, Cross Country Skiing might be just the thing! Never tried Cross Country, otherwise known as Nordic Track, skiing? No problem. Los Alamos based nonprofit, Southwest Nordic Ski Club, has you covered.

The Southwest Nordic Ski Club originally gained momentum in the 1970s as the Los Alamos Nordic Ski Club. The club mission is focused on promoting the sport of nordic track skiing in the Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado region. The club is entirely volunteer driven and has created and maintained agreements with the Santa Fe National Forest allowing nordic track skiing access on the Cañada Bonita trail as well as the Guaje Canyon Trail #282. The club maintains the trails in all seasons, grooms the trails in the winter for nordic track and snowshoeing use, and participates in countless stewardship projects to help all users have a more enjoyable trail experience. How cool is that, folks? It’s such a cool thing to be a part of!

The club has a wonderful website with the latest grooming reports as well as information on upcoming lessons, clinics, group ski activities, and more. They also have more information on the SW Nordic Ski Kids program, which actually goes year round. Not only do they have activities to help kids learn and connect with others their own age who enjoy it too, they do the same in summer! On warmer weekends, you can sometimes find the club practicing their skills on the quiet, winding, and sometimes fairly hilly terrain in neighborhoods around Los Alamos!

So if you’re looking for ways to enjoy the wonderful snow we’ve been having lately, check out these two amazing organizations here in Los Alamos. And when you’re ready to join our community here on the Pajarito Plateau, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you!

Ski Los Alamos

February 8, 2021 /

“Skiers of the hill, arise!”

The words sound like a parody of some epic movie like The Lord of the Rings, but in truth they come from a 1957 memo to members of the Los Alamos Ski Club. The purpose of the memo was to gather all willing and able members to the task of cutting trees, building tows, and essentially creating the Pajarito Ski Mountain as we think of it today. Since the mountain just opened for a limited season thanks in part to Covid and also the less than prolific winter we’ve been having, I thought it might be fun to look back at the history of one of Los Alamos’s coolest local amenities.

Skiing wasn’t originally part of the New Mexico landscape. In the beginning, members of the Ranch School staff and students made the trek up Sawyer’s Hill for their skiing activities. Sawyer Hill was located West of the NM-4 and 501 intersection. By 1943, the Los Alamos Ranch School had given way to the Laboratory and the European born scientists took Sawyer’s Hill in hand. Who better to clear cut trees in one fell swoop than a demolitions team also responsible for handling charges for one of the world’s first fission reaction weapons? Imagine C-4 strapped to trees and you might get a glimmer of the eccentric way that Sawyer’s Hill was expanded.

Sawyer’s Hill became the site of many incredible tales of DIY ingenuity. The first official “tow” was constructed from a circus rope and an old Chrysler engine and cost $400. Season passes were $7.50 and the “mountain” was more of a “slope”. A good portion of Sawyer Hill’s design was overseen by George Kistiakowski. The Ukrainian born physicist would later become the scientific advisor for President Eisenhower. Kistiakowski was an avid skier. So were other scientific heavy hitters such as Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Neils Bohr, and Robert Oppenheimer, all charter members of the Los Alamos Ski Club which was created in 1944 with the purpose of bettering the available skiing at Los Alamos.

By 1957, the LASC was fed up with the unreliable snow and varying ski conditions at Sawyer’s Hill. A scouting party made the trek to Pajarito Mountain and chose the North face as the future home of the Los Alamos Ski Club. Club members felled trees, worked terrain, and created most of the runs still in use today. Pajarito Ski Mountain is unlike any other. If you’ve ever skied elsewhere, you’ve probably noticed. Even now that the mountain itself belongs to the Sipapu Group, there is still a visible presence of LASC members and old school ski enthusiasts. The sense of pride and ownership that these individuals take in their mountain is part of what makes skiing in Los Alamos unique in the industry.

If you grew up in Los Alamos, chances are that you’ve skied. In the eighties and nineties, missing a few Wednesday afternoons of school or work was a normal occurrence when the snow was good and the mountain was open. At one point the membership in the Los Alamos Ski Club included nearly 4,000 locals.

Regardless of your personal enjoyment of our local ski facilities, it’s important to realize that there has been a lot of Los Alamos blood, sweat, and tears involved in keeping that mountain open and operating. Having a ski mountain “in our backyard” is just one more item on a long list of incredible outdoor opportunities available here in Los Alamos County. In the off season there are plenty of hiking and mountain biking opportunities available as well as “Yoga on the Mountain”, a joint venture between Tribe Yoga & Wellness and the Sipapu Group. Nothing says awesome quite like donuts, friends, and yoga at ten thousand feet elevation!

So, when you’re looking for something to do here in Los Alamos, don’t forget to look up! Whether covered in snow or in varying shades of green, Pajarito Mountain is a vital piece of what makes our community such an amazing place to call home. And if you’re ready to talk housing in Los Alamos, give me a call.

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