You can do a nice ascent/descent tour from the Taos ski area up to Williams Lake.

Skins/kicker skins might come in handy if your skis don't have good grip.

About one mile from the ski area parking lot up to the ski area Phoenix restaurant, a low angle ski or maybe even able to drive there if the road has been plowed. One can either ski up the Rubezal ski run or drive/ski the road past homes/condos to the Phoenix.

>From the Phoenix, essentially the edge of the ski area, it's about 1-1/5 mile up to Williams, gaining about 1000' along the way. Williams sits at about 11,200'.

The valley floor route crosses a few avalanche chute runouts, so be careful where you stop. Climbing from the lake onto any of the surrounding slopes turns this relatively route into a serious avy beacon tour.

As Guy already mentioned, you can also tour up to Bull of the Woods and/or Long Canyon. Only turnoff for this tour is the [normally] too steep to ski 300' [SW facing] ascent out of the parking lot to get onto a lower angle slope and start touring. One also passes thru a snowmobile corridor that's technically private property. The first bit of Bull of the Woods Road is also SW facing and will melt-freeze cycle in the spring.

Another winter XC option I've wondered about is the Valle Escondido [golf course] summer home area. I normally stage vehicles there to mountain bike my version of South Boundary and I've always thought it would have potential for XC use. Valle Escondido is a hidden valley which faces north, just as few miles on the Taos side of Palo Flechado Pass. The golf course sits at about 8500' and I know there are snowmobile trails up towards the road to Garcia Park.

-Barry [aka Ritchey-TeleRanger]

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