Ski Apache: A Tribe Buys a Mountain

High on the northern shoulder of Sierra Blanca sits one of the most surprising ski areas in the country, one of the southernmost major ski resorts in the country, deep in a state most people picture as pure desert. It opened at Christmas of nineteen sixty-one under the name Sierra Blanca Ski Resort, built by the wealthy oilman Robert Anderson. The next year it got something no other mountain in North America had, a pioneering gondola, hauling skiers up toward the alpine.

But the most important thing that happened here was a purchase. In nineteen sixty-three, the Mescalero Apache Tribe took over the whole resort, which the tribe has owned and run ever since, a rare thing for a Native nation. Later the slopes were given the name they carry today, Ski Apache.

So when you ride that lift, remember, you are skiing a mountain that a Native nation owns outright, on the sacred peak that has always been theirs. The base sits at about ninety-six hundred feet and the top at eleven thousand five hundred, a vertical drop of nineteen hundred feet across seven hundred fifty skiable acres. Eight lifts serve fifty-five trails, and the longest, the Sierra Blanca Trail, runs about two and a half miles.

The mountain averages about fifteen feet of snow a year. It is the only ski area in New Mexico with a gondola that serves ski runs, and it also has three zip lines, the longest about a mile.