Taos has always been known as a hill for experts. There are lots of stuff for advanced skiers as well. The entire Hunziker Bowl/El Funko area on skier right of lift 7 is like one big adventure park for adults. Lots of fun lines there. Walkyries Glade is another fun area of moderate angled trees. Best entry is through the gate on top of the terrain park. A more interesting entry is thru Ash Pond. More pucker factor there.
Pioneer Glade off the return trail (Rubezhl) and Japanese Flag Glade are good intros to tree skiing for low intermediate skiers.
For expert skier, Taos is a gem. The hike to terrain has been pretty well written up online. I don’t think I need to cover them much here.
Lift served expert terrain can be divided into four pods. Kachina Peak, Upper Front, Lower Front and the Bambi Chutes.
The Kachina Peak Lift has changed the way we ski the mountain. Won’t go into whether it’s good or bad here. When it is open, it is usually a massive bump fields with a few chutes thrown in. Everybody goes down Main Street. The concavity of the trails, steady pitch and the bumps on it keeps most skier from getting into too much trouble. The bad is oddly shaped bumps and lack of rhythm. The adjacent K6 is a much more enjoyable run. K3 & K4 are good fun. Watch out for the choke on those. Seen lots of carnage there. The traverse getting out to K1 &K2 are usually pretty sketchy. Just more business for Taos Ski & Boot.
One of the area I like to lap in the afternoon is the upper front under chair 2. It stretches from Pipe Line on the skier right to Blitz on the other side. Reforma and Blitz are the classic Taos runs. Steep and bumpy. Pollux is one of my favorite tree run on the hill. Nice, steep, big trees and usually clean. The trees are just tight enough to keep things interesting. Winston has a few very entertaining features under the old chair 6. We usually get to Castor through Pollux. The top entrance to Castor is pretty rocky unless the coverage is phenomenal. The bottom section is open, steep with big bumps.
I'll cover the lower front and the Bambi chutes on another post.
Lower front:
DIrectly under Lift 1, you have the infamous Al's Run. It's steep. It is long. It can get very icy. It has enormous bumps. To the skiers right of Al's at the top of Lift 1, you have North American, Ernies, and Longhorn. You can also get to Longhorn from Bambi, but I'll mention that later. North AMerican is a very long glade run. Really nicely spaced trees, very steep in spots, including a section that is a bit like a gully. You can often find stashes of fresh snow if you know where to look. Ernie's is similar, it's a glade that runs to the skier's right of North American. I'd say it is slightly mellower and gets a bit less traffic. One of my favorites when I am on the frontside. Next up is Longhorn. One of the longest, most consistent mogul runs I've ever seen. It has a few 'shelf' sections where it gets steep then flattens out, but almost none of it is "easy". The steepest section is up high, above Lift 1 and can only be accessed from Bambi.
To the skier's left of Al's Run at the top of Lift 1 is Rhoda's Revenge. It's a glade run. Tight in some areas, and pure heaven in others. It can be a bit ahrd to follow in spots because it crosses the path of some of the other runs in the area. I often do this as an alternative to North American if there has been recent snow as it gets considerably less traffic as everyone rushes to find the powder on NA. Wayne's Abbey and Snakedance go off to the skier's left from lower Al's. Snakedance turnes into a steep gully which can be very hard to navigate. Beyond this, there is a hodgepodge of intersecting steep, open piste mogul runs accessible off of Porcupine. Of particular note are Etch's Glade and Jean's Glade, which are off of lower porcupine. Both are a bit unique from the rest of the area as they are gladed out nicely. Jean's is very steep.
To the skier's left off of porcupine is Hannes Schneider (rarely open), and psychopath, which is a short steep mogul run. Hannes Schneider is a tree run, but not what I'd really call a glade. It's weird, but fun if conditions are good. But for some reason it doesn't hold snow at all. It's usually only open in a good snow year within a few days of a big dump. Watch out for rocks, roots, etc. Further to the skier's left and closer to lift 8 is Tell Trees/Glade, which is a nice little glade run near the bottom of Lift 8. I don't usually go over here, but if I am skiing with some intermediates doing laps on Lift 8, I will hit this up while they take on the groomers around the trees. Snow can be surprisingly good.
The Bambi chutes.... Maybe I should let Grump cover this as there is a lot over here. But the basic lay of the land is as follows:
Get off of lift 2, and go to the top of lift 7a. There is a gate there. Going straight through the gate gets you into Walkyries chute, which dumps you right into Walkyries Glade below. Go through the gate and to the skier's right gets you to the "What" chutes. There are 5 of them, all incredibly steep and narrow. What 3 is the 'easiest', but that's a hugely relative thing at this point. None of these are for the feint of heart, and they dump you into Walkyries Glade. Someone told me that if you go past What 5, there is a run called "What Trees" which dumps you in around the bottom of Ash Pond. Never went down that far myself. If you go left through the gate, you get into the "Bambi Chutes", although I prefer to access thiese from Sir Arnold Lunn.
Back to the top of lift 2. If you ski down Bambi just a little ways, you will see a gate on the skier's right, marked Sir Arnold Lunn. Arnie is a great and steep glade run, but it can get a bit sunbaked if there hasn't been fresh snow. It dumps into Walkyries Glade. If you cut right through the gate, there are a number of open chutes and pseudo-gladed areas which are collectively called the Bambi chutes. Steep, sometimes mogully. Not as hardcore as the What chutes, but nothing to sneeze at. Again, dunps into Walkyries Glade. If you enter the gate and cut left, and stay as high as you can, you will top out on Lorelei Ridge. There's a rope separating the Lorelei side from the Arnold Lunn side. Coming down on the Arnold Lunn side, there are a couple of marked chutes that are short, but pretty fun. One is marked as "Ho Chi Minh Trail", and another is "Air America". I've never heard anybody ever talk about these runs, and it seems like most people have never heard of them at all, but there are regularly tracks through here and they do have signs. I think people just don't distinguish this as separate from Arnold Lunn, or cut in below the signs and never see them. DOn't really know. But they are short little chutes, dumping into the bottom of Arnold Lunn.
Back to the Arnold Lunn Gate. COntinue down Bambi and you'll see another gate on the skier's right marked "Lorelei Trees". This is a very steep gladed run. The entrance can be pretty nasty, but it is usually great if you can get through the first 100 yards. If you cut very hard skier's right through the gate, you will again wind up on a ridge separating Arnold Lunn and Lorelei basins, this time on the other side of the fence. There are a few nicely gladed pitches over here marked "Big DIcks" and "Hail Mary", and a few others that I can't remember right now. Again, I've never talked to anybody that seems aware of these names, but the pitches have decent traffic. They dump into the bottom of Lorelei Trees, which spits you out on a catwalk (but not a stupidly flat one) that takes you to Lift 7.
Back to the Lorelei Trees gate. Go further down Bambi, and on the skier's right is another Lorelei gate. You can go straight through and down, which is an open piste, mogul run of moderate difficulty. Cutting right gets you back over to Lorelei Trees. Cutting hard left will get you to the top of another ridgeline and the top of a number of other runs. There is a gate here. The runs are named things like R&R, Pierre's, etc. These are all steep, and they are all glades with narrow regions of chutes through them. Do any of them, they are all great. They all dump out on Longhorn. If you finish one chute, you can sometimes cut hard right back into the trees at the bottom and then go hit the next one.
Back to the Lorelei gate. Go down Bambi some more until you get to the hairpin turn at the top of Zagava. Zagava is a steep, windswept, icy mogul run that is never very much fun. But to the right of that is a gate to get into upper Longhorn. The entrance is usually rocky, but the uppoer portion of Longhorn is usually fantastic. Going to the right gets you to a very steep open piste which usually has large moguls on it. Going a bit to the left gets you into a very steep and very narrow chute through the trees. The snow here can be very good. After you get down to the same elevation as Lift 1, you will be joined by the skiers off this lift, and it is a very long mogul run from here on out.
I think that about covers it... I am sure there is more, but I don't want to give away too many secrets.