Blakes sell Taos Ski Valley to billionaire conservationist Louis Bacon

After almost 59 years, the Blake family is leaving Taos Ski Valley. Founded in 1955 by skiing pioneer Ernie Blake and run by his children and grandchildren ever since, the family announced on Wednesday it is selling the steep and soulful New Mexico ski area to billionaire conservationist Louis Bacon. "I'm in mourning a little bit but I realize this is really a good thing for the ski area," said Adriana Blake, whose grandfather moved his family — including her father, Mickey — into an 11-foot camper trailer at the base of the ski area in the early 1950s and built the first chairlift with 16 local men and a mule named Lightning. "We — this family — we have all these amazing ideas but the ski area itself never makes enough money to do them without risking our ability to pay our people," Adriana Blake said. Bacon, a media-shy hedge-fund manager and land baron renowned for locking his acreage in conservation trusts, owns several large ranches in Colorado. He famously battled Xcel Energy's plan to run solar transmission lines across his 171,400-acre Trinchera Blanca ranch in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley in 2010 and 2011. In 2012 he placed his 20,000-acre Tercio Ranch near Trinidad in a conservation easement with Colorado Open Lands. His easement prohibiting development on Trinchera Blanca is the largest ever for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as well as the largest in Colorado....more