Storm Skiing 9/28/2026: Pajarito’s Massive Snowmaking Upgrade with GM Jasen Bellomy

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast wants you to know that there is skiing in New Mexico. Even beyond Taos. Subscribe for constant journeys into such improbable ski realms:WhoJasen Bellomy, General Manager of Pajarito, New MexicoDate RecordedSeptember 28, 2026Also discussedUpgrades across Mountain Capital Partners’ portfolio (see chart below), and reader reaction to last week’s pods - especially the EuroSki ep with Iain Martin.About PajaritoOwned by: Mountain Capital Partners, since 2014; company also owns:Year founded: 1957 - predecessor ski area, Sawyers Hill, founded nearby by the same ski club in 1944Pass affiliations: Power Pass, Power Pass Select, Power Pass Core - unlimitedBase elevation: 9,000 feetSummit elevation: 10,440 feetVertical drop: 1,440 feetSkiable acres: 280 trail acres + unspecified glade acreage (though Bellomy urges caution in the glades)Average annual snowfall: 125 inchesLift count: 6 (1 fixed quad, 1 triple, 3 doubles, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Pajarito’s lift fleet.Why I interviewed him“Ski New Mexico,” you say? Those three words underwhelm, but the stat sheet suggests that skiers miss out by dismissing New Mexico:Those are respectable vertical drops, and some nice acreage with modernizing lift fleets. Taos gets all the Ikon/Mountain Collective destination attention, and deserves it, after building seven new aerial lifts and otherwise sweeping the place clean over the past dozen years. But just about every New Mexico ski area is investing: Angel Fire props up the state’s first sixer for winter 2026-27, just a year after dropping a second quad, Rake’s Rider, onto its east side to spread skiers out between blues and blacks:Ski Santa Fe, Ski Apache, and Red River have collectively built or relocated another five lifts in the past decade. Tiny, super-south Cloudcroft seems like a mess, with little online presence and minimal operations (the bump lacks snowmaking). But overall, New Mexico is a bit of a big-mountain secret, with dry desert snow when it comes.The key to this improbable kingdom is base elevations among the highest in America:It’s not quite Colorado, but they’re high:And it’s high enough to get us to nine active New Mexico ski areas in 2026, which is probably nine more than most people think the state has. But even cloud addresses are not enough to keep these survivors around forever. They need snowmaking. Taos’ system - a big part of the mountain’s modernization under billionaire Louis Bacon, who bought the ski area in 2013 - runs to nearly 11,000 feet. But the smaller areas are building more firepower too. MCP, which operates one-third of those ski areas, stapled together a nice system at Sipapu, the company’s first acquisition, in 2000. Now, after years of negotiations, MCP is working with state and Los Alamos County officials on an $18 million snowmaking modernization plan for Pajarito:A five-mile pipe will shuttle water approximately 2,000 vertical feet up from Los Alamos to Pajarito’s summit reservoir. But this is not just a snowmaking project: firefighters will be able to tap hydrants along the five-mile route or dip the 10-million gallon reservoir with helicopters. The impact, MCP officials believe, will be substantial, and could mirror the turnaround of the company’s Arizona Snowbowl ski area. Prior to running a 15-mile-long snowmaking pipe 3,000 feet up from Flagstaff, Snowbowl’s seasons swung wildly, from 162,000 visits in winter 2000-01 to just four operating days the following season. Now, Snowbowl is consistently one of the last ski areas in the nation to close, with a 185-day 2024-25 season that ended on June 1. Repeating that success at Pajarito would, according to officials, give skiers seasons up to 140 days long - more than double the ski area’s traditional 60-day winter.So yeah, ski New Mexico, Man. It’s weird, I know. Down there in the desert. But there’s water if you get creative and work together. (Now we just need to see if MCP can repeat some version of this deal at snow-starved Sandia Peak.)Additional reading* A Ski profile of Pajarito by Nick Heil, 2016* Pajarito’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pajarito.ski/pajarito-transformation-