Skiing

Every resort has a founding family, and Angel Fire has the LeBus family. But every resort also has a founding character, the person who did a little bit of everything in the first winters, when nothing worked quite as planned. At Angel Fire, that person was Bill Burgess, a ski instructor and advertising artist who arrived in 1966, before the new ski area had welcomed its first paying guest.

Thursday, October 29, 2026

Angel Fire woke up clear and cold on Thursday, with temperatures around 30 degrees at sunrise and a bright morning in the Moreno Valley. The day warms steadily under partly cloudy skies to a high near 60 degrees, with west winds picking up to around 8 to 9 miles per hour in the afternoon. There are no weather alerts for Angel Fire, sunset comes at 6:07 p.m., and the overnight low falls back to about 29 degrees. Friday turns a little cooler, with a high near 56, a low near 33, and a small chance of rain.

Every resort has a founding meeting. Angel Fire's was a Sunday dinner, and the minutes were never written down — but the LeBus family remembered exactly how it went.

The family had run cattle in the Moreno Valley since buying the Cieneguilla Ranch in 1954, and they liked to ski. The trouble was getting to it: the nearest skiing meant a drive out of the valley. George LeBus raised the obvious fix at the dinner table — why not put up a tow rope on the ranch, so the family would not have to drive so far to ski?

Angel Fire Resort was not designed on a drafting table. It was walked into existence, one trail at a time, by a rancher and his general manager climbing the mountain above the family ranch.