Antonio Zuni looks like a Native American straight out of a picture book: A ponytail of shiny black hair falls on broad shoulders. Copper skin, noble profile, proud look. The only thing not exactly fitting are flashy carving skis. Let’s be honest, who had not secretly expected a wild mustang instead? Antonio grins as if he could read thoughts.

The Pueblo Indian works as a ski instructor at Taos Ski Valley, a small winter sports resort in northern New Mexico. Granted, high on horseback, he would reliably sink into the knee-deep snow of Kachina Peak, which towers 12,480 feet (3804 m) on a high-desert plateau of burnt-red table mountains. Even the stubborn romantic in me must admit skis are much more appropriate in this alpine environment.

In addition to powder snow, Taos Ski Valley enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year.

Here in this box canyon you don’t really feel like you’re deep in the American Southwest at first. The pointy tower of the base station, adorned with Middle Ages bric-a-brac like veiled damsels and bearded bards, seems much more apt for a little village in the Alps.

The small resort was in fact founded by German-Swiss Ernie Blake, who obviously must have been troubled by homesickness.

There’s a Hotel St. Bernard and Edelweiss here, and a restaurant called Rathskeller, and many of the buildings sport large wooden balconies with geraniums in flower boxes. The ski school’s children’s center is named “Kinderkäfig,” or children’s cage. The Blakes — Ernie died in 1989, but the resort remains a family business — have a strange sense of humor.

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Father Blake scouted for the “perfect” ski area from the cockpit window of a Cessna. What he developed on these bold, jagged, arduous peaks is black-diamond and double-diamond runs (51 percent of the runs) and about a dozen dizzying chutes that are hair-raising by just looking up at them.

Taos is considered one of the most-demanding ski areas in North America. It was created by ski professionals for ski professionals — no fancy après ski ado, merely an athletic challenge. Perhaps that’s the reason why there are no snowboarders permitted in Taos, whom ski pioneers such as Blake probably never completely took seriously.