The Mountain Magic of Totemoff’s—How One Santa Fe Legend’s Legacy Lives On

Totemoff’s Bar & Grill is Ski Santa Fe’s refuge on the hill. On cold days, a place to warm up with a warm beverage and a bowl of green chile stew, inching a little closer to the fireplace and checking the one TV for the latest football scores.

Or on sunny days—and there are a lot of sunny days in New Mexico—grabbing a beer and a burger on the deck as a jam band, local rock act or DJ sends that perfect pulse of outdoor music up into the clear blue air.

It’s a destination for local riders at least once a ski day, saying, “I’ll see you at ‘Tote’s,” or “’Totie’s,’” or just knowing that at some point, everyone will be there.

Then catching up on each other’s tales of deep powder off the summit, how the season is going, or comparing new gear. All while the lovely visitors from out of state walk onto that deck and immediately feel the friendly welcome of walking into their favorite neighbor’s afternoon barbecue. That cool ease of outdoor living in everybody’s smiles.

The whole scene is the perfect homage to Pete Totemoff himself, the bar’s namesake who came down to New Mexico from Cordova, Alaska in the late 1940s. “Pete” was trying to find a dry climate in which to recover from a lung lost to tuberculosis, when he got job running the bar which was originally named, “The Red Chair.”

He won the Alaska Ski Championships before he left, an event combining downhill, slalom, cross country, and jumping, and, according to his 2004 induction into the New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame, as a teenager skied “without lifts in the Chugach Range.”

It gave him the experience and the eye to head so far south in search of new mountains, where he ended up designing and building trails at Ski Santa Fe, as well as in Taos and Sipapu.

There is a picture of him by the fireplace inside, holding a pair of Rossi Stratos and staring back at the camera with a full mop of black-silver hat hair. One of a few clear homages to the Abruzzo family and people and history who have made Ski Santa Fe such a special place.

The bar sits at about 10,500 feet, higher than the summit at most North American resorts. My Facebook page photo is of me sitting on the deck with two wild-eyed, wet Labradors after coming back from a summer hike.

There is a warming hut for sack lunchers with another fireplace is on the other side of the deck, and upstairs, there are apartments for the owner and the mountain manager. Almost like a family lodge with the view of the skiers beautifully arcing down Midland’s perfectly groomed slope.

Which might be the most special aspect of the living history and positive vibe of Totemoff’s—how as good as it feels to sit there on a sun-bathed deck, with two triple seat summit chairs just a short walk away, you still can’t wait to get right back out on the lifts.