Let the shredding begin.

New Mexico's Taos Ski Valley today opens its lifts to snowboarders, leaving only three other places where shredders aren't welcome.

"Taos is the kind of place where we've had the same families coming here for generations," spokeswoman Adriana Blake said.

"Over the past two years we've been talking to families who used to come (to Taos) and who have stopped because they have snowboarders in the family. That's the entire reason" for lifting the ban.

Snowboarding has been shadowed by controversy ever since pioneers like Jake Burton, Tom Sims, and Chuck Barfoot pioneered the sport in the late 1970s and lobbied for access to the nation's resorts.

Snowboarders claimed a right to ride. Skiers complained that a snowboard scrapped off snow and, in the early days at least, the generally youthful riders were unruly and reckless, though that attitude has softened.

Some snowboarders have been writing to the Taos Web site, going to far as to call resort officials, "fascists." Some skiers, on the other hand, say Taos "sold out."

"There's no way to make a decision and keep everybody happy," Blake said.

Taos was among four resorts targeted this season by the Burton snowboard company's "Sabotage Stupidity" campaign, which offers a $5,000 reward to the best video of snowboarders "poaching" (or riding without permission) through one of the non-snowboarding resorts. After tomorrow, the holdouts will be Deer Valley, Utah; Alta, Utah; and Mad River Glen, Vt.

Mad River Glen has seen perhaps the largest influx of poachers, possibly because of its proximity to Sugarbush three miles away, which allows snowboarders.

Mad River Glen, however, a non-profit ski area owned by a cooperative of roughly 2,200 people, isn't about to buckle under the pressure.

"This isn't a decision made by a corporation or in an ivory tower somewhere, it's a grass-roots decision made by the people who own the ski area," said Eric Friedman, spokesman for Mad River Glen.

The Burton Web site contends that the resorts' policies are in, "blatant disregard for the Constitution of the United States of America," and that the poachers are participating in a "peaceful form of protest."

As for Taos, snowboarders, skiers, and telemarkers are expected to flood the mountain through the remaining two-and-a-half weeks of the season.