Sun Valley, ID – El Niño made for a late start to winter in both the East and many parts of the West in 2006-07. As usual we had our ski trip planned months in advance, and some worry set in as travel dates drew near. Without any bounteous snowfall on the horizon by February, reservations were nonetheless made and plane tickets bought. We knew that anything in the western mountains would be better than the skiing in the East, with or without fresh snow.
Sun Valley, in fact, had not seen any new snow since early January, so the snow pack was over 25 days old when we got to it and not very deep. Once past the lava fields and dry flat desert, all we saw were brown hillsides as we approached Sun Valley from the south, leading us to wonder if there would be any decent skiing at all. Our expectations were low, but we heard that Sun Valley was a world class resort, and an excellent place to visit with many non-skiing activities to keep us entertained should the skiing not meet our standards.
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Bald Mountain forms a backdrop to the village of Sun Valley. |
We followed the main highway north into the Wood River Valley through the downtown of Ketchum with its ski-mountain backdrop that reminded me for all the world of Banff with its art galleries, souvenir shops and restaurants. There were all kinds of houses, big and small, fancy and plain. After stopping in the center of town to pick up some beer we headed east up a hill to The Sun Valley Lodge.
Upon arrival we were greeted by a bevy of handsome and friendly young men who offered to unload our vehicle, check our skis and bring our luggage up to our room. They even offered to park our car for us. Sweet! This was definitely out of our league for the run-of-the-mill ski bums that we are. We tried to be as classy as possible in our very no-frills, down-to-earth way.
The bellman who brought our luggage answered a few questions about where to eat, drink and be merry. He pointed us toward the bus stop and informed us of the frequent schedule to get to the ski area as well as to travel down into Ketchum, where all the action is. We offered our bellman a Fat Tire Ale, but he graciously declined.
The room was luxurious, yet the bold floral patterns on the walls, bedspreads, carpets and curtains were enough to set off seizures. We unloaded our beverages and snacks into the fridge disguised as an entertainment system. The plasma TV screen above it sat flat on the wall.
Out the window, skaters skittered across the ice rink, some graceful, some less so. But the sun was shining and it was a dry 50 degrees, so being outside seemed like a good idea. We went for a walk to see what the Sun Valley Village was all about.
We strolled through the European style pedestrian mall just a one-minute walk from the lodge. We inspected some of the shops and restaurant menus and indulged in some hand-dipped chocolates. We found ourselves short on cash when buying post cards and gifts for those who couldn’t be with us, but quickly learned that everything in the village can be charged to the room. This was extremely convenient, yet a little scary as you can spend money quickly and end up with a doozey of a bill at the end of the trip. It was nice that you could leave your purse or wallet back in the room in the safe and go out for dinner and buy some art. Please charge that to room 249, thank you.
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A massive hot tub outside the Sun Valley Lodge. |
We walked by a huge glass-encased outdoor pool adjacent to the lodge. The steam rising into the air was inviting. The sun was setting over the hills and the air was starting to chill. A hot soak seemed like a good idea before deciding on a place to eat dinner.
The Lodge provides thick white terry cloth bathrobes and slippers to each guest, and it is not uncommon to see people strolling about the halls of the lodge in this attire. Since we were in Rome we donned the white robes and made our way through the hallways adorned with old photographs of the rich and famous in the ‘40s and ‘50s who used to frequent Sun Valley in its up and coming years as the first destination winter resort in North America. It attracted the most popular movie stars of the time, including Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Lucille Ball, Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper. I imagined Lucille Ball wearing a white terry robe down this same hallway. These large, round, warm pools were novelties created during the resort’s infancy to make it seem less cold.
People were spread out in groups around 40-foot hot tub, chatting and sipping cocktails as the waitress made her way around the perimeter taking orders and delivering cold beverages to the hot soakers. Looking around, we quickly noticed that the primary population of guests was in or near retirement. There were some families, but most included the grandparents. Some friendly people came over to make small talk, and from these conversations we didn’t get the impression that people came here to go skiing. There weren’t any serious skiers soaking their aching muscles near us in this hot tub. The people in this pool were those who go on a winter vacation where skiing was just one of the activities offered. With world-class skiing spread over Sun Valley’s steep 3,000 vertical feet, we expected more serious skiers, not a retirement community.
Frankly, we were overwhelmed by the opulence of The Sun Valley Lodge. We were unprepared for the posh dining rooms with their crystal chandeliers and people dressed to the nines for dinner, and decided to find a place to eat where people were a bit more casual. We asked our bellman where the local ski bums drink. He suggested Grumpy’s on the “other side” of Sun Valley. In fact, it wasn’t in Sun Valley at all, it was in Ketchum.
Grumpy’s is your basic dive bar with pool table where the local working people fraternize. We had a beer and fries and checked out the beer can collection on the wall. It was no longer happy hour and it was quiet at the bar with not much going on before the late-night crowd arrived, so we decided to hit the sidewalk and find a place for dinner.
The Pioneer, affectionately known as The Pio (“Pie-o”) is the place to eat in Ketchum. They even have a t-shirt that says “if you haven’t been to The Pioneer you haven’t been to Ketchum”. So, we went in to see the menu. Grilled Idaho beef and potatoes was the primary fare with a one-hour wait for a table (on a Monday night!). We decided to save the big meal for after a full day on the slopes. It always tastes better if you’ve earned it. Back out on the street, the next restaurant down the main street was The Roosevelt Tavern and Grille. There was no wait and we had an excellent meal.
What we came here for in the first place
We came to Sun Valley for the skiing. We heard about world-class steep runs that are so long they will make your legs quiver. We were in our top form of the season and were ready to rip.
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River Run Lodge
Click image to open a full-size Sun Valley trail map in a new browser window.
Sun Valley’s Seattle Ridge, as viewed from the Lookout lift. |
The bus picked us up the next morning near the Sun Valley Lodge and dropped us off at the River Run base area in less than 10 minutes. The day lodge is palatial and looks like a carbon copy of Snowbasin, Utah’s. In fact, the two ski resorts share common ownership and the three day lodges at Sun Valley were the inspiration Snowbasin’s Earl’s Lodge. They were designed by the same architects with similar materials. It indeed was the same, right down to the antiques and marble bathroom. It was elegant, woody and beautiful, yet it felt a bit weird to shuffle onto the beautiful rugs with ski boots, sit on a sofa of fine upholstery and puffy pillows while downing a chocolate croissant with a latté set on the finished wood and marble table. This posh environment is quite comfortable, yet takes little getting used to.
Two lift rides will get you to the top of the mountain. While we were on the first high-speed lift ride a red fox trotted out on the snow below us. Was this a sign of spring? It was sunny and the mercury was rising above freezing. Even on the mountain, the south facing slopes were brown and bare, but the long steep north-facing slopes had plenty of snow thanks to one of the largest state-of-the-art snowmaking systems in the West.
On the second lift ride we shared the quad with two retired men with season passes who ski every morning for just a few hours until lunchtime. They suggested we start out on Seattle Ridge, home to what they thought was the best skiing on the mountain that morning. They suggested the Lookout lift to get there, just a short shuffle ahead as we disembarked the quad.
The Lookout lift provides the most breathtaking views of Seattle Ridge and the Wood River Valley as it travels above the Christmas Bowl. Seattle Ridge, as seen from the Lookout Lift, sports four wide groomed runs and is topped by a summit lodge of the same design and magnificence as the base lodges. A look at the trail map will show these trails rated as green circles, yet they were steeper than most black diamond trails at your typical eastern ski resort. I’ve never had so much fun cruising on the green screamers. We made huge turns at mach speed and rode the Seattle Ridge Express repeat the experience on each of the groomed carpets of snow until we got bored. We ventured off the manicured path to see if there was anything more interesting on that side. Conditions were not favorable for off-piste skiing early in the morning, but the temperature was rising and the bumps were softening. We attempted the fall-line moguls under the lower part of the lift, in the shade and still firm but edgeable. Grey-haired lift riders cheered from above.
There was one more trail we hadn’t yet seen on the Seattle Ridge, a black diamond called “Fire Trail”. It dropped off the groomer on the far skier’s right. It looked almost as if it wasn’t a trail at all, though we continued beyond the plush boulevard onto more rugged and less traveled snow through the trees. This trail runs through a depression in the terrain. Not quite a gulley, but rather a low area surrounded by pine trees. Pine needles and cones littered the softening snow as we enjoyed the moguls and savored the escape from the high-speed freeway above. The skiing in there was decent, but is probably stellar when there’s new snow. The trail lets out on Lower Broadway so we cruised on down to the Cold Springs double.
Experts Only
In the hot tub the evening before we had heard people talking about an extremely challenging, experts-only trail called Exhibition, maybe a showcase trail of sorts. We wanted to know what the expert skiing was like at Sun Valley, especially after cruising the green circle trails on Seattle Ridge, so we gave it a whirl. Just off the Cold Springs Trail we hopped over past the Roundhouse and dropped over the edge.
The beauty of Exhibition is that it is mostly north facing. The snow on the bumps was dry and chalky and actually skied quite well. Exhibition was not any more difficult than your average eastern bump run, yet the troughs were ice-free.. Each turn could be carved. It was a piece of cake. We couldn’t figure out why no one else was skiing on it. Holiday was a similar run, steep and north-facing with bumps…and also devoid of skiers.
We found that we had just about every bump run to ourselves, yet the groomed runs had plenty of warp-speed traffic. This is surely a cruising mountain, and most of the people enjoy flying down the flat manicured cruisers at high speeds in big arcs.
The Other Side
After exhausting the options on the River Run side of the ski area we took the Lookout Express up to the top and headed over to the other side to the Warm Springs area. We started with a black diamond groomer called Limelight that was steep and firm, yet the snow was dry and carveable in the shadow of the mountain.
The sun was shining at the Warm Springs base area and people sat outside basking in the rays while eating lunch. Finding it inviting, we grabbed a table. Cold beer and a turkey sandwich on a home-made roll really hit the spot, and it was easy to just kick back and let the sun burn your skin while skiers funneled down to the lift as they pass by the patio with smiles on their faces. The smell of sulphur wafted faintly through the air from the spring.
There was still more mountain to explore, so we peeled ourselves off the warm patio and hopped onto the Challenger Express to see what else this side of the mountain had to offer. International is an ungroomed trail far skier’s left when you get off the lift with some trees if you continue far skier’s left on the ridge. There were a number of ungroomed blue trails on this side as well. Those trails with the most northerly exposure held the best snow, so we opted to stick to those and avoid anything that had a daily freeze/thaw cycle.
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Christmas Bowl |
Yet since the sun had been blazing all day, we knew that it was time to harvest corn in the Christmas Bowl. There are some nice pitches in these bowls, but the steepest trails had the least amount of snow. The best line looked to be down the Mayday Bowl with its long stretch of creamed corn bumps that funnel down into a depression toward the valley. At most resorts this would be a black diamond run, but it was rated blue square at Sun Valley and once again, this bump run was devoid of other skiers. It seems that at Sun Valley, the bump skiers do not ski on weekdays or on old snow. The moguls had to form somehow, so there must be skiers out there who ski the ungroomed terrain, but most of what we saw were healthy and active grandmas and grandpas cruising the groomers in groups of two to four. Maybe the true off-piste mogul skiers were just waiting for new snow to fall.
We had a very enjoyable day exploring the skiing at Sun Valley. On a week with less-than-average snowfall, there was still plenty of good skiing to be found in the blazing sunshine for which the area was named. We checked our skis and hopped on the bus back to the Sun Valley Lodge for a nice long soak in the big hot tub.
Other activities
There are plenty of things to do in Sun Valley besides cruise down the slopes. Exhausted from a day of exploring the mountain, we avoided the temptation to don ice skates or find the cross-country skiing on the resort’s golf course. Theatre, music and the arts are also big in the Valley. There is a symphony and an opera house, as well as many art galleries in Ketchum.
We were tired and hungry, so we set off early to eat some delicious grilled Idaho beef and potatoes at the Pio before the crowds arrived.
History
In the late 1800s, the Wood River Valley was a mining town and also famous for its hot springs and mineral waters. In the 1930s, Averill Harriman, chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, was in search of destinations in the West to which the railroad could bring passengers. In 1935 Harriman purchased 4,300 acres of what was considered to be a perfect resort location in the majestic mountains of Idaho. The name Sun Valley came from the fact that the sun shines here 250 days a year. The first phase of the Sun Valley Lodge was completed in 1936 as the new Swiss-style winter resort welcomed its first guests.
During the resort’s early years, skiing took place on the treeless Dollar Mountain and nearby Proctor Mountain. Lift tickets could be purchased for 25 cents. The first single-seat chairlifts were produced at the Union Pacific headquarters to carry people in comfort up the mountain, modeled after a system used to haul bananas onto ships in Panama. On cold days a blanket would be wrapped around the passengers as soon as they sat in the chair.
Skiing in America was in its infancy in the mid-30s. The best Austrian ski instructors were hired to teach skiing on Dollar Mountain. The instructors, though, soon discovered that the skiing on nearby Bald Mountain was outstanding and offered much more pitch, vertical drop and terrain. They would climb up and ski down on their days off, long before there were any lifts. As a result, three single chairlifts were installed on Bald Mountain in the resort’s fourth year of operations.
One of the most famous of Sun Valley’s residents, and probably one its first true ski bums, was Warren Miller. He at first lived in his car, then a camper-trailer, before renting an unheated garage in Sun Valley in the mid-forties. Miller sublet garage space to his friends to sleep for fifty cents per night, earning the money to buy his first movie camera to start his auspicious career in ski film production.
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Ernest Hemingway completed his novel, ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ in suite 206 at the Sun Valley Lodge. |
Ernest Hemingway was also a visitor to Sun Valley, completing his novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in suite 206 at the Sun Valley Lodge. He became a part-time resident for over 20 years and eventually made Ketchum his full-time home when he retired, taking his own life in 1961 while living in Ketchum. A memorial bronze bust of Hemingway overlooks Trail Creek since it was dedicated in 1966.
Back to the mountain
The Sun Valley Ski Resort is made up of the two mountains, the original Dollar Mountain and Bald Mountain, the 3,400 vertical-foot mountain that forms the backdrop to Ketchum. Dollar Mountain is now home to the ski school and children’s center in a brand new lodge erected in 2004. A family can safely drop off their children at Dollar Mountain and then proceed to Bald Mountain for the day before picking up the kids later on. There are buses that run back and forth, so the commute is not difficult, though some families may find this arrangement to be less than ideal. Bald Mountain does not offer much in the way of novice trails, so a group containing both novice and advanced skiers would be split for the day by a 10-minute bus ride. While there are trails rated “novice” on Bald Mountain, they are not for the rank beginner. Dollar Mountain offers more suitable terrain for beginning skiers.
Thanks to lift upgrades, many new high-speed lifts boost the lift capacity to over 23,000 skiers per hour. It is rare that 23,000 people ride the lifts in a day, guaranteeing minimal lift lines. Most of the time you can just ski right up to the lift and get on without any wait at all.
The whole Sun Valley experience is something to savor, not a place to visit on a tight budget. The days of the 25 cent lift ticket are over, so expect to shell out $79 this year for a day on the slopes. Sun Valley is a difficult place to do cheaply, but for a winter family vacation, whether they ski or not, there is something for everyone at Sun Valley.
For More Information:
Sun Valley Resort: www.sunvalleyresort.com