Sun Valley, Idaho: How to get there, where to stay, what to do and more
My long delay in getting here — I’ve been skiing the West since 1985, when I was “studying” at the University of Colorado — is due in part to Sun Valley’s fade from national prominence. Back in the days of shameless neon ski wear, noodle-kneed mogul maniacs and see-and-be-seen winter vacations, Sun Valley ranked right up there with Aspen and Tahoe as a near-mythical place where the snow fell in blankets, the runs stretched for miles and everyone was happy.
But when I was succumbing to the grip of my steep-and-deep addiction, the pushers steered me to Utah, Wyoming and British Columbia. Legions of others, it appears, got the same advice, fed by a ski media that shifted its emphasis from cozy, scenic resorts to ultra-radical terrain and flying-monkey athletes for whom no cliff was too high to try.
The next morning, with the echoes of the previous night still rattling my ski helmet, I skate off a lift at the top of Bald Mountain, Sun Valley’s main mountain, and have that odd feeling that I’ve come to the party on the wrong day: There’s almost nobody here.
It also occurs to me that someone needs to invent a registry for ridiculously beautiful places. The view in every direction features snow-cloaked mountains piercing the stark blue sky and testifying to Idaho’s bragging rights as the state with the largest area of unbroken wilderness in the Lower 48 — the 2.3 million acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
The snowpack is thin, and we’re content to cruise Sun Valley’s wide, quiet and well-groomed slopes and not explore the gladed terrain between runs. The thin crowd encourages faaaaaast giant-slalom turns across the hill, my skis knifing through the tight lanes of corduroy left by the grooming machines. Baldy doesn’t harbor the most daunting terrain in the West, but it does maintain a nice pitch for most of its 3,400-foot vertical drop (from 9,150 to 5,750 feet).
It wasn’t always so uncrowded here. Sun Valley enjoyed a long heyday as one of America’s marquee resorts, thanks to an amalgam of vision, marketing and serious mountaineers. In 1935, W. Averell Harriman, then chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, wanted to open a European-style winter resort where people could, in his words, “rough it in style.” He sent an Austrian count on a tour of the American West in search of a location. After exhaustive scouting, the count found the mining-turned-ranching town of Ketchum and the Alps-like terrain unfurling from its edges and wired an enthusiastic endorsement to his boss.
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