“Baldy’s combination
of consistent snow, challenging terrain
and quad lifts make
it the best teaching mountain in
the world.”

“Bend your knees, keep your hands in front and look downhill.”

“...an Alaskan low
can deliver prodigious snowfalls, toe-numbing cold, and winter’s
best skiing.”

“...expert skiers still consistently award
Bald Mountain gold stars for terrain, lifts, snowmaking and grooming.”

“Catching the Cold Springs Double back to the Round House, we ski Olympic and the River Run South Slopes.”

Sun Valley:
For More Information:
www.sunvalley.com

Reservations:
1.800.786.8259
www.visitsunvalley.com

It is eight thirty a.m. on Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain when Will Eilert and I board the Round House Gondola. Capable of carrying eighteen hundred skiers per hour in fifty-six, eight-passenger cabins, the Doppelmayr gondola takes eight minutes to reach the upper station. Though Bald Mountain does not officially open until 9:00, our primary focus is not on the Round House’s First Tracks continental breakfast or the spectacular view of the rising sun, but the chance to link first tracks off Bald Mountain’s 9150- foot summit. First to the Round House means first on the Christmas quad, which rises to first down Easter Bowl. Though he lives and works in Hawaii, Eilert and I have skied together for years. It is little wonder that a foot of fresh powder affects us in similar, obsessive ways.

Towering 3400 feet above Ketchum/Sun Valley, “Baldy” is a skier’s mountain. With 2054 acres serviced by 13 lifts this pyramid shaped peak is famous for its unrelenting pitch. Rolling off its broad summit, Warm Springs, Limelight and River Run do not stair step from one flat to the next, but fall precipitously toward Ketchum’s distant snow covered streets.

And yet, despite its venerable reputation, Bald Mountain is not an extreme mountain. Adi Erber, a Sun Valley ski instructor, whose clients include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood, believes “Baldy’s combination of consistent snow, challenging terrain and quad lifts make it the best teaching mountain in the world.”

If Baldy has a problem, it is this same diversity. On powder mornings, questioning what to ski first can drive you crazy. Should your first run be through Upper River Run’s moguls or Central Park’s cool glades? Should you attack Easter Bowl’s endless vertical, or warm up on Ridge Run’s groomed corduroy? Following a month of long hours and consistent sleep deprivation working as an emergency room surgeon, Eilert refuses to waste time on warm ups. If the choice were left to Will, our first run would be down the Easter Bowl gutter where the fall line is steep, deep and laser straight at the Mayday Triple. Eilert’s plan is simple and effective. Link three hundred turns in knee-deep powder to the Mayday lift then substitute diverse, but similar lines until complete exhaustion sets in. Eat cheese sandwiches and French fries at the Seattle Ridge Restaurant, then repeat until the lifts close at 3:45.

Following a short hike along the Bowl ridge, Eilert summons his motto. In the seconds before he drops off the four-foot cornice, he tells himself “Bend your knees, keep your hands in front and look downhill.” He will repeat this a dozen times during the day. It clearly works, for he links fifty beautiful turns in the deep, blowing snow before he rolls over a pitch and is lost to sight.

Judged by temperature alone, the night’s storm rightly belongs to February or early March. These are Sun Valley’s dependable months, the twin sisters booked by skiers who hope to guarantee deep snow and blue skies. In all truth, mid December is a better time. Colder and quieter, it is Sun Valley’s shoulder season when the mountain is open and the town is empty.

Now, two weeks before the shortest day of the year, Easter Bowl is shin-deep and deserted. Though Eilert and I will not claim first tracks on this broad, southeast bowl, we are fourth and fifth, and have our choice of a hundred untouched lines that descend from defining ridge to ridge. Pointing my skis downhill, I touch the snow with my pole, change edges and feel my skis come around.  Red Jacketed Beauty Sun ValleyTo my right, Eilert matches me turn for turn. His shoulders and hands are square to the hill and his skis float effortlessly through the light powder. While other skiers are content to drift down College, Ridge and Upper Warm Springs–intermediate groomed runs that radiate off the summit, Eilert loves Bald Mountain’s secret back alleys–Fire Trail, Upper River Run, Holiday, Central Park and Lower Bowls. His favorite run doesn’t even have a name. Instead it’s a 2700 vertical foot mix of black diamond bumps, trees and chutes that exits at the Cold Springs Double–Baldy’s oldest, most remote lift.

Watching the unbroken snow rise to meet me, I realize that much of my adult life has been defined by Bald Mountain. Without the influence of expert runs that plunge from its broad ridges, I might have spent my life in the pursuit of more worldly, but far less rewarding goals. From the perspective of my three decades in the Wood River Valley, I see that Baldy’s deficits are in fact, assets.

Sun Valley’s major storms are born in the Gulf of Alaska. Starting in early December these tightly wound lows lumber down the Pacific West Coast, then turn inland south of Eureka, California. When the meteorological variables beat in sync, an Alaskan low can deliver prodigious snowfalls, toe-numbing cold, and winter’s best skiing.

Dropping into Christmas Bowl, Eilert and I explore the Ridge South Slopes to skier’s right of Rock Garden. History records that Averell Harriman used to ride horse back through these alternating dark forests and open meadows. During one of these rides, he not only located the major runs, but also helped site the original Exhibition Lift and the Roundhouse Restaurant. According to William Castagnetto, a Union Pacific engineer, Harriman once paused on Baldy’s then-undeveloped north side and observed, “I’ve skied all over Europe but nothing compares to Bald Mountain.”

The truth is, sixty years later, expert skiers still consistently award Bald Mountain gold stars for terrain, lifts, snowmaking and grooming. Unlike some resorts where it takes a six-page trail map to separate green diamonds from black, Baldy’s layout is simple. From its rounded summit, four major ridges radiate down to the valley below. The gully runs of Warm Springs, River Run and Christmas Bowl define these ridges, and between the two, a variety of major and minor runs allow skiers access to groomed alleys, massive bumps and glades of Douglas Fir.

Exiting the Mayday triple, Eilert and I drop into Farout Bowl. Descending from a long north-south ridge, Baldy’s Bowls not only offer spectacular views of the Pioneer Mountains, but arguably Idaho’s best lift-assisted powder skiing. By eleven a.m. the storm’s last clouds have given way to a low winter sun that casts shadows across the ridges’ hollows and broad open faces that fall two thousand vertical feet to the Mayday and Seattle Ridge chairs. The ten-degree temperature preserves the snow and in succession we ski the trees in Lefty, Sigi’s and Lookout Bowls.

If this were February or March, the untracked lines would be skied-out in hours. But in early December, the mountain is empty. With our thighs starting to burn, Will and I ski Fire Trail where the snow has been pushed into the season’s first moguls.

Catching the Cold Springs Double back to the Round House, we ski Olympic and the River Run South Slopes. Returning via the Lookout Express Quad to the summit, we descend through Central Park’s glades to Graduate’s perfect fall line, which in turn falls to the Frenchman’s Gully Quad. As the sun arcs across Baldy’s summit, we explore the trees above Warm Springs and the powdery bumps on Upper Hemingway.

In December of 2009, Sun Valley has returned to basics. Crowds are down, ski-in lift lines are now the rule rather than the exception and reservations are optional in Ketchum’s restaurants.

By 2:45, my altimeter has recorded 40,000 vertical feet. Baldy’s quads will run for another hour but neither Eilert nor I can make another turn, much less take another run. This won’t be the first time, or last, that Bald Mountain will rise to humble us. And standing in front of the Warm Springs Lodge, Eilert studies the gray tendrils advancing from the west. “NOAA is calling for another eight inches tonight,” he comments then inquires, “What do you have planned for tomorrow?”

With Christmas a couple of weeks away, I know I should work, shovel the decks, shop or decorate the tree. But, I cannot resist the promise of December snow in Sun Valley. “I’ll call you in the morning.” I reply. “Say… 5:30?”

History:

When Union Pacific Railroad Chairman Averell Harriman commissioned Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch to find a perfect combination of deep snow, big mountains and bright sunshine, Harriman was convinced that a destination ski resort would stimulate rider interest on Union Pacific’s Northern Line. Over the next three months Schaffgotsch rejected Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, before following a last rumor into the Wood River Valley.

The Sun Valley Lodge was finished in the late Fall of ’36, just in time to host Hollywood’s biggest stars who were invited for Christmas. If it didn’t snow until early January Union Pacific publicity photos show houses groaning under eight-foot loaves of snow. Deep, cold winters, however, are more the exception than the rule in Central Idaho, but following the lean winters of 1986-91, Sun Valley voted against the vagaries of cyclic El Ninos and vagrant jet streams and invested $15 million in York-computerized snow making. With 454 computer-controlled snowguns, the system is the world’s largest, and virtually guarantees a Thanksgiving opening.

If Ketchum/Sun Valley once depended on sheep and mines for its survival, during the past two decades, art galleries, boutiques and real estate offices have filled the blocks around the town’s two stoplights. Weathered brick and wood facades still front Highway 75, and there is a growing realization that growth is no longer a synonym for progress.

Today, the Casino Club, Duffy Witmer’s Pioneer Saloon, and the Sun Valley Lodge bear witness to the Wood River Valley’s riotous past. Ernest Hemingway, of course, is still a major draw and a Chamber of Commerce map gives directions to Whiskey Jacques, where he once drank; the Hemingway House which overlooks the Wood River; and even old room number 38 in the renovated Ketchum Korral Motel.