After twenty five years in the Wood River Valley, I am well aware that I am neither the first, nor best skier ever to carve tracks on this 3260 vertical foot, wooded Sphinx.   The rich, the famous and the strong have all preceded me and feeling my skis arc beneath six inches of fresh powder, I know why Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch fell in love with the Wood River Valley.

The story of Schaffgotsch’s search for the American St. Moritz, is the stuff both fantasies, and legends, are made of.  To encourage sales on Union Pacific Railroad’s northern route Averell Harriman, UP’s Chairman of the Board,  dreamed of building a ski resort, an outpost in the American West, accessible only by passenger train.  In the fall of 1935 Harriman commissioned Schaffgotsch to search for an area blessed with a proper balance of sun, snow and isolation.  Over the next four months, he rejected Aspen, Jackson Hole, Alta and  Lake Tahoe before braving fifty miles of desolate winter road north from Shoshone into the Wood River Valley.

An Austrian Count, even one who worked for UP, was a rarity in the Wood River Valley and the locals turned to Jack Lane, who owned the local general store, for advice.  “Be nice to him,” Lane counseled the assembled group,  “But don’t cash his checks........”

Sun Valley Ski instructor Adi Erber is only one of many Austrians who followed Schaffgotsch to Central Idaho.  Erber remembers,“I was raised in Europe, and Baldy was not the biggest mountain I’d ever skied but its perfect pitch, cold powder and fantastic weather made it by far the most interesting.”  Today Erber’s clients range from young families, to graying business executives to Hollywood stars--the most famous of which is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Bald Mountain is by no means Sun Valley’s only winter jewel.  Between Sun Valley Nordic Center on the south and Galena Lodge thirty- five miles north, the Wood River Valley also supports 200 kilometers of cross country ski trails.  Here groomed tracks rise, fall and circle the Sun Valley golf course, search out the tributary canyons of Trail Creek, Lake Creek and Baker Creek and trace the Harriman Trail from Galena Lodge Nordic Center sixteen miles south along the Wood River.

Guided by a local youth on barrel stave skis, Schaffgotsch explored Ketchum’s high surrounding hills, breathed the cold clean air, and watched the sun swing in a bright arc above the southern desert.  At the end of a week he returned to Shoshone where he excitedly wired Harriman, “It contains more delightful features than any other place I’ve seen In the U.S., Switzerland or Austria for a winter sports center.”

Much of what attracted Schaffgotsch in 1935, continues to define Sun Valley in 2000.   While Sun Valley has served as the resort core since 1936, Ketchum, the century old mining and sheep town that crowds Highway 75 a mile to the west, is cast in the 19th century’s  brick and cedar architecture.  Faded sepia photographs reveal Main Street’s Lane Mercantile, the Casino bar, Bald Mountain Hot Springs and half a dozen other buildings have changed little in the past sixty-five years.

Part small western town with world class restaurants and hotels, part huge mountain with predictable snow, for the second time in a decade Ski Magazine named Sun Valley the U.S. Number 1 Ski Resort.  With eighteen lifts (including 7 detachable quads) accessing more than 78 runs, ski in lift lines are the rule, more often than the exception.

nowshoeing also provides an aerobic alternative to alpine skiing.  Along with an excellent workout, snowshoes offer a low tech means to explore the Wood’s silent canyons.  In a type of "zuruck zu natur" the chance to stand alone on a high ridge, in a snow covered meadow or among winter bare groves of aspens, appeals mightily to city dwellers who, almost certainly, lack the skills or conditioning to ski there.  One often overlooked  beauty of snowshoeing is it requires little, if any training.  Even the chronically un-athletic can simply buckle a pair on and start walking.

Located a mile east of downtown Ketchum, Sun Valley mixes an undeniable sense of history and incredible views of Bald Mountain with a pedestrian only commercial core.   During the summer of 1935 Union Pacific workman used local rough sawn lumber to form the Lodge's concrete exterior.  As it cured the cement replicated the wood's heavy grain which today accounts for the Lodge's rustic appearance.  History plays well here and hundreds of black and white U.P. photographs fill the Lodge’s long halls.   In a quieter time, Earnest Hemingway worked on For Whom The Bell Tolls in room 206 and Gary Cooper, his wife Rocky, Jane Russell, Clark Gable and Ingrid Bergman danced in the Duchin Room.

The Pioneer Saloon, Ketchum Grill and  Cristina’s Restaurant would be wildly successful in San Francisco or Seattle, cities famous for sophisticated palates.  Intermixed with the hotels and restaurants, are boutiques, art galleries, ice rinks, the Nextstage Theater and ancient Casino bar where the rich and famous rub elbows with Austrian ski instructors and tanned ski bums, weathered carpenters and starving artists.

There might have been a point decades ago when I could have left Sun Valley.  But not anymore.  During the past quarter century, I’ve skied in raging powder storms and photographed the alpen glow on the Devil’s Bedstead, built a house in a tributary canyon and watched my two sons grow up surrounded by mountains, rivers and forests. 

Fast forward sixty-five years.   Now owned by Earl Holding’s Little America hotel group, the four story Lodge anchors the resort core with a circular outdoor pool and open air ice rink.  Winding paths depart from the front steps through deep snow banks to the Konditorei Restaurant, the Ram Bar, the Opera House  and the Sun Valley Inn where, on winter evenings, a horse drawn sleigh departs for dinner at Trail Creek Cabin.  

No resort, however, can subsist on snow and sweat alone.  Ketchum is a genuine western town, Sun Valley is a world class resort, and together they define the word “authentic.”  Classic hotels such as the Sun Valley Lodge, the Knob Hill Inn and the River Street Inn offer visitors a warm, undeniably romantic home away from home.