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World's Best Ski Resorts: Sun Valley, Idaho

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There are a lot of great ski resorts in the United States, but none can match Sun Valley’s rich winter sports history - this was literally the nation’s first destination ski resort, with the world’s first chairlifts, where the very idea of the American ski vacation was born. Sun Valley changed the paradigm, and immediately became a hot spot for the biggest celebrities, the most important VIPs, and the world’s best skiers (and later snowboarders), and they have all been coming back ever since.

The story is so colorful it is worth repeating.

Growing up skiing in the Swiss Alps, W. Averell Harriman thought North America needed its own luxurious alpine resort in the style of Gstaad, St. Moritz or Interlaken. Harriman was Chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, and had seen the model successfully used by the Canadian Pacific railroad of building beautiful resorts like the Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Lake Louise and Chateau Frontenac, then using these destinations to drive passenger traffic on its trains, a sort of “build it and they will buy tickets” approach to railroad marketing. Union Pacific would benefit by creating a ski destination, so he hired an experienced Austrian skier, Count Felix Schaffgotsch, to scour America’s mountains for a suitable site. The Count rode trains all across the West, passing on since developed ski locales in California, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, before arriving in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1936, where he was wowed. Construction began almost immediately at a fever pitch, and by the end of the year, America’s first destination ski resort was ready, its highlight being Harriman’s secret weapon - the chairlift.

Before Sun Valley, every ski mountain on earth, whether tiny community ski hills in New England or the poshest resorts of the Swiss Alps used the same technology, some sort of cable dragging standing skiers uphill, rope tows, J-bars or T-bars. Harriman asked railroad engineers to create a better way to get skiers up, and inspired by machines for loading train cargo, they invented the chairlift. Before the winter of 1936 if you skied, you either walked or were towed up the mountain, so the ability to ride sitting down was immediately embraced as a quantum leap in luxury. Sun Valley opened with the world’s first two chairs, which were such an overnight success that a third was added the following season. This helped create the resort’s swank luxury image, and A List celebrities of the period flocked here, regulars including Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Marilyn Monroe, and Ernest Hemingway, who wrote his classic For Whom the Bell Tolls while staying for several months in the resort’s flagship hotel, the Sun Valley Lodge. The Hollywood trend never slowed, and Sun Valley skiers include Oprah Winfrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, Justin Timberlake, longtime fan Clint Eastwood, who filmed Pale Rider here, and longtime homeowner Bruce Willis.

Sun Valley was an anomaly in 1936 and still is 80 years later, retaining a distinctive character that sets it apart from just about every other major ski resort in the country. It has been fervently family owned by decades by the Holding family of Sinclair Oil fame, who also have the Snowbasin ski resort in Utah, Salt Lake City’s premier hotel, the Grand America, and were instrumental in organizing the Utah Winter Olympic Games. But Sun Valley was always their baby, and over the years, numerous improvements were undertaken, but always with a close eye on keeping the underlying character unchanged.

Read previous detailed profiles of outstanding ski resorts here: The new Park City, now largest in the U.S.; Beaver Creek, the white-glove ultra-luxe choice; Breckenridge, Colorado’s favorite mountain; Vail, the King of American ski resorts; Jackson Hole, “The Big One,” better than ever as it turns 50; Deer Valley, with the best ski-in/out lodging anywhere; and the French Alps, home to the world’s three largest ski resorts.

While the resort attracts a lot of celebrities and very wealthy regulars, it is no Aspen or Deer Valley, and in winter people come here primarily to ski. More understated than glitzy, it has a rural flair, with a fiercely self-sufficient mountain spirit among the locals. Sun Valley has a long, rich tradition of sending homegrown talent like Picabo Street to the winter Olympic Games, and was among the first resorts to embrace snowboarding - a resident has represented the sport in every Olympic Games since it was introduced. It is an extremely active place, and when locals are not skiing the downhill runs, they are on the Nordic trails, riding fat tire bikes, or skiing in the backcountry, and in summer it is one of the hottest spots in the country for mountain biking. It’s the kind of place where no one bats an eye at riding the bus, and there are no ski-in/out hotels. One of the reasons the original golf course here is so much better than most ski resort versions is because it enjoys the best real estate at the base of the slopes, prime land usually given over to condos.

While there is plenty of pricey ski gear from folks like Bogner and Kjus for sale in local boutiques, no one seems to buy it - during my last trip there, in several days of skiing, I saw almost no flashy clothing on the slopes, but rather monochromatic, utilitarian, “real skier” gear from the likes of Mammut, Stio, Mountain Hardwear and Outdoor Research. And when I popped into Apples, the quintessential bottom of the lift après dive bar, the regular crowd included a litany of former Olympians, U.S. Ski team racers, and “ski porn” film athletes.

But what really sets Sun Valley apart is its true resort model: it is like the Greenbrier, Broadmoor or Gleneagles of ski resorts. In addition to the two mountains, the resort includes the top hotel, the Sun Valley Lodge, the second choice, the Sun Valley Inn, and most of the rest of the area’s best lodging in rental homes and condos. It includes a large equestrian center, the excellent Nordic center, indoor and outdoor skating rinks, a retail and dining village, numerous restaurants of every description, from fine dining to on-mountain to rustic sleigh ride cabins, a full service shooting facility, and three quality golf courses. Sun Valley is one of those rare ski resorts that is almost as busy in summer as winter, and with the horseback riding, golf, fishing, shooting, and biking it is easy to see why. It is steeped in tradition, and few offerings sum up the Sun Valley difference like its summer weekly “ice shows,” which bring in former Olympians and world famous skaters to perform for guests immediately outside the Lodge. How many other resort hotels can you think of that put on their own version of Ice Capades?

Sun Valley is not a town, it is a big resort, and it was purpose built in faux-Alpine style, not unlike Colorado’s Vail Village, but imagine Vail Village as a single resort entity, plopped down adjacent to an actual town, Ketchum, in turn full of frontier charm and lively color. An odd hybrid offering the best of both worlds, it is a ski destination unlike any other.

As for skiing, there are two separate mountains, with Dollar for beginners and park junkies, as it now features a seven meter Superpipe and full Terrain Park. Over the years Dollar has repeatedly been ranked the best or one of the best places in the country to learn to ski, and it is easy to see why. It rises just 150 vertical meters, but is virtually treeless, and the openness inspires confidence in first timers since there is no trail to go off and little to hit. There is a magic carpet area for first time kids, and a wide variety of slopes of varied steepness, perfect for progression, with purpose-built features for the new more effective terrain based learning the ski industry is quickly moving to. Dollar Face is the steepest run, a solid blue intermediate, and once those who started on Dollar master it, they typically head to the big mountain, Baldy - as do most visitors who already know how to ski.

For most skiers and snowboarders, Bald Mountain is Sun Valley. Read almost any article written in the past half century about the place and you will likely encounter the words “constant pitch.” Perfectly shaped, sort of like a cartoon volcano, this is the signature of Sun Valley, a consistent and never ending incline with no plateaus or natural places to stop and regroup. This makes it truly awesome for taking lessons, especially at the intermediate to expert plateau, because you can endlessly practice consistent turns of any shape without having to vary for changes in steepness. It also makes the mountain ski even bigger than its impressive girth, over 3000 feet of vertical, because skiers here unconsciously tend to go longer without taking a break. The unrelenting plunge is a trademark, and makes Warm Springs, which drops from the very top of Baldy to the base, the rare signature run that is blue. That being said, there is no shortage of expert skiing here, and in particular, Sun Valley is famed for its black diamond bumps, among the best mogul skiing anywhere. It is also one of the few ski resorts in America with onsite heli-skiing, and the only one where the pickup and drop-off is actually on the mountain. Sun Valley Heli Ski has been at it for 50 years, claims to be the inventor of the sport in the U.S., and claims the largest permitted acreage of any domestic operator.

Ski Magazine’s Readers’ Poll, widely considered the most important industry ranking, named Sun Valley the Number Two Overall Resort in North America and gave it the Number One spot in an amazing five categories: Grooming, Lifts, Character, Overall Satisfaction and Kid Friendly. The surrounding mountains are equally distinctive and largely treeless, with vast expanses of now everywhere you look. Several seasoned ski journalists I know have told me that they think Sun Valley has the best views of any U.S. resort, and while I can’t fully agree, I can see the point. It is stunning.

The major weakness here compared to other top destination ski resorts is the absence of slopeside lodging, and far and away the top hotel choice is the Lodge, which means a short bus ride or drive daily to either mountain. That has never bother Sun Valley fans, but if ski-in/out is crucial to you, be forewarned. The other knock in recent years has been that the Lodge is a bit tired, but that could not be any less true. For its 80th birthday, the hotel undertook a massive nine month top to bottom renovation that somehow managed to preserve the feel of the place and kept the exterior almost unchanged while upgrading everything within. The constant is that the hallways of every floor are still lined with a huge gallery of black and white photos of the resort and its many famous guests, from royalty and Presidents to professional athletes, musicians, and movie stars.

I stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge eight years ago, and I stayed there this winter, and the difference is dramatic. Guest rooms were greatly enlarged with modem luxury bathrooms added, and as a result, there are substantially less of them (108 down from 148). Today’s definition of luxury hotel includes a separate tub and walk in shower, and the huge ones here do not disappoint. Nor do the double sided glass walled gas fireplaces, the large decks, spacious rooms and fine appointments. The late Earl Holding was obsessed with craftsmanship, materials and details, and as a result the day lodges at both Sun Valley and Snowbasin are easily the finest in the ski industry, to the point where guests sometimes feel awkward entering them in ski boots because the floors are so nice. That same attention to detail can be found in the revamped rooms and common areas, with granite floors and cabinets of African hardwoods. Rooms were combined at the corners of the hotels to create four especially large new “Celebrity Suites,” each with dual balconies on either side. They were named for and themed after some of the resort’s most loyal customers, including Marilyn Monroe, Eastwood, and Hemingway. The Hemingway Suite has a replica of his old typewriter, pictures of him hunting nearby, and lots of books, while the Eastwood suite has movie posters and photos.

The grand lobby was redone with a new, open centerpiece bar and lounge, and the existing six lane bowling alley was upgraded into a full service family entertainment center. But besides the guest rooms, the big change was the addition of an all new 20,000 square foot spa with state of the art fitness center, beauty salon, and yoga studio. Any “luxury” hotel worth its salt these days has a spa, but this is a whopper, a gorgeous facility with extensive his and her locker rooms each with steam, sauna and experiential showers. The famous signature round heated outdoor pool was relocated to create a vast new pool deck around it with hot tub, fire pit, and a new Poolside Café, and is now filled with filtered salt water.

Sun Valley is one of the country’s best ski resorts, and it is probably the most distinctive. The biggest market has traditionally been the west coast with short non-stop flights from Seattle, San Francisco and LA, but with short (40 minute) connections via Salt Lake it is pretty easy to get to from any major city in the country. It is part of the Mountain Collective, a loose marketing confederation of independent ski resorts that share a discounted lift ticket pass program, and includes among others Jackson, WY; Alta & Snowbird, UT; Stowe, VT; Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows, CA; Aspen/Snowmass, CO; and Alberta’s Ski Big 3 (Banff, Sunshine Lake Louise).

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