STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
VIDEO BY MICHAEL HOBBS, KAREN BOSSICK AND LYNN PATTNOSH
It’s getting to be a rite of spring for tiny tykes around Sun Valley.
Learn to form pizza shapes, or wedges, with your skis as you make lots of turns down the mountain. Lean forward in an athletic stance.
Then, on Dollar Mountain’s last day, throw everything you’ve been practicing all winter out the window!
Bomb Dollar Mountain like a kamikaze pilot, heading straight down the slope without a single turn. And, when you hit the pond at the bottom, sit back on your skis as far as you dare, hoping to make it across the water before you sink.
Dozens of youngsters—and adults—took to Dollar Mountain Sunday afternoon to do just that as they celebrated Dollar’s last day with the Dollar Daze Pond Skim.
They were lucky—the temperature climbed into the low 60s in contrast to some years when it’s felt like a day in an ice chest at the North Pole.
Sun Valley Ski patrollers Mollie McLam and Sara Gress took first turns on the pond—just to test the waters, of course. Then they took turns jumping in the pond to fish out those who sank.
Ski Patrol Director Mike Lloyd sat in a high rise chair shaded by a straw beach umbrella raising cards signifying where skims ranked on a scale of 1 to 10—until his arm got tired and he took a leave of absence.
The pond skimmers included Spiderman, a UPS man and a gorilla who had apparently emerged from Dollar Mountain’s jungle of rails and pipes.
Sun Valley’s General Manager Tim Silva took his place among the skimmers, as he does every year, emerging with nary a drop of water on him.
One of the pond skimmers came prepared, wearing a snorkel. He didn’t need it, as he easily cleared the pond, which was the size of a small swimming pool.
Kyzer Stroelbel wasn’t so lucky.
He was the first to splash down as a few hundred people looked on.
“I’m not that cold,” he protested as his mother tried to wrap him in a towel. “It wasn’t as cold as I thought.”
Those who sank got the biggest cheers of the days as they emerged from the water. And their smiles ended up being the widest—at least, after they got over the initial shock of being drenched.
“It feels like skiing,” said Cord Roth, who was participating in his third Pond Skim. “The secret is to lean back and hope it’s a warm day.”