STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTO BY JOHN LUNDIN

We could just cover Sun Valley’s ski runs with AstroTurf. Or, maybe, pave College Boulevard and Mid- and Lower River Run.

Longtime Ketchum skier Leroy Kingland has come up with a more practical way for dealing with the small rocks that plagued skiers earlier this year.

The problem was small rocks that popped up on Bald Mountain like acne early in the season when Mother Nature was being stingy with her snow.

Normally, Sun Valley’s 578 snow guns can blast enough snow onto the runs to cover the pebbles, even when the snow is slow in coming. But this winter’s warm weather kept Sun Valley’s arsenal of snow guns silenced many times during December and January when they would normally be going full blast.

Kingland, a ski rep for many years, felt sorry for the ski patrolmen and courtesy patrollers who spent hours bending over to pick up the rocks, carting them away in Sun Valley gift bags leant them by The Brass Ranch and Sun Valley Gift Shop.

So he invented a rock scooper.

It consists of a concave screen he got at Ketchum Kitchens attached to a stick. It allows patrollers to scoop up rocks and fling them into the nearby woods, if they desire, without bending over.

Shades of the good old days when ski patrollers used to whack rocks off the runs with hockey sticks!

When patrollers asked for a right-and left-handed version, Kingland obliged.

Now, how ‘bout staging a tree trimming party this summer for runs like Lower Can Can and Brick’s Island?!