STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

A fire on Bald Mountain was quickly knocked down Monday afternoon.

The fire, which witnesses said occurred on Lower College in the vicinity of Can Can, was contained about an hour after it started.

The fire was reported about 3:35 p.m. It is believed to have started while mountain crews were mowing a portion of Lower College, readying it for the upcoming ski season, said Kelli Lusk, a spokesperson for Sun Valley Resort.

It sent up billowing white smoke that was visible from Ketchum’s Main Street. There onlookers wondered whether it was an unplanned fire or a prescribed burn to burn some of the shrubs and other material crews have been thinning from Can Can and other runs in Frenchman’s Gulch.

Initial reports indicated that the fire was contained to the mowing equipment.

Sun Valley resident John Todd was leading two friends from Edmonds, Wash., up Lower River Run when the first fire engine raced by them, the driver screaming for them to get off the mountain. He and his friends Carolyn and Walter Fenning watched as more firefighters rushed by. 

“We saw two red, one green and one white truck go up,” said Fenning.

Sun Valley Resort cranked up the gondola, just in case, said one employee.

A mountain biker saw the flames from above as he rode down the mountain.

“I wasn’t sure whether to call it in. Then I realized there were people fighting the fire,” he said.

Crews from Ketchum Fire Department, the Forest Service and Sun Valley Resort responded to the fire. Conditions were dry, as there’s been scarcely any precipitation since mid-June.

Josh Switzer had just returned from fighting a fire near Soda Springs, reportedly started by someone welding a mailbox, when he and the Sawtooth Helitack helicopter was called into service on the Bald Mountain fire.

The helicopter circled above the fire a few times, then landed in the paraglider’s field near the upper River Run parking lot. Firefighters readied the water bucket on the helicopter as they awaited a pool to be set up from which they could draw water.

Switzer said there were a few places the helicopter could have collected water out of the Big Wood River that runs by River Run Lodge, as well.

“But there’s some big trees in there we’d just as soon avoid,” said Switzer, a senior firefighter for Sawtooth Helitack. “It looks as if the fire just burnt a little patch on Lower College. You won’t even notice it come ski season.”

The fire was contained and all the firefighters off the mountain and gone home to dinner by 6.