STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Rotarun Ski Area will launch its opening day on Saturday with a free pancake feed and the unveiling of a new exhibit at the base of the ski hill.

The small ski hill three miles west of Hailey in Croy Canyon at 25 Rodeo Drive will open for the 2024-25 season on Saturday, Dec. 21. The timing is right—last week master’s ski racers had but a ribbon of manmade snow to ski on. Today it is completely covered thanks to storm that dumped 12 inches of snow on Hailey on Saturday and another four or so on Monday.

Members of Hailey’s Rotary Club, for whom the ski area is named, will begin flipping flapjacks for the community at 10 a.m. The new Rotarun History Preservation Project will be unveiled at 11 a.m. And public skiing will be offered from noon to 4 p.m.

The Rotarun History Preservation Project shares the story of how the ski hill came to be nearly eight decades ago. It features written narrative, images, memories and historical mementos.

It is a work in progress: The first phase, which will be unveiled on Saturday, features a permanent exhibit near the base of the lift with five large-format panels sharing a decade-by-decade history-in-brief. The second phase will invite the community and visitors to share memories and stories through an ongoing “Letters to Rotarun” campaign, which will be featured in the interior of Rotarun’s base lode.

The next phases of the project are expected to roll out by the end of the calendar year in 2025.

Heather Foster, who works full-time for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation and volunteers for Rotarun, took the lead on the project with the help of Joan Davies, a long-time member of the Rotarun Board of Directors and a member of the Hailey Rotary Club.

The project was funded by the Wood River Women’s Foundation with the idea of preserving history and building a stronger, more connected community.

“A couple of years ago, I brought the idea for the Rotarun History Preservation Project to Rotarun’s executive director, Scott McGrew, in hopes to identify funding to help with the hard costs of the project,” said Foster, director of Strategic Communications & Development for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. “Rotarun holds such a special place in the hearts of so many, and the more I continued to learn about its history, the greater my passion grew for seeing this project through to fruition.”

The Savaria family, Carl Rixon Jr. of Rixon Excavation and Skip Merrick of Merrick Construction contributed more than a hundred hours to design, engineer and build the exterior exhibit’s structure. Artist and graphic designer Julia Seyferth Curran worked with Foster to bring the panel visuals to life.

With Under the umbrella of the Sun valley ski Educaiton foundation it provides free ski lessons to beginning skiers and boarders through its LASER program.

It offers affordable skiing for famiy Wednesday nights and Friday nights

It’s become known as “the little mountain with a big heart.”

Rotarun, which rises to 5,895 feet above sea level, sits on the treeless north-facing slopes of a 475-foot hill named for Art Richards, a Hailey dentist and Rotarian who replaced the original rope tow in 1957, naming the ski area after the Rotary Club.

It was founded during the winter of 1940-41 when three locals—Bill Mallory, Jim Hurst and Bob Jackson fashioned together a rope tow with tractor and a pulley. Anne Jeanette Winn, the daughter of a Gannett beekeeper, was one of its first ski instructors, teaching children there after she returned from competing in the 1948 Winter Olympics at St. Moritz.

Other Olympians who skied there include gold and silver medalist Picabo Street, silver medalist Christin Cooper, Paralympic medalist Muffy Davis and snowboarder Chase Josey.

The hill was originally served by a rope tow that was replaced by a J-bar and, eventually, a Poma lift that is still in use today. The annual Arkoosh Cup ski race is named for Gooding sheep rancher George Arkoosh whose Arkoosh Sheep company gave Rotarun a 99-year-lease on the land for $1 a year.

“The opportunity to share the story of Rotarun in such a meaningful way is a long time in the making, and I am so grateful for the vision, initiative, and community support that have come together to make this a reality,” said Davies. “Remembering our past and those who came before us is so important, and equally so is keeping our collective community always looking to our future. And a project like this is such a fun way to bring it all together.”