STORY AND PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN W. LUNDIN

In the years immediately following the opening of Sun Valley Resort, “Old Baldy Mountain” as it was called, offered one run down Cold Springs that started nearly four miles from the highway, with 3,400 vertical feet.

“Aside from this run, Old Baldy is considered much too hazardous, abrupt, rough, timbered, to be of interest to skiers,” an article in “Zee Skiing” said.

Sno-cats carried skiers to the top of Bald Mountain in winter 1938. The map shows two runs on Baldy-- one down River Run Canyon and one down Cold Springs Canyon.

The route up Baldy began at the base of Cold Springs Canyon where the Big Wood River is on the east side of the road one mile south of Elkhorn Road. This map shows several cabins and shelters mentioned in Charles Proctor’s article “located at convenient places so the ski tourer will find comfortable camps for spending the night or for lunch.”

These huts included the Boulder Mine and Elkhorn cabin, which sat in Elkhorn Valley where bus transportation was available. Uncle Tom’s cabin lay east of Elkhorn Ridge, south of Proctor Mountain, and Saw Mill hut was further east on Corral Creek. Bus transportation was available on Trail Creek Road.

The backcountry huts provided a self-propelled alternative to lift-served skiing, which utilized lifts on Dollar, Ruud and Proctor Mountains and the ski jump on Ruud, which was built in the summer of 1937.

“The Ridge Trail on Elkhorn Ridge,” went from the top of Proctor Mountain to the Elkhorn Horseshoe, and had multiple runs into Elkhorn Basin. Skiers could continue on the ridge to Elkhorn Loop and ski down to the Elkhorn cabin, providing five miles of skiing on the ridge top from the Proctor lift south, including a 2.5-mile downhill run and a mile and a half of flat skiing.

“It is a beautiful tour for the skilled skier with necessary endurance,” Zee Skiing reported.

A run from the top of Proctor Mountain went east into the Pioneer Mountains, toward Uncle John’s Cabin, John’s Creek and Corral Creek Road. “Zee Skiing” said Corral Creek was four miles from the Lodge, and Corral Creek Cabin was at the forks of Corral Creek, which could be reached by skis or dog sled carrying provisions and sleeping bags.

The Corral Creek Run went along a branch of Corral Creek heading east into the Pioneers where snowcat skiing was available. Pioneer Cabin was reached by going along the fork of Corral Creek heading south, four miles toward the Devils Bedstead section of the Pioneer Range, where extensive backcountry skiing was available.

The Devil’s Bedstead run went along a ridge down to the cabin. It was suitable for skiers of medium ability, but some skiing in the spring season was for the expert only: “Do not undertake an outlying section, such as this one, without a guide.”

Skiing was also offered on Elkhorn Mountain, south of Elkhorn Road and west of Peters Creek with the notation: “The skiing slopes are excellent on the side toward the Elkhorn Shelter and Elkhorn Gulch.”

Skiers climbed the mountain on a marked slope, being careful to avoid three mine openings, as they climbed 2.25 miles to the top, gaining 2,000 feet of elevation before skiing down the same route.

Richard Gale, a Sun Valley guest, wrote an article titled “Touring at Sun Valley,” in the 1937-38 Sun Valley Ski Club magazine: “As for the facilities for touring in and about Sun Valley, the field is limitless. There are mountains laying around all over the place, some of which are good in cold snow, some during warm spells and some in corn snow.

“There is such a variety that there is always some slope, somewhere, in any weather or snow condition ready to be scaled. One of the finest touring lands is certain to be the Pioneer Range in the rugged and almost unlimited Devil’s Bedstead country east of Sun Valley, reached by establishing a base camp at the new shelter cabin at the head of Corral Creek...

“From the top of Baldy there are seven different descents averaging 3,000 feet or more. Baker Creek is long but easy, through scattered timber. There are hundreds of other unnamed mountains accessible by motor roads. In short, there is no spot as yet in this country which offers the variety of mountains to ski on that Sun Valley does.”

In winter 1937, the Valley Sun said skiing on Bald Mountain was enjoyed by “the hardier brand of winter enthusiasts--the strong and rugged individual to whom walking and climbing is secondary to finding new powder snow...Hardy souls ventured up Wood River canyon to the north, and Warm Springs canyon to the west, and realized that miles and miles of perfect skiing lie as a vast Promised Land to be opened to snow sportsmen of the future.”

Other runs were available in peaks surrounding Sun Valley--“the really adventurous ski-rider will find unlimited terrain. This part of Idaho is chock full of mountains.”

Friedl Pfeifer took Averell Harriman and his daughter Kathleen to the top of Bald Mountain in 1939. They climbed up Cold Springs using skins on their skis, traveling at their own speed, using kick turns. It took three hours to get to the top and five minutes to ski down, but was a good way to get fit, according to Kathleen Harriman.

“We climbed on sealskins in the beginning, which were much stiffer than the plush ones made out of cloth,” she recounted. “You’d get to the top of Baldy and take those darned things off your skis and they’d be frozen stiff, and you’d wrap them around your waist and ski down, hoping you got down before they melted and you were wet solid to your knees.”

In 1937, the Forest Service developed a snow machine for Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, a major C.C.C. project. It was a seven feet long tractor with one 55" wide track, which operated on snow or the ground. It pulled a sled that could carry 25 or 30 people and negotiate grades up to 30% or 40% at uphill speeds from four to eight miles an hour, and 20 miles per hour downhill.

“Snow depth is no obstacle to the tractor, whose wide base prevents it from sinking and stalling, even in the softest covering...The tractor will eliminate arduous uphill climbs,” reported the Seattle Times.

In the fall of 1937, Harriman ordered several of the $4,000 snow machines for Sun Valley, where they took skiers into backcountry areas around the resort.

“Wintersports Parade,” in a 1937-38 issue of “Ski Illustrated” said skiing was available at the Boulder Downhill Run [Durrance Mountain], “the longest and toughest downhill race course in the world.” Other areas included Baker Creek, with open slopes both gentle and sharp; North Fork, with “untold mileage in open and timbered cross-country and downhill skiing,” and Warm Springs canyon, “with its Old Baldy Mountain elevation of almost 10,000 nerve-tingling courses thru its steep, spruce-timbered shanks.”

Sawtooth National Forest workers spent August and September clearing trails for the new mechanized snow tractors that provided access to Sun Valley’s backyard.

This monster, which was thought to be as revolutionizing in cross-country skiing as theSun Valley chair-lifts, were “in fixed up-hill accommodations last year, can move through any cleared way, no matter how deep or drifted the snow, and climb straight up a 40% hill! This, then, is the answer to reaching the ridge tops on Boulder, North Fork and Old Baldy.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: After a Chinook wind melted the snow following Christmas 1938, Sun Valley Resort brought in buses from Union Pacific’s operations at the Grand Canyon to Sun Valley to take skiers north of Sun Valley. Read all about it when Eye on Sun Valley publishes the third installment looking at backcountry skiing in and around Sun Valley.

To see the first installment looking at backcountry skiing in Sun Valley, go to “Sun Valley Has Always Been a Backcountry Skiing Mecca” at https://eyeonsunvalley.com/Story_Reader/12622/Sun-Valley-Has-Always-Been-a-Backcountry-Skiing-Mecca/.

John W. Lundin is a former Seattle lawyer who has written several books on skiing, including “Ski Jumping in Washington” and “Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings.”