STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Skiers at Sun Valley Resort have a lot to look forward to as the resort embarks on its 88th winter season.
The resort will crank up a new six-passenger Challenger chairlift on the Warm Springs side of Bald Mountain in mid-December, weather permitting. And it will introduce a new Flying Squirrel chairlift that will start from the base of Warm Springs and deposit skiers mid-mountain so they don’t have to go to the top to get to the River Run side.
With it comes a new Lower Flying Squirrel trail, carved out of the woods as part of the Warm Springs Enhancement plan. And there’s new glade skiing to take advantage of, as well.
But, before all, is opening day, otherwise known as Thanksgiving Day. And getting ready for this year’s opener has been a challenge, thanks to temperatures in the upper 40s and 50s that have made for great fall hiking and biking dampened the output from Sun Valley’s arsenal of snow guns.
Colder temperatures that swept into the Wood River Valley on Monday gave a boost to snowmaking. But the resort will have only Lower River Run open for skiing on its first day.
That’s 619 vertical feet—a pretty nice run by Midwestern ski area standards and not bad for those just looking to get their ski legs back or ski one run because it’s a Thanksgiving tradition.
But it’ll probably disappoint those who were hoping for a repeat of last year’s season opening when the entire River Run side of the mountain was open, including bump runs like Rock Garden, Exhibition, Holiday and the Olympic area.
The good news: NOAA’s forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of snow tonight and an 80 percent chance of snow on Thanksgiving Day, during which the area could see four inches of snow. And nighttime temperatures are supposed to dip to 15 on Thursday and 7 and 8 degrees on Friday and Saturday, with day time temperatures remaining under freezing—perfect snowmaking temperatures.
And, heck, Thanksgiving is early this year.
River Run Lodge’s restaurant will be open on Thursday, as will its bar. A DJ will get the scene rocking out on the River Run patio and the first arrivals will get a free Sun Valley mug filled with cocoa.
Over in Sun Valley Village, Sun Valley is offering its Thanksgiving Buffet full of traditional favorites in the Limelight Ballroom starting at 3 p.m.
- The new six-pack Challenger lift—one of 18 people conveyors on Bald and Dollar mountains--is the longest, biggest lift in North America, according to Stephen Helfenbein, the new director of Sun Valley’s Ski & Ride School. It is a one-of-a-kind machine designed expressly for Sun Valley by the Austrian-based Doppelmayr company.
It will climb 3,138 vertical feet to the top in just eight minutes—more than a minute faster than the old lift. That is the largest vertical rise in North America.
Pete Sonntag, Sun Valley Resort vice president and general manager, called the Warm Springs Enhancement Project one of the most ambitious mountain projects the resort has undertaken in many years.
“We’ve upped our game in a meaningful way this year, with two new state-of-the-art chairlifts and a new trail that is destined to be a Sun Valley classic,” he said.
- Skiers and boarders can also look forward to more glade skiing when the Seattle Ridge area opens just before Christmas.
Sun Valley Company, the National Forest Foundation, the Ketchum Ranger District and Bureau of Land Management collaborated to remove dead and diseased trees from 91 acres in the Cold Springs drainage this past summer as part of the years-old Healthy Forest Initiative.
A lot of trees were removed in this area in 2018 prior to the building of the Broadway lift. This opened up another 40 acres in that area, said Zack Poff, Ketchum’s new district ranger.
The rest of the tree thinning was off Seattle Ridge in an area known as Numbers. This will open up the area around the Fire Trail.
“The neat part about it is that people can now ski down and take one lift back up to the top instead of two,” Poff said.
Cut wood was transported to the Shoshone-Paiute reservation near Mountain Home to supply firewood for residents there to heat their homes. And some was delivered to Sticks & Stones in Shoshone, which builds kit homes out of it.
Miller Timber Service thinned the trees with minimal impact, Poff said. And timber thinning carried out this past month by a private landowner on private land just above River Ranch Road should also mitigate the risk of wildfire, he added.
- Sun Valley is reinstituting group lessons on Dollar and Bald mountains. And multi-day camps will be offered first-time skiers and snowboarders. Children’s and teens’ group lessons are now billed as adventure camps.
The Freeride, Mountain Masters and Divas programs are back, as are ARCS—an eight-week men’s all-mountain ski program. And guests are invited to Ski with a Legend—skiers like World Cup racers Zach and Reggie Crist and freeskiing pioneer Kent Kreitler, who can acquaint guests with the history and culture of Sun Valley skiing, in addition to showing them a good time on skis.
- Sun Valley Resort will host the U.S. Alpine National Championships featuring the United States’ best ski racers March 20-24.
- Sun Valley Resort also has a newly rebuilt website, which Sonntag said will better showcase everything that makes Sun Valley so magical.
“It will totally streamline the user experience,” he added.
The website boasts a platform for guests to book Sun Valley’s lodging deals, lift tickets, private and group lessons and rental equipment. It also showcases the new 2023-24 trail map. Sun Valley Resort has launched App Push Notifications and SMS text messages for skiers, as well.