STORY BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE COMMUNITY LIBRARY AND PEGGY PROCTOR DEAN

Averell Harriman, who founded Sun Valley Resort, set out to make Sun Valley an international destination and the country’s center of ski racing by sponsoring ski tournaments to attract the world’s best skiers.

Dick Durrance, the top U.S. ski racer of the 1930s, said Harriman, “was determined that Sun Valley would match anything Europe had to offer” and set out to attract the biggest names in the sport.

A warming hut sat at the top of the Proctor lift.

Harriman knew one way to bring Sun Valley into the public consciousness was to get it onto the sports pages. No expense was spared when it came to promotion.

Harriman supported U.S. ski teams and prospective racers by paying their expenses when they trained at the resort and provided jobs for them.

Competition “was quite important in the development of Sun Valley,” he said. “It attracted people. And, of course, some of the best skiers in the world came here for those competitions. We paid the expenses of the top skiers to race at the resort, since we wanted to have an internationally recognized, first-class competition.”

Sun Valley had chairlifts and long, tree-free slopes, making it ideal for race training.  Its chairlifts provided fast transportation to the top of the mountains at a time when few ski areas even had rope tows.  This enabled racers to get in far more training than elsewhere to develop skills necessary to compete internationally.

Charles Proctor, for whom proctor Mountain was named, holds skis at the lodge. COURTESY: Peggy Proctor Dean

In March 1937, the first Sun Valley International Open Downhill and Slalom Competition (later known as Harriman Cup tournaments) was held. It was the country’s first major international Alpine ski competition.  The tournament attracted the “greatest collection of downhill ski racers ever assembled in North America.”

Even though Proctor Mountain was the area’s “expert” hill at the time, it lacked the sufficient vertical drop needed to run a Europe-style downhill race.  So, the downhill was held on an unnamed peak in the Boulder Mountains, eight miles north of Ketchum near the present-day Sawtooth National Recreation Area headquarters.  

Competitors hiked for three hours to reach the start of the “exacting” downhill course that had 3,900 vertical feet of descent. Harriman later named it Durrance Mountain after Dartmouth’s Dick Durrance won the first Harriman Cup tournament.  

Harriman Cup downhills were held on Durrance Mountain in 1937 and 1938.  In 1939, the first Harriman Cup downhill was held on Bald Mountain, although competitors still had to hike 3,000 feet up to the start.

A man sits down on the J-Bar that was used first at Proctor and, later, at Ruud Mountain.

Dick Durrance had designed a course down the Warm Springs side of Baldy in summer 1938, then a narrow route through a heavily wooded canyon.  When chairlifts were installed on Baldy for winter 1940, competitors had the rare luxury of being able to ride to the top to train and race.  

Thereafter, Harriman Cup downhill races were held on Baldy, with routes alternating between the Warm Springs and the River Run sides of the mountain.  In 1950, the classic downhill route was created by Otto Lang that went down Ridge and Rock Garden, then down Exhibition to “provide the piece de resistance” and offer excellent spectator opportunities. It ended where the River Run Plaza now is.

But one thing was missing--a ski jump.  In those days, most competitors were four-way athletes who competed in downhill, slalom, cross-country and jumping.

Following the Sun Valley International Open Downhill and Slalom Competition held in March 1937, Harriman asked two famous Norwegian skiers who had participated in the tournament to locate a site for a jumping hill and design a ski jump.  

Charles Proctor races in the 1938 Harriman Cup.

In March 1937 Sigmund Ruud and Alf Engen selected a choice site on which to build a regulation jumping hill.  Their pick was the smooth and steeply graded mountain between Dollar and Proctor mountains, and it was named for the famous Ruud brother from Kongsberg, Norway.

The hill selected was not huge.  It had an elevation of 6,600 feet and a 600-foot vertical drop.  A 40-meter jump was built to take advantage of the natural slope, “making it as near perfect as humanly possible.”

A bigger hill of 70 to 90 meters would have been required for Class A competitions. But this smaller one offered “splendid competition for all classes of competitors.” It was designed for 140-foot jumps, but a number of skiers soon exceeded the design limit.

Sun Valley Resort moved the J-Bar going to the base of the nearby Proctor chairlift to the new ski hill, and it extended and widened the road to the Proctor chair so buses could take skiers directly to the base of the Proctor Chairlift from the lodge.  

On Aug. 31, 1937, Harriman approved building a 40-meter ski jump and ski tow costing $12,000 to $14,000, after considering various locations and lengths of ski jumps.  That fall Union Pacific crews built the jump designed by Engen and Ruud. Some reports say a smaller 20-meter jump was built for training and junior meets.

“Sigmund Ruud … knew just about high a jumper would go out in the air after coming off the jump, and we graded it that way,” said Val McAtee, the project manager.

And, just like that, Ruud Mountain had become the resort’s new center for ski jumping and slalom racing.

Warren Miller, who skied on Ruud Mountain after World War II, was not a fan of the mountain, noting that it had no bathrooms and no trees to substitute. And the chairlift had no real chairs.

Instead, the seat consisted of a small piece of wood about 16 inches long and six or eight inches wide. The loading platform was located far enough from the first tower that “if you sank into the seat too vigorously it would set up some sort a sympathetic vibration in the cable that would magnify in scope until it just plain threw the rider out of the lift.”

On Jan. 3, 1949, the U.S. Forest Service notified Union Pacific that its fees for the special use permits for Sun Valley had been adjusted.  The fees increased, as they were based on a percentage of the gross revenue from their use. Sun Valley did not keep a separate record of revenue from individual ski lifts, and provided a single figure for all the ski lifts, principally Dollar and Baldy.  

The Forest Service allocated the income equally between the two mountains.  Sun Valley’s ski lift revenue for 1948 was $129,800, of which $64,900 was allocated to Bald Mountain.  The total length of the Bald Mountain lifts was 14,600 feet, of which 7,300 feet were on Forest Service land, so revenue of $32,450 was apportioned to that use of Forest Service land.  This led to a fee of $636.  The Proctor Mountain lift and cabin had not been in use for some time so the permit fee for that mountain continued to be $15 a year.

In summer 1951, the Proctor Mountain single chairlift was removed and installed on Baldy to increase lift capacity on the bigger mountain.  It ran from the Roundhouse to the summit, parallel to lift #3 .  Known as lift #5 on Baldy, it carried 300 skiers per hour and nearly doubled the capacity to the summit.

Andy Hennig said there had been plans to install a new chairlift from the Roundhouse to the top of Baldy in 1951. However, Union Pacific’s president didn’t want to spend the money for a new lift, so the Proctor chair was disassembled and used instead.

The top section of Baldy was one of the most popular ski runs, with all-day solar exposure and “exceptionally fine terrain,” according to the Sun Valley Ski Club Report, 1951. This second chairlift should eliminate all waiting, officials said, and will be a natural approach to the Christmas and Easter bowls.

Skiers intending to ski Ridge and College would now ride the old #3 lift. Many of Baldy’s ski runs were cleared of brush and bumps were smoothed out the prior summer to provide more and better skiing for everyone.

For 1954, additional chairs were added and more powerful motors installed on Baldy’s single chairlifts, increasing their capacity. Lift #1 received 27 new chairs, increasing its capacity from 300 to 400 persons an hour.  On lift #2, a new 125-horsepower motor replaced the old 50-horsepower motor and 53 chairs were added, increasing its capacity from 300 to 580 riders per hour.

Lift #5--the old Proctor chair--received a 50-horsepower motor.  Waiting in lines “will be virtually eliminated,” meaning “more skiing for everyone,” Sun Valley advertised.

For winter 1958, a Riblet-designed double chairlift was installed on Bald Mountain from the Roundhouse to the Summit, replacing lift  #5 (the original Proctor single chairlift).  It was 4,300 feet long with a vertical gain of 1,350 feet, had 125 chairs spaced 75 feet apart, moved at 500 feet per minute and provided a capacity of 800 passengers an hour.

It was the latest word in skier transportation... “Another advantage from the new line will be that of having company while in transit up the hill--a circumstance which cannot help but find favor with practically everyone,” the resort touted.

Other work done at Sun Valley for 1958 included removing an island of trees from Rock Garden and taking down cabins on the top of Proctor and Dollar mountains. They were remodeled to make a clubhouse at the shooting range where seven electronically operated traps and a skeet layout had been added.

In 1974, Mount Eyak of Cordova, Alaska, bought the old Proctor chair for $20,000.

“Discover year-round recreation above Cordova on this gorgeous mountain,” advertised Mount Eyak following the acquisition. “Local skiers and boarders love this small but mighty mountain that’s open from December through April on weekends and powder days. Why? Let’s start with the average annual snowfall—a whopping 350” of it.

“You’ll also find the oldest operating single chairlift in North America here: the American Steel and Wire single lift arrived in 1974 from Sun Valley, Idaho. And rumor has it that Marilyn Monroe sat on one of the chairs!”

In 1980, an application was submitted to place the Proctor Mountain chairlift on the National Register of Historic Places. However, the picture used for the registration was not of the Proctor Mountain chairlift—it was of the Ruud Mountain chairlift as it looked in 1977.   And the description on the application erroneously said the Proctor chairlift was still on the mountain in 1980, mistaking it for the Ruud Mountain chairlift.

The Ruud Mountain chairlift was subsequently placed on the National Register, as noted in a plaque at the base of the hill.

Today, the only physical evidence of the Proctor Mountain chairlift left is a series of concrete footings for the towers that were removed long ago.  In 2019, local realtor and ski racer Bob Sarchett worked with the Sun Valley Company to have a plaque installed showing the location of the Proctor chairlift.