STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS COURTESY JANET KELLAM

After the community rallied to save Galena Lodge from the wrecking ball, Janet Kellam became the concessionaire in charge of opening the lodge after it had been closed for three years.

It meant sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag, shoveling the roof daily in a winter that saw 200 percent average snowfall and dealing with a generator that was on its last legs, a septic system that needed an overhaul and an old Ford pickup truck that couldn’t keep a grip on its plow.

Janet Kellam spent six weeks camping on Antarctica ice with a film crew.

But Kellam persevered, leading the way for the lodge to grow into a Nordic and mountain bike lodge that is the envy of many. And for that and many other pioneering endeavors she will be inducted into the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame at 5:30 tonight—Thursday, Dec. 11.

Seats are full, but the ceremony will be livestreamed at https://vimeo.com/event/5530337 and available to watch later on The Community Library’s online Archive. There also will be a reception following the ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Wood River Museum of History + Culture.

Kellam will be inducted along with longtime Sun Valley ski instructor Juli Webb, hockey magnate George Gund III and Ed “Scotty” Scott, who revolutionized skiing with his ski pole, plastic ski boot, goggles and other inventions.

Kellam did not grow up in the West. She grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., where her great grandfather had made a living in stonecutting and road construction.

The Antarctica expedition involved a schooner ship.

“He moved to New York from California after his orange grove froze to build the Million Dollar Staircase for the New York State Capitol. He built cobblestone streets and I think he even carved my great-grandmother’s face into an angel face on the staircase,” she said.

Because they built roads in summer, the Kellam family played during winters, skiing and skijoring in the Adirondack Mountains. Young Kellam nurtured a love for skiing that  led her to compete in alpine and Nordic skiing at Middlebury College where she majored in environmental biology.

She was introduced to the West in 1976 when she was invited to work as a college intern in the White Cloud Mountains with a wildlife biologist who was trying to restore salmon runs.

“I remember him calling and asking, ‘How would you like to work in Stanley, Idaho? I opened my atlas and saw it was one of the few areas in the United States that had so few roads. I called back and said, ‘Yes!!!!’ ”

Janet Kellam installed the Titus weather station.

Kellam caught a ride to Bozeman, Mont., where she took a Greyhound bus to Twin Falls. Her bus to Ketchum broke down near Shoshone amidst the lava rock.

“Total desert, total sagebrush, but I could see the white peaks of the Pioneer Mountains in the distance and that gave me hope.”

Upon arriving in Ketchum, Kellam was greeted at Atkinsons Market by Jim Crow, a large pet raven who was notorious for chasing children and begging for snacks from skiers.

“He spread his wings and rocked back and forth. All of a sudden, he said, ‘Alright!’ ”He’d ride the bus between Ketchum and Sun Valley and hang out at Sun Valley Resort. He dropped a woman’s car keys on the top of a bank so the cops had to arrest Jim Crow.”

Checking snow layers comprised about a third of Janet Kellam’s work as an avalanche forecaster.

Kellam and Dana Perkins, who went on to become a whitebark pine specialist, lived in a wall tent and washed dishes in Stanley’s Kasino Club in their spare time, dancing to the Braun Brothers on weekends.

“Something like that—who wouldn’t come back!” she said.

And she did return the following summer, helping this time with a bighorn sheep study.

But the next few years were consumed with ski racing in national races against the U.S. Ski Team, even racing in the pre-Olympics before the Lake Placid Olympics. Though Kellam did well she didn’t make the six-member team. But that was forgotten when she was introduced to three-pin skiing on the backside of Vermont’s Mount Mansfield on a trail that had been cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

“I loved it. That ended traditional racing for me,” said Kellam.

In 1980 Kellam returned to Ketchum where she waitressed at The Colonel, located where the Wood River Museum is now. She taught skiing at Galena Lodge and coached the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Junior Nordic team with Kevin Swigert, while getting in as much backcountry skiing as she could.

“Galena Lodge had a teensy Pisten Bully and Cam Daggett took people for dog sled rides on the Thunder Paw Express. Hurley and Dan Hamilton owned the lodge and Charlie Johnson and Bobby Noyes worked there.”

The following winter Kellam became the first licensed female ski guide, after taken a three-day exam that involved spending the night at Galena Summit, first-aid and route finding. She guided in the mountains near Sun Valley, Driggs and the Eastern Sierra. And she guided for Sun Valley Heli Ski, building a yurt in the Pioneer Mountains near the Hyndman Basin and another a half-mile past the North Fork of Hyndman Creek.

“Then, they only plowed the road to Triumph and it was too far to get to the Coyote Yurt in one day,” said Kellam, who also worked at The Elephant’s Perch.

Towards the end of the 1980s a documentary filmmaker who had seen Kellam’s ability to get around in the mountains recruited her for a caving film in New Zealand. She got a gig on Survival of the Fittest out of that in 1983. Then, in 1990, she set sail from South America on a hundred-foot triple-masted schooner to Antarctica.

She and the film crew spent six weeks climbing, skiing and filming whales, seals and penguins for National Geographic Explorer, showing the need to preserve Antarctica ahead of the renewal of the Peace Treaty.

“We had no communication, no cell phones. Help was not going to get to come for us,” she recalled “We were the original adventure film people. There was hardly anyone down there then save for a guy on a 30-foot sailboat who climbed up to cut a piece of mutton hanging off the yardarm when he wanted dinner.”

One time, Kellam recounted, the boat ended up in a group of krill.

“I was the sound recorder, wearing headphones, and one whale surfaced blowing stuff all over me. One came up, turned and looked me in the eye—here I was covered in stinky whale stuff.”

Climate change was happening then, Kellam said—those who had been there noticed more exposed rock than they’d seen before.

“I see pictures now, and the ice shelf we where we lived and skied is all open water now.”

In 1993, Kellam tired of the travel and returned to Ketchum.

“I wanted to be part of the community. Andy Munter suggested I be a concessionaire for Galena Lodge,” she recalled. “It was a wonderful opportunity. I wanted to build it back to be the magical place that Steve Haims had created and take it further.”

Kellam enlisted Sawtooth Club’s Tom Nickel to help her draw up a business plan. And during back-to-back 200 percent of average snow years, she found herself constantly rescuing groomers by snowmobile.

The Idaho Transportation Department helped clear the parking lot of snow but could do nothing to sop up the water when spring thaw turned the parking lot into a lake.

Still, with the help of the community, the lodge managed to host the First Security Winter Games, the animal shelter’s Paw and Pole and moonlight ski dinners. And Kellam put up the Miner’s Yurt

In 1996 snow ranger Doug Abromeit approached Kellam about expanding the avalanche forecasting duties that he had taken over from Ketchum District Ranger Butch Harper two years earlier.

Kellam began tromping into the office at 4 in the morning where she checked the weather and observations backcountry users had left on the hotline before writing her forecasts.

When she didn’t have to deal with administrative work, she headed to Galena Peak, an area popular with snowmobilers in the Baker Creek area and out of bounds on Bald Mountain to dig snow pits to check for weak layers in the snow. She forged a relationship with area meteorologists, and she helped start avalanche classes for snowmobilers and skiers.

“I was concerned about snowshoers on summer trails—they’d go up Proctor Mountain and march right across a high avalanche zone. Kids sledding, too—I talked to middle school kids. I ‘m so pleased that we have so much awareness today. We have four forecasters and we network with avalanche centers to learn from each other.”

Kellam stepped back in 2017 to take care of her mother in Schenectady who was dealing with health issues. She went back and forth for the next five years, finally settling back into the rhythm of life in Ketchum after her mother passed.

Today she takes long walks with Andy Munter, whom she married in 2003, and their dog—a playful Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Toby--at their homes on the Board Ranch and at Fisher Creek. And she helps out with the Sawtooth Ski Club

“I’m looking forward to doing more skiing this year—I couldn’t go backcountry skiing last year because of a shoulder replacement,” she said. “I just feel so fortunate that I get to live here, that I’ve been able to work here.

“I just feel so fortunate that we have the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and all this public land around us--the Lost River Range, Frank Church Wilderness… And we’re so fortunate to have a community that cares—about the arts, the environment, kids, about each other.”