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STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK The Sun Valley Ski Club used to have a Spring Race that combined tennis, bowling and shooting with bike racing and skiing. Dick Barrymore came up with the hot dog competition that eventually segued into the moguls and big air competitions that are so popular today (he also invented the wet T-shirt contest in the Boiler Room, according to Kristine Bretall, of the Wood River Museum of History and Culture). And the late Sun Valley Ski School Director Friedl Pfeifer invented the dual slalom racing to add excitement to slalom racing. This weekend Sun Valley Resort is poised to add another new twist on ski racing.
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Sun Valley Resort drew up this map of the course.
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The resort is asking: How do you decide who’s the best skier? Is it the fastest? The most graceful? The one who can ski bumps best? Or the one who can perform backflips in the air? The inaugural Sun Valley Stampede is putting skiers through all those paces, plus an opportunity to strut their stuff on rails, as it crowns The Best Skiers of the West in a race that is timed but involves style points, as well. The race, which starts just below the Mid Challenger station on Warm Springs, takes skiers on a wild ride down a thousand vertical feet of slope primed for GS carving, bumps skiing and natural terrain with the opportunity to hit some rails, zoom through banked slaloms and skier cross elements before hitting rails and catching big air on a jump at the finish line. It will test skiers’ technical control, ability to adapt to terrain and freeride expression in a competition that values overall skiing ability over specialization.
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Uncle E. teased Mikaela Shiffrin about the jeweled sunglasses during the Slalom bib draw during the 2025 Audi FIS World Cup Finals at Sun Valley.
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“It’s nonstop action,” said Riley Berman, who oversaw the construction of Sun Valley’s World Cup Finals course last year. “We’re telling skiers: Choose your own adventure. Test yourself and your ability.” Two days of action will kick off with qualifying races at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, March 14. The head-to-head finals will be held from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 15. There’ll be live music on Warm Springs Plaza in the afternoon of both days with a Vendor Village, as well. The Sun Valley Stampede was concocted as a way to keep the vibe going in between the 2025 World Cup Finals and the 2027 World Cup Finals at Sun Valley in March 2027.
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Steve Porino, who broadcast alpine skiing for NBC during the 2026 Winter Olympics at Milan Cortina, will be among the judges for the Sun Valley Stampede.
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POWDER Magazine Co-Founder Jake Moe pitched the idea to Sun Valley Ski and Ride School Director Stephen Helfenben and Berman. Bald Mountain is the perfect place to host a competition like this because it offers all kinds of terrain in one run, utilizing terrain Sun Valley skiers ski every day, Moe said. “We used to have ski events that were really fun and we’ve gotten away from that,” he said. “This is going to be back to the day when ski events were really fun.” Helfenbein said that every ski mountain has an identity—something that makes it special. “This place is about skiing really well in a lot of different conditions,” he said.
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There’ll be a Vendor Village and live music at Warm Springs Patio.
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Baldy doesn’t have outrageous cliffs or massive snow dumps. What it does have are long steep runs and great snow surfaces for carving turns. And it has “awesome” terrain parks, he said. “To me, great skiers show versatility. They’re someone who can master a lot of things,” he added. “The World Cup showed that no other town in this country loves competition as much as this community—it’s amazing we can host such a competition in such a small community. And we should host something every year—not just every other year.” Salomon is bringing its top athletes. And this new concept has the potential to establish some rivalries—say, pitting Team Salomon against teams from other ski manufacturers and ski towns against other ski towns, Helfenbein added. “It’s a statement of top ski talent, not top ski racing talent,” he said.
In a time when skis are so specialized, the Sun Valley Stampede also asks: What is the ski that can do everything the best? Since skiers cannot use the ski they think makes the best GS turns, then switch to their best mogul ski, it asks them to pick the ski they think will do best through all the elements. “Who is designing that ski that will work well for all of this?” said Berman. “If it snows, it just adds to the complexity.” The race starts with a Dual GS course on mid-Warm Springs that rewards edge control, intelligent line choice and balance before hitting a jump at Race Arena. Skiers will then plunge into a land of moguls and off-piste snow that tests their ability to maintain rhythm through diverse terrain and adapt quickly.
Closer to the bottom, they’ll have banked turns, and optional rails and other creative terrain elements that allow them to express style and amplitude. Skiers can go fast or vie for style points. One last double sided hip jump with perpendicular landings on both the left and right sides will give skiers a last chance to make a statement for the judges. On Sunday skiers will advance through head-to-head brackets meaning the winner might ski the course several times. There’ll be first and second-place Western themed prizes in each age group. And $2,500 is on the line for the first-place male and female.
Those skiing Bal Mountain can watch the Super-G portion along the course or even watch the competition in all its aspects as they ride the chairlift. The most exciting parts of the competition will be in full view of spectators at the bottom of Warm Springs. Pro skiers who plan to compete include Marcus Caton, a ski racer-turned big mountain skier known for his “Return of the Turn “video series, and Harlan Collins, who grew up in Sun Valley and is a three-time ski cross champ (he hit and killed a deer while skiing on Lower College and carried the deer over his shoulder to the bottom where Apples Bar and Grill turned it into stew for all-comers). Others include Connery Lundin from Lake Tahoe, who has appeared in countless ski movies; Matt Sterbenz, founder of 4FRNT Skis; Kole Harle, a British Columbia alpine ski race who hucks off 50-foot cliffs; Ridge Dirksmeier, who competed with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Park and Pipe Team before heading to New Zealand and Japan to film ski flicks, and Joe Dunn, an instructor at Deer Valley Resort who created the Ski Dad TV YouTube Channel. Sun Valley skier Hayley Cutler plans to compete if she doesn’t make the World Cup Finals.
Judges include Heather Paul Featherman, who skied on the University of Vermont ski team before becoming a big mountain skier and a Marmot & K2-sponsored athlete. An XGames skier cross competitor and 24 Hours of Aspen competitor, she has been in multiple ski films, including Warren Miller’s. Others include Ketchum’s Mike Hattrup, a member of the 1987-88 U.S. Freestyle Ski Team who starred in Greg Stump and Warren Miller films, including “Blizzard of Aahhhs” and was named one of POWER Magazine’s 48 Most influential Skiers of Our Time and one of 50 Best Skiers in North America. McKenna Peterson, a big mountain skier who grew up in Wood River Valley, spends summers fishing in Alaska; Lyndsey Dyer, another local, has skied on six continents, been named Female Skier of the Year by POWDER and Freeskier Magazines multiple times and co-founded SheJumps.org. The last is Drew Peterson, a Sun Valley podcast host.
The announcers will be Alex Hegewald, a DJ based in Sun Valley who has broadcast such events as ESPEN and X Games; Christopher (Uncle E) Ernst, who rallied the crowd during the 2025 World Cup Finals in Sun Valley, and Sun Valley’s Steve Porino, a former U.S. Ski Team downhill racer who covers Olympic alpine events and the Tour de France for NBC. IF YOU GO: Saturday (schedules are subject to change) 12 and under Saturday only on a modified course
Age groups are 13 to 17, 18-40 and 41-qualifiers with the top skiers from each age group advancing to Sunday’s head-to-head finals. Qualifying rounds on Saturday: Run 1: 10:30 AM: Ages 13–17 (W then M)
11:00 AM: Adult Age Group 1 (W then M) 11:30 AM: Adult Age Group 2 (W then M) 12:00 PM: Adult Ages 41+ (W then M) 12:30 PM: Ages 12 & Under (1 Run Only)
Run 2: 1:30 PM: Ages 13–17 (W then M) 2:00 PM: Adult Age Group 1 (W then M) 2:30 PM: Adult Age Group 2 (W then M)
3:00 PM: Adult Ages 41+ (W then M) The Awards Ceremony will start at 4 p.m. SUNDAY Bracket Rounds:
11:00 AM: Round of 32 M 11:30 AM: Round of 16 W 11:50 AM: Round of 16 M 12:10 PM: Round of 8 W
12:30 PM: Round of 8 M Lunch. Break. Course Maintenance 1:30 PM: Round of 4 W 1:45 PM: Round of 4 M
2:00 PM: Finals W 2:15 PM: Finals M The Awards Ceeremony will be held at 2:30 p.m. There’ll be a Vendor Village at Warm Springs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday featuring local brands, demos and giveaways from Sun Valley Resort, Salomon, Smith, Mammut, POWDER and Bark 9. There also will be an outdoor BBQ and bar.
There’ll be live music from 2 to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Aaron Golay and the Original Sin will perform at Warm Springs on Friday; Hooks and the Huckleberries on Saturday and the Kris Lager Band on Sunday. DJ BearSkinRug will perform a set from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday.
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