STORY AND PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN W. LUNDIN

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the Army decided to activate a full division of mountain troops for a future invasion of Europe.

An Army Division includes 12,000 to 16,000 personnel and is commanded by a major general.  Mount Rainier did not have the size or facilities to train this number of mountain troops so another training site had to be selected.

Averell Harriman, who founded Sun Valley Resort as America’s first destination ski resort, was a true patriot.  

The 87th Mountain Infantry trains on skis. COURTESY: American Ski Annual 1944

Beginning in 1940, Harriman became deeply involved in public service with the U.S. war effort and, later, in diplomacy and politics. In 1941, Harriman became chief of the materials branch of the production division in the Office of Production Management.  Later that year, he was sent by President Roosevelt to Britain to administer the Lend-Lease Act, which provided U.S. aid to U.S. allies for the war effort.

Harriman went to Moscow in 1941, to arrange Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union.  In August 1942, Harriman returned to Russia, this time with Churchill, to discuss opening a second front in Europe.

After that Harriman was made Ambassador to Russia in 1943.  The work done in England during the war by Harriman, newsman Edward R. Morrow, and U.S. Ambassador John G. Winant is told in Citizens of London: the Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson.

Harriman’s role in WWII is also described in Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Issacson & Evan Thomas.

Fred Iselin opined that Sun Valley Resort offered ideal training grounds for 10th Mountain Division troops.

Harriman believed it was important for the country to have ski troops as part of its military team.  In fall 1941, Harriman offered to let the War Department use Sun Valley as a base to train an expanded number of army ski troops, based on input from ski instructor Fred Iselin, who had served with the Swiss Alpine Troops.

In Switzerland, officers were trained at winter resorts, such as St. Moritz, where the training period was sped up five-fold when ski lifts were available.  Harriman offered to train Army officers at Sun Valley at a reasonable expense rate and have them coached by Iselin and Willi Meyer.

He theorized they could get ski training at the resort using its ski lifts and be taken into the higher mountains for mountaineering work.

The Sun Valley Ski Club Annual, Season 1941, published an article written by Fred Iselin titled Why Not Military Skiing at Sun Valley? that described Harriman’s vision.  Iselin advocated using Sun Valley’s resources to train U.S. military ski troops, which he said were better than in any other place in the United States.

Sun Valley Resort ski instructor Walter Prager demonstrates rappelling for a training film.

The resort had more than 10 miles of slopes from easy and gentle ones to the most difficult rock peaks and mountains surrounding the resort that offered the variety of terrain necessary to train ski troops.

Harriman thought this terrain could be used to serve Alpine Troops, which had to be formed into two groups. Group A involved training the soldier to be a first-class skier.  Group B involved training the first-class skier to be a high Alpine soldier.

Iselin said that Sun Valley, with its chair lifts, was the best area to train soldiers to be first-class skiers in a short time.  The Proctor lift, which was generally not used until March, could be reserved for ski troops, he ventured.

Once trained in proper skiing techniques, the soldiers need to learn skiing and camping in high Alpine terrain, for which the Pioneer region of the Sawtooth mountain range offers the perfect location, he added: “I, personally, couldn’t think of a better place than this with its rocks, snow and ice. And it would be necessary to build a few military cabins in the area for a base camp.”

The 10th Mountain Division trekked through snow in Italy in January 1945.

Alpine training had to be strict with necessary discipline to accustom the mountain infantryman to ski and walk correctly with a heavy load. Group B infantrymen also had to know how to build ski sleds, bivouacs, fix meals in snow and ice and handle an avalanche shovel, avalanche rod and avalanche thread. They also had to know first aid, skiing on the rope, roping down, walking with crampons and how to read maps and compass.

Iselin added that a military ski patrol competition should be organized in future big ski races.

The government did not accept Harriman’s offer, and, instead, created a major training facility for Mountain Troops at Camp Hale, Colo., that opened in late 1942.

The Sun Valley Resort was disrupted by the war, as was the entire country.  In December 1941, the Office of Defense Transportation ordered railroads not to run sports specials for the duration of the war.

And on Dec. 7, 1941, Union Pacific announced that Sun Valley—"winter sports resort of the nation”—was closing its doors to the public on Dec. 20 for the duration of the war.

Hundreds of people with reservations over Christmas were notified.

“Scarcity of help, shortage of food, fuel rationing and rail-traffic conservation are the reasons for closing,” they were told.

The University of Washington ski team had to cancel its trip to Sun Valley, and 500 Seattle area skiers were forced to change their plans.

Three ski meets planned for 1942 were cancelled, and 625 Union Pacific employees, a ski-instructing staff of ten headed by Otto Lang and 1,000 skiers with reservations for the holiday were affected, according to the Seattle Times.

In the Sun Valley Ski Club Annual, Season 1942, Otto Lang wrote that the President of the Union Pacific Railroad decided to close Sun Valley after the government advocated curtailing unnecessary travel, which would include ski trips.

“The ever farther spreading effects of the present emergency have also reached the thresholds of our little village in the Sawtooth Mountains,” he wrote. “It is with deep regret-- but at the same time with patriotic pride--that I take it upon me to inform our members that Sun Valley is closing for the duration of the War...

“A great number of our members and friends are on the various war fronts at training school or at camp.  They, as well as all other club members, will be carried on our active list until we resume our regular activities.”

The war had other impacts on the resort.  Not long after the U.S. entered the war, the F.B.I. detained three Sun Valley Austrian ski instructors suspected of being enemy aliens.  Friedl Pfeifer and Hans Hauser were taken to a North Dakota detention camp, and Sepp Froehlich was held in a county jail.

Pfeifer was the head of the Sun Valley Ski School and married to the daughter of a prominent Salt Lake City banker.  Froehlich was married to a daughter of a wealthy Eastern family.

After an investigation, Pfeifer and Froehlich were released in mid-February 1942.  In March 1942, Pfeifer resigned as head of the Sun Valley ski school and enlisted in the Army.  Otto Lang directed the Ski School in Pfeifer’s absence.  Hauser was kept in an internment camp for the duration of the war. and Harriman ignored his pleas to help him get out.  

Sun Valley ski instructors Otto Lang, Florian Haemmerle and Andy Hennig were already American citizens. But Sigi Engl was not, and he immediately enlisted.  Pfeifer, Froehlich and a long list of Sun Valley ski instructors later joined the 10th Mountain Division.

Another major change at Sun Valley was the disappearance of Count Schaffgotsch,  who in 1936 had selected Ketchum as the located for Union Pacific’s new ski resort planned by Averell Harriman.

The Count’s Nazi sympathies were well known.  When World War II broke out, he returned to Germany, became an officer in the German Waffen SS Florian Geyer division and was killed fighting on the Eastern front in Russia in 1942.

The Waffen SS was an elite paramilitary wing of the Nazi party that ran concentration camps and carried out assignments from Hitler and Himmler.  Its mission in 1942 was an “anti-partisan” one to “deal with” the Jews, Gypsies and Slavic populations in Central Europe so Germans could resettle the area by burning villages and massacring civilians.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Even though the Army turned down Averell Harriman’s offer to use Sun Valley as a training ground for 10th Mountain Division troops, Sun Valley Resort did have a—should we say?—starring role in the 10th Mountain Division?

Learn more in the conclusion to the three-part look at the 10th Mountain Division in Eye on Valley next week.

The author, John W. Lundin, is a lawyer and historian whose books include “Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley” and his latest, “From Cheechakos to Sourdoughs: Two Ivy Leaguers’ Quest for Yukon Gold,” which he co-authored with his brother Steve.