STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Sun Valley’s Mountain Masters has long been the crème de la crème for skiers who want to sharpen their skills in a wide variety of conditions from powder snow to moguls to even Bald Mountain’s racecourse.

The program offers its skiers a group to ski with and instruction from some of Sun Valley’s best ski instructors who often introduce the skiers to terrain they might never have skied before.

During the last seven years Mountain Masters has included one-day-a-week and two-days-a-week options with its longstanding five-day-a-week eight-week program. It even offers a Mountain Masters program crammed into just one week, rather than eight weeks, for those who don’t spend all winter in Sun Valley.

Kimmie Drummond and Minette Broschofsky get the bonus of eagle eye views from the chairlift during the Senior Mountain Masters program on Dollar Mountain.

This year came another option. Senior Mountain Masters, as it’s dubbed, is an eight-week program for skiers 65 and up who want to continue enjoying the art of carving turns on manicured snow but on the less crowded, less intimidating terrain of Dollar Mountain.

The Senior Mountain Masters get to focus on fine tuning their skiing—even practicing elegant skiing—while making new friends among their skiing buddies.

The program was a hit among those who tried it this year, said Rae Kowlowski.

Participants divided into three groups with such instructors as Tony Parkhill, former director of Sun Valley Ski & Ride School, leading them around the nooks and crannies of Dollar Mountain that they might not have known existed.

Leslie Nelson talks about edging skis.

“Some of those in our new group don’t want to ski the long runs on Bald Mountain anymore. Here we give them the comfort of Dollar Mountain, but they’re still out there enjoying skiing,” said Kimmie Drummond, who oversees the Mountain Masters program. “And on Thursday evenings those skiing in the Dollar Mountain program join those skiing in the Bald Mountain programs at a weekly social at Warm Springs Lodge.

On one sunny afternoon towards the end of the eight-week program 11 skiers showed up at the base of Dollar Mountain, breaking up into three groups as they readied to catch the chairlift to the top of Dollar Mountain.

Susan Sahlberg hadn’t skied for five years after having her ankle replaced. But, with the help of Mountain Masters, she quickly returned to her previous form, entertaining her fellow skiers as she sang her way down the mountain.

John Koh, an ecology scientist who lives in San Diego when not in Sun Valley, found it difficult to ski when he incurred some eye problems. But with surgery he elected to go for it again and was skiing Dollar Mountain to regain his confidence while his wife skied on Baldy.

Josh Koh follows his classmates down the hill.

Minette Broschofsky used to ski Bald Mountain a few times a week before the Covid pandemic. Afterwards, she found herself skiing fewer days.

“Last year I skied 29 days. This year I started Mountain Masters,” she said. “I know how to ski, but I find it’s fun to ski with other people. It’s been really fun and I’ve learned how to ski powder and black diamonds better.”

Dollar Mountain has a good pitch so it’s acknowledged that, if you can ski from the top of Dollar, you can ski Baldy,” said Leslie Nelson, the group’s ski instructor.

Nelson is a native of Pebble Beach, Calif., who moved to Sun Valley to ski as a stuntwoman for Warren Miller films and to ride horses. She’s competed with the American horse team in the Pan American Games and won the women’s mountain bike title of VetExpert World Champion.

Leslie Nelson talks about ways to handle icy patches.

And during winter she shows skiers how to expertly ski.

Nelson showed the three how to focus on their little toe and big toe as they went from one edge to another. And she showed them how to release their ski edges to do a little slide slip to navigate an icy patch.

Then she took them down New Bowl, showing them little tricks to ski uneven slushy conditions.

“I came to Dollar one day when the light was flat and I went to Quarter Dollar first to get a feel for skiing in the flat light,” Broschofsky told her. “Eventually, I got my confidence to ski the entire mountain.”

While Senior Mountain Masters is marketed to those 65 and above, it will take anybody, said Drummond.

“Senior Mountain Masters is a really great program,” added Nelson. “And I think next year it will be even better.”