STORY BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Editor’s Note: Sun Valley once again welcomed the Ancient Skiers—a group of die-hard Washington skiers that has been coming to ski for a week at Sun Valley Resort for ages. Over the years, the group has included such members of Ski Patrol innovator  Nelson Bennett and mountaineer Lou Whittaker.

Now, they’re here again this week—living it up in Sun Valley’s Boiler Room, perusing the ski exhibits at the Wood River Museum of History + Culture and, of course, skiing Sun Valley. They will cap the week tonight with a banquet at Sun Valley’s Limelight Room.

Karen Audett stands next to an exhibit of Gretchen Fraser, America’s first Alpine skier to medal at the Olympics. Audett said her father Art Audett knew Fraser, having been Sun Valley’s No. 12 ski instructor in the days before World War II took him away: “He came to Sun Valley in 1942 after my mother, who worked at Trail Creek Cabin. After the war they managed a handful of ski resorts, including Lookout Pass, Stevens Pass and one in Alaska.”

Here's John W. Lundin’s account:

Our organization was founded on the idea of skiing together every year in Sun Valley, according Joy Lucas in her book, Ancient Skiers.

We began in 1982 when one had to have skied before World War II to be a member. The idea was to hold events that would bring old ski friends together, such as the Sun Valley Reunion.

Our Sun Valley trips began in 1983 and they quickly became the club’s main event.  This is no surprise given what Sun Valley has always meant to Northwest skiers.

Rae Kozlowski and Kim Cathleen Verde stand beneath the rescue toboggan that Sun Valley’s former Ski Patrol Director Nelson Bennett invented with his brother.

Sun Valley opened in December 1936, built by Union Pacific Railroad under the leadership of Averell Harriman. He built it for $1.5 million during the Depression as the country’s first destination ski resort, offering a high class experience in Idaho’s remote mountains.

Called “America’s St. Moritz,” it had a luxurious Lodge with high-end shops, chairlifts invented by UP engineers to take skiers uphill quickly and in comfort, huge mountains with abundant dry snow and clear skies and a ski school with Austrian instructors that made skiing sexy.

Sun Valley had an immediate impact on Washington’s skiers.  Our skiing was done in private clubs or on local mountains and involved climbing, since there were no lifts.  Gear was rudimentary and ski lessons virtually non-existent.

Sun Valley was a vision of paradise, accessible in comfort by train, and Washington skiers were drawn there like moths to a flame.  In 1937, the Seattle Times said “Sun Valley was 26 hours from Seattle by train, and 20 hours by car, but it might as well be in Seattle’s back yard...”

Kris Jarvis visits with Mark Bathum, a visually impaired skier who trained at Sun Valley for the 2010 and 2014 Paralympics—the first in which he used local Slater Storey as his guide. Bathum says he’s been spending six months of the year here and will move here permanently in February—“I can walk everywhere here.”

Seattle newspapers reported on ski races at Sun Valley and Seattleites who traveled there to enjoy its year-round attractions.  The Times mentioned Sun Valley 227 times in 1937, and 234 times in 1938.  Sun Valley’s lifts even inspired skiers to get tows installed in ski areas near Seattle.  

The Harriman Cup was the country’s most challenging and prestigious ski race, attracting the world’s best skiers.  The American Ski Annual 1943 said, “just as it is the dream of every tennis player to compete once at Wimbledon, it is every skier’s hope to participate in the famous Harriman Cup Races at Sun Valley.”

For the first Harriman Cup in 1937, Averell invited Seattle’s Don Fraser and Darroch Crookes, who were members of the 1936 U.S. Olympic Ski Team, and Don Amick, who would later make his way onto the 1948 Olympic Ski Team.

They were given first-class train tickets. When they stepped off the train, a warm bus took them to the Sun Valley Lodge, where all the movie stars were standing around waiting to see the great skiers.

Brenda Lyon and Rae Kozlowski enjoy a moment on the old chairlift seat that hangs in the museum.

The three walked in dressed like bums. But they felt like kings given the opportunity to stay in the Lodge since they were used to the old guide’s shack at Mount Rainier.       

Resort publicist Dorice Taylor wrote that Seattle Ridge was named “for the rugged skiers of Seattle who ski their own Cascades in raincoats.”

In the spring when they come to Sun Valley, she wrote, they didn’t mind at all following a long and difficult catwalk out to the Ridge.  They would wait there for the snow to soften. Then they would ski down a great open slope that led to the highway well below Ketchum.  From this point they walked or hitchhiked back to town.

We have seen Sun Valley grow and prosper over the years.  It was rated the No. 1 ski resort by Ski Magazine in 2021, 2022 and 2023.  It was rated the No. 2 resort between 2016 and 2020 in what is one of the most consistent rankings of any resort.

“But if there was a ranking for history, Sun Valley would have been in first place every year,”   the magazine declared.

Sun Valley hosted the World Cup Alpine Finals in 2025 and will do so again in 2027.   

My mother skied in the 1930s at Paradise, the Municipal Ski Park at Snoqualmie Pass and the Milwaukee Ski Bowl.  Like many, I learned to ski in the 1950s on Snoqualmie Pass, riding rope tows and using wooden skis and leather boots when Webb Moffett gave free ski passes to those who boot-packed snow for an hour before the lifts opened.

I first skied in Sun Valley in 1960 after an arduous 24-hour train ride from Seattle, when a one week pass cost $39. For $5 you could stay in a bunkhouse at North Fork and get breakfast and dinner.

I returned during spring vacations when I was a student at the University of Washington, chasing after Erik Giese and Dick Hanson. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have a place in Ketchum since the early 1980s.

After skiing all over this country and Europe, Sun Valley remains my favorite resort

EDITOR’S NOTE: John W. Lundin has written several books, including Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass and Skiing Sun Valley: A History From Union Pacific to the Holdings. His essays are on Historylink.org, the on-line encyclopedia of Washington history and on the Central Washington University website at https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/local_authors/.