STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS BY ROLAND WOLFRAM

After months of planning, a helicopter swooped into the airspace above the parking lot at the Fox Creek Trailhead before sunrise Friday morning.

Over the course of 45 minutes, it picked up half of a 70-foot bridge and towed it one mile up the trail, dropping it onto moorings that had been built.

The helicopter drops the second half of the bridge.

Then it returned to pick up the second half, nimbly placing it exactly where it needed to be.

In 45 minutes, the operation was over.

The Fox Creek Bridge is not ready for use just yet, said Liz Pedersen, development director for the Wood River Trails Coalition. There’s a lot to be done by the Wood River Trails Coalition, Ketchum Ranger District and the contactor before it is a finished product.

But hikers will be able to continue using the trail this summer via some long logs that have been placed across the creek.

One wonders what the deer and elk through as they saw the bridge flying above the woods.

And come next year, when the creek is swollen with snowmelt, hikers will no longer have to risk limb to cross the creek on the popular trail. Rangers with the Ketchum Ranger District hope the bridge will prevail for the next century.

The original bridge flushed downstream three times after floods dating back to 2017. Experts said the much longer 70-foot bridge was needed to prevent that from happening over and over.

The project was originally planned for next year. But it was moved up to this year because the Ketchum Ranger District and Wood River Trails Coalition was able to shave about $100,000 off the $310,000 price tag by using a helicopter that Sun Valley Resort has been using to fly materials in for two new lifts on Bald Mountain.

A little nifty rope work enabled the helicopter to drop the bridge precisely into place.

The new bridge sits upstream from the two long logs hikers are presently using to cross Fox Creek.