BY KAREN BOSSICK

Peter Stearns has long been thought of as the man who orchestrated snowmaking operations to get Bald Mountain open by Thanksgiving or, more recently, one of those who played a key role in getting the new Challenger and Flying Squirrel chairlifts built and running in a tight window of time.

But Stearns was also involved in building the wooden fence that lines the fields between Sun Valley and Ketchum. He helped build the Lodge Terrace at Sun Valley's outdoor ice rink and the Seattle Ridge Lodge and the infrastructure for River Run and Warm Springs

Stearns recently retired after a half-century of working for Sun Valley Company, one of his more recent positions being that of director of Mountains Operations, a position to which he was appointed in 2009. And it's impossible to see beloved aspects of Sun Valley that he hasn't touched in some way.

Stearns came to Sun Valley in 1974 straight out of college at the University of Oregon in Eugene where he had majored in Fine Arts. He came with a college roommate from Boise, but Sun Valley was not new to him.

His father had come here in 1948, getting a job with legendary Ski Patrol Director Nelson Bennett and the Sun Valley Ski Patrol. A Yakima, Wash, native, he'd skied with Don Fraser, an Olympic alpine ski racer whose wife Gretchen Fraser became the first American in 1948 to medal in alpine skiing at a Winter Olympics.

"I came here when I was 11, but I grew up skiing Mount Bachelor and had been exposed to a lot of people in the ski business. And, like so many, I fell in love with Sun Valley," said Stearns.

Stearns' first job at Sun Valley was working the front desk at the Sun Valley Lodge with Louis Stur, a Hungarian native famed for first ascents of many of the peaks surrounding Sun Valley, including the Stur Chimney on Mt. Heyburn that was named for him. Stur also famously skied from Sun Valley to Galena Lodge in 1973 to deliver medicine when snow closed the highway.

In 1980 Stearns started working on Sun Valley's trail crew. With Sun Valley's vast snowmaking system still in its infancy, he helped install pipes along Roundhouse Lane, Upper and Lower College and along Gun Tower Lane leading to the Seattle Ridge area of Bald Mountain. Several years later he helped install  automatic snowmaking on Lower Warm Springs and Upper Greyhawk.

Stearns helped put in the first Challenger lift 50 years before he would oversee its replacement. And between 1977 and 1980 he was involved in building two of Dollar Mountain's lifts, before later dismantling the iconic Exhibition and Sunnyside lifts when they were no longer needed.

"In 1991 we retrofitted the snowmaking system, making it automatic, which was a monster project and a significant financial commitment on the part of the Holdings," he recounted. "Before, we had to drag hoses around. We put thermometers at various places and, when it got too warm in one place, we'd  load up the hoses and haul them elsewhere."

With the automated system, by contrast, a computer takes imput from snowmaking crew and takes advantage of the best temperatures and wind conditions to optimize snowmaking.

"There weren't a lot of automatic systems in the United States when we automated ours. It was a game changer. And it's certainly proven its worth over time. Initially, snowmaking in the West was just to augment the snow Mother Nature gives us. Now a lot of ski areas have become dependent on snowmaking," Stearns said.

It's gratifying to think he and others built something that brings a lot of joy to a lot of people, Stearns added.

"This is a community that's passionate about its skiing, and I get it. I grew up in a skiing family, and that's what we did. My dad was a skier in the 1940s, and we did it as a family in the '60s and '70s. I raised my kids here and they started out on Dollar, learning under Alice Schernthanner who touched the lives of most of the kids in the valley. Now, my grandchildren are spending their time at Dollar with the Little Spuds program."

As he neared retirement, Stearns took five pages to list the projects he's worked on over the years. But he's quick to acknowledge that he was part of a team that built what needed to be built.

"There was a significant number of people involved," said Stearns, who even did a five-year stint with the Sun Valley Ski Patrol.

That was especially true of this past year's Warm Springs Enhancement Project, which included tearing down the old Challenger and Greyhawk lifts to build the new Challenger six-passenger lift and a new Flying Squirrel chairlift.

Stearns and others spent a few years getting necessary permits from the Forest Service, working with Dopplemayr to custom design the lifts for Sun Valley and constructing a building plan that left no margin for error given the tight constraint between the time one ski season ended and the next began.

They did it all while harvesting dead and dying trees on 92 acres of the Cold Springs side of the mountain in an ongoing project to improve the health of the forest on Bald Mountain.

"We had to get it done in time. Failure was not an option," he said.

Sun Valley closed the Warm Springs side ahead of the rest of the mountain on April 9, 2023, following a huge snow year. Workers immediately began plowing through the deep snow so they could cut down trees on the proposed Flying Squirrel extension and lift them by helicopter off the mountain before migratory birds would have the chance to build nests in them between May 1 and July 31.

"We needed that real estate to assemble the lift," Stearns said.

Workers had to drill, blast and move 8,400 cubic yards of dirt to make room for the new Challenger lift's mid-station, which would deposit skiers at the top of Upper Greyhawk.

"It spoke to the complexity of things," Stearns said. "I wish people could see the underground utility that had to be dug up and moved."

Stearns, who was given the honor of cutting the ribbon on the Challenger chairlift in December 2023, said he's pleased with the Challenger, whose vertical rise is the biggest in the world, ferrying people to the top of Baldy in 8.06 minutes--three times faster than the 23 minutes it took years ago.

"It's a good thing for community vibrancy, for skiing, for all of southern Idaho," he said. "Both Challenger and Flying Squirrel are amazing machines. Not enough attention has been paid to Flying Squirrel, but it will become the locals' favorite."

Stearns quips that when he began tearing out projects like the Challenger, Sunnyside and Exhibition lifts that he had helped build that he knew it was time to go. He even helped dismantle the Duchin Restaurant on the top of College Boulevard that many of today's Sun Valley residents never knew existed.

His new chapter, he said, will give him more time with his grandchildren 4-year-old Murphy and 1-year-old Chance and his daughter Mia and son Crockett, who was named for the coonskin-capped Davy Crockett--Peter's great, great, great, great uncle. And, of course, his wife Heidi who he met while playing softball at Atkinsons' Park years ago.

They're looking forward to traveling around the world but will always be glad to return to Sun Valley.

"I'm super proud and happy to have raised my kids here," said Stearns, who’s also looking forward to dabbling in his passion for art again. "So many people from the Holdings on down have played a tremendous role in making Sun Valley what it is today, and I'm just glad I got to be around when this evolution took place. I just feel so privileged to have been part of something that brings so much joy and excitement to so many people."