Sun Valley Magazine | Winter 2010-11

winter/spring 2011

5 b swim team | Backyard Rinks | Avalanche Awareness | Full moon nights

W inter/Spring 2011

sun valley magazine

6

snow piOneers

Valley locals influencing the winter sports world

Defying gravity

Snowmobiling’s High Flying Idaho Boys

QUIET KINGMAKER

The little known story of E. Parry Thomas

VALLEY FOLKLORE

Weird, Wacky and Moss-covered Myths

13 Great Gifts 3 Terrain Parks 9 Goggle Guidelines

www.sunvalleymag.com

White Clouds is an exclusive residential neighborhood in Sun Valley. The much-anticipated first offering of the White Clouds Townhomes is now available. The townhomes overlook holes 1 and 9 of the White Clouds Nine, are adjacent to the regional biking/hiking trail and directly across the street from the new Sun Valley Club. These spectacular townhomes offer stunning views of the surrounding mountain peaks.

This first townhome offering by Sun Valley Company has been carefully planned and includes only four single family clustered homes and four duplexes and will feature the quality and craftsmanship for which Sun Valley Company is known. Homes range in size from approximately 1,990 square feet to 2,700 square feet. Final pricing will be available by late December.

For more information contact Sun Valley Resort Property located in the Sun Valley Mall or call 208.622.2828.

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Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 4

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contents | features

58

High Flying Idaho Boys

Heath Frisby and Isaac Sherbine are taking snowmobiling to new heights.

by Kira elizabeth tenney photography by kristin cheatwood

64

Snow Pioneers

64

76

From carving up halfpipes and launching big air to introducing a new sport to the region and teaching kids to love carving turns, Valley locals are making their marks in the snow. photography by Hillary Maybery

76

Home is Where the Art Lives

Hailey artist Richard Rush shares his home, and his passion for expressions on canvas. by mike mckenna photography by kirsten shultz

80

Unbridled Enthusiasm on the cover

Colter Bremmer throws a cork 720 at Smith Optics’ private backcountry terrain park. photographed by TaL ROBERTS

12 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

How the “Quiet Kingmaker,” E. Parry Thomas, envisioned the Las Vegas Strip and shared his love for the idyllic, leisure life of Sun Valley with Sin City’s most powerful people. by steve friess photography by Kirsten Shultz

frisby & sherbine snowblowing: kristin cheatwood / kaitlyn farrington: hillary maybery / richard rush: kirsten shultz

58

49

92

25

25

86

25 Local Buzz

New Skis | Locally made and designed.

Epic Terrain | Launching into Sun Valley’s next generation.

Calendar | What’s happening this winter.

Backcountry | Avalanche awareness.

39

Body & Soul

Body Work | Indoor workout spots.

Winter Protection | Surviving driving on snow and ice. Eye and skin protection.

49

Get Out There

Backyard Rinks | Old school hockey.

Full Moon Nights | Moonlit adventures.

Soldier Mountain | The rebuilt lodge.

The Roundhouse | Reinvented.

14 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

86 | History Lore and Legends. A closer look at Wood River Valley mysteries.

by van gordon sauter

92 | Kids Pages Learning to swim like champs. by julie gallagher

96 | Words & Writers The unconventional life of Idahobred Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Marilynne Robinson. by emily ruskovich

100 | Local Hero The beauty of “pizza and French fries.” by kit doucette

102 | Local Voices The future of Sun Valley is beginning to look a lot younger. by hailey tucker

Also in This Issue 18 | From the Editor 20 | Contributors 111 | Gifts & Gear 116 | Galleries & Artists 122 | Gallery/Restaurant Map 123 | Restaurant Guide

broom ball: craig wolfrom / swimmer: kevin syms / galena avalanche patrol: craig wolfrom moss man: michael wertz / 5b ski manufacturing: todd kaplan

contents | departments

Available Exclusively at

Sun Valley 208-622-2021 River Run 208-622-6146

contents | online

{ www.sunvalleymag.com } When you want more, visit www.sunvalleymag.com for in-depth stories, multimedia features, local color and resources.

Yum! | A Blog About Food Whether you want to grow and harvest, or simply prepare and enjoy, Yum is all about food and the role it plays in our lives.

Local Resources Menus at your fingertips...We’ve made dining out in the Valley a whole lot easier.

Browse through menus and listings of nearly a 100 restaurants. Whether it’s casual lunch or a romantic dinner, find it online.

Valley Calendar Wondering what to do? Check our calendar first.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more cool happenings in and around Sun Valley.

Check out your weekly Horrorscope from Clouds SCORPIO McCloud every Monday afternoon!

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www.sunvalleymag.com 16 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

By Lynea newcomer

Get more . . .

Stories A profile on Sun Valley’s new snow terrain park guru Brian Callahan.

More Valley folklore with the haunting Legend of Mrs. Osborne.

More of our exclusive interview with novelist Marilynne Robinson.

An interview with professional skier and freestyle coach Tai Barrymore.

Hitched | Planning Your Big Day Everything you need to know to plan your dream wedding, from an honest and funny first-person perspective.

By charlotte hemmings

Fetch | For the Love of Pets About all things feathery and furry, scaled and four-legged, Fetch gives tips and tells tales about how to keep your pet of choice healthy and happy.

By jenna resko

Local Buzz | Who What Where & Wow! Photographs and write ups on what’s happening every week all over the Valley.

Videos Get inspired by Mark Oliver’s film, “It’s Always Sunny in Sun Valley.”

Be amazed by the high flying Idaho boys of snowmobiling as they practice.

Watch “Prospecting Idaho”— breathtaking footage of snowboarders and skiers at Smith Optics’ private backcountry terrain park.

Be amazed by the jaw-dropping shots of skiers in a special teaser of “Eye Trip”

by Level 1 Productions.

By hailey tucker

Galleries Catch more of Sun Valley Magazine’s world-class photography, including: backyard hockey rinks; the artwork of Richard Rush; and lots more stunning shots of snowmobilers Heath Frisby and Isaac Sherbine.

Gone Fishing | Life on and off the waters of the Wood River Valley Humorous and hopeful articles on everything from f ly fishing to local war heroes to bumbling one’s way through parenthood.

By mike mckenna

elkhorn golf club courtesy elkhorn golf club / snowboarder nate farrell: courtesy smith optics / biker: hailey tucker

blogs

web extras

Introducing our new bedding showroom. . . . . . indulge in the essence of comfort and elegance.

Luxury Bedding, Table Settings, Home Decor and Gifts.

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Anniversaries are often about reflecting on the past, commemorating important events from previous years. It is a concept I have been contemplating recently—not due to Sun Valley’s 75th Anniversary but because, in a break from my “last-minute spontaneity is better” theory, I have actually begun to think about how to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.

The temptation is to find a suitable way to honor our history together. But that feels so apparent. No, I am more inspired to create a new adventure. Something that will launch us onto our next course beyond what this decade has brought us—a small home beside the Big Wood River, two astounding (in ways both brilliant and challenging) children and a community rich in friendships, authenticity and opportunity.

Reflection seems natural for this issue of Sun Valley Magazine, as this marks the 75th Anniversary season of Sun Valley Resort. But far from resting on our laurels, the entire town appears to be looking forward in all ways imaginable. The Resort is marking the event with a calendar packed full of new and exiting events and on-mountain features.

Tim Silva (Snow Pioneers, page 72), the quiet visionary and new mountain manager, may have something to do with this. But there is something else—a buzz, an excitement in the air. A firm hopefulness that broadcasts the passion that so many of us carry for this place. Read about it in Local Voices (page 102) where a professional snowboarder, the County assessor, the president of the Wood River Arts Alliance and others share their thoughts and musings, along with a few predictions about the Valley’s future.

The early snowfall has helped. And the exuberance continues to rise with each flake that falls. Perhaps it is the eternal optimism of ski town mentality. That same rugged, distinctive and inventive spirit that has helped us become a town of firsts.

We are, after all, an America original, laying claim to the title as the country’s first ski resort. We invented the first chairlift and established the world’s first ski school (for more insight into this venerable institution, turn to page 100 to read about Alice Schernthanner, a Sun Valley Ski School icon and instructor to countless kids who have gone on to compete on the world stage—including Picabo Street and current U.S. Freestyle team member Shane Cordeau).

It is also the place where Warren Miller first got his start while living in a car in the River Run parking lot and where Ed Scott invented the first tapered aluminum ski poles. We have always been blessed with inspired and inventive minds not afraid to explore new terrain in the pursuit of their chosen passion. Individuals are still engineering new ski and board designs from their garage workshops (Local Buzz, page 26) and a couple of Idaho-grown extreme snowmobile competitors use our backyard to practice gravity-defying tricks that light up the winter sports scene (High Flying Idaho Boys, page 58).

These are the individuals that bring vitality and possibility to our community. It is the guy standing next to you in line for your morning coffee. Or it could be your neighbor. Who knows, that quiet person in line behind you could be E. Parry Thomas, the man who almost single-handedly helped raise modern day Las Vegas out of the desert sands of Nevada (Unbridled Passion, page 80).

And it is this spirit of anticipation and innovation that will guarantee that we will continue to embody, and to expand upon, the original vision that Union Pacific Railroad chairman and business tycoon Averell Harriman stated when he first envisioned the resort of Sun Valley: “It is not enough to build a hotel and then mark with flags and signs the things you plan to do in time to come. When you get to Sun Valley, your eyes should pop open.”

laurie sammis, editor in chIEf

18 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

kevin syms

fromtheeditor | insight

Kristin Cheatwood (High Flying Idaho Boys, pg. 58) is not your typical wedding photographer. She began her career as a motorsports photographer with works published in many national and international magazines. Her love for life and action attracted her to shooting weddings and, after her first, she “fell in love” with wedding photography. Kristin applies her unique photojournalistic style to assure that every moment is captured in a reminiscing storytelling manner.

20 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Hailey Tucker (Snow Pioneers: Doran Key, pg. 74) recently completed her degree in Visual Journalism at Western Washington University and has returned to the Wood River Valley with dreams of telling the stories of her hometown.

Whether she is covering events for www.sunvalleymag.com’s Local Buzz blog or shooting photos of the people that make up the community, Hailey is always looking for new ways to tell the tales that make this Valley so unique. In her spare time, Hailey loves backpacking, reading, dancing and spending time with her family and friends.

Steve Friess (Unbridled Enthusiasm, pg. 80) is a veteran Las Vegas freelance journalist whose work appears regularly in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, USA Today and others. He also blogs at VegasHappensHere.Com and co-hosts a Vegas-centric interview podcast, The Strip, as well as an animal-affairs show called The Petcast. This piece on Parry Thomas represented an important part of understanding a long-held fascination Steve’s had with how Steve Wynn rose to prominence and how The Strip became what it is today.

HILLARY MAYBERY (Snow Pioneers, pg. 64) has been photographing kids and weddings in Sun Valley for 10 years. She lives and breathes photography. It’s her life and passion. Considered easy to work with, laid back, and always having fun, Hillary loves spending time with her family and horses, skiing, and sipping red wine with people who love great photography. Check out more of Hillary’s work at www.hillarymaybery.com.

kristin cheatwood: hillary maybery / hailey tucker: katie greene steve friess: courtesy / hillary maybery: kristin cheatwood

Contributors | photographers & writers

You’re here for the lifestyle.

We’re here for you.

You’re in Sun Valley for it’s distinctive style. And, Cox is here to help make it easier and more enjoyable for you to connect and entertain. We are Sun Valley’s communications expert, delivering all your in-home services including Cox Advanced TV SM now with On DEMAND, Cox High Speed Internet SM and Cox Digital Telephone®. So, when you’re ready to live it up with family and friends, we’ll be there to help you make the most of it.

Call 208-928-6783, click www.cox.com or come in — 105 Lewis Street in Ketchum, ID.

Let us creAte An ArchItecturAL desIgn IdentIty unIque to your IdAho LIfestyLe

W I NT E R / S P R I N G 2 0 1 1 publisher/editor in chief Laurie C. Sammis

associate publisher/ circulation director Laurie Christian managing editor Mike McKenna art director Robin Moore Leahy

senior designer/ webmaster Charlotte Hemmings production director Julie Molema

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copy editor Patty Healey

contributing editors Martha Liebrum Carrie Lightner

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Best Annual/Consumer Magazine Finalist Sun Valley Magazine® (ISSN 1076-8599) is published quarterly, with a special annual HOME edition, by Mandala Media LLC. Editorial, advertising and administrative offices are located at 111 North First Avenue, Suite 1M, Hailey, Idaho 83333. Telephone: 208.788.0770; Fax: 208.788.3881.

Mailing address: 111 North First Avenue, Suite 1M, Hailey, Idaho 83333. Sun Valley Magazine. Copyright ©2010 by Mandala Media LLC. Subscriptions: $22 per year, single copies $5.95.

The opinions expressed by authors and contributors to Sun Valley Magazine are not necessarily those of the editor and publisher. Our printer is SFI- and FSC-certified. Paper used contains fiber from wellmanaged forests and meets EPA guidelines that recommend a minimum 10% post-consumer recovered fiber for coated papers. Inks used contain a percentage of soy base. Our printer meets or exceeds all federal Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) standards.

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22 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

S F P

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photo: Tim Brown

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LOCAL BUZZ

IN THIS SECTION A new era of skis [pg. 26] • MTN Approach skis • 5B Ski Factory

Epic Terrain [pg. 28]

• Smith Optics backcountry terrain park • Sun Valley Company ramps things up

winter events [pg. 32]

• Lunar Eclipse Rail Jams • Nordic Festival • USSA Super Tour Finals & More!

backcountry awareness [pg. 34] Yancy Caldwell pulls a tail grab nose bonk at the early season terrain park on River Run.

• Sawtooth Avalanche Center • Galena Backcountry Patrol

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 25

LocaLbuzz | new skis Cory Smith hard at work creating a prototype of his new, ultra-light Approach skis for snowboarders.

“This isn’t just some kid trying to make three-piece skis in his garage . . . at least it isn’t anymore.” -cory smith

+Gear Junkie

Do your skis or board have the right camber for you?

LIBERATING THE BACKCOUNTRY Cory Smith’s new Approach skis

For decades now, just like grommets confined to the kiddie pool, snowboarders have pretty much been left behind, while skiers went out and played in Idaho’s big backcountry.

But those days, thanks to a Ketchumite named Cory Smith, may soon be over.

No, Cory hasn’t invented a suit full of super powers, it only looks like he can fly when he’s snowboarding. Instead, the former pro rider and current father of two girls and Smith Optics employee, is in the final stages of launching a new “approach ski” for snowboarders.

“What we’ve designed, well, they’re basically a float for the snow,” Cory explained, from his shed-turned-shop, at his house tucked below the slopes of Bald Mountain.

While scores of free-heeling skiers glide into the great white wilderness each winter, either on telemark skis or an alpine touring system for downhillers, snowboarders usually get stuck, literally, in the snow.

Sure, there are a few options for snowboarders wishing to access the backcountry, but they’re all far from ideal—more like floaties or water wings than surfboards.

Options include split-boards, which are snowboards designed to split into two skis for climbing. But they’re heavy and, when reattached as a single board for the ride downhill, tend to be shaky on anything other than 26 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

powder. Snowshoes are also used by snowboarders as a way to get off the beaten path, but are built more for the pace of a turtle than a snowshoe hare, which is why, in backcountry jargon, they call it “slow-shoeing.”

“You can fly in these things. They’re so light,” Smith said while lifting up a demo pair of MTN Approach skis, as they’re being called. “It feels like there’s nothing on your feet.” Each ski folds into thirds and fits perfectly into most backpacks. The bindings are specifically designed to fit a wide range of snowboard boots and perform like a pair of normal skis with climbing skins attached. A pair of MTN Approach skis weighs a mere six pounds; about a third the weight of the average split-board. The skins needed to grab the snow for climbing don’t have to be removed on Approach skis either. Meaning they save time in the transition from hiking uphill to flying down it, and there’s no messy glue to deal with. Instead, you just swap out the MTN Approach skis in your backpack with your board, and you’re ready to rip.

“A pound on your foot is equal to about five pounds on your back, and the one thing you don’t want when you’re hiking through snow is more weight,” Cory said. He explained that after messing around with a few homemade versions, he eventually sought out an engineer to help.

Camber. The upward curvature built into the body of the ski or board. Basically, how much a ski rises between contact points in the tip and tail. There are three basic types.

Traditional or “single” camber. Designed to be ultra-responsive, great for groomers and harder snow. They are designed to “pop” out of turns and to make carving easier.

Reverse or “banana” camber (RC). RCs are great in powder and dicey conditions. They’re flatter in the middle, with the camber or rise coming in the tips and tails, which helps keep the rider on top of the snow for better float and more binding control.

Early rise or “mustache” camber. Combining the best of both worlds, early risers offer traditional camber under foot, so you get that responsive feel and stable turns, then reverse camber closer to the tips and tails allowing for better maneuverability. Ideal for all-mountain riding, early risers are steadily growing in popularity.

“A real designer came up with the final design. This isn’t just some kid trying to make three-piece skis in his garage . . . at least it isn’t anymore,” Smith joked.

But there’s no joke about what he’s helped create. There’s an ever-expanding market for approach skis for snowboarders. “The backcountry movement is definitely growing and these can really help open things up,” Cory said, adding that snowboarders who’ve long felt left out, won’t have to feel that way for long.

“For snowboarders who want to explore the backcountry,” Cory said with a smile, “it’s liberating.” -Mike McKenna

cory smith: tal roberts / 5b skis: todd kaplan

The Valley has a history of ski bums building skis in their basements, testing them on the mountain and later making it big in the industry.

built for baldy

5B Ski Factory displays their hand-crafted wares.

Locals inspired to make their own skis Since it first opened for skiing back in 1939, Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain has been the inspiration for athletes, moviemakers and craftsmen nationwide. Whether it was providing the perfect backdrop for a film, or acting as the training ground for celebrated skiers, “the mountain” has been cited as being the motivation, even the muse, for many creations.

This winter, Baldy’s impact on innovation will surface again with the release of a new line of skis. The 5B Ski Factory began three years ago as a side project of local skiers, Brandon Doan and A.B. Wescott. After joining up with ski racer Caleb Baukol, and getting help from ex-K2 contractor Bob Boice and designer Jack Weekes, the team set out building and testing ski after ski in an attempt to create the best all-mountain ski for Baldy.

After a few years of ripping apart skis, testing and tweaking various cores, top sheets and edges, the Factory, as it’s simply called, settled on a tip-to-tail wood core, an early rise rocker and a carbon fiber cage for the Bootlegger, their first all-mountain ski. The Bootlegger and a powder ski are for sale now, and the Factory has a mogul ski in the works.

Both Doan and Baukol had been involved in ski construction and tuning for about 10 years prior to starting the Factory and said Sun Valley is the best place for building skis.

“If you get a ski to work on this mountain,

you have a ski that will work anywhere,” Baukol said. “This town is loaded with awesome skiers who know what an awesome ski feels like. You can’t just slap something together and sell it as a good ski.”

Baukol doesn’t seem to be the only person with this mindset. The Valley has a history of ski bums building skis in their basements, testing them on the mountain and later making it big in the industry.

In 1974, Bobbie Burns emerged as the trailblazer for Ketchum-built skis with his classic planks,“The Ski,” which became a common name in the freestyle mogul world throughout the decade. A year later, ski bum Mike Brunetto began Research Dynamics in his Ketchum garage, which would eventually sell close to a quarter million skis per year.

Brunetto later left the growing business in the early ’90s for another small, local skimaking endeavor that would become Wolf Skis.

Wolf Skis are still known for their Makwai and Cold Smoke models, which were inspired by slopes on Baldy.

As for now, the 5B Ski Factory produces their skis in batches of 25, with a goal of producing 300 pairs a year, including a special 75th anniversary ski for Sun Valley. They hope to someday join the legacy of local ski boutiques and open up a ski shop in downtown Ketchum. -Hailey Tucker Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 27

Pavé 3.65t w Black Diamond Link Bracelet Blackened Sterling Silver Pavé 1.54t w Black Diamond Onyx Ring

Barry Peterson Jewelers 511 Sun Valley Road 208-726-5202 | 800-889-9424 www.barrypeterson.com

LocaLbuzz | epic terrain

Olympic Bronze medalist, Scotty Lago, goes huge on one of the many jumps constructed

by Pete Colombo last winter.

the secret stash The folks over at Smith Optics in Ketchum have a secret. And, like most secrets in small mountain towns, it’s lasting about as long as it takes to drink a schooner over at Grumpy’s.

Of course, bringing in some of the top snowboarders in the industry to shoot movies and ad campaigns at their confidential confines doesn’t really keep things hush-hush.

“It was a secret,” explained J. P. Collett, Smith’s Board Sports Promotions manager.

“But it’s tough to keep something this cool a secret for long.”

“What happens there is just incredibly unique. No other company or brand has anything like it.” -j.p. collett

By appointment only PO Box 7039 Ketchum, ID 83340 208.726.1028 www.brucemartininteriors.com bruce@brucemartininteriors.com

“The Secret Stash,” as it’s sometimes called, was first discovered eight years ago by former professional snowboarder Cory Smith. Nestled in a secluded spot in central Idaho, Cory found an ideal place to shoot snow industry movies. After getting permission from the owners to use the perfectlypitched, private land while it was snowcovered, Cory called up his moviemaking buddies at Robot Food.

They showed up. Were blown away, and ever since that first day of filming, the industry has been flooded with movies and breathtaking photos from a place usually referred to simply as “Somewhere in Idaho.”

“It’s just a really cool spot,” said Cory, 28 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

the Senior Promotions manager for Smith (no relation).

“The Spot,” as it’s also called, offers 1,500 vertical feet, over 890 acres and is usually rideable for about two months each winter. It’s full of technical lines and tends to receive more white gold than other spots in the Northern Rockies. “It’s in a snow belt. It gets way more snow than we do in Ketchum,” Cory said.

Last year, Smith Optics was allowed to bring in a snowcat. So snow terrain park builder, Pete Colombo, came in and built 35 jumps for them. “That place was just ridiculous,” Pete laughed.

Smith then invited some of the world’s finest winter athletes to come for some photo and filmmaking shoots, and the result has been the stuff of legends.

“What happens there is just incredibly unique. No other company or brand has anything like it. And the people lucky enough to go there—and willing enough to trek there, it’s definitely an off-the-grid type place— really understand how special it is,” J.P. said.

“We do what we love to do and actually use what we sell,” J.P. said about the crew at Smith Optics. “The reason we can’t always answer the phone is usually because we’re out doing something incredible like riding our own private backcountry stash.”

The crew at Smith now has another reason not to want to answer the phone—so they can avoid people asking them how to find The Secret Stash. -SVM

scotty lago: courtesy smith optics / ben verge: tal roberts / video still: smith optics

Smith’s private backcountry park

Ben Verge executes a perfect 360° at The Secret Stash.

LET ADVENTURE BE YOUR GUIDE

DISCOVER SILVER CREEK OUTFITTERS

Sun Valley Scene

PROSPECTING IDAHO: Episodes 1 & 2

Smith Optics shows off their own private Idaho backcountry terrain park with this short film.

Showcasing the creative work of terrain park builder Pete Colombo, the film details the making of the park and the talents of a handful of handpicked pro snowboarders like Scotty Lago and Scott Stevens who were invited to come ride it last winter.

EYE TRIP

Turn out, tune on, and drop in! Visually stunning, “Eye Trip” is the latest ode to skiing’s counterculture by the crew at Level 1 Productions. Starring pro skiers like Tom Wallisch and Parker White, “Eye Trip” highlights everything from the largest gap jump ever built in Sun Valley, to record snowfalls in Helsinki, Finland, to the epic backcountry of Alaska.

Web Extras: Catch clips from “Prospecting Idaho” and “Eye Trip” on www.sunvalleymag.com

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 29

Silver Creek Outfitters offers guided fly fishing trips, schools, clinics and a full service fly shop. You’ll find a complete selection of premium fly fishing and hunting gear in addition to men’s and women’s apparel, accessories and footwear.

500 North Main Street | PO Box 418 | Ketchum, Idaho 83340 | 208.726.5282 | 800.732.5687

silver-creek.com

Chris Logan ducks to avoid the force of the rotorwash while getting towed up to the drop in during the filming of “Eye Trip” on Warm Springs.

Raising (and riding) the bar Sun Valley makes its mark on the freestyle scene You know it’s getting serious when they call in Colombo.

Not to be confused with Peter Falk’s famous TV detective, “Columbo,” Pete Colombo is one of the most highly-respected snow terrain park builders in the country.

Last winter, Sun Valley brought Colombo to town to help put America’s oldest ski resort on the terrain park map.

“Maybe that area had been overlooked a bit, especially by younger people and fami-

lies, because people didn’t think Sun Valley had enough park terrain to entice the kids.

Well, they do now,” Pete explained.

Pete came to Ketchum as part of the dream team assembled by Snow Park Technologies (SPT) out of Truckee, California.

The premier terrain park and event course designer in the world, SPT’s résumé includes the annual X-Games, and their clientele includes snowboarding hot spots like Aspen and Northstar-at-Tahoe.

Park Etiquette Courtesy Sun Valley Co. MAKE A PLAN

Every time you use freestyle terrain, make a plan for each feature you want to use.

Your speed, approach and takeoff will directly affect your maneuver and landing.

LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP

Before getting into freestyle terrain, observe all signage and warnings.

Scope around the jumps first, not over them.

Use your first run as a warmup run and to familiarize yourself with the terrain.

Be aware that the features change constantly due to weather, usage, grooming and time of day.

Do not jump blindly and use a spotter when necessary.

30 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

RESPECT GETS RESPECT

• Respect the terrain and others • One person on a feature at a time • Wait your turn and call your start • Always clear the landing area quickly • Respect all signs and stay off closed terrain and features Web Extras: Check out Sun Valley’s series of terrain park footage “It’s Always Sunny in Sun Valley” by Mark Oliver. Get inspired to learn new tricks and push yourself to the next level this season. All at www.sunvalleymag.com

Tai Barrymore takes advantage of one of the many new features at Sun Valley’s Freestyle Park.

SPT doesn’t just design snow terrain parks, however, they help train a team to maintain the park for years to come—and to keep it on the cutting edge of the terrain park scene. Brian Callahan, now in his second season as Sun Valley’s Terrain Parks manager, was part of the SPT team.

“Basically, what we were trying to do was put Sun Valley back on the radar,” Brian explained, about a resort that’s gone from having just a few freestyle features to now offering a top-notch terrain park system that boasts dozens of features, from rails and halfpipes to boxes and jumps of all kinds. “And, it’s working.”

According to Callahan, last season Dollar Mountain, which got the majority of the terrain park facelift, showed a significant increase in popularity. He also reports that more home-grown Idaho skiers and boarders, who would normally make treks outside the state in search of world-class terrain parks, were thrilled to get to stay (and spend their time and money) in the Gem State.

“There was a lot of hungry youth in that town that needed something like this.

So it was really cool to be able to give the kids there something of really high quality and to see how stoked they were with it,” explained Colombo.

Andy Gilbert, the longtime Snowboard Team manager for Sun Valley, is the man in

chris logan: mark oliver / tai barrymore: tal roberts / rail skier-brian callahan: hillary maybery

LocaLbuzz | epic terrain

charge of a lot of that “hungry youth,” and he couldn’t agree more with Colombo.

“The extent of the traveling we used to have to do to find this level of terrain was ridiculous. Now, we can sleep in our own beds and still be able to access (park terrain) quality as good as anything we compete on anywhere,” Andy said, adding, “this has opened up opportunities for our kids to show they’re not just ‘halfpipe jocks,’ as people used to describe them, but they’re as good as anybody. In the next few years you’re going to start seeing a lot of kids from Sun Valley making a name for themselves on the freestyle and slopestyle scenes.”

Experience Ruby Springs Lodge.

“There was a lot of hungry youth in town that needed something like this. So it was really cool to be able to give the kids something of really high quality and to see how stoked they were with it.”

-pete colombo Pete said he expects Sun Valley to become a serious player in the park terrain landscape as well. And he should know. Pete’s spent most of the last decade helping to keep California’s terrain park meccas, Mammoth and June Mountains, atop the terrain park scene. He’s also “The Man,” as they call him at Smith Optics, who built the gear company’s infamous private terrain park “somewhere” in central Idaho (see pg. 28).

“As a destination resort, Sun Valley really has a lot to offer. There’s just a class and style there that you can’t get anywhere else.

There’s a great town right there, full of awesome places to eat and lots of really neat people,” Colombo said. “It’s beautiful. There are never any crowds there, and now they have the type of park terrain that will get the kids excited and give the locals some cred.”

While the kids may love the new terrain parks now protruding from the slopes of Sun Valley, older folks will still have plenty of room to enjoy the resort’s unrivaled groomers. After all, the terrain parks that Pete Colombo builds are not for the weak of heart—or old of knees or wrists. Basically, they’re not designed for those old enough to even know who the other Columbo is, let alone repeat one of his classic lines after getting pummeled in the terrain park, “Oh, don’t mind that, that’s just my lunch, that doesn’t mean anything.” -Mike McKenna Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 31

Fly fish some of Montana’s most storied rivers and private-access spring creeks.

Revel in superb cuisine and beautifully-appointed riverside cabins. Lose yourself in a classic Montana landscape. www.rubyspringslodge.com info@rubyspringslodge.com 800-278-RUBY (7829)

Localbuzz | winter events

WINTER ACTIVITIES CALENDAR Winters in Sun Valley are nothing shy of magical. In fact, it’s hard to find anyplace on the globe that offers a better variety of alpine and cross country skiing, aprèsskiing, mouth-watering restaurants or a continuous influx of culture of all kinds.

Quite frankly, there’s almost too much to do around here in the winter. To help make the most of it all, here’s a rundown of some of this season’s highlights.

December 17 TERRAIN PARK EXHIBITION

January 8 SNOWMAKER CLASSIC CROSSCOUNTRY SKI RACE

Head to Dollar Mountain when Brian Callahan reveals all the new features of Sun Valley’s terrain park.

32 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Feb. 4 BoarderCross, Dollar Mountain Feb. 5 Slopestyle, Dollar Mountain Feb. 6 Halfpipe, Baldy/Warm Springs

January 26-February 6 SUN VALLEY NORDIC FESTIVAL A week filled with Nordic skiing, demonstrations, races, seminars and activities, including the 36th Annual Boulder Mountain Tour—one of the largest crosscountry ski races in the U.S..

Approximately 1,000 skiers enter this race.

December 24 January 27-30 Christmas eve InTerMountain DIVISION celebrations FREESTYLE SKIING COMP. Festivities begin at 5:30 p.m. with Sun January 27 Slopestyle Valley Carolers beginning the show.

January 28 Halfpipe Next, “Nutcracker On Ice,” a short holiday January 29 Moguls January 30 Moguls and Dual Moguls performance with world-class skaters, followed by the traditional torchlight parade down the mountain, fireworks and a special appearance from Santa. Free ice skating after the show.

Begins January 19 town series A seven week race series, each December 27 Wednesday at 11 a.m., co-sponsored CHRISTMAS CLASSIC

by Watkins Distributing. Four-person teams, dual GS format includes postSKI RACE The Christmas Classic includes 3, 5 and 10km pursuit-format Nordic ski racing at Lake Creek Trails.

February 4-6 USASA INTERMOUNTAIN SNOWBOARD SERIES

At Prairie Creek on Saturday, January 8-15, 7.5, 5 and 3km races. Race begins at 11 a.m.

Race day registration closes at 10:45 a.m. 208.726.3497.

December 21 SILVER & GOLD ICE SHOW The Silver & Gold Ice Show will feature only Olympic silver-and-goldmedal-winning figure skaters, including: Evan Lysacek, Sasha Cohen, Brian Boitano, Ryan Bradley, Nathen Chen. Fireworks after the show!

FEBRUARY

JANUARY

race parties throughout the Valley.

For more information or to sign up a team, contact svrace@sunvalley.com or call 208.622.6356.

February 5 and 19 LUNAR ECLIPSE RAIL JAM SERIES Sun Valley Resort shows off the region’s best new park with the 2011 Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam Series. With bright spotlights, PBR, brats, discounted hamburgers, a DJ and nighttime tubing.

February 11-12 intermountain X-country ski championships Intermountain Cross Country Ski Championships at Lake Creek Trails. Skate and Classic races for Juniors and Masters.

courtesy sun valley company (4) / janss pro-am: marc davey

DECEMBER

Web Extras: If you’re still looking for more to do, where to eat, or what’s happening in Sun Valley, don’t forget to check out the Local Buzz blog or calendar listings at www.sunvalleymag.com

MARCH

APRIL

March 28-April 2 U.S. Ski & snowboard hall of fame

April 4 HAWAIIAN NATIONALS

A joint presentation of the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame comes to Sun Valley Resort March 28-April 3 for a week-long celebration, with the Induction Ceremony on the evening of April 2 in Sun Valley Inn’s Limelight Room.

March 8-12 USCSA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

Yes, it is happening! The final event of the Sun Valley Telemark Series, a fun dressup giant slalom race. Series starts February 1st. For more information check out www.sunvalleytele.blogspot.com

The United States Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association competition events will include Nordic, Alpine Slalom and GS, Snowboard GS, Freestyle and Superpipe competitions.

March 19 LUNAR ECLIPSE RAIL JAM Series March 29-April 2 FIS/USSA SUPER TOUR FINALS Featuring International, U.S. and Canadian Ski Teams March 29 Men 3.5km, Women’s 3km Prologue;

Freestyle (Skate) March 30 Men 15km, Women 10km Classic April 1 Men & Women Individual Sprint Classic

Location TBD

Qualifying 9 a.m.; Finals 5 p.m.

April 2 Men & Women 6km Hill Climb Freestyle

Dollar Mountain 9 a.m.

March 26-27 USSA Cross Country championships Country’s best Nordic skiers compete for national title.

April 7-9 JANsS PRO-AM The Janss Pro-Am Classic, founded in 1998 by Beverly Hay DeChevrieux, mixes a pro racer with four “citizen” skiers or snowboarders of all skill levels, to create five member teams that compete for prizes (including best costume) and titles.

April, Closing Day SCORPION NATIONALS During the Apple’s End-of-Season Party, catch Baldy’s bravest as they ski the sagebrush on Scorpion, on Scorpion skis.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 33

LocaLbuzz | backcountry

craig wolfrom

Blase Reardon examining snow crystals.

AVALANCHE AWARENESS

Blase Reardon and Chris Lundy assessing snow conditions in the Galena Pass area.

Keeping safe in the backcountry The rewards of backcountry skiing are undeniable—no lift lines, fresh tracks, indescribable views and the feeling of escape. But like most outdoor activities, the bliss of the backcountry comes with risks.

The wrong weather conditions can easily turn fresh powder into an unstable slope and a dangerous place to be. But with proper education and awareness about avalanche danger, the backcountry can be a lot safer. With the goal of safety in mind, the Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center began in 1994.

The center, which is technically part of the U.S. Forest Service-Ketchum Ranger District, puts out daily avalanche advisories, and covers the mountains between Bellevue and Galena Summit, and the Sawtooth Valley and Fairfield areas.

Each morning, a member of the team goes out into the field to look for signs of recent avalanches or weakening of the snowpack. They often dig pits to study the layers of snow that have accumulated and, as Chris Lundy, the center’s director said, to look for “slabs” and “weak layers.”

“Weak layers here are usually caused by extended periods of time without snow,” Lundy said. “Usually, you get warmer days and cold nights which turn the whole snowpack into loose snow. It’s the kind of snow that feels like sugar. It’ll just pour out of your hand.”

Combine this with a “slab,” which is one layer of snow sitting atop a weaker layer, and you get what international backcountry ski guide and the owner of Sierra Mountain 34 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Guides, Neil Satterfield, calls “the Oreo cookie effect.” “You need something hard sitting on something soft that’s on top of something else hard to slide on…and maybe a little milk,” Satterfield joked, while presenting at a High Sierra seminar on avalanches a couple of winters ago.

If digging a pit reveals this kind of layering, Lundy said, there is a good chance the slope could slide.

Satterfield also explained that the Oreo cookie effect is just one of three main ingredients that causes avalanches. Besides the dangerously layered snow, the other two components are: avalanche terrain, usually slopes angled between 35 to 45 degrees, and a trigger— “usually you,” he said.

The goal of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center is to alert—and educate—backcountry users to the snow conditions and dangers. After gathering observations in the field, the center combines the information from their notes with reports from a series of remote weather stations in order to create the avalanche forecast for the next day.

Aside from compiling the advisories, the center also hosts introductory-level avalanche safety courses, which range from snowmobilingspecific classes to general field sessions. It also puts together the free Avalanche Rescue Training Park, in the field along Sun Valley Road, which allows backcountry advocates a chance to practice using their avalanche beacons.

To help keep up with the ever-changing slope stability around town, observer reports

Fill out a report or view daily advisories, weather reports and class times by calling the hotline at 208.622.8027 or visiting www.sawtoothavalanche.com.

are available online. Lundy encourages anyone who has been in the backcountry, whether the snow was safe or not, to fill out a report so the rest of the community can be aware of what is going on. -SVM

+Avie Tips

Courtesy of the Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center

Recognize Red Flags:

• Recent avalanche activity in the area.

• Significant new snowfall.

• Winds strong enough to create blown snowpack.

• Collapsing and crackling of the snowpack.

• Dramatic temperature changes.

Be Prepared:

• Check the avalanche report before you go!

• Carry and know how to use rescue. equipment like beacons, shovels, collapsible probes and a general first-aid kit.

• Be aware of terrain that could increase the consequences of being caught in a slide like rocks, cliffs, and trees.

• Never go alone.

• Never expose more than one person at a time to a dangerous location.

• Never descend directly above someone else.

• Ski or board one at a time.

• Don’t let down your guard—you can never be 100% safe in the backcountry.

• For more tips and an online avalanche awareness tutorial, visit www.sawtoothavalanche.com.

FA

Faceted snow crystals.

BACKCOUNTRy EDUCATION The goal of the Galena Backcountry Patrol

In winter wonderlands like the rugged and remote Northern Rockies, sometimes the only thing that separates having fun from having a near fatality is one wrong move.

Luckily for those who love to play in the snow-covered terrain of Blaine County, the crew at Galena Backcountry Patrol (GBCP) isn’t there just to help save people, but to help folks avoid problems in the first place.

Since the dawn of the DayGlo ski suit era in 1980, GBCP has been operating under one basic theory—make the backcountry safer! “Anyway we can help, that’s what we’re trying to do,” explained Bruce Smith, who’s been a member of the volunteer-based GBCP for 20 years.

panache brunello cucinelli gunex rivamonti

“We’d rather train you than have to dig you out later.”

-bruce smith There are three basic ways in which the GBCP helps out. First, the 40 members (all of whom are certified National Ski Patrollers) are on call to assist Blaine County Search and Rescue and the Ketchum Fire District with any winter emergencies like avalanches, lost skiers or off-road accidents. They also regularly pzrovide basic first-aid services for events like the Boulder Mountain Tour and the Northern Rockies Folk Festival.

But their big focus is really on education.

“We’d rather train you, than have to dig you out later,” Smith said.

Throughout the winter, GBCP offers avalanche awareness courses and refresher classes. They also provide intensive outdoor emergency care classes and maintain a yurt at Avalanche Peak up on Galena Summit, known as “The Fort,” for training.

“You never know what to expect in the backcountry. A blue bird day can turn pretty quickly in the Northern Rockies,” Smith said. “We try to help people prepare for the unexpected.” -SVM For more information on GBCP or their programs, visit www.galenabackcountryskipatrol.com

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 35

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SUNVALLEY | celebrating 75 years

special advertising section

sun valley resort Celebrating Our 75th Season Don’t Miss Out on the Celebration!

U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame March 28–April 2

A weeklong celebration with the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) and the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame will begin on Sunday, March 28. This week promises to bring skiing greats back to where it all began, with a week of exciting events and activities. The celebration will culminate on the evening of Saturday, April 2, 2011, with the Ski Hall of Fame’s grand Induction Ceremony at 6 p.m. in the Sun Valley Inn Limelight Room—at which time Sun Valley Resort owner Earl Holding and Olympian Muffy Davis will be inducted. Don’t miss the weeklong celebration!

2011 Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam February 5 & 9, March 19

Dollar Mountain’s Snow Park Technologies-designed Terrain Park was packed all last season. This year they will add even more features and again, Sun Valley Resort wants to show off the region’s best new park with the Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam Series on Saturday nights (February 5, February 19 and March 19). With bright spot lights, PBR, brats, discounted hamburgers, a DJ, it is sure to be an event not to be missed. Huge lights light up the area as athletes practice from 5-6 p.m., and the contest runs from 6-9 p.m. Great prizes and more information to be announced!

Dollar Mountain

Terrain Park Grand Opening, December 17 Dollar Mountain’s Snow Park Technologies-designed Terrain Park will open with 25 new rails and exciting new sculpted terrain on Friday, December 17. The event will draw star athletes anxious to ride the park’s unique 75th season Quad Wall—to be unveiled during the exhibition party. And don’t miss the Vintage Ski Party and Contest the next day at 2 p.m. at River Run Plaza, highlighting Sun Valley’s glamour and style.

36 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

CALENDAR 2010-2011 December 17 Terrain Park Grand Opening & Exhibit

December 18 Vintage Ski Party

*

Sun Valley Tree Lighting Ceremony

December 21 Silver & Gold Ice Show

*

Gala Gourmet Dinner

December 23 Third Annual Christmas Concert

December 24 Christmas Eve Celebration

*

Christmas Eve Dinner Buffet

December 31 New Year’s Eve Dinner & Limelight Ballroom Party

January 30February 6 Sun Valley Nordic Festival

March 8-12 USCSA National Championships

March 28-April 3 ISHA & U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in Sun Valley

April 2-3 Dollar Daze at Dollar Mountain

tory taglio

The resort’s calendar is packed full of exciting 75th Anniversary commemorative events—everything from snow and ice sculpture competitions to weekly events such as scavenger hunts, snowman building contests, races, sleigh rides, or a chance to ride in a working snowcat at night. The excitement continues all season with races and competitions like the USCSA National Championships with over 4700 athletes competing for 200 national ski and snowboard titles in Nordic, Alpine Slalom and GS, Snowboard GS, Freestyle and Superpipe. Continue to check www.sunvalley.com for a full calendar listing or www.blog.sunvalley.com for weekly details.

Every sport has a rite of passage.

This winter, make the pilgrimage to a place more genuine than any prefab ski village. More legendary than most mountain getaways. More original than them all. It’s time you finally discovered where it all began: Sun Valley.

WELCOME TO

b TRADITION.

Celebrating Our 75th Winter Season

Stay and Ski Free Package starting at $129 per person / per night

blackout dates apply

sunvalley.com | 800-786-8259

white clouds

White Clouds is an exclusive residential neighborhood in Sun Valley. The home sites overlook the White Clouds Nine of the 27-hole Sun Valley golf course and are surrounded by open space. They are adjacent to a regional biking/hiking trail, are within walking distance of the new Sun Valley Club, and offer a variety of outstanding views including Bald Mountain, Dollar Mountain, the Pioneer Mountains and Sun Valley Village. For the first time in over 30 years, Sun Valley is offering the opportunity for new home sites.

Great care has gone into the planning of White Clouds. Only 30 home sites are available, all sited to take advantage of the views while protecting the character of the land. Lots range in size from one acre to almost two acres. Home sites are available starting in the mid-$1 millions.

w w w . Wh i t e C l o u d s Re s i d e n c e s . c o m C O N T AC T : Wa l l ac e h u f f m a n , S u n Va l l e y R e s o rt P ro p e rt y, L L C 208-622-2828

•

800-894-9939

•

i n f o @ Wh i t e C l o u d s Re s i d e n c e s . c o m

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body& soul

IN THIS SECTION body work [pg. 40] • The Gym Scene

WINTER PROTECTION [pg. 42] Randy Flood, a High Altitude Fitness member, prepares to lift and flip a tire at Benji Hill’s Cross Fit Training Class.

• Picking the Perfect Lens • Braving Black Ice • Beating the Elements

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 39

Body&soul | body work Dryland training at Zenergy.

RIGHT Muffy Ritz and Kate Whitcomb using ski ergs at 5B Crossfit.

The Gym Scene Trying to avoid that haven’t-skied-in-a-while body hangover? Or need a push to make the transition from mountain biking to skiing the slopes, or from hiking boots to gliding on skate skis? Hook up with a local gym and get your body in shape for any type of winter sport. From KettleKross to Boot Camp, there are plenty of local classes to help you shine on the slopes. -Sara Sheehy

5B CrossFit Hailey 415.860.2515 “We train people to be good at life,” reports Alex Margolin, coowner of 5B CrossFit. Located in Hailey, 5B CrossFit teaches participants to control their body and build on their strengths and weaknesses—creating a well-rounded athlete. “Our athletes are ready to ski in June!” joked Margolin. Using a unique combination of a warmup and fitness challenge in every class, participants cheer each other on while completing the workout in a given time frame. Using functional movements only, 5B CrossFit aims to increase participants’ GPP, or “general physical preparedness.” A typical workout includes athletes challenging themselves with double-jump rope and kettlebell swings, followed by ski pole races on a nordic poling simulator.

40 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

BCRD FitWorks Hailey 208.578.2273 Conveniently located in the Community Campus (next to the high school in Hailey), the Blaine County Recreation District’s FitWorks program offers a wide variety of options to get your body in gear. With two full fitness rooms, including cardio and circuit training equipment, free weights and two double-pull SkiErg meters, which simulate the arm movements of Nordic skiing, FitWorks provides the perfect, affordable training option for anyone looking to get in shape. FitWorks also offers a variety of classes including Boot Camp, Pilates and Spinning, as well as personal trainers for a more tailored workout. Popular group and private Nordic skiing lessons at Quigley Canyon also take place once the snow starts flying.

High Altitude Fitness Hailey 208.788.4955 Ketchum 208.726.1959 High Altitude Fitness gears up athletes for winter sports with several different classes. To keep the body in tip top shape, owner Kevin Mora suggests trying a recent addition to their training repertoire—Kettlebell training and KettleKross, which both use Russian-style kettlebells, a cast iron weight designed to be used with a range of movements.

Kettlebell training focuses on posterior movement, working out the hips, glutes, abs and spinal rectus.

Take kettlebell a step further with KettleKross, a class combining basic kettlebell movements with body weight exercises. KettleKross uses tires, ropes, sledgehammers and specialty sandbags to complete a typical workout.

Angela’s Gym Ketchum 208.720.7433 Angela’s Gym is a private, personal fitness center located in Ketchum. Owner Angela Freeman sets her gym apart by opening only for specific classes or private training.

Welcoming all abilities and genders, Angela says she, “enjoys teaching ski conditioning in particular because it’s so fun to teach—people just want to get killed!” In addition to a “ton” of leg work, class participants work on functional core training with exercises like the hanging plank and reverse crunches. Core work is the center of Angela’s method to ski conditioning, and participants can expect to get an intense workout.

zenergy: jane mccann / 5B crossfIt: courtesy

we deliver world-class artists From up and coming talent to performers you’d only find in a large city, we bring diverse talent to the community. photo: Ayumi Kameda

“I enjoy teaching ski conditioning in particular because it’s so fun to teach—people just want to get killed!” -angela freeman

+Ski Shape

Training Tips

From the team at FitWorks 1 One-legged squats help build up quad muscles and teach balance.

On Ensemble

we stimulate conversations From Pulitzer Prize winning authors to internationally acclaimed speakers, each year we present artists and authors to enrich your life.

2 Bent-over rows with a small dumbbell help develop the latissimus dorsi muscle in the back and build core and leg strength.

3 Properly done lunges build strength in the legs and glutes. Make sure to keep your knees in line with your toes when doing lunges. Letting the knee go past the toes puts the joint at risk of injury.

Zenergy Health Club and Spa Ketchum 208.725.0595 Recently selected as one of the “most luxurious fitness clubs” in America by CNBC, Zenergy Health Club prides itself on offering something for everyone. Whether you want to bomb down Baldy in a thigh-busting tuck or you simply prefer your workouts to be away from the snow, Zenergy can help. “We can keep you in shape, no matter what your favorite sport is,” explained Zenergy’s Kerry Samudio. Offering over 65 ongoing classes in everything from Kettlebell train-

Maude Barlow Nov 4 Neil deGrasse Tyson Nov 17 Eric Schlosser Feb 24 Ari Fleischer Mar 10 Neil deGrasse Tyson

we help students learn Through art classes and school visits to our gallery, to musicians’ visits to local schools, and a scholarship program that provides over 30 grants a year totaling over $50,000, The Center encourages kids to explore art.

“I work hard to make sure each class is fun, to keep participants looking forward to the next one.” -eric hall ing to Master’s swimming, from dry land training to yoga, classes at Zenergy are open to the public and run in four-week increments. Among their most popular classes are the “Boot Camps,” like the winter sports training class taught by seasoned trainer, Eric Hall, who summed up the Zenergy staff attitude by explaining, “I work hard to make sure each class is fun, to keep participants looking forward to the next one.”

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 41

Crystal Monee Hall Nov 19 Raul Midón Dec 3 On Ensemble Jan 21 Sweet Plantain Mar 4 De Temps Antan Mar 13

Ketchum 191 Fifth Street East Hours Mon-Fri, 9-5 Sat, Feb & Mar, 11-5 Hailey 314 Second Ave S Hours Wed-Fri, 2-6

208.726.9491 sunvalleycenter.org

Mountain Resort Services

Body&soul | winter protection

Sun valley Distinctive and professional Lifestyle Services

PICKING THE PERFECT lenses Finding the right sunglass or goggle lens can be a challenge.

Luckily, the Wood River Valley boasts two of the world’s finest winter sport lens manufacturers, which develop and test their products right here in our backyard. To learn which lens works best when, check out the tips below. -Sara Sheehy

Transportation: * * * * * *

Private SUV & Van Transport Airport Service Bus & Motorcoach Charter Personal vehicle shuttles Wedding & Event Transport Full size Van & SUV rentals

Local Lens Options

The Basics bright

low light

variable

3

With so little light passing through the lens, the Sol-X Gold Mirror is what to bring out on those bright, reflective days. The multi-layer gold mirror cuts glare and the dark brown tint reduces eye fatigue.

3

This gold-tinted lens excels on bright sunny days. Designed to portray true colors to the eye, this lens also provides exceptional contrast and clarity.

SMITH optics Sol-X Gold Mirror (7% VLT)

SCOTT Gold Chrome OptiView (20% VLT)

Lifestyle: * * * *

3

The Sensor Mirror offers a vibrant tint that helps increase depth perception.

The lens allows ample light to reach the eye and makes it possible to see surface definition even on the flattest light days.

3

This pink and yellow tinted lens also has a chrome coating, which provides exceptional contrast in low or extreme flat light conditions.

SMITH optics Sensor Mirror (70% VLT)

Personal Assistance Property Services Concierge Service Travel Services scott Illuminator OptiView (64% VLT)

Serving the unique needs of

www.mtnresortservices.com

3

As a part of the Scott Natural Lenses Line, this lens alleviates “eye shock,” which is the optical fatigue caused by taking your goggles on and off on the slopes. This lens will take you from a cloudy morning to a sunny afternoon, no problem.

SMITH optics Ignitor Mirror (35% VLT)

second homeowners and busy year round residents.

888-779-6789

3

Need to cover a large range of light conditions? The Ignitor Mirror is a great option for an overall lens. It reduces eye fatigue on bright days while continuing to increase depth perception and enhance contrast in lower light conditions.

scott NL-32 Black Chrome OptiView (32% VLT)

42 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Anne et Valentin Tag Heuer

•

•

Robert Marc

Oliver Peoples •

Lunor

•

•

Paul Smith

Persol

•

•

Chanel

Judith Leiber

•

Ray Ban

Never use cotton or your fingers to clean your lenses. Touching the inside of the lens will cause it to continue to fog.

+ Lens Tips VLT

Choosing the right lens has everything to do with light—specifically the Visible Light Transmittance, or VLT, the amount of light the lens allows to pass through it. Those infamous flat light days are “not a result of a lack of light,” explained Smith Optics’ Greg Randolph. “It is an abundance of blue light to be precise.

Blue light overloads your eye making it unable to see any contrast or shadow.

Our lenses filter out the blue light to enhance contrast so you can see the surface definition you need.”

If you know Sun Valley you know the eyeworkS

UV Rays

Do you only ski on those blue bird days?

Look for an amber­–or gold–tinted lens to dampen those bright rays.

No More Fog

Keep a micro-fiber lens wipe handy! If you get snow inside the lens, gently wipe it away with the cloth. Never use cotton or your fingers. Touching the inside of the lens will cause it to continue to fog. If all else fails, head to the lodge to dry them out as soon as possible. Make sure to store your goggles properly between uses, i.e., NOT hanging from the rearview mirror.

The sun will quickly break down the foam.

4 featured frame anne et Valentin . Grigri

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 43

Body&soul | winter protection

Winter driving can be treacherous . . . be prepared.

braving black ice Snow on the slopes invariably means snow on the Valley’s roadways. So here are a few winter driving tips with help from Car Talk producer Doug Mayer to keep you safe on your way to carve turns, or wherever you may be headed.

Clear Snow and Ice Clear off the entire car, not just a little peephole in the windshield.

You need just as much, if not more, visibility in poor conditions because you have to keep your eyes peeled for pedestrians, and every other knucklehead or animal on the road. Make sure every glass surface is clear and transparent by using a snow brush and/or ice scraper. Your side-view mirrors and all lights should be brushed and cleared as well. It’s the law in most states.

Drive Defensively Even with good coolant, snow tires, stability control, all-wheel drive and the bag of Doritos in the trunk, keep in mind that driving in snow, sleet, and ice is very treacherous. And even if you maintain control of your car, not everyone else will. So don’t ever get

Driving a vehicle that is so covered in snow that it resembles Frosty the Snowman is dangerous. lulled into a false sense of security.

Do everything slowly and gently.

Remember, in the snow, the tires are always just barely grabbing the road. Accelerate slowly and gently, 44 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

turn slowly and gently, and brake slowly and gently. To do this, you have to anticipate turns and stops.

That means what? Going slowly and leaving plenty of distance between you and other cars.

Understanding your Car Every car has different handling characteristics. You should know what your car can and cannot do in the snow. (Hint: It can’t do any of the things it was doing on the TV commercial that made you buy it.) You should know if you have front-, rear-, part-time or fulltime four-wheel drive; antilock brakes; traction control; and stability control. You should know what kind of tires are on the car, and how all those things work and how they help you or don’t help you. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to do a little driving in an empty parking lot on a snowy day just so you know what to expect from your car when you drive on snowy roads.

Gain Control in a Spin If you find yourself spinning on a slippery roadway, don’t panic.

Or, as our Car Talk friends, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, advise, “Rapid movements lead to skids and loss of control. Drive as if there were eggs on the bottoms of your feet—step on the gas and the brake pedals so gently that you don’t break the eggshell.” If

you do find yourself in a spin, without panicking or overcorrecting, slowly remove your foot from the accelerator and/or brake and try to follow the skid until your tires regain traction.

How to Avoid Wildlife Deer and elk are typically on roadways during dawn and dusk, while moose and bear move around at night. If you see an animal on, or near, the road, slow down until the animal has moved. Frightened animals are unpredictable and may run

in any direction. Turning in the direction that the animal is moving will increase your chances of collision. If a collision is unavoidable, make sure to let off the brakes right before impact to ensure that your front end stays high (braking does the opposite–moving the car’s center of gravity forward and lowering the front end) which will hopefully keep the animal from hitting your windshield. -SVM Web Extras: Visit www.511.idaho.gov for higways color-coded by conditions and to check out live web cams of major passes and intersections.

+Survival Tips non-perishable foods

blanket/sleeping bag

small sturdy shovel

multi-purpose knife

flashlight

Pack a Winter Survival Kit

A well-stocked winter survival kit is essential in the event of an emergency. Be sure your kit includes: extra clothing and a sleeping bag or blanket; long-lasting food like granola bars or nuts; bottled water; a flashlight and extra batteries; a pocket knife and basic tools like a screwdriver, hammer and pliers; a fully stocked first-aid kit; a map of the area so you can give your specific location if lost or injured (carrying a cell phone can be life saving); matches; a shovel; jumper cables; rope; and a brightly colored piece of fabric to make your car more visible to other traffic if you are off the road (tie to your antenna or other easily seen location); and tire chains, especially when traveling in the mountains.

Know Before You Go

jumper cables

matches

extra water

first-aid kit

"We treat every car as if it were our own."

Airport pickup & curbside delivery Heated, secure car storage

Before hitting the road, make sure your vehicle is in good working order. This includes good tires (all-season or snow), plenty of non-freezing windshield wiper fluid (wet, snowy days require lots of window cleaning) and a full tank of gas (an idling car can keep you warm when you’re stranded).

Windshield repair & replacement • Rock chip repair

Check Road Conditions

Custom Car Sales, Auctions & Specialty Searches

The Idaho Transportation Department maintains a website and hotline to keep motorists informed of changing road conditions.

Log on to www.511.idaho.gov to find highways color coded by condition and to check out live web cams of major passes and intersections, or call, toll-free, 511 to hear a recording of conditions.

It’s also always a good idea to tell someone where you’re going, how you plan on getting there and when you expect to arrive.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 45

Auto detailing • Mobile detailing Two Full-time ASE auto mechanics Routine Service & Repair • Oil changes CARcierge services Paintless dent removal

208.578.2323 • www.svautoclub.com

Attention to Deail is now part of the Sun Valley Auto Club Team Aircraft Detailing • Mobilie Detailing

❋ Sun Valley Dog Fine Accessories and Treats for Dogs

Body&soul | winter protection

Beating the Elements Winter is here! And living in this dry, cold and, of course, sunny climate (we are in Sun Valley) brings with it a whole new set of skin challenges for your skin. -Laurie Christian

protecting | Apply sunscreen thoroughly and often.

While it seems like common knowledge, wearing sunscreen during the winter months is extremely important, as important as wearing it to the beach or on a hike during a hot August day. Goggle tans are no longer cool, so wearing sunscreen every day is one of the best things you can do for your skin. With advances in skin care technology, there are now sunscreens made for all skin types— moisturizing, oil free, organic, all-natural and even mineral-based.

The most important factor is to apply thoroughly and often. People typically only apply 25-50% of the amount needed for protection. The recommended quantity is one ounce (a full shot glass) of sunscreen to cover exposed body areas sufficiently. It’s important to use a sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher.

Moisturizing | Keeping skin hydrated can be a challenge.

As the seasons change, it’s also important to modify your skin care routine. There are many things you can do to keep skin looking its best and feeling soft and moisturized. During the summer months a light lotion may be just fine, but during the winter months you may want to use something a little heavier such as a cream or oil-based moisturizer. Look for non-poreclogging oils such as avocado, primrose or almond oil. And, if you think an oil-based moisturizer or cream is too heavy for your skin, there are all kinds of oil-free moisturizers that work great, too, with ingredients such as aloe, green tea, hibiscus and cucumber, which all absorb easily and instantly into the skin, refreshing and protecting the skin from dehydration.

Eating |

What you put in your body is just as important as what you put on your body.

sunvalleydog.com isabellacane.com 360 N East Ave #4 Courtyard Bldg, Ketchum 208.725.0455

Sun Valley Dog

While moisturizing topically is an important way to keep skin looking and feeling good, what you put in your body is just as important. We all know that eating right and exercising have positive effects on your overall health, but they are also imperative to great-looking, healthy skin. Foods rich in antioxidants, such as blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, are rich in vitamin C, which helps to increase collagen vital to younger looking skin. Essential fatty acids found in oily fish, such as salmon and sardines, are also a great way to keep skin moisturized and hydrated. EFA’s (essential fatty acids) help reduce inflammation in skin and help to retain skin’s moisture. Nuts, seeds, avocados and olive oil also contain large amounts of EFAs and also include vitamins E and A, which help protect your body and skin against environmental pollutants and sun damage. Almonds, walnuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds are also great sources for these rich oils. Dark leafy vegetables such as spinach, watercress and romaine lettuce are great sources of antioxidant vitamins A, C, E, and the mineral iron, an essential for keeping your blood healthy and your skin bright. Green tea is also bursting with antioxidants which help fight viruses and slow-aging. As proof positive of the potency of these food choices, it is common to see antioxidants, Omega 3 fats, EFAs and green tea as some of the top ingredients in anti-aging lotions and creams.

46 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Using products that are hypoallergenic and fragrance free with no synthetic preservatives will be gentler to your skin and will help to prevent dryness and irritation.

+

Things to Avoid This Winter Skin is easily irritated when exposed to severe cold and dry climates, so avoid using products that include alcohol, harsh soaps or a heavy fragrance. All of these things can irritate and dry out your skin and it’s easy to find products that don’ t contain them. It’s important to remember that even a natural or organic product can irritate your skin, so look for products that contain antiinf lammatory herbs such as calendula, aloe vera and cucumber. Using products that are hypoallergenic and fragrance free with no synthetic preservatives will be gentler to your skin and will help to prevent dryness and irritation. Drinking plenty of water and avoiding drinking caffeine and alcohol in excess will also help to keep your skin looking and feeling great. Protect, moisturize and nourish from the inside out. Your skin will thank you.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 47

SOPHISTICATED & ECLECTIC CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES FOR WOMEN 100 N. Leadville • Ketchum, Idaho • 208.726.5160

From the Slopes of Sun Valley...

...to the Malibu Surf...

...to the Los Cabos Coast.

DOUGLAS W. BURDGE, AIA 21 Comet Lane Unit C, Hailey, ID 83333 208-495-3228 310-456-5905 www.buaia.com

craig wolfrom

get out there

IN THIS SECTION backyard rinks [pg. 50] • Backyard ice rinks rule

full moon nights [pg. 52]

• From Galena Lodge and Trail Creek to adventuring on your own

soldier mountain [pg. 54]

• Rebuilding the lodge after the fire Christopher Cook carving moonlight telemark turns on Dollar Mountain.

roundhouse [pg. 56]

• First tracks breakfast and Averell’s Bar

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 49

getoutthere | backyard rinks

Whitehead’s idyllic backyard hockey rink.

RIGHT Nothing beats a nighttime game of broomball at the Lees’ rink.

backyard ice rinks Ideal ice thickness? Optimal temperature? The latest in resurfacing technology?

No, these are not conversations that will be taking place in NHL locker rooms this season, but rather as part of the ongoing debate that rages throughout the Wood River Valley every winter regarding backyard ice rinks.

While the rinks ostensibly cater to children learning to skate and play hockey, there is no dearth of entertainment for the adults.

While the concept of laying down some freezing water and plywood might strike most as an elementary affair, the truth, as told by practitioners and experts, seems closer to quantum physics 50 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

than simple arithmetic.

“It’s all about the Visquene,” says John Lee, a Board Ranch resident and contractor who will be erecting a rink for the third year in a row as soon as the temperature drops.

Lee explains that the plastic sheeting used as the base of the rink must be greenhouse grade; otherwise, the water will leak out and create an uneven surface as it freezes.

Of course, like all aspects of backyard rink building, one person’s necessity is another’s extravagance. Just ask Dates Fryberger, a Minnesota native and member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic hockey team. He’ll be helping his daughter, Stephanie Carlson, build a rink in their Ketchum backyard for the third year this winter.

“This is the old-timer’s way of doing it,” Fryberger says of his simple method of clearing

snow off of the most level piece of ground, using the snow to build a border, and then flooding the interior.

The border also allows for variance and interpretation, with Lee recommending 2x6” or 2x8” boards to set the perimeter of the rink, with adequate depth to support an ice sheet several inches thick.

Both agree, however, that the creation of the ice surface is a process that requires care and preparation. Fryberger notes that beyond the seemingly obvious need for freezing weather, it’s imperative to flood the rink numerous times in order to ensure that each layer is completely frozen. If too much water is laid

down at once, the result is what Fryberger describes as “shell ice,” with a thin surface of ice above air pockets and unfrozen water.

Lee learned this the hard way during an early attempt, ending with an ice sheet that had buckled in the middle as water pushed its way up through the bottom.

The work doesn’t end once the surface is laid, however, lots of maintenance is required. For, in the absence of vigilance, all the initial effort could end up for naught.

“If it’s snowing, you’re going to be in trouble and scraping off dog prints,” says Lee. The continual shoveling led Lee to break down and purchase a snow blower to keep his sheet

craig wolfrom

Bragging rights are on the line

Web Extras: Catch more of Craig Wolfrom’s photos of slick backyard ice rinks at www.sunvalleymag.com

Eva Carlson and friend on her family’s homemade ice rink.

smooth. He also created a homemade Zamboni, constructed out of copper tubing, a hose for hot water and a towel attached at the back to sweep along the ice.

“It’s kind of a competition to see who has the best ice,” says Lee, who also plays on the backyard Valley rinks of both Pete and Gunnar Whitehead.

And while the rinks ostensibly cater to children learning to skate and play hockey, there is no dearth of entertainment for the adults.

Lee and his wife, Tracy, host an annual “broomball party,” which attracts such an enthusiastic crowd that helmets must be provided to prevent (any more) concussions.

Of course, with the winter sun disappearing by midafternoon, Lee and many others have taken steps to allow the fun to continue into the evening; namely, the installation of floodlights, giving the rinks the appearance of baseball stadiums during night games.

It’s clear from Lee and Fryberger—along with a seemingly infinite number of plans on the Internet—that there is no one “correct” method for building an outdoor rink. But for those looking to construct some homegrown fun of their own this winter, make sure to include some unique extravagance. Bragging rights are at stake, after all. -Horatio Ruiz

+For the Love of Hockey The Pond Hockey Classic

On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend (Saturday and Sunday, January 15-16), Ketchum will proudly host the 4th annual Idaho Pond Hockey Classic at Atkinson Park.

The four-on-four tournament is played on three outdoor rinks with goals as wide as regulation hockey nets, but only slightly taller than a puck.

“It’s more of a finesse game,” explained John Kearney of the Ketchum Parks Department. “It’s kind of how hockey started.”

The Pond Hockey Classic is popular with both players and fans alike. Beer and bratwursts are staples of the event.

To sign up a team to battle for the “Golden Shovel” or for more information call John at 208.726.7820 or jkearney@ketchumidaho.org.

Sun Valley SUNS Hockey

Kick your backyard hockey up a notch by attending a local SUNS home hockey game—held most Friday and Saturday evenings throughout the winter season at the indoor ice rink in Sun Valley.

For a complete schedule visit www.sunvalleysuns.com.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 51

getoutthere | full moon nights The glorious glow of a full moon during winter. RIGHT Christopher Cook skinning up Dollar Mountain for a full moon ski.

full moon nights

Sun Valley is known for its scenic winters. But once a month, you can see the snowscapes in a different light. When the full moon reflects off the snow, winter nights become bright enough to cast shadows. With some warm layers, a Thermos full of your favorite hot winter beverage and a sense of adventure, you can take to the snow with moonlight as your guide and see the Valley as you never have before. Here are some fun things to do on a full moon night: Sleigh Rides Sun Valley’s Trail Creek Cabin 208.622.2135 For a magical and memorable moonlit dinner for the whole family, take a horse-drawn sleigh ride to Trail Creek Cabin.

Sleigh rides begin December 17, and run three times a night, Tuesdays through Saturdays, throughout the season. Bundle up, grab a hot toddy from the bar at the Inn and enjoy the ride. Due to the wild popularity of the sleigh ride dinners, reservations are required.

52 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Full Moon Dinners Galena Lodge 208.726.4010 Take a moonlit drive up to Galena Lodge for a fabulous and unforgettable five-course meal. The dinners do not include any group excursions on the snow, but visitors are welcome to go snowshoeing or cross-country skiing under the moonlight before or after dinner. Reservations are required, so give them a call to assure your seat and hear the menu for the month.

Snowshoeing, Cross Country Skiing, Sledding, Ice Skating and Snowmobiling Wood River Valley If scheduling a full moon outing ahead of time is too much work, don’t be afraid to find a moonlit adventure of your own. There are plenty of reasons why USA Today named Sun Valley one of the Top 10 ski resorts in the world for non-alpine skiers.

The Wood River trail system offers 30 miles of free, groomed trails for snowshoeing or cross country skiing.

Snowmobiliers can ride the 500 miles of groomed trails north of Ketchum, or head over Galena Summit to ride some of the 170 miles of trails in the Smiley Creek/Stanley area, or head a little southeast to the 200 miles of trails near Fairfield.

You could skate on the same surface Olympian champions like Sasha Cohen and Brian Boitano do at Sun Valley Lodge’s ice rink. Rentals are available and skating is open until 8 p.m. nightly. There are also “natural” rinks at Atkinson Park in

skier: craig wolfrom / galena lodge: paulette phlipot / rail jam: courtesy sun valley resort

Seeing snowscapes in a different light

+Winter

Galena Lodge lit up during a winter evening for their Full Moon Dinners. BELOW Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam at Dollar Mountain.

Moons

This winter, the full moons arrive on November 21,

December 21, January 19, February 18 and March 19. Mark them

on your calendar—make sure to take advantage and experience Sun Valley after sunset.

Ketchum or Roberta McKercher Park in Hailey.

Or, you could simply find a well-lit spot just outside your own neighborhood to go snowshoeing or sledding. If you do go on a trip of your own, please make sure you take all the proper safety precautions and always be sure to let someone know where you’re going and when you’ll be returning. -Hailey Tucker

Lunar Eclipse Rail Jams

February 5, 19 and March 19

This year, the new world-class Dollar Mountain Terrain Park will add even more features and Sun Valley Resort wants to show off the region’s best new park with the second Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam Series, running on Saturdays, February 5 and 19 and again March 19. Featuring PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon beer), brats, discounted burgers, a DJ, nighttime tubing, and scores of talented riders showing off their skills, the Lunar Eclipse Rail Jam Series is a must-see event.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 53

1/3 Page Vertical bleed

getoutthere | soldier mountain

Soldier’s newly rebuilt lodge. RIGHT Skiing at Soldier Mountain on a powder day.

Soldiering on after disaster

Ski lodge rebuilt after 2009 fire Despite a devastating fire in late March of ’09 that burned Soldier Mountain’s ski lodge and shop to the ground, the family-friendly ski area has recovered quickly.

Originally opened in 1948 with a single rope tow, Soldier Mountain (60 miles southwest of Sun Valley, 12 miles north of Fairfield) has long been known for its homey, mom-and-pop feel. So there were undoubtedly a few faces wet with tears when news spread that the lodge at Soldier had burned down.

But from the ashes of the past has arisen hope for a better future.

Mountain manager Larry Davenport said the fire set back plans for any new programs or additions at Soldier, aside from building the new lodge, but that the new lodge is more eye-pleasing and efficient than the old one.

“We can feed people faster and help them get in and out of there a lot faster,” Davenport said. “The new lodge is great because everything is under one roof now.”

The new, single-story, 4,500-squarefoot lodge is only a touch shy of doubling the size of the old lodge. Now, the lodge not only houses a dining area, but also the Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 54

ticket booth, ski school, rental shop and administrative offices, which were all spread out before.

With full-day adult passes priced at only $36, Davenport said Soldier is one of the most affordable skiing experiences around.

Soldier, owned in part by actor Bruce Willis, is open Thursday through Sunday and offers 1,150 acres of skiing. Soldier also offers central Idaho’s only backcountry snowcat skiing and claims to have the “best grooming in the northwest,” as well as some of the best powder skiing known to man.

Powder hounds, Davenport explained, are beginning to notice that Soldier not only gets incredible powder, but that it doesn’t disappear in the first hour (or sometimes even the first month) after it has fallen.

Davenport encourages skiers to come to Soldier to “experience skiing the way it used to be.” -Hailey Tucker

Celebrating 10 Years of Community Health Care

Welcomed 2,810 children into the world in our Mother/Baby Unit.

St. L

e’s Wood R uk

r ive

The Wood River Valley is a remarkable place, and at St. Luke’s Wood River, we strive to provide the best care for the community we call home. Since November 2000, St. Luke’s Wood River has made tremendous accomplishments for a hospital our size:

aring

of C ecade

AD

Conducted 138,941 state-of-the-art medical imaging exams.

Performed 2,497 digital mammograms in the new Women’s Imaging Center opened in 2009.

Served 35,186 delicious and nutritious meals this year in one of the nation’s only hospital-based sustainable foods programs.

Offered over 3,000 classes, workshops, community education events, and health screenings through St. Luke’s Center for Community Health.

Is the only facility its size in Idaho with board-certified emergency physicians and highly-trained nurses on-site

soldier lodge: courtesy \ skier: craig wolfrom

Powder hounds are beginning to notice that Soldier not only gets incredible powder, but that it doesn’t disappear in the first hour after it has fallen. -larry davenport

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

+Where & When

Soldier Mountain is located 60 miles southwest of Sun Valley and just 12 miles north of Fairfield, off of Highway 20 in the beautiful Sawtooth National Forest. Open Thursday through Sunday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m..

Adult Full Day Pass: $36 Adult Half Day Pass: $23 Youth Pass (age 7-17): $25 Child (6 and under): FREE Senior (age 62-69): $25 Silver Senior (70+): FREE More information at www.soldiermountain.com.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 55

Thank you Wood River Valley!

Look for your 2011 Anniversary Calendar, coming to the community soon!

Stromberg

getoutthere | roundhouse

moore Hardwoods Hardwood Flooring Specialists

photo: craig wolfrom

Specializing in

reclaimed, hand-distressed, prefinished, environmentally sustainable, wide plank and custom flooring products.

Services

Over Radiant Heat Installation, Custom Sand & Finish, Repairs, Refinishing, Free Estimates

ROUNDHOUSE REVIVAL

The new and improved Roundhouse is making a comeback.

photography: craig wolfrom

New renovations put Roundhouse back on the map

208.788.7360

www.strombergmoorewood.com

This winter, skiers are sure to give the 71-year-old Roundhouse lodge, nestled midway up the River Run side of Sun Valley, a second glance. Built as an afterthought to the original three chairlifts constructed on Baldy in 1939, Roundhouse was the first lodge on the mountain. But with bigger, glitzier lodges built atop Seattle Ridge and at the bases of River Run and Warm Springs, Roundhouse eventually lost its place in the spotlight—that is, until recently.

With the new gondola, which opened last season and marches straight up the slopes to the entrance of Roundhouse, the Valley’s attention has been refocused. What has long 56 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

been an oversight is now becoming a mustsee. Located some 7,700 feet above sea level, the octagonal-shaped lodge, which is home to Averell’s Bar and Baldy’s first restaurant, is reclaiming its throne in the hierarchy of Sun Valley hangouts.

Although the most recent set of revisions to the lodge is nothing dramatic, mountain manager Peter Stearns said Sun Valley was concerned while planning the remodel.

“Although there’s no particular cultural significance to this building, there’s a huge emotional significance,” Stearns said.

Sterns said they knew the community was attached to the feel of the old building and

roundhouse: bass sears / vintage roundhouse: regional history dept. of the community library

The original Roundhouse, February 4, 1940.

the original unique structure, so maintaining it during the remodel was important. The renovations included leveling the base of the building for the gondola landing, building a set of new steps to the lodge, adding a new décor, a fresh layer of paint and reopening Averell’s Bar. The Roundhouse now offers the only sitdown dining service on the mountain, along with a “first-tracks” breakfast special that allows diners to watch the sunrise and get a head start on the slopes. Averell’s Bar, which had been closed for about a decade, offers stunning views of the Wood River Valley and Pioneer Mountains to accompany the tasty beer, wine and bar fare.

Now able to meet the needs of a functional and easily accessible lodge, while still preserving the memory of the Sun Valley of yesteryear, the Roundhouse is making a comeback as a destination spot in Sun Valley. -Hailey Tucker

“Although there’s no particular cultural significance to this building, there’s a huge emotional significance.” -peter stearns

+Last Call!

It’s easy to lose track of time when hanging out at Averell’s Bar, but if you don’t want to get stuck taking the gondola back down the mountain (or a bus back to Warm Springs) here are a couple reminders: • They don’t ring the bell for big tips, but rather to remind guests when it’s “last call” to grab a lift or to ski down River Run. • Last call for Christmas lift to the top is 2:45 p.m.

• Last call to ski down departing from Roundhouse is 3:45 p.m.

• Last gondola down in winter is 4:45 p.m.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 57

BY Kira Elizabeth Tenney PHOTOGRAPHY Kristin Cheatwood

58 sunvalleymag.com | WINTER 2011

s y o b o h a d i g n i y l f high

y defy gravit s r e il b o m snow e a sport in f Two local e d p l e h and the bar is crowded, the lights are flashing,

and a room full of the world’s most extreme (probably mildly insane) athletes erupts in cheers as Heath Frisby takes the stage. Just a few hours earlier, Frisby had claimed his first X-Games gold medal for Best Trick in Freestyle Snowmobiling, a well-deserved accomplishment for a 25-year-old who has been dominating the scene for over a decade. This isn’t why the crowd is cheering, though.

The masses hush as the beat starts, and with a touch of his flatWINTER 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 59

heath frisby

1

1

Heath Frisby defies gravity with a “KOD (Kiss of Death) backflip.”

2 Heath pulls off a

“one-handed heart attack.”

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3 Frisby flies high

over Bellevue, while doing a “one-handed backflip.”

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brimmed hat, Heath shouts, “Yo VIP, let’s kick it! Ice, ice baby…”

That’s right, leave it to Frisby to celebrate a lifetime accomplishment by bringing his talent from the snow to the stage and captivating an entire room with a Vanilla Ice karaoke routine.

This young athlete grew up in Sand Hollow, Idaho, a town he describes as “Not really a town, but more of a freeway exit with a gas station and a bunch of farms.” The Frisbys work hard on their farm throughout the spring, summer and fall, but as soon as the ground freezes with the coming of winter, the family takes to ripping around on snowmobiles, both in the backcountry and on the race circuit.

Heath began competing when he was 13, at a time when the only well-developed snowmobile event was racing. The completely new sport of freestyle snowmobiling was, however, in the beginning stages of a rapid, athlete-driven evolution, and young Frisby was ready for it.

Freestyle snowmobiling began to develop in the late ’90s, as snowmobilers riding in the backcountry started to mess around with tricks from freestyle motorcross. Although his dad initially wanted Frisby to focus on racing, Heath was inherently drawn to the new progression of twisting, turning, and hucking himself off of anything he could on his snowmobile. He attended one of the few snowmobile freestyle competitions of the time and won. After winning, Heath promptly decided to hand over the $300 cash prize to his dad for gas money.

Jason Moriarty, owner and founder of Slednecks, the leading snow-

mobile film and apparel company, remembers the first time he ran into the small, wiry, 14-year-old in West Yellowstone. At the time, Moriarty was a well-known filmmaker documenting the ever-advancing, jaw-dropping development of freestyle snowmobiling.

Describing their first encounter, Moriarty chuckles and says, “I can remember this little kid running up to me, all excited about all the tricks he had and how he could land backwards. There was something different about him. People were coming up to me all the time and saying they could do that stuff, but I could tell he could actually do it. So I said, ‘OK, let’s see what you got,’ and out of that our friendship was born.”

“Little Friz,” as he was called, continued to impress people throughout his early career, and by the time he was 15, Heath was invited to try out for a national freestyle team that was in the makings back East.

The team already had two riders signed from Alaska, and the manager didn’t know if he really wanted a third member. Nonetheless, he offered the young Frisby a one-time chance to make the team, so Heath ditched school and drove all the way to North Dakota, where he showed off his skills in front of 19,000 people packed into the Fargo Dome.

During practice, the two existing team members hit the big jump and crashed, which immediately led to talk of changing it. While higher-ups discussed the issue, Little Friz grabbed a snowmobile and nailed the jump—gracefully, stylishly, and cleanly. He was immediately hired by the team for a year.

“People were coming up to me all the time and saying they could do that stuff, but I could tell he [Heath] could actually do it.”

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In no time, Heath Frisby, the youngster from a barely-there town in Idaho, was showcasing his freestyle snowmobile talent in enormous arenas across the country. By his junior year in high school, Heath had won the Freestyle Snowmobile Indoor Championships and a total of $25,000, which sure beat the income of a typical 17-year-old kid.

Despite missing a lot of school, Heath was able to attend summer sessions and graduate a semester early, just in time to fully devote himself to another winter of competition. He again won the Freestyle Snowmobile Indoor Championships, but lost his love for the team, so, as he simply stated, “I quit.”

Politics, paycuts, and slipups had hit the team hard, so It takes an enormous amount of Frisby decided it was time to find a different outlet for his relentless drive to project himself off large jumps at high speeds. Heath soon partnered with Red d strength to technique, practice, an Bull, the well-known energy drink company, and a start-up called SCS Unlimited, a group of riders out flip, twist, and maneuver one’s body and a of Missoula, Montana, who were looking to take the sport of freestyle snowmobiling to the next level.

500-pound sled while projecting through the Frisby was growing in the sport, just as the sport itself was growing. He was creating new moves, new air at speeds of over 65 miles per hour. records, and a new community of riders. “I always wanted to do better,” Frisby recounts. “I just kept doing it and every year there were more shows and more competitions.”

Frisby was a big name in snowmobiling at that point, so when Isaac Sherbine, a high school snowmobile racer from Bellevue, heard from one of his older sisters that she had started to date Frisby, Sherbine was, needless to say, pretty psyched.

Similar to Heath, Isaac grew up in a setting with uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents living just down the road. The two local boys also had other major aspects of Idaho family life in common: farming and snowmobiling. Isaac was riding on a snowmobile as early as 18 months old, and had been on one ever since.

He started competing in snowmobile races when he was 12, and continued every winter until he made the switch to freestyle during his senior year in high school. With Frisby suddenly in his world, Sherbine jumped full-throttle into the sport under the guidance of one of the best competitors out there.

Heath’s expertise and Isaac’s newfound passion inspired the Sherbines to build a freestyle snowmobile training facility on their family farm in Bellevue. Ramps, landings, a foam pit, and a crane all slowly came together with the help and support of Isaac’s family. And little by little, Heath showed Isaac how to jump and eventually how to do more challenging flip moves.

In the sport of freestyle snowmobiling you have to be good to get noticed, and you have to be incredible to make a career out of it.

Ultimately, a majority of the winter is made up of demos and exhibitions in which you are the main show. With Frisby as his mentor and teacher, Sherbine made the cut.

In the winter of 2009, the Red Bull Revolutionary Machines Tour took on Russia. Frisby and Sherbine excitedly hopped on a plane, ready to bring the art and insanity of freestyle snowmobiling to a global audience.

After a series of long, overnight flights, the Idaho boys stumbled blearyeyed off the plane in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city. A big problem met them there—their bags were missing. While the athletes obviously couldn’t check their own sleds, they did always travel with their body 1 armor and custom bent handlebars, which allowed continued on page 108 62 sunvalleymag.com | WINTER 2011

THIS PAGE (Clockwise from top left) Chad Brumpton getting the feel of ice hockey. Joseph Danes and friend strike a pose on the top of Dollar Mountain. Joe Lowe and local ski instructor Jen Smith capturing the first turns of the day.

isaac sherbine

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1

It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

It’s Superman! No, it’s Isaac Sherbine launching a “double grab.”

2 Isaac tightens up 3 Sherbine soars on his sled.

this “stripper.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY Hillary Maybery

The true spirit of Idaho is that of a pioneer. The type of person who doesn’t simply stand around and wait for something to happen, but rather the type who make things happen.

Here we profile six such snow pioneers, people whose passions and roots run deep through the heart of the Wood River Valley.

The sky is the limit Kaitlyn farrington leads the next generation When Kaitlyn Farrington first started snowboarding, she didn’t do so in hopes of gaining fame and glory, or even to get free trips halfway around the globe.

Rather, at 12 years old, Kaitlyn’s motivation to switch from skis to a snowboard was much simpler than that. It was a classic younger sibling moment. She wanted to be more like her older sister, Jessalyn— and Jessalyn was a snowboarder. Little did Kaitlyn know that in a mere eight years, she’d be climbing podiums around the world for her skills in the halfpipe.

Farrington, now 21, said she was not a natural at snowboarding, but, thanks to lots of practice and patience, she was able to improve.

By 2005, she became good enough to join the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s (SVSEF) snowboarding team and began to enjoy the competition side of the sport. To help support her burgeoning career, Kaitlyn’s family sold cows from their farm to help pay for her travel for competitions.

With growing momentum and steadily improving skills, Farrington soon caught the eye of GNU Snowboards, and by the ’06-’07 winter season, she had received her first sponsorship. A year later, she scored a spot on the U.S. Rookie Snowboarding Team.

Since then, Farrington has continued to carve up the snowboarding scene. In the ’09-’10 winter season, it seemed like she made a podium every weekend. Kaitlyn won the Winter Dew Tour Cup Overall Championship at Mount Snow, Vermont, by being the only woman to pull off a clean “Crippler 7” (an inverted frontside 360 degree flip). She then took gold at the European X-Games in Tignes, France, by beating out Olympic gold medalist, Torah Bright. Finally, Farrington ended her season on a high note by finishing just behind another Olympic gold medal winner, Kelly Clark, for an impressive

Kaitlyn Farrington Pro Snowboarder

second-place showing at last year’s U.S. Open Championships of Snowboarding at Stratton Mountain, Vermont.

Although Farrington travels the world snowboarding and has dreams of making the 2014 U.S. Olympic team, she said one of her favorite runs in the world is still Broadway on Baldy. Farrington credits Sun Valley, both the mountain and the coaches she met on it, for a large portion of her success.

“Since there wasn’t a halfpipe until later, I got really good at freeriding and just having fun,” Farrington said. “Baldy made me a strong rider because of all the different terrain. It made me a strong all-around snowboarder.”

This winter, Farrington will once again participate in the Grand Prix, the Dew Tour and both Winter X-Games, and hopes to execute a Cab 1080 (a popular trick among male snowboarders in which the rider starts fakie, spins around 360 degrees three full times, and then lands regular) along the way.

Kaitlyn sees the other women on the U.S. Team as some of her greatest competition, but adds that they are also some of her best friends. Farrington cites fellow women’s snowboarder, Maddy Shaffrick, as one of her biggest inspirations.

Farrington’s advice for aspiring snowboarders is to have fun and believe in your own abilities. “The sky is the limit. Really, you can do anything,” Farrington said.

And with her success last season, it seems that she is following her own advice. With a little fun and fierce ambitions, Farrington hopes to keep making the Valley that raised her proud. -Hailey Tucker Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 65

MiKE HATTRUP Director of K2 Adventure

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we did 20 years ago, and “ What what they do today in extreme skiing, makes it a very different sport…Today, they are straightlining the stuff we were just barely able to get down.”

pushing the limits mike hattrup and the evolution of extreme skiing Ketchum resident Mike Hattrup is a shy guy, in a mellow town, with an extreme problem.

A pioneer in the sport of extreme skiing in the ’80s, Hattrup, now 48 years old, is happy to watch his two children, Axel and Isabella, excel at Hemingway Elementary School and to play the dutiful spouse to his Munich-born wife of nine years, Claudia.

Hattrup clearly enjoys the Wood River Valley and the freedom to travel the world as the director of K2 Adventure. But this also begs the question: Why is a founder of the global community of hard-core skiing pioneers hanging his hat in Ketchum?

“You need to put it all into perspective. Yeah, I would prefer to have Rendezvous Peak at Jackson Hole right there,” as he points toward Bald Mountain from a table at Java on Fourth. “But when you combine the town and mountain, it’s a very nice mix. The town is not ostentatious, it still feels warm, and the mountain is still remarkable.

It’s a nice balance.”

“Let me say this,” Hattrup continues, “I have skied a lot of places.

And there are not many places you can go with a pure 3,100-foot vertical fall line. I like to make a lot of turns and I want my legs to quit before the run does. Baldy does that.”

Hattrup’s ride to the extreme skiing scene was a bit of a bumpy one.

Born in Seattle, he made the U.S. Moguls Ski Team in the mid-’80s before an ACL injury took him out. But his big break came in ’88, when he co-starred in Greg Stump’s landmark ski flick, “The Blizzard of Aahhhs.” To this day, the film is still considered a cult classic.

“Stump was a DJ by trade,” explains Hattrup. “So while there were other filmmakers before him, like (Warren) Miller and (Dick) Barrymore, his music was really good and his editing was a lot edgier and quicker.”

After nearly 30 years, extreme skiing continues to push physical and technical limits, as young skiers jump off even larger cliffs and ski even steeper faces. Advances in equipment from ski companies such as K2 have also opened up the winter backcountry to diehards and weekend warriors in equal numbers.

“What we did 20 years ago, and what they do today in extreme

skiing, makes it a very different sport,” Hattrup points out. “The difference is in the equipment that allows skiers to push the envelope.

But it’s crazy right now, with the speed and the consequences. Today, they are straight-lining the stuff we were just barely able to get down.”

Hattrup recalls the early days in the backcountry scene with a favorite quote from a fellow extreme skier, the late Allan Bard: “‘Bardini,’ as he was called, had just completed this awesome descent down a face on skinny skis, three-pin bindings, and leather boots.

When he gets to the bottom, he turns to fellow skier, Tim Carter, and says, ‘I can’t believe we just skied what we just skied—on what we just skied!’”

Hattrup moved to Ketchum full-time in ’97, but he was no stranger to Baldy and the Wood River Valley. He took a year off from college in ’82 and lived in Ketchum. He recalls riding the chairlift that winter with skiers, “like me (now). They were in their late forties, they came for a winter and never left.”

“Back in the ’70s and ’80s, we skied bumps every day and Baldy was one of, if not the, best bump mountains in the world. Bump skiing was the culture in that era,” he adds.

Aside from his role with K2, Hattrup is still a prominent ski mountaineer and certified guide. He works for Marin Volken’s Seattle-based guiding service and spends a portion of each winter in the Alps.

“Being a guide at 48 years old, it’s much different than what I thought at 28 years old. If you can survive all the stupid stuff, then you can develop some pretty good judgment,” says Hattrup. “As the saying goes, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

Over the years, Hattrup has also lived in other mountain towns, but Ketchum still resonates with him.

“I lived in Vail for a year and a half. But after three months in Ketchum, I knew more people here than I knew in Vail. It’s very comfortable,” says Hattrup. “I had friends visiting recently. They kept remarking how quiet and peaceful it is here. I thought that’s pretty crazy, but it’s also very true.” -Dan Gorham

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are lots of places I like to “ There go in the world, but there’s not a whole lot of places that I love coming back to. The Wood River Valley is one of the few places I love coming home to.”

the global citizen

dave robrahn finds, and helps define, his home Dave Robrahn is a global citizen, and even though he calls the Wood River Valley home, the twisting path that brought him here is quite a story.

Born in the winter of ’46 in Maroubra, one of the rougher coastal towns surrounding Sydney, Australia, Dave grew up as a surfer. He didn’t even get his first taste of winter until he was 21, in the mountains of southeastern Australia at a ski resort called Perisher Valley.

After one season on the slopes, Dave hit the road, not really sure where he was headed.

“If you know where you’re going, or why you’re going,” Dave said, in his thick Aussie accent, “then you also know when you’re coming back, and what’s the fun in that!”

Robrahn’s long journey to Idaho began when he hopped a ship from Sydney to Singapore. He then traveled up to Europe, where he jumped on a sailboat to the Caribbean and worked there for a while.

Eventually, Dave made his way north to the Rockies, where he worked on the ski patrol at Aspen. From there, Dave followed the snow to Whistler, British Columbia, and eventually ended up in Sun Valley in the early ’70s, four years after he left Australia.

“The first time I came to the Valley, it was during one of the worst snow seasons ever,” Dave recalls, about his first fateful (pre-snowmaking) Idaho winter. Large patches of dirt covered Baldy in midFebruary. The skiing was awful. But he didn’t give up on the place, mainly because of the people he met here. The next year his faith was rewarded with a big winter.

“That did it for me,” Robrahn said, fondly. The world traveler had finally found his home. Not that he’s one to stand still for too long.

Dave continues to travel extensively, from Alaska to Australia, from South and Central America to Mexico and Europe—he’s always on the move. It’s just that now, he always comes back to Ketchum.

“There are lots of places I like to go in the world,” he explained, “but there aren’t a whole lot of places that I love coming back to. The Wood River Valley is one of those few places.”

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When asked just what it is about the Valley that keeps him coming back, Dave gets a bit philosophical. “It’s just an awesome balance for me, an all-around great place to live that has a wonderful mix of the outdoors, good food, great people, a nice climate and a lot of open space,” he explained.

Dave was one of the first snowboarders on Baldy, thanks to a few early boards made by Hooger Booger that showed up at his office at Scott USA (and thanks to the encouragement of his two young sons, Kai and Tann). Robrahn played a vital role in the burgeoning snowboard culture of the late ’80s and early ’90s­— a culture that has now come of age and features world-class, locally-grown snowboarding stars like Olympian Graham Watanabe, Kaitlyn Farrington and even Dave’s now-full-grown sons (Tann made the 2008 Australian Olympic team).

Merging his background in surfing with his love of winter sports and his experience as a design engineer and head of new product development at Scott USA, Dave helped define what it means to be a snowboarder in Sun Valley and the type of gear you need to be one.

The list of products Dave helped design and patent is as long as the one Santa Claus carries around. Though Dave doesn’t like to talk about it, he helped patent inventions like anti-fog systems for goggles, lenses that amplify flat light, face protection gear for motorcross and pivot-points in ski boots that allow a skier’s ankles to move more naturally.

But it’s not because of his inventions that Dave has come to define the Wood River Valley as much as anyone. It’s because of his easy laugh, abundant enthusiasm and a natural ability to encourage others.

Dave is pretty hard to miss around town with his long blond hair (usually stuffed under a baseball cap), an arm full of bracelets, and an Aussie accent that he holds onto proudly. So the next time you spot him, do yourself a favor and buy him a beer. At the very least, you’ll hear an amazing story or two, and there’s a good chance he might just inspire you to go out into the world with an open mind, an open heart, and no destination whatsoever. -Kitt Doucette

DAVID ROBRAHN inventor

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Humble Beginnings Bringing the boarding revolution to the valley

were a tiny shop run by “ We two people and a dog.”

jim slanetz & karin reiChow board bin owners

After spending two weeks driving cross-country with their German shepherd, Sasha, and sleeping in the car at night, Jim Slanetz and Karin Reichow finally trundled into Hailey in a Mercedes Benz on its last legs.

“Whoever had to sleep in the back seat had to sleep with the dog.

Whoever had to sleep in the front seat had to deal with the stick shift,” said Slanetz, reliving that late-’80s ordeal.

By the time they got to town, the car was kaput. It was time to get jobs and find a place to live. Luckily, those responsibilities came together in a fortuitous fashion. They found a garage in Ketchum for rent. It had heat, electricity, a carpet, no running water and was long enough to fit two cars parked end-to-end.

“So Jim was like, ‘Why don’t we open a snowboard shop in the front?’” Reichow recalls.

The rest, as they say, is history. They hung their hats in the back and opened the original incarnation of the Board Bin—the (unofficial) first snowboard shop in the Northwest—in the front.

“We were a tiny shop run by two people and a dog,” Reichow explained.

Since then, the store has become a Ketchum mainstay and the couple has had a hand in shaping the evolution of snowboarding and skateboarding in the Wood River Valley.

But long before that, their stories began on different continents.

Slanetz, 46, grew up in New Hampshire and went to college in Boulder, Colorado, where he first stepped onto a snowboard.

“Someone in my dorm had a snowboard and we would hike up this hill by the planetarium,” Slanetz recalled. “It was more like sledding.”

Reichow, 49, was born in a flat part of Germany, where winter sports were restricted to sledding. She was 12 when she first went skiing in Austria, and spent four weeks in a hospital one winter with a broken back from a bad tumble on the slopes.

In ’88, the pair met in Boston, where Reichow was working with a non-profit group and Slanetz was taking vanloads of tourists on trips around New England. She liked his dog, helped him find some clients, and he invited her to join him on one of his adventures.

Soon thereafter, they were in the jalopy heading west. The next January they got married at the Hailey airport.

Over the years, the Board Bin grew through hard work and dedication. For a while, Slanetz and Reichow each kept side jobs to pay the bills. They innovated early, fashioning snowboard boots from old ski boot liners stuffed into used snow boots. Reichow learned to snowboard and the shop soon became a hub for the knuckle-dragging community.

The fall after they opened the store, Slanetz and Reichow moved it (and their living quarters) to a building on 4th Street, currently home to Java’s ice cream store. In the small alley next door, they opened Ketchum’s first skate park. The neighbors were not thrilled, but the park gave local kids a place to skateboard under the watchful eyes of the shop owners. Eventually, they helped organize the first legitimate skate park in Ketchum, garnering support around town and raising money by throwing street parties.

Since the couple first moved to town, snowboarding has gone mainstream, they’ve had two sons, Ziggy and Shea, and . . . the Board Bin has become a true icon.

“We didn’t know that we’d still be doing it 20 years later,” Reichow said with a laugh. -Dana Chivvis Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 71

people will tell you Baldy “ Most may be the best ski hill in the country, if not beyond that.

Warm Springs, top to bottom, is among the best runs anywhere.”

COMING HOME

The culture of tim silva

From carving turns on his favorite Fischer Riesenslalom skis of yesteryear to the wood core Völkls he enjoys today, longtime Sun Valley advocate Tim Silva is still in love with skiing on Bald Mountain.

Despite spending 18 years away from the Valley, to give the Northstar at Tahoe resort a serious spit shine, Silva, who cut his teeth as a Sun Valley lift operator 35 years ago, is still at home in the Wood River Valley.

But this time around, Silva’s challenge isn’t just safely loading skiers onto lifts—it’s to help make Sun Valley as much fun for a 13-yearold as it is for someone his age, 58.

“Most people will tell you Baldy may be the best ski hill in the country, if not beyond that,” Silva said. “Warm Springs top to bottom is among the best runs anywhere. I love the bowls. The soft snow crud can stay soft and buttery for days.”

For the youngsters, the new terrain park at Dollar Mountain and halfpipe on Baldy are steps in the right direction, Silva said, adding that what makes Northstar and Sun Valley more than just great ski areas is that they are four-season resorts as well.

Silva is a fan of Sun Valley summers, too. His favorite warmweather activities include mountain biking and trail running. He is a little worried that the grounds crew may chase him off the golf course, though.

“Much to the dismay of the superintendent, I do golf. Every time I’m out there I create a lot of work,” he said with a smile.

“I love to hike with my wife anywhere in the Pioneers,” Silva adds, explaining that their connection to this place is so strong that they even “dragged” their two children, who were born in Sun Valley, to Pioneer Cabin every summer during their California years to shoot the family Christmas card. “That is our place. It holds a great deal of sentiment for us.”

Silva returned full-time to Idaho in May ’09 to take the reins as Sun Valley’s general manager. When asked about his dreams for the future of the resort, Silva hopes that actions will speak louder than words.

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“I plotted a path academically. I took a natural science route and studied forestry and recreation. Coming to Sun Valley is not an accident,” he said from his office adjacent to the Sun Valley employee cafeteria, where the people whom he believes are the core of the resort take their work-a-day respite. “I think the essence of any resort is the quality of guest services. We are lucky to have the caliber of people that we do. Some folks over there are the warmest you will ever meet.”

Silva believes Sun Valley employees make the original destination resort an international jewel by sharing their personal warmth and love of the area with visitors.

“You’ve got to want to come to Sun Valley. When you step off the plane in Hailey, you are greeted by a bellman. By the time you get to the lodge, you already have a feel for Sun Valley. It’s got the patina,” he said.

Silva sees room for refinement and continual improvement in all four seasons and in all disciplines at Sun Valley, but more specifically, at the root of the resort. Silva dreams of expanding one of Sun Valley’s original claims to fame: high-level ski instruction and mountain guide leadership to be on par with any ski area in the world.

“I admire anybody who loves this sport, from instructors to maintenance employees and to the people who live here and make it their primary focus,” Silva explained. He sees his job as sustaining the skiing culture. “It takes commitment, but it all adds up to a great experience for those who pursue it.”

Ultimately for Silva, Sun Valley is about family and the people who make the place. While riding the early-bird bus from Hailey to Ketchum, Silva’s name came up in conversation with veteran Sun Valley ski patroller and father of two, John Stokes, a builder who first met Silva during his early years at the resort.

“He is very busy, but he stops when we see each other and we talk about the kids. He is a very amiable guy,” Stokes said after loading his bike onto the Mountain Rides bus for his end-of-the-day ride back to Hailey as he prepares for a new ski season.

That’s Silva’s kind of ski culture. -Matt Furber

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DORAN KEY Ski team coach 74 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

kids light up because “ When they’ve done well, the whole world lights up. At least my world lights up.”

Falling in love with skiing doran key shares her passion for the slopes I started skiing with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s ski team when I was seven, and, like most kids growing up in the Valley, I quickly fell into the routine of praying for powder, spending all of my lunch money on candy bars and trying to understand how my skis were supposed to resemble the shapes of “pizza pies” and “French fries.”

As the years went on and my skiing improved, I remember finding myself in a puzzling situation—for the first time in my life I realized adults could be cool. Ski coaches were a conundrum, and there was one in particular who stood out.

Her name was Doran Key, and I thought there was no one better.

Even as a kid, I could sense her passion and it was contagious. It was impossible not to love skiing when doing it with her.

Growing up here, I’ve noticed that many of my experiences on Baldy were not unique. It might have been Snickers instead of Kit Kats for lunch, or some kids may have stayed on the team longer than I did, but overall, I’ve heard a lot of the same stories; especially when it comes to favorite coaches. And Doran Key is included in those stories almost every time.

Doran, now 53, came to Sun Valley with her family in ’65 and joined the ski team that winter. Even then, she knew she’d found a home in the Valley. When Key was 20, she was invited to coach for what was then called the “Farm Team.” She accepted, and has been working for the Foundation ever since.

She estimates that in the 30 or so years she’s been at it, she’s coached upwards of 1,500 kids. Scott McGrew was one of those kids and has been coaching alongside Key for the past eight years.

McGrew said he has always been impressed by Key’s radiant energy, selflessness and dedication.

“It has never been about Doran. It has always been about the kids,” McGrew said. “There are very few people I think you can honestly say that about.”

Doran beams when she talks about seeing a child win a race or have a breakthrough skiing powder.

“When kids light up because they’ve done well, the whole world lights up,” Key said. “At least my world lights up.”

Although Key is also involved in children’s activities at Atkinsons Park in the summer, she said coaching alpine skiing is an unbeatable experience. The time spent riding the chairlift in between runs is her most cherished.

“In no other sport do you have that break between the activity where you can actually sit down with your kids for 10 minutes and get to know them,” Doran said.

During her coaching tenure, Key has taught the gamut—from skiers like me, who couldn’t care less about speed, to Sun Valley legends such as Muffy Davis, Picabo Street and Zach Crist; she’s been there for it all. And, despite Key’s pride in her students that became Olympians, she said many of her other coaching experiences have been equally rewarding.

Doran said she is just as proud when children join the team at age seven and stay on it until they graduate from high school, even if they’re not the ones who make it up onto the podiums. She also said that seeing the number of young adults, like McGrew, who have returned to coach for the team after being on it as kids, has been incredible.

Key said her goals are to make lifelong skiers out of her students and to help children get involved in a healthy, outdoor activity. And after 30 years of doing just that, she has no intention of calling it quits. Key said she plans to continue coaching until she is unable to walk out to the mountain anymore.

When asked what she would want her legacy to be, Key’s answer was modest. She said, simply, that she wants to be remembered as someone her students had fun skiing with and who played a positive role in their childhoods.

Key could not say enough about how supportive and generous the community has been toward her and the program over the years.

And while she realizes that what she does is important, she doesn’t seem aware that the community is trying to return the favor. Key has dedicated her entire adult life to teaching the Valley’s kids to love the mountains they were raised in. For her efforts, the Valley has fallen in love with her as well. -Hailey Tucker

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Home is where the artlives

richard rush’s abstract representationalism

BY Mike McKenna PHOTOGRAPHY Kirsten Shultz

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 77

when you first meet richard rush, he seems like a mellow enough guy.

A middle-aged Midwesterner by birth, Richard has a deep, soft-spoken voice, a broad forehead, and an easy smile.

But there’s something arresting about his steely eyes—an energy pulses through them as intense as a bolt of lightning.

You don’t have to be around Richard Rush for very long to realize that deep down inside of him, in that place where dreams and possibilities blend together like storm clouds, there is something that desperately needs to escape.

“Painting is my passion,” Richard explained from the studio at his home on West Croy Street in Hailey. “Painting is something that I have to do, that I’ll always keep doing. It’s just something that has to come out.”

Richard, now 45, was born and raised in Chicago, but left the Windy City for the Big Apple before he was old enough to legally drink. He spent the next 15 years in New York, finding a release for his artistic voice by studying acting at the American Academy of Dra78 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

matic Arts in Manhattan by day and painting in his tiny Brooklyn apartment by night.

While pursuing these two passions, Richard found a third when he fell in love with a girl from Idaho. Jenn Jacoby spent many muggy New York City nights telling stories to Richard about where she grew up—some faraway, idyllic place in the mountains where the Big Wood River flowed.

“I would hear her stories and see the pictures and it would just blow me away. It called to me,” Richard said while gazing out the window at the mountain-ridged Hailey skyline. “I love looking out and just seeing sky and land.”

The couple eventually left the noise of the big city behind and answered the quiet call of the Northern Rockies. That was over a decade ago now, and Richard’s art (and the muse that dances behind his eyes) has found its true home in the Wood River Valley. “This place—and the place that I’m at in my life right now—makes it all work,” he said, as a smile crept across his stubbly chin.

Richard describes his work as “abstract representationalism,” a phrase that sums up his style as well as any words can. His medium is mixed media, and occasionally he experiments with encaustics. “What interests me is what we don’t know,” he explained.

Richard’s paintings, often done on canvases as large as his old Brooklyn apartment, have an energetic and dreamy quality to them that pulls the viewer in. His is that rare work that touches emotions

from left “Chinatown” painting; Rush uses graphite to draw on a canvas before paint is applied; Rush works with an encaustic (pigment and beeswax) painting; Rush applies paint over the wax surface of an encaustic painting.

Web Extras: Can’t get enough? View more of Richard Rush at work on www.sunvalleymag.com

and instantly connects with its audience. Once you’ve seen Richard Rush’s work, it’s easy to recognize it again.

“That’s what it’s all about. You see something and you just…you love it, it speaks to you. That’s what I’m going for. I love it when people have that kind of reaction,” Richard said, as we stood amidst a half-dozen pieces hanging in various states of completion.

“I’m going for my own reaction. I paint what I want to see, and if it evokes a universal feeling in me, I feel like it should in others, too,” Richard said. He added with a grin, “And I try to think about whether it’s something I would want to look at every day.”

Richard says he is also inspired by other artists. And not just the types of artists you find in big-time museums like MOMA (New York’s Museum of Modern Art), but also from art done by local moms and merchants, neighbors and newcomers. “I’m inspired by all kinds of artists. It’s fascinating to see what people have done,” he says.

To that end, Richard helped co-found the Valley’s extremely popular annual artist showcase, ARTHOUSE, back in 2007. For one weekend each autumn, Richard and Jenn empty their house completely and then invite other artists to fill it up by displaying their own work.

Richard has also continued to practice his other art, finding an outlet for his acting voice by performing regularly with the highlyacclaimed Company of Fools. He finds that a common thread runs between the two art forms.

“Painting is my passion. painting is something that I have to do, that I’ll always keep doing. It’s just something that has to come out.”

“It’s that whole ‘you don’t know what’s going to happen’ thing. So you just have to let go and dive in and see where you’re at. You don’t want to be doing it if you’re not enjoying it,” he explains.

Painting, however, will always be Richard’s first passion, his life’s work, if you will—although he won’t. Richard doesn’t like to refer to his painting as work.

“It doesn’t feel like work,” Richard said. “All I’m responsible for is for showing up and trying to focus. And I love that part.”

And apparently, the muse that burns within Richard loves that part, too.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 79

Unbridled Enthusiasm

The Sun Valley Sin City Connection

80 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

BY Steve Friess PHOTOGRAPHY Kirsten Shultz

at

the end of the main driveway into River Grove Farm in Hailey, Idaho, standing sentry on a sculpture’s pedestal, is a swirling bronze statue comprising the form of Brentina, inarguably the greatest American dressage horse ever.

It’s not surprising to find it here, just yards away from the stable where the 19-year-old Hanoverian model for the statue enjoys her retirement. Bretina is the pride of this ranch, a centerpiece of Sun Valley equestrian life, and her legendary poise and acumen naturally inspire a monument of such magnificence.

But what few visitors probably realize about this particular work by the late American sculptor, Stephen Weiss, is that there are two of them. The other sculpture stands sentry before a very different sort of centerpiece. It has proudly greeted millions of tourists in the main porte-cochère of the $2.4 billion Wynn Las Vegas resort, an equally significant landmark for Las Vegas, but about as far as could be from the lush, sedate pastures of River Grove Farm and the calm trickle of the Big Wood River.

The common thread between the two sites is E. Parry Thomas, the 89-year-old patriarch whose life’s work as a groundbreaking banker quietly transformed the nation’s original gambling mecca from a kitschy, Mob-infested gaming town of the mid-20th century into an allpurpose destination that now fuels one of the nation’s most dynamic modern metropolises. In the process of that lofty task, Thomas also introduced the major players of Las Vegas to Sun Valley, turning the low-key ski resort alternative to Vail or Aspen, Colorado, into the unpretentious getaway of choice for dozens of Sin City’s most powerful and influential families.

How the “quiet kingmaker,” E. parry thomas, transformed las vegas and helped put sun valley on the map.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 81

“For about 25 years, Parry Thomas was Eeny, Meeny, Miney and there was no Mo.” -Steve Wynn the trim, elderly man with an impressive mane of bright white hair and an easy grin sat in his rustic River Grove Farm barn office one morning last summer, nursing a cup of coffee and sharing his story.

From this perch, Thomas spends hours each day watching handlers train horses in the indoor arena through a room-long glass window surrounded by equestrian ribbons and trophies.

Sun Valley first came into the Thomases’ lives long before Vegas appeared on anyone’s radar. Parry, the third of six children born to a Mormon family in Ogden, Utah, first visited as a teen in 1939. His

82 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

wife, Peggy, also from Utah, spent a summer in Sun Valley waitressing at the then-Challenger Inn. Set up on a blind date by friends who knew their mutual love of horses, the Thomases first met in 1945 after Parry returned from service in Europe as a paratrooper-skier in an American intelligence unit during World War II. They wed in 1947 and settled in Salt Lake City, where he went to work—and quickly moved up the ranks—at Continental Bank & Trust Company.

In 1954, the bank moved Thomas to Las Vegas to figure out why their branch was struggling Thomas quickly realized that the desert gambling destination was actually a potential jackpot.

What stifled both the bank and the city, and led the casinos to be controlled by Mob interests, he discovered, was that no lending institution in the state was willing to loan money to casino owners, who were stigmatized even in Nevada. Instead, the capital for construction and expansion had to come from tainted sources such as Mob-controlled union pension funds and the like. “The casinos were legal businesses and I said that we ought to do business with any legal business,” Parry recalled.

The first loan Thomas managed was for $750,000 to Milton Prell, then owner of the Sahara. Prell proceeded to build a 120room hotel and showroom that the Rat Pack soon made famous.

By 1961, Thomas was president of the Bank of Las Vegas and had forged what would become a lifelong business relationship with real estate investor Jerry Mack, son of bank chairman, Nate Mack. Together they would push and pull the levers of Vegas power, financing a parade of now-famous resort developments, like helping the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes buy numerous hotels owned by aging mobsters ready to cash out. The pair then influenced a big change to Nevada law, allowing public companies to own casinos in order to enable men like Kirk Kerkorian, the

historical images: courtesy stephens press

“Parry Thomas is the Sun Valley guy,” said Steve Wynn, the casino-hotel visionary whose own father died when he was 20 and who has regarded Thomas as his father figure for most of his adult life. “He took me up (to Sun Valley), he took everybody up there.

His children have homes there, other people have homes there because of him.”

Roger Thomas is Parry’s son and the artistic genius whose design aesthetic came alive in all of Wynn’s masterpieces, but especially the lush Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas. So, in a way, Parry Thomas is responsible for transforming Las Vegas twice, with Sun Valley in the backdrop all along.

From left Parry Thomas with Steve Wynn after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Gaming Summit in 1996; The sculpture of Brentina by Stephan Weiss, a gift from the Wynns, graces the entrance of Thomas’ River Grove Farm in Hailey; Parry with Olympic champion equestrian Brentina; Parry Thomas in 1969 as president of the Bank of Las Vegas; Decending the steps at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.

“Father of the Megaresort,” to jump in. Public ownership enabled Vegas “Strip” developers to access previously unimaginable sums of capital, the rocket fuel that set off the late-20th-century Las Vegas boom.

“For about 25 years, Parry Thomas was Eeny, Meeny, Miney and there was no Mo,” Wynn said. “If you wanted to build a building, if you wanted to build another tower, if you wanted to buy a casino or you wanted to get a bankroll loan for working capital, he was the one guy.”

By the late ’60s Thomas had become a mentor to Wynn, a young up-and-comer whose family had owned bingo parlors on the East Coast. The kid had a creativity and hunger Thomas found intoxicating. So when Wynn’s first casino deal played out—he had a small share in the Frontier when Howard Hughes bought it in ’67—Thomas insisted Wynn remain in Vegas and advised him on his next move. Recalled Wynn: “His exact words: ‘This is a growing town, they need young people, you’ll end up owning the place.’

I thought that was so funny. My God, that was 43 years ago.”

Thomas’ impact seldom drew fanfare. There was a Business Week cover in the ’70s with the headline, “Frank Sinatra Gives Las Vegas Its Glitter, Parry Thomas Gives It Its Gold.” In 2000, the Las Vegas Review-Journal included him as one of the 100 most influential Nevadans of the 20th century. Then, in 2009, Thomas was the subject of a biography, “The Quiet Kingmaker,” the result of his own children lobbying him to share stories of his role in the rise of Las Vegas. Thomas gave it the okay despite his long-abiding belief that the relationship between a banker and borrower ought to be as confidentially ironclad as that of a doctor and patient or priest and confessor. Yet most Las Vegans today only know the Thomas name because of the Thomas & Mack Arena, where the University

of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) basketball teams plays. They have no idea that he and Mack assembled the land and raised the money to get UNLV off the ground. prizes from those early days—his first Sun Valley sojourn with the Thomas family. Peggy and Parry Thomas began bringing their five children to horseback ride and ski in the early ’60s, buying one of the first Cottonwood units.

Other families who bought in that round of development included, according to Roger Thomas, the Pritzkers, the DuPonts and the Fords. The Thomases became close personal friends with, among others, Olympic skiing superstar Gretchen Fraser and her husband Don. “We were the first Las Vegans to go there a lot and spend a lot of time there,” Roger said.

It was customary for the Thomases to bring important Vegas movers and shakers to their Sun Valley digs, and it was on the slopes of Baldy and Dollar Mountain in January of ’68 that Parry introduced Wynn to the Nevada inner circle. “I ended up there for the first time in ’68 at age 26, with Hank [Greenspun], Bud [James] and Herb [Jones],” Wynn said, referring to a trio that included the state’s most prominent real estate and media magnate, a gaming executive who’d go on to become chairman of ITT Sheraton, and the most influential attorney in Las Vegas.

“They’re in their mid-40s, I’m 20 years younger, but I’m there at the invitation of Parry, who was the most important person there,” Wynn recalls. “I was hanging out with the parents, not the kids.

And that really was the most important moment in my introduction to the Las Vegas society and its power structure.”

And yet, Sun Valley was decidedly a place where Vegas business continued on page 106 did not—and still does not—get done.

there is another memory wynn

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 83

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A five minute stroll from the pioneer saloon... to your living room

history | folklore

BY Van Gordon Sauter ILLUSTRATIONS Michael Wertz

LORE AND LEGENDS MYSTERIES OF THE WOOD RIVER VALLEY

The Wood River Valley, a place where the sagebrush subtlety of the Great Basin reaches toward the magisterial peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains, has seen its fair share of the unusual over the years. And among the detritus of history, bizarre stories, legends, myths and madness have emerged. Some stories were created by splashy journalists. Others by community apprehensions. And still others by mad behavior or just plain silliness. Most are now relegated to musty archives. But here are a few engaging stories from our past that run the spectrum from legitimate history to old-fashioned delusion.

SAMSON—THE GREAT ELEPHANT ATTACKS HAILEY! I know a little about elephants, as I was once assigned by the Detroit Free Press to ride the lead elephant at the head of the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus parade through the Motor City.

That elephant, dusty, bored and thoroughly disinterested, began the parade with me clinging to the no-doubt-homicidal beast like some parasitic barnacle on the back of an immense gray whale. Meanwhile, my photographer yelled up, “Relax!” with the serene composure of someone safely standing at street level.

Undoubtedly, he’d never been on an elephant before. Nor had he ever heard of Samson, the great Indian elephant that once attacked an innocent and placid Hailey, Idaho, wreaking havoc upon the quiet citizenry and prosaic animal life of Blaine County.

Samson was probably, in 1884 at least, the largest Indian elephant ever seen in America.

Five tons. At least 12 feet fall. He first came to public attention while taking children and tourists for rides at Coney Island in New York. His stay there was uneventful, but his handler had a sense that Samson had a dark side. It was just a hunch, but he sold Samson to the circus.

It was a routine albeit very warm August day in Hailey when the Cole Brothers Circus arrived. And while the original reports of Samson’s rampage through the Wood River Valley were fairly reserved, the version the pachyderm’s trainer, George Conklin, penned

years later for his autobiography was downright sensational.

Conklin, wearing tights with a leopard skin wrapped around his waist, reported that shortly after Samson had dropped off the last of the local kids that had ridden upon his back as the circus paraded from the train station to the Big Top, the elephant, as usual, followed the cages full of other animals into the main tent.

But then, inexplicably, Samson put his trunk under a small cart of animals and casually flipped it on its side. Samson then turned on four nearby work horses, knocking them all to the ground. He then followed this up by flipping over 11 more carts, letting loose a menagerie of lions, tigers and bears to the “Oh, my!” shock of the crowd of spectators.

Conklin got a pitchfork and jabbed the elephant a few times to divert its attention. As Samson turned to attack Conklin, he jumped on a bronco and hightailed it out of the tent.

Samson gave chase. Outside the tent was a blacksmith shop with a huge ore wagon in front, waiting for repairs. Samson blithely shoved it through the shop front and continued his pursuit. As Conklin wrote in his memoirs, “An elephant never goes around anything.”

Conklin was pounding across the field toward a water tower where many people were perched to watch the circus festivities. To them, Conklin looked like a crazed phantasmal on horseback…until they noticed he was being chased by an enraged elephant—and

they were heading right for them! “They climbed down and ran faster than I ever saw anyone run in my life,” Conklin recalled.

Chaos spread quickly. In a momentary pause, Conklin was handed a shotgun which he fired a couple of times at the elephant. “I hit him squarely in the trunk five or six times, but he paid no more attention to it than he would to so many raindrops,” he wrote.

Four cowboys with small-caliber rifles joined the chase and fired at Samson. It didn’t slow him down, though. Finally, the elephant was trapped in a freight yard and set upon by a score of circus workers, who were able to topple the beast and tie up his legs.

Conklin soothed and healed the bound elephant, whose worse problem was a sore trunk. He had to be handfed for a week.

Samson went on to continue his circus career without further disruptions. But years later, he was caught in a fire that swept through the circus’s winter quarters. Samson wouldn’t allow anyone close enough to set him free. He died in the blaze.

It was a tragic, senseless death, but the legend of Samson has lived on. His bones were collected and mounted for an elephant display in the Museum of Natural History in New York City where Samson had a second life entertaining and informing children—far away from screeching train engines and the occasional foul moods that once threatened the well-being of Hailey, Idaho.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 87

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history | folklore

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For years, the rarely timorous denizens of the Wood River Valley and the Camas Prairie lived in mortal dread of a being so large, so loathsome, so cruel, that adult men slept with their lanterns blazing and fierce watchdogs cowered behind iron stoves. No one was safe.

The Camas Wild Man was afoot!

Newspapers, including those as far away as Chicago and New York, quoted witnesses who said the Wild Man wore a beard two-and-ahalf-feet long. His muscular body was covered 88 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

with a two-inch-thick mat of hair. His finger and toe nails were long, at least two inches, and resembled claws. Whispered conversation reported he lived primarily on snakes and over the years had abducted a couple of innocent maidens, ensuring a fate worse than death.

These horrific stories, whispered in the finest drawing rooms of the Valley, sent delicate women lurching for their swoon couches. All piety and decency and life itself were vulnerable to this demented feral beast.

Finally, justice prevailed. The Bellevue Sun reported in 1883 that a traveler named Mickelhenny was hunting in the prairie for ducks with a double-barreled shotgun. Suddenly, the Camas Wild Man leapt from behind some greenery. Mickelhenny, no whimpering fool, dropped the Wild Man with both barrels. Mickelhenny’s colleagues came running.

But the Wild Man was NOT dead. He rose and started to flee. Just as the Wild Man turned to look back at his tormentors, one of the men hurled a hatchet at him. The hatchet cleaved his forehead, and, this time, the Wild Man fell dead.

“Thus ends the life of a mysterious being,” reported The Bellevue Sun. “A man no one knows whom and coming from no one knows whence. A terrible specter. A being shrouded in mystery of whom nothing more will ever be known.” But not so fast!

T. E. Picotte, editor of the Hailey Times, was aghast at the Sun’s revelation. Outraged, Picotte detailed in his paper—admitted to the world—that he, personally, had conceived and

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A man no one knows whom and coming from no one knows whence. A terrible specter. A being shrouded in mystery of whom nothing more will ever be known. brought forth the Camas Wild Man. And this fictitious creation, he fumed, had well served the circulation needs of all three valley newspapers (The Ketchum Keystone rounded out the literary triumvirate). The Sun, he harangued, had no legal or moral right to callously kill off the circulation-enhancing Wild Man, and even then it did so with “ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.”

Presumably, newspaper readers in those days paid no more attention to editorial-page rants and front-page tomfoolery than they do today. And, thus, Valley readers quickly moved from the Wild Man to the more pressing revelations of Mrs. Kate Dougray, who reported that during the winter two of her fine hogs fell into a pond . . . mind you, it was 30 below zero . . . and were quickly encased in ice. However, when the thaw came, the two pigs, brace yourself, promptly broke free of their ice overcoats and returned to normal life . . . rooting for garbage behind the local restaurants. Why not?

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 89

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history | folklore

90 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

MOSS MAN of Frenchman’s Bend Even by the mid-1980s, the young and restless of the Wood River Valley had a subset that sustained itself by lackadaisical work and a host of chemical concoctions. And, thus, the story of the Moss Man begins.

In March of 1984, cross-country skiers reported to the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office that a man—with peeling skin and green moss on his back—was living in the wide, shallow, natural mineral hot pool at Frenchman’s Bend in the Smoky Mountains, about ten miles west of Ketchum on Warm Springs Road. On the ground nearby were the man’s frozen clothes.

“When we pulled him out, he looked like a boiled chicken wing,” Femling said. “He had moss growing on him.”

The deputies extracted the semi-coherent, 6’ 2’’ interloper and carted him off to the old St. Moritz Hospital, where doctors were flabbergasted. The man, then 20-year-old Hailey resident Timothy Hammerbeck, claimed to have been living in the pool for 28 days.

After initially settling in for a long, quiet, speed-heightened soak, Hammerback was horrified to discover that his clothes, lying on the ground by the hot springs, had frozen.

It was bitterly cold, and putting on his icy outfit, he declared, was out of the question.

Even leaving the pool for a few moments to get fresh water from Warm Springs Creek resulted in his feet beginning to freeze. So he stayed in the 90-plus-degree water, only leaving as infrequently as possible to get a drink.

He figured there would soon be a spring thaw and he could get back into his clothes.

Having resigned himself to being trapped in the hot water, Hammerback held fast to his resolve and bobbed around for days that flowed into weeks. He was observed by some people who dismissed him as unhinged and moved on. A man on a snowmobile gave him a bottle of beer—his only nourishment—and, as he later recalled, “probably the best beer I ever had in my life.” The hospital doctor estimated he lost 60 pounds during his immersion.

Current Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling, one of the officers who came to extract Hammerback, told Outside magazine for an article done more than a decade after the soggy event that the Moss Man had basically spent the winter sleeping in the post office, before taking his historic dip.

“When we pulled him out, he looked like a boiled chicken wing,” Femling said. “He had moss growing on him.”

The man’s sister-in-law wasn’t surprised by what may have been the longest hot tub stay in American history. It seemed he consumed amphetamines like popcorn. “His brains are really scrambled,” she told the Mountain Express shortly after the her soft-boiled brotherin-law was rescued.

The Moss Man, who said his nickname is embarrassing, reportedly had numerous strange visions while soaking, including watching a white wolf stalk and kill a deer.

Moss Man’s visions helped inspire a bunch of Valley locals to create a short-lived festival a dozen years later in honor of the man who temporarily became half-human, half-plant.

The Moss Man Commemoration and Pagan Fun Fest of Ketchum, Idaho, though, soon disappeared into the same blurry history that swallowed up its namesake.

But the Moss Man declared he has fond memories of his sojourn at Frenchman’s Bend, although he’d prefer to let that part of his life fade into obscurity.

“I’ve got a job now,” he told Outside, on the condition he not be identified, adding that he’d moved to the practical Midwest, where people would never consider taking up residence in an outdoor hot tub as a sensible real estate play, even if rent free. “People might get the wrong idea about me if they found out I’d lived in the water for a while. It was hard at first, staying there all by myself. But after a couple of weeks, I just started feeling peaceful,” he said.

“It’s also possible,” the Moss Man admitted, “that the drugs had a little bit of influence.” Maybe just a little.

Web Extras: Want more Valley folklore? Visit www.sunvalley.com for the tall tale of The Ghost of Mrs. Osborn.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 91

kidspages | swim team

BY Julie Gallagher PHOTOGRAPHY Kevin Syms

Kelsy Syms in an underwater dive.

License to Win

Swim team makes waves

They practice five days a week, 52 weeks a year. Every member of the Sun Valley 5B/ YMCA Swim Team (SV5B) swims 1,150,700 yards­— or an average of 697 miles a year— roughly the driving distance from Yellowstone National Park in Montana to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. And they love it!

They are focused, physically and mentally tough, and they train to win.

SV5B is a USA Swimming-sanctioned, year-round program. The team (swimmers ages nine to 18) competes as part of the Snake River Swimming Association.

Many members are also part of the Wood River High School Swim Team which— thanks in large part to the mentoring of impassioned coach Brian Gallagher—has taken both district and regional titles, and the women’s team owns the last five state championship titles.

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“I love being coached by Brian. He never makes me feel nervous or intimidated.

He explains everything in ways we can all understand.”

-colby werley, sophomore From its inception in 1995, SV5B has been coached by Gallagher, a lifelong swimmer, former Masters World Champion and two-time Idaho High School Swimming Coach of the Year. Gallagher studies and understands every aspect of swimming, believes in excellence by example and loves coaching kids. A soft-spoken mentor with a positive demeanor and easy rapport, Gallagher stresses the importance of each individual in a team environment, and teaches the kids how to set goals with no shortcuts to success.

“Brian has been such an inspiration to me,” says 15-year-old team co-captain, Lena Friesen. “He encourages every single one of us and (always) has a smile on his face. Even when I have a bad day, I look forward to going to swim team.”

By training in every daily workout, Gallagher sets the bar high, challenging the members to build the skills, determination and focus demanded for swimming competition. “I love being coached by Brian. He never makes me feel nervous or intimidated.

He explains everything in ways we can all understand,” states 15-year-old Colby Werley.

And according to 16-year-old co-captain, Elizabeth Fry, “he is the perfect leader Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 93

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because he does everything with us, has conversations with us, and never yells!” While an exhaustive training schedule rules each day, Gallagher keeps things fresh with inventive workouts that are never repeated and help keep SV5B practices spirited.

“Our team is tight-knit, where everyone supports one another. Brian pushes me to be the best I can be and I don’t like to let him down,” explains 14-year-old Kelsey Syms.

As they build physical and mental strength, the team also learns how to perform under pressure. Most importantly, they each learn to swim the very best they can in every race. “We never doubt the hard sets Brian gives us in training,” says 13-year-old Kaedi Fry, “because we know it will help us be tougher. He always brings out the best in me.” Seventeen-year-old Wood River High School junior JT Sutton notes, “I really admire Brian’s commitment to swimming and our team. He is always there encouraging me to swim my best race and to focus on personal goals.”

Pride runs deep with SV5B swimmers, especially in this mountain community where so many other sports dominate the local news. Team members and their parents learn quickly that competitive swimming requires a great deal of discipline and a healthy respect for the training and coaching process.

Gallagher asks his swimmers to commit to train year-round, and they have been rewarded with numerous trophies and titles. They’ve also 94 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

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“Our team is tight-knit, where everyone supports one another. Brian pushes me to be the best I can be and I don’t like to let him down.”

-kelsey syms, freshman been rewarded with life lessons they learn along the way. As 16-year-old Tori Emerick puts it, “Brian’s devotion of time and patience every time I jump in the water has created a meaningful personal bond between athlete and coach.

As I have grown with the team, I have discovered the importance of respect and focus.”

Author’s note: Author is Brian Gallagher’s wife and biggest fan.

Web Extras: Catch additional testimonials from Gallagher’s team at www.sunvalleymag.com.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 95

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Words&Writers | Marilynne Robinson INTERVIEWED BY Emily Ruskovich ILLUSTRATION Gina Scanlon

Robinson’s language, so deeply infused with wonder, has won over countless readers, including President Obama, who named Gilead, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner, as his favorite novel.

Robinson leads a fairly solitary life in order to devote her time to her creative works.

Divorced and the mother of two sons and one granddaughter, Robinson also writes theology, sometimes gives sermons and currently leads classes at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Our interview for Sun Valley Magazine took place at her home in Iowa City on the first of October. When I thanked her at the doorway, she waved my thanks away. “Anything for Idaho,” she said.

an unconventional life

An Interview with Idaho-Bred Novelist Marilynne Robinson “I have to say, I feel I was well-served by Idaho. I went to a public high school and then I went to Brown and throve, and was completely at a level with any of my peers. I mean, I think that’s pretty wonderful.”

Web Extras: For more Q&A with Robinson, visit www.sunvalleymag.com

96 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson was born in 1947 by the shores of Lake Pend Oreille in Sandpoint, Idaho, a lake whose glacial waters spread 65 miles across the Idaho Panhandle, and whose memory runs so deep that when it rises off the water in the form of mists or smells, it seems to haunt the forests of its own shores and get into the bones of the people who live there.

Its presence is so beautifully unsettling that it’s no wonder, almost 20 years after Robinson left Idaho, the lake returned to her unexpectedly, “sharp as the breath of an animal,” and took over her consciousness when she began writing the first of her three award-winning novels: Housekeeping, followed by Gilead and Home.

SVM | Did you know from an early age that you would be a writer?

ROBINSON | You know, when I was a child, what I mainly thought was that I did not want to live a conventional life. I didn’t have any idea of what the alternatives were, but the idea of being continuously distracted by other people’s demands, even the kind that would come from a highly rewarded life, like being a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, the idea that somehow or other you were always at the beck and call of certain kinds of obligations, was something that I wanted to evade.

SVM | From very early on?

ROBINSON | Yes, exactly. I couldn’t have articulated it in those terms. I read a lot. I was a flashlight-under-the-covers sort of kid. I’ve always enjoyed having my mind to myself, and I’ve been very systematic in retrospect about preserving it. It comes down to controlling my own time, so that I can actually think

a thought from the beginning to the end, or read what I feel I need to read in order to understand what I’m thinking about.

SVM | You told us once in class that one of the most important things we could do as writers was maintain a “mystified loyalty” to our own fascinations. Could you talk about this in terms of your own imagination?

ROBINSON | In my experience, the things that actually take root in your imagination are pretty arbitrary. I mean that among the millions of complexities that individuate any consciousness, one of the things that is true and also very mysterious is that you can see something a million other people have already seen, but for some reason it becomes luminous to you; it becomes something that, if you attend to it, it opens out. You find that if something has a certain sort of emotional coloration for you, usually very ambiguous, it has this sort of importance that you could not possibly gloss. You attend to it, and similar things begin to constellate around it, so to me this is the mind working. It does aesthetic things and then suddenly those things are charged with meaning beyond articulation in straightforward terms. And that is the sort of self-transcendence of the mind, in a way.

Because it is not utilitarian, it is aesthetic, and it’s consciousness putting itself together in terms of the kind of meaning that we recognize when we read a good poem, or the “higher”—I think it’s fair to call it—the “higher” operations of consciousness.

SVM | What was the “tone” of your childhood in Idaho?

ROBINSON | To the extent that my mother found possible, my life had a suburban cast.

But my grandparents lived on the homestead that my grandfather’s parents had established and they had a crazy old, wonderful white clapboard house and old hunting dogs and all that, and a woodshed, and a crazy old barn, and that really was a much stronger image for me in a certain way. I mean it was very distinctive. My great-grandparents seem to have been very powerful personalities, and my grandparents seemed to be the custodians of everything that my greatgrandparents had done, so the furniture was the same. Well, you know, I went to that museum that they have in Sandpoint now, and it looked exactly like the interior of my grandmother’s kitchen, my grandmother’s Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 97

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Words&Writers | Marilynne Robinson

parlor. And that was probably my strongest Idaho association, along with lady slippers and wild strawberries and huckleberries.

SVM | Do you have a certain loyalty to Idaho?

ROBINSON | I have to say, I feel I was wellserved by Idaho. I went to a public high school and then I went to Brown and throve, and was completely at a level with any of my peers. I mean, I think that’s pretty wonderful because Coeur d’Alene High was not elaborately funded, shall we say. But I was taught

very seriously and generously, and it gave me a good foundation.

SVM | Is there a sense of loneliness that comes with the life you’ve chosen?

ROBINSON | I don’t think there’s any question. I think that’s absolutely true.

It’s an odd life. You really do have to concentrate profoundly on things that have no reality for anyone else until the deed is done, and I mean, I write relatively quickly—my books take me about a year and a half—but I mean people take 10 years

Gilead: A novel

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, 256 pages) won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and fully entrenched its author, Marilynne Robinson, as one of the greatest novelists of her generation.

Taking place in the fictional Iowa town of Gilead, the novel tells the story of how the elderly Reverend John Ames—who’s dying of a heart condition—attempts to write an account of his life, and what he remembers of his father and radical abolitionist grandfather, for his seven-year-old son, who will never really get to know his own dad.

Covering several generations, the story tackles the challenges of the Civil War and the theological struggles of a man of the cloth who’s coming to the close of his life.

writing a novel. And you think what that means in terms of shutting yourself away into an imagined world that really can’t mean much of anything to anybody until you’ve finished it. And then there’s that melancholy thing of having finished it, and realizing that a whole swatch of life is gone.

But it’s true. You know, Chekhov wrote with all of his tubercular relatives around him and so on, and there are people who can do that, but I think for most it’s a matter of self-isolation, and it’s pretty severe by a lot of people’s standards.

SVM | What advice do you have for people like me, just beginning that sort of life?

ROBINSON | I’m a great believer in resignation, frankly. I mean, if you’re going to do anything of value probably, you are doing one thing at the cost of other things, and you just have to be realistic about it. I think people write because it’s a profound experience, that degree of concentration. It’s a privilege to have that deep of an experience of your own consciousness. There are other things that become difficult as a consequence, and it’s

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just that. It’s the cost of doing business. My idea, and I’m about to say something cliché and banal, but my idea of loneliness is having a superficial relationship with oneself, and therefore with other people.

SVM | Does writing make you happy?

ROBINSON | Well, you know, it depends.

It’s emotionally complex. Sometimes I write something that I enjoy having conjured for my own purposes; sometimes there’s that sort of quantum fluctuation where you write something and you think “good,” and you look at it the next day and think “dreadful,” and you look at it the next day and you think “pretty good.” I have written passages that I felt had failed and depressed me. And then I find out later that they didn’t fail, and because of the intensity of the relationship between the writer and the work, there is this weather that goes on, these emotional storms, that really intervene between yourself and any objective sense of what you’ve done, so that when you’re happy you think “this might pass,” and when you’re depressed you think, “This

will pass.” It’s not an easy life in that sense.

It’s not a straightforward life.

pick anyone off the street and make them a writer, but if they, you know, if they have the basic capacity for either of these things, you can enhance their development along the lines of their own gifts, ideally.

SVM | Ok, what about the question of whether writing can be “taught.”

ROBINSON | Well, you know, the usual answer is, and I think the appropriate answer, is that a writing program is like any other art school in the sense that we try to recruit people who already show a gift, and then enhance the development of that gift.

You can’t pick anybody off the street and make them into a ballerina, and you can’t

SVM | Do you feel motherly toward your books? Which of them are you closest to?

ROBINSON | Well, that’s really hard to say. I do have this sort of maternal relationship with my books, and if I seem to prefer one, I feel guilty toward the others. I like them all.

Housekeeping: A novel

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980, 212 pages) is Marilynne Robinson’s haunting and poetic story about three generations of Idaho women.

Winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel, Housekeeping tells the story of how two orphaned girls, Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, are raised by an eccentric aunt in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho—an unveiled literary version of Sandpoint, Idaho.

The novel takes its name from the role housekeeping plays in the girls’ challenging lives, not only the actual domestic duty of cleaning one’s home, but also the idea of keeping and creating a spiritual home from which to handle the challenges and heartbreaks of life.

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LocaLHero | Alice Schernthanner

BY Kitt Doucette PHOTOGRAPH Cody Doucette

PIZZA AND FRENCH FRIES Learning to ski with Alice Schernthanner “If I were a bird-watcher, I probably would have taught bird-watching,” Alice Schernthanner says, matter-of-factly, before her signature raspy, baritone, chuckle-cough rises up and her eyes smile behind a pair of thick, round glasses.

Luckily for me, and every other kid who learned to ski or spent time at Dollar Mountain in the last 33 years, Alice Schernthanner is a skier, and so she taught us all how to ski. She also taught more than a few of our parents how to let go—sometimes she downright demanded it.

Listening to her on this crisp morning, I can’t help thinking that Alice Scherthanner hasn’t changed at all from my memories of her when I was a young snow grommet 24 years ago, sliding around on Dollar Mountain. The children’s ski school, however, has grown substantially during her tenure, in large part thanks to her tenacity and passion.

During those three-plus decades of teaching young skiers how to make “pizza and French fries” with their skis (something she won’t take credit for, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she invented), and sharing the simple, silly magic of gliding around on snow, Alice has watched what was basically a daycare service transform itself into one of the premiere kids’ ski programs in the country. The kids’ ski school hut has evolved to become a kids’ and parents’ paradise; a beautiful lodge complete with never-ending supplies of hot chocolate 100 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

“I find it boring to teach them once they know how to ski,” Alice says.

“Instead, I prefer to just let them go.” and marshmallows, delicious pizza and French fries, and an outdoor playground of the grandest scale in the form of Dollar Mountain itself.

There’s even a rumor that the new lodge at Dollar was going to be named after Alice, since it was her hard work and outspoken statements that helped Carol Holding convince her husband to build the thing in the first place. But Alice put the kibosh on that idea. “I told them,” she says, again in that deadpan tone of voice that she holds just on the edge of laughter, “if I don’t own it, then I don’t want it named after me.”

Humble as ever, she rarely takes credit for what she’s been able to accomplish. Most of her students are too young to remember her, because she prefers teaching the newbies. “I find it boring to teach them once they know how to ski,” she says. “Instead, I prefer to just let them go.”

When asked about the famous skiers— and they are numerous—who first learned to carve turns under her tutelage, Alice usually

has some small story about them. Like the time she “grounded” future Olympic gold medalist, Picabo Street, and wouldn’t let her ride the lift until the little speed demon learned how to turn. Or the time she told the dad of Shane Cordeau—a current member of the U.S. Freestyle Team and an Olympic hopeful—that Shane was far too old to be skiing on the dumb end of a leash. His dad agreed, but said, “He just won’t turn.” Alice replied, “He’ll turn if he skis with me!”

Three runs later, the young Cordeau was a turning machine and said goodbye to that leash forever.

After each story, she’ll smile and hack out another laugh, always maintaining her famous modesty and straightforward verbal approach to skiing and life. While many of her students may not remember their first ski instructor, if they’re like me, they’ll always remember those first joyous feelings of speed and freedom and will always come back for more. Hopefully, Alice will be there waiting to laugh with them all over again.

LocaLvoices | the future

Web Extras: Want more opinions? We interviewed Tai Barrymore, professional skier and coach for Sun Valley freestyle ski team. Check it out at www.sunvalleymag.com

INTERVIEWS BY Hailey Tucker ILLUSTRATIONS Charlotte Hemmings

the valley’s future As Sun Valley enters its 75th ski season, we asked a handful of longtime locals their thoughts on the current state, and the future, of America’s oldest ski resort.

Wyatt Caldwell

Professional snowboarder and arborist Valley resident for 27 years (his whole life)

What keeps you here?

The seasonal change and all the recreational activities that come with each season; the quality of life; and, most importantly, the climate and the tight-knit community.

in your opinion what is Sun Valley’s image?

A remote mountain ski resort community founded by wealthy ski bums who cherish their quality of life so much they fail to market to the rest of working-class America who might want to visit.

What is Sun Valley’s biggest strength as a resort community?

We have some of the most extensive snowmaking in the world with very steep terrain and expansive vertical feet. We also have strong annual snowfall and diverse seasonal sports to accommodate all abilities, along with easy access to trailheads, lakes, rivers and streams, and a strong presence of local businesses, restaurants and galleries.

What do we need to improve on?

Marketing to working-class middle America in a way that presents Sun Valley as a place where not just wealthy, second-home owners can visit or come on vacation. They need to focus specifically on the demographic of individuals between 18-30 years of age, who would love to live here for the quality of life and all Sun Valley has to offer but have a hard time finding a legitimate job with their college degree due to the tight-knit “who you know” mentality of prospective employers.

What will it take to put Sun Valley back on top?

A very strong marketing campaign to inform potential residents that everything they desire exists here. Sun Valley needs to keep up with other resorts that have done this and succeeded. They need to start marketing through magazine advertising, television ads and web content. Sun Valley is a great place to grow up, raise a family and recreate outdoors. I hope the right efforts are put in place to ensure many generations of skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, golfers and hikers can enjoy the seasons while happily working and staying involved in the community.

102 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Sarah Hedrick

Owner of iconoclast books & cafE valley resident for 20 years What keeps you here?

The fall, four children, a mortgage, a business.

I’m not really a small-town person. I love city living, and still think of myself as a city slicker.

But I do love the sense of community that a small town offers, and the safety, and that it’s a great place to raise children. Part of what I love about it here is that we’ve got things like the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Company of Fools, these amazing organizations. These are very sophisticated things that a city would afford, and so, for me, what keeps me here is that I have exactly what I love about a small town and yet we’ve got so much culture, art and intellectually stimulating things going on.

Otherwise, I would go crazy.

What is your ideal Sun Valley day?

One of my favorite things to do is have company in town and enjoy the area as if I were a tourist. You know, go to the Hemingway Memorial and go out to lunch. If it were a winter day, it’d be a ski day and then coming down to one of the hot springs, and then there are some restaurants that are wonderful.

What is Sun Valley’s biggest strength as a resort community?

For one, there’s this level from Sun Valley Company of core competency—that they are doing what they’re really good at—and I think with Tim Silva, that’s only getting better. I think part of its strength is that it is small and intimate, but that it has all of this glamorous appeal—that you can come here and eat at a world-class restaurant, go to a world-class bookstore, ski a world-class mountain. You can do all these amazing things, but in this environment of a really neat small community.

What is Sun Valley’s current market?

I think it’s been targeted at what was my parents’ generation for a long time and that has shifted. One change that I’ve seen from my childhood to now is that it used to be marketed as a ski resort. Now the target audience is fly fishermen, tennis players, golfers, hikers, bikers. And, quite honestly, I feel that the fall season is spectacular, so it’s much more of a year-round destination than I remember in my childhood.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 103

LocaLvoices | the future

Claudia McCain

President of Wood River Arts Alliance Valley resident for 30 years What keeps you here?

I just love everything our town has to offer. I love the sophisticated restaurants and food. I love our arts programs and watching them grow. I love the outdoor availability. I love that I can be in galleries with world-class art and go to a theater performance that’s top-draw or see some of the finest musicians in the world, and in another 15 minutes I can be in the mountains with my dog enjoying all the solace that they have to offer. Even though we have an urban sort of feel, it’s still a smalltown community that supports each other. When any one of us, a part of our community, is in need, we turn out to support them, and I think that’s incredible and beautiful, and that’s part of why I like being here and staying here.

What is Sun Valley’s biggest strength as a resort community?

I think we have a lot of diversity. As a mountain town, we draw people from urban areas who are fairly sophisticated, and with that comes all the

amenities to fill those needs for residents and visitors. So we have great restaurants and our arts community has grown exponentially in the time I’ve been here. The programming has become much more exciting and broad, and our outdoor life is very exciting.

What do we need to improve on?

I think that we’ve had a lot of shakeup in the community, and that’s painful for many of us.

But at the same time, I think that will help us evolve and grow and reach out in new and different ways. And I think that we probably need greater marketing of what we have to offer—of what is so special here.

I also think we need to continue to work toward a superior quality of service from everyone, from the person who picks someone up at the airport, to a waitress, to the barista at the coffeehouse, to the bank teller. I think it is just a requirement of us to do our best to have the most hospitable service we can offer.

I think we can always improve on who we are, on our quality of hospitality and service. Our economy is so based in tourism that we have to do everything we can to make the visitors’ experiences the best they can be so they’ll want to come back, so they’ll be excited about this place that we all love.

Valdi PACE

Blaine County Assessor Valley resident for 42 years What keeps you here?

You know, it’s the mountains, really. I am drawn to the mountains and the seasons. I can’t imagine living somewhere without them. I’ve traveled to lots of places, but this is the place.

What is Sun Valley’s biggest strength as a resort community?

One would think it is the skiing, but I really believe it’s our summers. We have excellent summers. We have beautiful weather and many activities. I mean, you can ride a horse, you can ride a bike, you can go down to the river, you can hike anywhere you want. Really, we have the freedom to explore whatever we want.

What’s the biggest challenge Sun Valley faces today?

I think we must be very thankful that we have an owner (Sun Valley Resort) who is just very happy to pour money into it, because the economic times really are difficult. I look around and I am amazed at what has left, but what has also stayed, and I really believe it’s because of the community. There’s a lot of turnover in businesses and it’s very difficult to make a living here. Many people have more than one job because that’s what they have to do to be able to stay here, and it’s been that way for nearly as long as I can remember. You have to make sacrifices to live in a such a beautiful place.

What will it take to put Sun Valley back on top?

Do we want to be at the top? I don’t know if that’s their goal, and I don’t know that I want to see that as their goal, but it’s not up to me, is it? I don’t know that Sun Valley fits at the top.

You know, what is the top? What makes the top? We have a fantastic mountain. We have fantastic grooming. But it is difficult to get here. That is a challenge, and the people who come here know it’s a challenge, and if they really want to come, they will.

104 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Ben VERGE

Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Coach Valley resident for 29 years (his whole life) What’s your ideal Sun Valley day?

Go skiing at 9 (a.m.), or actually maybe around 10, and then ski with my buddies until around 2. Then meet up with all the kids for ski team and then ski some more.

What’s Sun Valley’s biggest strength as a resort community?

Just the terrain, I think...the non-stop steeps produce great skiers and great skiing.

What’s the biggest challenge Sun Valley faces today?

I think the biggest challenge is shifting gears from the old way of thinking and embracing the new mentality that it’s decided to adopt.

You know, the old way of thinking was kind of closed-minded toward progression in skiing and bringing young people in and making it a skier’s ski mountain as opposed to a mountain catering to wealthy older people.

It’s too good of a mountain to be wasted on just people that can bring us money.

you a cheaper deal on a season pass. I mean they’re already doing big things with the parks, so I think that’s the one big issue.

What will it take to put Sun Valley back on top?

I think that they’re moving in a good direction. I think that the days of only having ski racers come out of here for the last 20 years is kind of shifting, and I think that’s a cool thing. We’ve got kids now that are potentially going to be in the Olympics, and that’ll be on the U.S. Ski Team in the next year, for a new sport (instead of the usual downhill racers), which is halfpipe. I think it’s just really cool to see. It makes me happy to live here.

What is Sun Valley’s image?

I think that for this winter, Sun Valley’s image has gotten far more beautiful than it was in the last few years. I think that the terrain park and the kids that are coming out of here, in terms of halfpipe and park skiing, have changed the image and made it a lot younger and more youthful and cooler.

What does Sun Valley need to improve on?

I think local deals. Locals pay way too much to ski. A huge thing is that there needs to be discounts on season passes: A) bigger in the summer; and B) if you’re a Blaine County resident; if you have a Blaine County driver’s license, I think that should count for getting Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 105

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Unbridled Enthusiasm continued from page 83

“We never talked business when we were here,” Parry Thomas said. “That’s not why we came here. We came here to ski and get out of the heat, to enjoy ourselves.” In fact, in 1977, when Bill Janss needed to sell Sun Valley Resort, Thomas contemplated buying it. His wife, however, shot those plans down. As Peggy explained, “I said, ‘No, if you buy Sun Valley, it becomes a business.

It won’t be a place to go on vacation, it’ll be a work place.’ I wouldn’t let him think about it.”

instead, the following year the Thomases bought the 80-acre riverside spread known as River Grove Ranch from real estate developer and occasional llama raiser, Dale Donnelly, and rechristened it, “River Grove Farm.” The Thomases’ only daughter, Jane, was enthralled by horses (having gotten her first, “Beau Valentine,” at age 9) and competed in hunter-and-jumper competitions. So the Thomases persuaded Bob and Debbie “the First Lady of American Dressage” McDonald, who had been coaching Jane and Peggy in Southern California when the Thomases summered there, to move to Hailey and help them build a barn and stable.

As Peggy became more interested in dressage, a discipline of intense obedience, sometimes referred to as “horse ballet” (and one of just three Olympic equestrian

events), so, too, did Parry. By the late ’80s, with his banking career winding down in Las Vegas—he sold his holdings to Bank of America in 1992—Parry started spending more time in Sun Valley and hired Olympic equestrian medalist, Hilda Gurney, to train Peggy. He followed that up by deciding to buy German Hanoverian horses, in hopes of developing a world-class dressage program at his Sun Valley property.

Their greatest triumph, of course, was Brentina, the Hanoverian mare they bought at auction in Germany in 1994. By then, the Thomases were so well known at the auction and on the equestrian circuit that when the hammer came down and they had outbid all other contenders for Brentina, the auctioneers played a rousing version of “Viva Las Vegas” in tribute.

Debbie McDonald and the chestnut-coated mare would go on to become the greatest American dressage partners in recent history, earning, among countless other honors, a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

In “The Quiet Kingmaker,” two of Thomas’ older sons express surprise that their father chose to retire to an equestrian life of summers in Hailey and winters in Las Vegas and Del Mar, California, saying they expected their dad to enjoy his dotage by boating. But Roger Thomas disagreed with his brothers: “Mom and Dad met on horse-

Quiet Kingmaker

of Las Vegas: E. Parry Thomas by Jack Sheehan (Stephens Press 2009,

346 pages) pulls back the curtains for a behind-the-scenes look at how Las Vegas evolved from a desolate gambling outpost in the Nevada desert into one of the world’s largest and most successful tourist meccas.

While Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack were making Las Vegas famous, a quiet family man from Utah was making it a financial reality. The Quiet Kingmaker is an oral account of how Parry Thomas not only envisioned the Las Vegas Strip, but how, with little fanfare or notoriety, he played the pivotal role in it’s creation.

After taking charge of a tiny, struggling bank in Las Vegas in 1954, Thomas decided to do something no other bankers at the time would do—loan money to casino operators. And it paid off.

In short order, the Sahara, Stardust and Sands hotels and casinos all sprung up and the Las Vegas Strip was born. A generation later, Thomas mentored a young upstart named Steve Wynn, who carried Thomas’s dream for the Strip a step further by building the Mirage, the Bellagio and the Wynn Las Vegas resorts.

Including scores of first-person accounts from a who’s who of Las Vegas power players like Steve Wynn and Jack Binion, Bill Boyd, Joyce Mack (the wife of the late Jerry Mack) and Bob Maheu (Howard Hughes’ “alter-ego”), the Quiet Kingmaker breaks the silence on the real story of how Sin

City was built and the man that made it happen.

106 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

back, basically. As soon as my sister started riding competitively, Dad took to it maybe even more aggressively than his boats. The boating turned into a solitary thing for him.

When it came to horses, it was always my mother and father with my sister.”

Indeed, Parry Thomas explains the decision this way: “I loved being on the boat and on the ocean, but the reason we went into horses is because it was something Peggy and I could do together.

Peggy and I have been married 63 years now. We’ve had a wonderful, wonderful marriage. When we were about 60, we started wondering what we’d do. And we decided to concentrate on horses because we could do it together.”

Parry and Peggy, once inveterate skiers, no longer hit the slopes; doctors warned Parry that his aging bones couldn’t withstand a crash and Peggy decided “It’s no fun doing it without him.” The couple spends at least five months a year in Sun Valley now, minding the farm and living in a house near their daughter, Jane, whose family also lives on the property. They’ve thrown numerous fundraisers to benefit the arts and civic programs in the region, most notably the Sun Valley Pavilion.

Yet there was one special summer evening in August of 2003 that topped them all and brought together so many facets of the Thomases’ lives in a magical way.

Parry and Peggy hosted an extraordinary fundraiser for the Sun Valley Summer Symphony at River Grove Farm in which the full orchestra played patriotic music as Debbie McDonald and Brentina performed a six-minute dressage routine. The farm’s indoor arena was decorated with mammoth chandeliers (that still remain) for an elegant dinner enjoyed by hundreds of patrons and, of course, the Thomases’ closest friends from Sun Valley, Las Vegas, and the equestrian world. Steve Wynn was the master of ceremonies.

The performance was flawless and is said to have been the first time in America that a full orchestra had accompanied a dressage performance. Everything felt right, and in perfect alignment for Thomas.

“That was what Sun Valley is about to us,” Parry Thomas recalled fondly, as he looked at the Brentina statue the Wynns gave them shortly thereafter. “It was a magnificent evening, everything was lovely.”

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 107

Precision Aviation, Inc. excellence in aviation since 2002

chartered flights • aircraft management Aircraft maintenance • u.s. and canadian service 208.308.1852 • www.paviation.com

Home of Julie Foods

Local produce, dairy & eggs  Gluten free products Top of the line supplements

Kiki’s Cafe 9:30 to 4:00 151 Main Street, Ketchum, ID 83340 Tel: 208.929.7604 | Fax: 208.928.7605 www.jjnourishme.com jjnoruishme@gmail.com

The Gluten Free Pantry Open Monday - Friday 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

For more Information Call 720-7045

“For all your gluten free staples & treats.”

& Resilient Body Pilates STOTT PILATES® method & Barre Studio 720-4089 Both Located at 515 N River St Unit B Hailey Idaho Behind Fireplaces Etc at the Corner of River Street and Myrtle www.resilientbodypilates.com For current Class Schedule

aho boys id g in ly f h ig h continued from page 62 them to swing their feet through for tricks such as heel-clickers. “Without the handlebars,” Sherbine states, “it’s pointless to ride. We might as well have turned around and gone home.”

So, without knowing a grunt of Russian, Frisby and Sherbine engaged in a frustrating and fruitless game of charades with the Russian customs agents in an effort to track down their crucial pieces of luggage. Getting nowhere fast, the guys finally tracked down their Red Bull guide who promised he would figure it all out.

Dressed only in jeans, T-shirts, and hooded sweatshirts, Frisby and Sherbine walked out of the airport and got their first glimpse of Russia. They probably could have used some shots of vodka, but instead they were blasted with minus-40-degree temperatures.

They had to suffer through a whole week of brutal Russian winter weather in what might as well have been beach attire.

Eventually, Red Bull tracked down the missing bags. They were found at the International Airport in Moscow, but, as their importance to the riders had been heavily emphasized, they were now tagged with a mysterious $1,200 release fee. Grudgingly, Frisby and Sherbine paid the fee and got ready to do what they had come to do—ride.

At their first show in Russia, there were over 76,000 spectators—the most people to ever watch a snowmobile event. “Just to be a part of that,” Sherbine remembers, struggling to find the words, “we were all stoked to ride in front of so many people.”

After a solid month of being on the road in a completely foreign culture on the other side of the world, the team was ready to return to their favorite place—the familiar confines of the Wood River Valley.

The riders’ international success at such young ages can be attributed to a combination of natural talent, intense dedication, and hard work. Being a professional freestyle snowmobiler is not just a pick-me-up jaunt in the park. It takes an enormous amount of technique, practice, and strength to flip, twist, and maneuver one’s body and a 500-pound sled while projecting through the air at speeds of over 65 miles per hour. During the winter, Frisby and Sherbine train on their snowmobiles and in the gym every day without fail.

Describing Heath’s training regime, Jason Moriarty notes, “He’s really serious and considers himself a world-class athlete. He’s in the gym daily trying to get stronger, and he practices on his snowmobile year-round 108 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

as much as he can. Heath looks at freestyle snowmobiling like it’s his job. He takes it seriously and he wants to be the best.”

All the hard work culminates for Frisby and Sherbine at the Winter X-Games, held in Aspen, Colorado, every year. The scene at the X-Games is nothing short of extreme—cameras on zip-lines film the athletes’ runs and cameras at the top and bottom of the course film every reaction and move. ESPN sponsors the event and covers every minute of it, determined to get the full story—smeared blood, brutal crashes, waving moms, and incredible tricks.

For the 2009 X-Games, 18-year-old Sherbine went as an alternate and got the opportunity to compete. Not even knowing that he was going to ride when he arrived in Aspen, Isaac was stoked on his sixth-place finish in freestyle. And although he didn’t do as well in 2010, he’s looking forward to competing and finishing higher in 2011.

At his first Winter X-Games in 2007, Frisby received the bronze medal in freestyle, but was just two-tenths of a point shy of first place. He notes, “I thought that I should have won it.” As with any judged sport, the athletes have to take what they get, and a bronze isn’t all that bad.

The following year, Heath won another freestyle bronze, and was two points away from the gold medal. The year after that he won bronze again, once more finishing a mere two-tenths from freestyle gold. “I was feeling like I was never going to win it,” said Frisby.

By last winter’s X-Games, Heath was starving for gold. Another competitor had a clear lead in the Best Trick competition until Frisby’s last jump, when he pulled out a mindboggling, gravity-defying, clean “Tsunami Indy Flip,” in which the rider does a full back flip with the sled and then extends his body and crosses his legs while the snowmachine is still completely upside down above him, before bringing the snowmobile back around for the landing. After a lifetime in the sport, Frisby had finally claimed his first X-Games gold medal with an incredible trick.

No matter how many medals they amass, Frisby and Sherbine will always be hard-working Idaho farm boys. When asked separately where the best place they’ve ever been is, both answered, “home.” It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us that the Wood River Valley unwaveringly holds the hearts of the extreme.

Web Extras: Be sure to visit www.sunvalleymag.com for more of Kristin Cheatwood images along with a Slednecks video from the Bellevue practice session.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 109

Lisa Holley "The ArrAngemenT" Watercolor, 20” x 21”

P.O. Box 3 ~ Sun Valley, ID 83353 ~ www.lisaholley.com

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SUN VALLEY MAGAZINE

Through profiles, in-depth features and stunning photography, Sun Valley Magazine captures the spirit of Central Idaho—with the unique personalities, arts, food and wine, events and history that define the West.

SUN VALLEY HOME

The Valley’s reliable resource on regional architecture, interiors and design, Sun Valley HOME offers a sneak peak into the extraordinary homes, designs and trends in the area.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Get both Sun Valley Magazine and Sun Valley HOME delivered to your door for only $22

Easy and secure online ordering at

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

GIFT GUIDE

Whether you’re looking for that perfect holiday gift or simply something to give as way to show how much you care, the goal of any gift giver is to get that “Wow!” reaction from its recipient. To help, here’s a selection of gifts sure to be high on the “Wow!” factor.

PHOTOGRAPHY Kevin Syms

textured pears

SUN VALLEY GARDEN CENTER 771 North Main Street Bellevue 208.788.3533

Pears $6.95 each Tray $39.95

Each hand-poured pear will burn in and down through the middle, glowing all the while. Beautiful alone or placed on a hand forged iron tray.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 111

GIFTGUIDE | things we love

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

BURTON’s WHAMMY BOB MARLEY BOARD BOARD BIN

180 4th Street East Ketchum 208.726.1222 “Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” As with every season, Burton never fails to sprinkle exciting collaborations among its already impressive array of shreds. We’ve seen official collaborations with the Warhol estate, Futura, Ducati, and most recently for 2011, legendary singer and cultural icon Bob Marley. The Marley Whammy board was made possible with a blessing from the Marley Estate and it should give you some good vibes and easy feelings on the mountain for sure mon.

Collar $28.00 Leash $46.00

www.sunvalleydog.com www.isabellacane.com

REGAL REDS COLLARS

$99.

95

SUN VALLEY DOG

www.yourplanet.ws www.facebook.com/yourplanet www.gotoatg.com

360 N East Avenue #4, The Courtyard Ketchum 208.725.0455

WEWOOD WATCH YOUR PLANET

Air Terminal Gifts/Your Planet Salt Lake City International Airport The WEWOOD Company emerged out of Italy as an emblem of eco-luxury and design, committed to the health of our planet.

WEWOOD is the avant-garde approach to sophisticated sustainability. Completely absent of artificial and toxic materials, the WEWOOD Timepiece is as natural as your wrist. When you get your WEWOOD Timepiece, you can feel confident you’re making a difference (with each purchase, WEWOOD plants a tree) and together we help to ensure the health and survival of the natural world.

112 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

$399.00

www.boardbin.com

Sun Valley Dog is located in Ketchum, Idaho. All of our products are designed and manufactured here in the USA. We do all of our product testing in the Pioneer, Sawtooth and Boulder mountains to ensure rugged quality. We are design conscious and strive to provide high-quality products that are durable, functional and beautiful. Sun Valley Dog accessories are the perfect complement to an active outdoor lifestyle. Our dogs enjoy freedom here and the playful exuberance they display is infectious.

We play hard, we work hard and we are always available to help our customers.

Colors shown above: Buddha and Stripes

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

JEWELED NECKLACES

BARRY PETERSON JEWELERS Sun Valley Snowflake, Pink Tourmaline & Diamond Cross 511 Sun Valley Road Ketchum 208.726.5202 Sun Valley Snowflake: Barry Peterson’s

JOHNNY FARAH LEATHER CARRY-ON TRAVEL BAG

signature Sun Valley series remains a favorite amongst Sun Valley residents and visitors.

This series includes the original Sun Valley Sun (first designed in 1972 by special request from the owner of the resort) and the new Sun Valley Snowflake. Select from the extensive collection of sizes and diamond options in 18-karat or 14-karat gold or sterling silver.

SISTERS

100 North Leadville Ketchum 208.726.5160

Pink Tourmaline & Diamond Cross: Make

a statement this season with this stunning handmade 3-karat pink tourmaline cross featuring .26-karat diamonds and handmade Turkish filigree using time-honored old world techniques.

Price upon request. www.barrypeterson.com

CHANTECAILLE PURE

Les Macarons Face Palette, Lip Chic & Lip Stick, Compact Makeup, Iridescent Eye Shade 651 Sun Valley Road Ketchum 208.727.9080

From the Johnny Farah collection of belts, handbags and shoes made of entirely handstitched, high-quality leathers crafted from premium quality, vegetable-tanned hides that are individually and meticulously handmade in Beruit. Elegant simplicity in a beautiful and timeless design.

Price upon request.

sisterinketchum@aol.com

CHANTECAILLE is the preeminent luxury brand for serious skincare and beautifying cosmetics, known for its uniquely high concentration of natural botanicals. The line stands out for the extensive research and technological innovation invested in each ground-breaking formula. It is also distinguished by the exceptional purity of its ingredients, which are endowed with a potent life force capable of nourishing and revitalizing the skin, the body and the spirit.

Price upon request. puresunvalley@aol.com

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 113

GIFTGUIDE | things we love

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Two’s Company photo frame YOUR PLANET

Air Terminal Gifts/Your Planet Salt Lake City International Airport Air Terminal Gifts (Your Planet) in the Salt Lake City International Airport, Two’s Company photo frames are techno savvy and made from recycled computer keyboards. Show off your environmental awareness and “re” decorate with eco-friendly goods. Your friends will be “green” with envy.

LEATHEROCK BELT 24/7 skin spa 24/7 SKINCARE BY NANCY KELLY

24/7 Calming Cleanser Gel, 24/7 Sun Valley Silk, Dermaquest SPF 30 Clarisonic Mia™ Sonic Skin Cleansing System 671 Washington Avenue N., Suite A Ketchum 208.726.5400

ZETA & COMPANY

Air Terminal Gifts/Zeta & Company Salt Lake City International Airport From Air Terminal Gifts (Zeta & Company) in the Salt Lake City International Airport, Leatherock belts are handmade in the USA/ California. Their unique styles are made from genuine leather and Swarovski crystals.

Leatherock belts have emerged as a leader in the fashion industry. The company was established in 1983 by Laurence & Rahleen Bloch, originally from South Africa.

Price upon request. www.24-7skincare.com

$22.95

www.yourplanet.ws www.facebook.com/yourplanet www.gotoatg.com 114 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

The words “cleanse, correct, moisturize and protect” are Nancy Kelly’s skincare mantra. This minimalistic approach to skincare has helped her clients stay on track. Our lives are incredibly busy and it is a sensible choice to keep a skincare program simple, while constantly protecting and allowing the skin to heal itself. Although everyone’s needs are different and some need more products to fine tune problem areas, always reduce it to the basics for beautiful, healthy skin.

$212.95

www.zetaandcompany.com www.facebook.com/zetaandcompany www.gotoatg.com

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

THERM-IC POWER GLOVES STURTEVANTS

Hailey, Ketchum & Warm Springs Village 208.726.4501 Never again cold hands! Thanks to the newly designed heatable gloves by Therm-ic Power Gloves. At first sight, Therm-ic Power Gloves may not look extraordinary. But there’s something very special going on inside… HEAT. Each Therm-ic finger has built-in heating elements. The temperature is regulated with convenient push-button controls on the back of the gloves. Therm-ic Power Gloves feature the great feel and style of the best high-end gloves, but you’re also provided with warmth and comfort for up to 12 hours! And they re-charge overnight.

$394.99

www.sturtos.com

WHIMSICAL WOOLEN ROBINS

SUN VALLEY GARDEN CENTER 771 North Main Street Bellevue 208.788.3533 These adorable whimsical woolen robins are ready to nest on a shelf or perch atop a mantle.

A fun gift for young and old.

DECORATIVE PILLOWS ELIZABETH LUCAS HOME 340 Walnut Avenue Ketchum 208.622.7551 Update any room with these decorative pillows. Choose from antique illustrations of birds, botanicals, sea life and African animals.

$325.00 each

Large $21.95 Medium $16.95 Small $12.95 Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 115

galleries & artists

Whether a passionate collector, a hands-on artist or simply a casual gift buyer, Wood River Valley visitors and residents alike celebrate the arts in all forms.

Indulge your senses. See, feel or hear for yourself. Visit the artists and galleries highlighted here, or check our website at www.sunvalleymag.com for a calendar of art classes and special events.

Andrea Maki www.andreamaki.com • 206.954.7733

elizabeth lucas home 340 Walnut Avenue • Ketchum, ID 208.622.7551 Elizabethlucascompany.com

Friesen Gallery Sun Valley Road at First Ave • Ketchum, ID 1200 Second Ave • Seattle, WA 208.726.4174 • www.friesengallery.com www.speakforthetreesbook.com

Resonate: Believe (Wild Horses), 2005-09, 4’x3’x3”, Private Commission, New York. Right: Andrea at Toi, Seattle 2001.

Born on the West Coast in 1966, Maki graduated from NYU in 1988 with a painting degree. Her art career spans over two decades, exhibiting in collections nationally. Maki’s work reflects her (our) relation to universal energy, life and oneness, and her deep connection to the animal world. Maki’s mixed media work is intimate, yet interactive. In 2005 she created “The Wild Horse Project,” following her 1999 wild horse series, to promote, support and raise awareness. Wild Horses from the 2009 Challis roundup have now led her to their home, resulting in Wild Love, a magical wildlife preserve and project dedicated to protecting and preserving, honoring and nurturing the legacy of the Wild as nature intended. Visit the website www.wildlovepreserve.org for more information.

116 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Black Dove Branch with Crystal Thistle, Richard Jolley, Glass and Steel, 18” x 24” x 11”

George Perch, Multimedia on Canvas, 36” x 48”

Elizabeth Lucas Home features art created by the Elizabeth Lucas Company, L.c. The collection consists of limited edition prints and pillows designed and created in a studio here in the Wood River Valley. The materials range from recycled cardboard to gauze and canvas. The collection gets its inspiration from antique scientific illustrations mixed with a variety of images. The art is recognized throughout the United States and Canada and we are proud to offer it at Elizabeth Lucas Home.

Friesen Gallery exhibits contemporary paintings, glass, and sculpture by internationally and nationally recognized artists: Martin Blank, Jeanne Brennan, Christopher Brown, Ford Crull, Matthew Dennison, Andie deRoux, Valentina Dubasky, Ron Ehrlich, Enrico Embroli, Dennis Evans, Lawrence Fodor, Jeff Fontaine, Gregory Grenon, Reilly Jensen, Steve Jensen, Richard Jolley, Jill Lear, James Kuiper, Holly Lyman, Ann Mallory, Nancy Mee, William Morris, Trinh Nguyen, James Shay, Catherine Eaton Skinner, Sebastian Spreng, and Laura Sharp Wilson, among others.

GAIL SEVERN GALLERY 400 First Avenue North • Ketchum, ID 208.726.5079 • www.gailseverngallery.com

Newell, Michael Gregory, Oil on Panel, 40” x 30”

Celebrating 34 years featuring contemporary painting, sculpture and photography: Victoria Adams, Nicolas Africano, Tony Berlant, Bo Bartlett, Squeak Carnwath, James Cook, Kris Cox, David deVillier, Brad Durham, Betsy Eby, Tony Foster, Raphaelle Goethals, Morris Graves, Michael Gregory, Michelle Haglund, Jonathon Hexner, Jun Kaneko, Margaret Keelan, Gary Komarin, Judith Kindler, Hung Liu, Lynda Lowe, Laura McPhee, Cole Morgan, Kenna Moser, Gwynn Murrill, Ed Musante, Marcia Myers, Carolyn Olbum, Deborah Oropallo, Luis Gonzales Palma, Christopher Reilly, Rene Rickabaugh, Jane Rosen, Brad Rude, Julie Speidel, Jack Spencer, Mark Stasz, Therman Statom, Allison Stewart, William Robinson, and Theodore Waddell.

Custom framing and art installation services: Severn Art Services 208.726.5088. gilman contemporary 661 Sun Valley Road Ketchum, ID 208.726.7585 www.gilmancontemporary.com

Seated Girls Green, Jane Maxwell, Mixed Media and Resin on Panel, full piece 40” x 60”

Voted “Best Gallery” three years running, Gilman Contemporary was built on the premise of presenting innovative contemporary art in a relaxed setting. We represent a select group of national and international artists who apply extraordinary vision to their art form through the use of content or material. Presenting photography, sculpture and paintings, we continue to fulfill our mission to bring compelling contemporary work to the Valley.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 117

101 Saddle Road Ketchum, ID 208.727.9622 WoodRiverYMCA.org

Our Mission: To build strong kids, strong families and strong communities through programs that develop the whole person in spirit, mind and body.

Green Antelope Gallery 116 South 2nd Street Bellevue, ID • 208.788.2353 www.greenantelope.net

Located 12 miles north of Fairfield, Soldier Mountain ski area is just one hour from Hailey or Twin Falls and 1.5 hours from Boise. Soldier Mountain is situated in the Sawtooth National Forest overlooking the pristine Camas Prairie.

ATV Trail, Ruth Sauerbreit, Oil on Panel, 16” x 16”

photos by Craig Wolfrom

www.soldiermountain.com (208) 764-2526 Thursday-Sunday 9:00am - 4:00pm

HOME AWAY FROM HOME. HOLIDAY SUITES

Fine art gallery representing local and regional artists. Featuring paintings, photography, sculpture and jewelry in a variety of mediums and price ranges. Gallery space is in a charming restored old house, enhanced by the sculpture garden with mature trees and beautiful flowers. On the corner of Oak & 2nd, next to the bike path. Open Thursday to Saturday, 12-5 p.m., or by appointment. Visit the website to see our artists, available pieces and upcoming events.

HARVEY ART PROJECTS USA ABORIGINAL ART IN AMERICA 391 1st Avenue North • Ketchum, ID 208.309.8676 • www.harveyartprojects.com

HOLIDAY SWEETS The perfect holiday package isn’t always under the tree.

Great food and cozy rooms make Chandlers Steakhouse and Hotel 43 the perfect home away from home during the holidays.

Mention this ad for special Wood River Valley guest rates.

ChandlersBoise.com • 208.383.4300

Hotel43.com • 800.243.4622

981 West Grove Street, Boise

Margaret Baragurra, Acrylic on Linen, 2009, 41”x 24”

Harvey Art Projects USA proudly present “Desert Heart,” an exciting first-time exhibit by Bidyadanga Artists of Yulparija. Displaced from their traditional desert country, Bidyadanga artists blend saltwater and desert colors to create their extraordinary paintings. This exhibit will coincide with a visit by two leading painters who will travel to Ketchum from their remote community to share their stories.

Additional cultural events include a library lecture and special film screening of “Desert Heart,” the story of Bidyadanga artists’ journey back to their homelands.

118 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

USA McNeill Studio Larkspur, CO 303.688.9117 www.katherinemcneill.com www.katherinemcneillfineartworld.com

Aspen and Fireweed, Oil on Canvas, 24” x 24”

Katherine McNeill is best known for her lifelike oil paintings of aspen forests and serene mountain landscapes. She also paints largerthan-life flowers in addition to portraits, seascapes, and wildlife. Her exquisite oil paintings are a result of her love for the outdoors and her enjoyment of recreating God’s work! For more information visit her website at www.katherinemcneill.com and view more of her beautiful work. lisa Holley, studio P.O. Box 3 • Sun Valley, ID 208.622.9122 lisaholley_studio@yahoo.com

Osprey, Packing a Lunch

Illustrations of botanical and wildlife series totaling over 30 images composed from elements reflecting the subject’s habitat and/ or food sources, using dry brush watercolor techniques. Commissions accepted from collectors, museums and for commercial applications. Originals and limited edition signed offset lithographs are available starting at $75 each. Studio visits are welcome.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 119

SFP Studio 680 Sun Valley Road • PO Box 90, PMB 492 • Ketchum, ID 83340 Tel 208.727.6803 • www.sfpstudio.com

2 worlds both protecting, Kabul, Afghanistan 2010

Stephanie Freid-Perenchio shares her photographs of people and wildlife from locations around the world, including Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Israel, Africa and Idaho.

SFP Studio is a gathering place where images can accomplish change and allow people to relate to a part of the world they might otherwise never see. Stephanie has traveled to countless remote and exotic destinations. She aims to capture the raw energy and emotions of her subjects with her lens and provide her viewers a chance to experience an intimate connection with them. Stephanie’s focus is the creation of a bond between people who have never met in the hopes of establishing awareness and relationships that will make a difference in the world. sun valley center for the arts 191 5th Street E. • Ketchum, ID 314 2nd Avenue S. • Hailey, ID 208.726.9491 www.sunvalleycenter.org

Godzilla Pauses During a Rampage to Consider an Alternate Reality, Richard Young, 2005.

Courtesy of the artist. A part of exhibition, Creatures: From Bigfoot to the Yeti Crab

The Center is committed to enhancing the quality of life in our community through diverse arts programming. The Center’s projects feature art exhibitions, dance, film, evenings with authors and cultural experts, and art classes for families, kids and adults.

This winter, The Center presents Cosmic and Creatures: From Bigfoot to the Yeti Crab. In addition, The Center presents outstanding lectures and performances featuring Eric Schlosser, On Ensemble and more.

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DISCOVER YOUR OWN STYLE

At Zeta & Company our brands are as unique as your personality.

We offer a variety of apparel from jeans to handbags, tops, jewelry, belts, footwear and hats. Come and immerse yourself in a boutique meant to rejuvenate your fashion sense, and come out ready to conquer your travels.

Zeta & Company is one of 16 stores owned and operated by Air Terminal Gifts. Air Terminal Gifts is a Utah family- owned company. For more information call Air Terminal Gifts at 800.962.8357 or visit www.zetaandcompany.com

Galleries&restaurants | map

(TO TRAIL CREEK CABIN) (TO SUN VALLEY RESORT) (TO THE RAM)

Hailey

(TO GREEN ANTELOPE GALLERY)

to Bellevue

ketchum

(TO ROUNDHOUSE)

Restaurants

E5

Ketchum Grill 520 East Ave.

H5

Smoky Mountain Pizza 200 Sun Valley Rd.

The Kneadery 260 N. Leadville Ave.

H6

Sushi on Second 260 Second St. three-TEN-main 310 N. Main St. , Hailey

*

Andrea Maki www.andreamaki.com

F6

Elizabeth Lucas Home 340 Walnut Ave.

H5

Friesen Gallery 320 First Ave. N.

Vintage Restaurant 231 Leadville Ave.

H4

Gail Severn Gallery 400 First Ave. N.

Zaney’s 208 N. River St., Hailey

E7

Gilman Contemporary 661 Sun Valley Rd.

D11 Zou 75

416 N. Main St., Hailey

J13

Green Antelope 116 S. 2nd St., Bellevue

H4

Harvey Arts 391 1st Ave. N.

G6

The Cellar Pub 400 E. Sun Valley Rd.

G6

F7

CIRO 230 Walnut Ave.

F6

Michel’s Christiania 303 Walnut Ave.

E11

H13 CK’s Real Food

320 S. Main St., Hailey

G5

Pioneer Saloon 320 N. Main St.

A9 Trail Creek Cabin Trail Creek Rd.

H6

Cornerstone Bar & Grill 211 N. Main St.

A9

The Ram Sun Valley Inn

G6

G7

Cristina’s 520 2nd St. E.

H4

Riccabona’s 380 N. 1st Ave.

F11

F4

Globus 291 E. 6th St.

G6

Roosevelt Grille 280 N. Main St.

G5

H5 Glow 380 Washington Ave., #105

G4

il Naso 480 N. Washington Ave.

I5

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Sawtooth Club 231 N. Main St.

SEGO 310 Washington Ave.

Galleries

*

Lisa Holley www.lisaholley.com

*

Katherine(TO McNeill BRICKHOUSE BAR AND GRILL) www.katherinemcneill.com

F7

sfp Studio­ 680 Sun Valley Rd.

G4

SV Center for the Arts 191 5th St E.

G14 SV Center for the Arts

314 2nd Ave. S., Hailey

* By Appointment Only

dining guide The Wood River Valley enjoys a wide variety of food for every palate and budget. For the best advice in finding the perfect eatery, check out the tasty offerings shown here in Sun Valley Magazine’s dining guide.

Visit www.sunvalleymag.com for online menus.

Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 123

CK’s Real Food real meals for real people

We at CK’s believe our business should be part of the solution and not part of the problem. We recycle everything: metals, glass, paper, and cardboard. Our used cooking oil goes to the local science teacher for his bio-fuel car. The vegetable scraps become compost for our garden. Our paper products are made from wheat or recycled paper. Fifteen percent of our energy is produced by our rooftop solar panels and solar hot water is on the way soon. Many of us commute to work on foot or by bike. Our food comes from several local farms and ranches and we purify our drinking water. Our goal is fresh healthy food that will feed your body and your soul.

GLOW Live Food Café 100% organic and delicious

Health-conscious Ketchumites and visitors looking for high-energy, delicious and healthful foods need look no further than GLOW Live Food Café.

Visitors, locals, and dedicated athletes flock to the always fresh and original GLOW, an organic, vegan, live food café in the heart of Ketchum. Owner Molly Peppo Brown, trained in nutrition by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., and Dr. Bob Marshall of Premier Research Labs, has created a bright and inviting space that serves healthy and nutritious fare using the live food concept (plant-based foods not heated or cooked above 118 degrees)—a way of preparing foods that keeps nutrients, minerals and enzymes intact for the body to utilize.

The menu, which is both innovative and delicious, consists of energizing superfood smoothies, green juices, a rotating daily selection of organic live vegan entrées and delicious desserts that are actually good for you! Every menu item is designed to satisfy the tastebuds and nourish the soul. Dig into the Deep Dish Pizza served on a sunflower-pumpkin-flax-chia-seed crust, or try the Indian Grain Bowl (cooked, vegan), a tasty concoction of diced bell peppers, carrots, kale, steamed quinoa and a creamy Indian-spiced cashew sauce.

Other menu favorites are the Kale Salad with creamy dulse dressing, Sun Valley Wrap (in a collard leaf ), and the GLOW Roll. Also noteworthy are the Chia Porridge and GLOW Buckwheat-goji Granola.

Smoothie favorites are the Chocolate Banana Monkey Love or the Coconut Kiss.

All menu items are wheat, flour, soy, gluten and dairy free.

GLOW supports local farmers and uses local produce when seasonally available. GLOW offers hands-on classes, party platters and custom desserts.

M&M Heath Farm

Open Range Beef

Phone: 208.788.1223 Location: 320 S. Main Street, Hailey Hours: Lunch, Mon-Fri, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner nightly at 5 p.m.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Regional Northwest Service: Dinner nightly 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Website: www.cksrealfood.com 124 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Photo: Hillary Maybery

Special thanks to all our suppliers Ballard Dairy Idaho’s Bounty Co-op Ernie’s Organics Water Wheel Farm Shooting Star Farm King’s Crown Organics Fair Mountain Farm Grace Organics Springs of Life A+ Ranch Lava Lake Ranch Mountain Fresh Produce Canyon Trout Farm Mountain Pride Rolling Stone Chevre

Phone: 208.725.0314 Location: 380 Washington Avenue, #105, Ketchum Summer Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Shakes, smoothies, tea, lattés, juice Reservations: Not accepted Type of cuisine: Local, organic, raw, vegan Service: Dine in, takeout, party platters, catering, custom desserts Website: www.glowlivefood.com

Sego Restaurant & Bar Local. Fresh. Handcrafted

Smoky Mountain Pizzeria Grill fun place . . . seriously good food Located in the heart of Ketchum, Smoky Mountain Pizzeria Grill is a comfortable, casual and dynamic family restaurant. We pride ourselves on a well-trained staff, attention to service and quality food. Our menu features unique pizzas and pastas enhanced with ingredients of varying cultures and cuisine. We also offer incredible salads, sandwiches, grilled steaks, hamburgers and desserts as well as an extensive beer and wine selection, a kids’ menu, catering and a fast, friendly delivery service. In addition to our extensive menu, you’ll always find an exciting selection of seasonal appetizers, entrées and desserts, as well as great lunch specials daily. Come in from the cold and enjoy our cozy fireplace room with flat screen TVs and entertaining game room for the kids.

Boasting over 80 percent of menu ingredients from Idaho and a commitment to clean, quality food, the family at Sego Restaurant invites you to enjoy food in the fresh, handcrafted, made-here, Idaho sort of way.

With the mountains as a backdrop and the bounty of Idaho as inspiration, Chef Taite Pearson brings care, locality, freshness, and taste to your plate. Every item on his carefully created, seasonal menus is handcrafted in a bright, clean kitchen with hand-painted murals, an old school chalkboard, and tunes that vary from Pieta Brown to Mason Jennings. Hamburger meat is ground just before service, condiments are made in-house and fries are cut every afternoon. Bread is leavened there, pasta is handmade, and house-cured charcuterie is often on the menu. The only freezer in the kitchen is for ice cream and big trucks don’t deliver anything pre-made.

Each change in the season is reflected in Chef Pearson’s dishes, which are simple, comfortable, colorful and clean. Pomegranates and squash turn up in autumn. Lettuces and berries arrive in summer. Mushrooms and fava beans liven the spring menus; winter brings roots and braising greens.

The Sego family invites you to join them in their beautiful space in downtown Ketchum. With warm booths, summer rooftop seating, big windows, soft lighting, and ever-changing artwork, whether you sit in the lounge or dining room, Sego proves to be the dining destination of Ketchum.

Enjoy a nine-ounce burger; a flatbread with smoked duck and pears; a bright salad or seasonal soup; hormone-free beef; a skillfully crafted fish dish; or an ever-evolving vegetarian dish. Eat your meal family-style, or enjoy a boutique, regional wine with a three-course meal. Treat yourself to a house-made dessert and a cup of Stumptown Coffee, or enjoy a night of the Sego Music Series. Belly up to the bar and they’ll pour you a regional draught beer or make you a specialty cocktail with fresh squeezed juices.

Whatever you like or whatever is on this season’s menu, Sego Restaurant welcomes you to their home.

Phone: 208.928.7878 Location: 131 N. Washington Avenue, Ketchum Hours: Tues-Sun, 6 p.m. to close Outdoor dining: Seasonal rooftop deck Beverages: Full bar, creative wine list, regional beers on tap Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Contemporary American Service: Bar and lounge, dining room, private room, catering, takeout Website: www. segorestaurantandbar.com

Phone: 208.622.5625 Location: 200 Sun Valley Road, Ketchum Hours: Mon-Thurs 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fri-Sat 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Encouraged for groups of 10 or more Type of cuisine: Pizza, pasta, grill menu including steaks and burgers, homemade soups and salads Service: Dine in, takeout, delivery Website: www.smokymountainpizza.com Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 125

three-TEN-main

Vintage Restaurant

balancing the creative and the classic . . .

delightfully distinguished

photo: dev khalsa

Balancing the creative and the classic, three-TEN-main in Hailey offers a hand-crafted and refined Northwest cuisine, paired with a concise, inspired wine list that reflects the eclectic tastes of the owner/ chef, Derek Gallegos.

All of three-TEN-main’s dishes, from starters to desserts, are crafted using pure and uncomplicated preparations that showcase the quality and flavors of each ingredient, its freshness and availability, and, of course, the presiding muse of the chef.

Chef Derek’s menu transforms with the seasons and is drawn from the freshest bounty of the Pacific Northwest: fish from Alaskan waters, Idaho mountain-farmed lamb, the finest grain-fed Washington beef, mushrooms and ripe berries from Oregon’s rain-drenched forests, and vegetables infused with our own Wood River Valley sunshine.

The restaurant periodically hosts unique prix-fixe events that re-create specially-selected regional fare from around the world. To view our current menus at three-TEN–main please visit our website: threetenmain.com Three-TEN-main offers off-site catering and rentals of the restaurant space to accommodate your special events and private parties. Please phone or email to discuss your ideas and plans with us: threetenmain@yahoo.com “…And above all, friends should possess the rare gift of sitting.

They should be able—no eager—to sit for hours—three, four, six— over a meal of soup and wine and cheese, as well as one of 20 fabulous courses . . . Then, with good friends of such attributes, and good food on the board, and good wine in the pitcher, we may well ask, When shall we live if not now?” —MFK Fisher

Phone: 208.788.4161 Location: 310 N. Main Street, Hailey Hours: Mon–Sat, open at 5:30 p.m.; closed Sunday Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer and wine Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Eclectic New American cuisine Service: Dine in Website: www.threetenmain.com 126 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Eclectic, upscale, peasant food.

Vintage Restaurant is proud to be primitive. If anyone can spin grass and berries into a platter of delights, Jeff Keys can. Along with his wife Sheila, the couple produces a unique menu that changes daily with the whims of the owner/chef, the available produce and the freshness of the locally farmed seafood, meat and poultry.

“Vintage is not a machine-driven restaurant,” Jeff says. “We don’t have the fanciest equipment. We have very little space. We are handmade in every sense of the word.”

Menu highlights include Delights of the Naked Stranger, rock shrimp tamales, crispy skin roast duckling, pecan crusted chicken and spicy Cajun oysters.

Housed in the restored historic Burt Cross cabin, Jeff and Sheila combined the best of their popular previous restaurants—Soupcón and Bellevue Bistro—to create Vintage.

The environment reflects their sensitivity to elegance and comfort.

A rustic and warm interior gives the visitor a cozy feeling as they await their meal.

Jeff says his creativity is guided by the ingredients he uses.

“The natural beauty and intrinsic value of the ingredients tell us what to do,” he says.

Those who want to attempt to replicate their experience at home, or at least do so vicariously, will enjoy perusing the recently published book, Vintage Restaurant: Handcrafted Cuisine from a Sun Valley Favorite.

Phone: 208.726.9595 Location: 231 Leadville Avenue, Ketchum Hours: 6 p.m. to closing Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Encouraged Type of cuisine: Eclectic world Service: Dine in

Zou 75

Zaney’s River Street Coffee House

more than just great sushi . . . there’s something for everyone!

the community’s gathering place

Photo: five b studios

When is a coffee shop more than just a coffee shop?

When it’s Zaney’s River Street Coffee House. From the moment you walk into Zaney’s, you feel the difference. There is something more to this place. That something is the sense of community that pervades the little red house in downtown Hailey. People come here to take in the rich scents of house-roasted coffee beans and to get their daily jolt, but they find themselves lingering for conversation and debate. Zaney’s is an unofficial, sometimes unintended, gathering place. Perhaps it’s the comfort of knowing that the owner/coffee roaster Sue Martin has lived and raised her children in this Valley for over twenty years. Perhaps it is because Sue has the “best family and employee team in Hailey.” Certainly, the wholesome breakfast creations such as huevos rancheros, breakfast burritos and everyone’s favorite, the fried egg sandwich (with pesto mayo and bacon), help set the tone. For lunch and weekend brunch specials, you can expect to find daily chef’s creations utilizing Wood River Organics’ produce and seasonal finds from Hailey’s Farmers Market.

At its heart, Zaney’s was started with coffee and delicious food as its goals, but it has become something more. The inspiration behind this small shop on River Street came from Zane, Sue’s youngest son who had started a career as a connoisseur coffee roaster and international bean purchaser. Zane was adamant about finding the best quality beans from the most respectable plantations and using wellresearched methods for roasting. Sadly, Zane had a fatal motorcycle crash two years after opening the business with his mom. However, Zane’s inspiration lives on and his memory is honored by the hum of espresso machines and in the customers’ lively conversations.

If you haven’t already experienced Zaney’s, come by and learn why the locals who care about coffee and community, care about Zaney’s.

Phone: 208.788.2062 Location: 208 N. River Street, Hailey Hours: Weekdays 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., Weekends 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Coffee, tea, smoothies, Italian sodas Reservations: Not required Type of cuisine: Coffeehouse and café Service: Dine in, takeout

Rediscover this Main Street gem in downtown Hailey! Zou 75 is your destination for more than great Asian fusion, sushi and seafood selections. Featuring an addition with the same warm, contemporary feel, this casually elegant restaurant boasts an upscale martini/wine bar and 35 additional dining seats. The vast Pacific Rim menu features all the great dishes you’ve come to know and love and a whole lot more. With fresh fish flown in several times a week straight from Honolulu, Hawaii, you can always count on the best in quality and freshness. Don’t miss the lightly seared, crispy, panko-encrusted ahi tuna appetizer, the Zou 75 signature baked scallops, or the ahi tuna tartar on crispy wonton chips. The sushi selection is second to none, showcasing delicious unique rolls, both cooked and uncooked, as well as the famous thinly sliced sashimi tetaki. Not in the mood for fish? Not to worry! Start with the dynamite tempura green beans, crispy duck spring rolls or curried pork potstickers. From there, it’s on to the organic Niman Ranch® flat iron steak over wasabi mashed potatoes or the Miso Glazed Salmon over rice and organic vegetables, all while sipping a Pomegranate Cosmopolitan.

There’s always an owner on site and with a martini/wine bar, two private rooms and take-out party platters of all sizes, Zou 75 is the perfect choice for your next dining event.

Phone: 208.788.3310 Location: 416 N. Main Street, Hailey Hours: Monday-Saturday, 5 p.m.

Beverages: Beer, wine, sake, full bar Reservations: Encouraged Type of cuisine: Pacific Rim Service: Dine in, take out Website: www.zou75.com Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 127

restaurants | chart

Restaurant Location

Contact Cuisine

Page Number

400 E. Sun Valley Road, Ketchum

208.622.3832 www.thecellarpub.com

American Pubfare

230 Walnut Avenue, Ketchum

208.727.1800 www.cirosunvalley.com

Seasonal menu using local producers; woodburning oven; family friendly

131

320 S. Main Street, Hailey

208.788.1223

Regional Northwest

124

211 Main Street, Ketchum

208.928.7777

Urban Western Cuisine

520 2nd Street East, Ketchum

208.726.4499

Casual European Bakery, catering, and take-away

291 E. 6th Street, Ketchum

208.726.1301 www.globus-restaurant.com

Gourmet Asian

GLOW Live Food Café

380 Washington Avenue, #105, Ketchum

208.725.0314

Live Food Café

iL Naso

480 N. Washington Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.7776

Italian

The Cellar Pub CIRO restaurant & wine bar CK’s Real Food Cornerstone Bar & Grill Cristina’s Restaurant & Bakery Globus

131

132 132 133 124

133

Ketchum Grill

520 East Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.4660 www.ketchumgrill.com

New American with an Idaho emphasis

The Kneadery

260 N. Leadville Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.9462

Idaho American

Michel’s Christiania

303 Walnut Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.3388

Traditional French

Pioneer Saloon

320 N. Main Street, Ketchum

208.726.3139

American Steakhouse

Sun Valley Inn

208.622.2225 Reservations: 208.622.2800

European American

380 N. 1st Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.1166

Fine dining with a Mediterranean flair

136 137

The Ram Riccabona’s

134 134 135 135 136

Roosevelt Grille

280 N. Main Street, Ketchum

208.726.0051 www.rooseveltgrille.com

American bistro and steakhouse

Sawtooth Club

231 N. Main Street, Ketchum

208.726.5233 www.sawtoothclub.com

Creative American dining/casual bar

137

SEGO Restaurant & Bar

131 N. Washington Avenue, Ketchum

208.928-7878 www. segorestaurantandbar.com

Contemporary American

125

Smoky Mountain Pizza

200 Sun Valley Road, Ketchum

208.622.5625 www.smokymountainpizza.com

Pizza, pasta, grill menu homemade soups and salads

125

Sushi on Second

260 Second Street, Ketchum

208.726.5181 www.sushionsecond.com

Asian Fusion

three-TEN-main

310 Main Street, Hailey

208.788.4161 www.threetenmain.com

Eclectic New American Cuisine

Trail Creek Cabin

Sun Valley Resort Trail Creek Road

208.622.2135 www.sunvalley.com

Western

231 Leadville Avenue, Ketchum

208.726.9595

Eclectic World

126

Zaney’s River Street Coffee House

208 N. River Street, Hailey

208.788.2062

Coffee House/Cafe

127

Zou 75

416 N. Main Street, Hailey

208.788.3310 www. zou75.com

Pacific Rim

127

Vintage Restaurant

128 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

138 126

138

View listings in the Wood River Fine Dining Guide and at www.woodriverfinedining.com

Fine Dining Wood River

www.woodriverfinedining.com

Volume 4, 2011

www.woodriverfinedining.com

If I were going to simplify life to its most basic, I would break it down

into two camps: those who eat to live and those who live to eat. I know with which camp my allegiance lies. Of all of the influences throughout the ages that have contributed to the success of man, food has probably been the most…satisfying and not just because our taste buds say so. Food is experience. Food is art. Food is life. Food, as my kids well know, is family.

The Wood River Fine Dining Association is all about family. We are a family of restaurants, individual business owners and chefs who began with the modest philosophy—to make every dining experience the best possible for every customer and to promote and grow the Wood River Valley as a culinary destination. The sixteen restaurants represented in this guide are the best of the best. We are committed to culinary excellence. We believe in using the freshest local and sustainable products available and fully support each of our local farmers and growers. We believe that you, our customers, are the most important part of this endeavor, and so it is our highest aspiration to honor you with a remarkable and memorable experience when you honor us by choosing to dine with us.

Each of the restaurants included in the Wood River Fine Dining Guide also plays a key role in the Wood River Valley community, each participating in numerous philanthropic, non-profit and community fundraisers. We also work to promote our Valley as a premier dining destination by hosting special events like the Food and Wine Festival and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Wine Auction. We hope that by working together like a family, we bring another reason for you to visit and live in this beautiful place, which we are so fortunate to call our home.

Sincerely,

The Cellar Pub, CIRO restaurant and wine bar, Cornerstone Bar & Grill, Cristina’s Restaurant & Bakery, Globus, il Naso, Ketchum Grill, The Kneadery, Michel’s Christiana, Pioneer Saloon, Riccabona’s, Roosevelt Grille, Sawtooth Club, The Ram, Trail Creek Cabin, Sushi on Second

Cover Art: Anne Yoder. More of Anne Yoder’s work available at Green Antelope Gallery in Bellevue.

130 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

The Cellar Pub where Valley folks say “cheers!”

The Cellar Pub, boasting the Valley’s best fish and chips, is nestled below Sun Valley Road, just a stone’s throw from Main Street. Reminiscent of the legendary Cheers bar, where everybody knows your name, The Cellar Pub is a favorite with locals seeking the perfect après-ski atmosphere. It provides a convenient venue for catching up with friends, old and new.

The Cellar Pub features traditional pub fare, in addition to its more unique entrées. The beloved bangers and mash, flat iron steak salad, and lamb or Kobe sliders are just a few examples.

The variety of cuisine is sure to please every appetite. In addition to the menu favorites, The Cellar Pub offers its patrons a full bar and features a selection of draft beers, fine wines and spirits from around the globe.

Bigger than a nook, yet intimate and cozy, The Cellar Pub is a warm and inviting pub that ensures fun times with every visit.

It also offers the competitor in all of us a venue to cheer for your favorite team, or to challenge friends to a game of shuff leboard.

Run by pillars of the Ketchum food service community, The Cellar Pub is owned and managed by a team of local all-stars. They include Paige and Roger from Sushi on Second, Bob from Warm Springs Ranch Restaurant and Kristin, long-time manager of Whiskey Jacques’. This family-like group pays close attention to quality service and the overall experience for every visitor to The Cellar Pub.

Phone: 208.622.3832 Location: 400 E. Sun Valley Road, Ketchum Hours: Open daily, 4 p.m.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Full bar, beer, wine, shots Reservations: Not accepted Type of cuisine: American Service: Dine in, takeout Website: www.thecellarpub.com

CIRO restaurant & wine bar market & wine merchants good food for all

Wood-fired pizzas, pastas, and wine list rival any you’ d find in the big city.—Sunset Magazine CIRO restaurant & wine bar is a Valley favorite for casual, affordable, fine dining. A seasonally inspired menu satisfies the most discerning to the simplest diner, using as much natural, local and organic product as possible. Exceptional daily specials, seafood, crispy pizzas, entrée salads, and CIRO desserts, ice creams and sorbets are stand-outs. An extensive and very reasonably priced wine list offers 25 choices by the glass, 100 by the bottle.

Attentive and amiable staff and gracious proprietors, Tracey and Mark Caraluzzi, impart a warm and engaging experience—chic, modern-alpine design, mountain views, glowing pizza oven, and an open-kitchen set the stage. Bistro tables, signature breadstick festooned marble bar, and rustic limestone fireplace provides an inviting space to ‘uncork & unwind’ with friends or, comfortably, as a single.

Voted ‘Best Wine Bar’ and listed in Sunset Magazine’s ‘Where to Eat & Drink’ when visiting the Sun Valley area.

CIRO market & wine merchants offers an array of freshly prepared food, deli sandwiches, soups, “Best Cheese Selection in the Valley”, specialty grocery, beautiful gift baskets, and a well-priced, hand-chosen wine selection with something for everyone, and any wallet. Open table and sofa seating makes this a hip, casual place to meet, with evening live music, small plates and wine service seasonally. Don’t miss free wine and cheese tasting Wednesdays, 4-6 p.m., and NEW wine & food classes.

CIRO catering offers full-service catering for parties large or small, from picnics to weddings.

Phone: Restaurant: 208.727.1800, Market: 208.622.4400 Location: 230 Walnut Avenue, Ketchum Hours: Restaurant: Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Mon-Sun, open 5:30 p.m. • Market: please call for hours Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Extensive wine list, organic beer, soft drinks Type of cuisine: Seasonal, contemporary Italian Service: Catering, deli, takeout, wine store Website: www.cirosunvalley.com Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 131

Cornerstone Bar & Grill urban western cuisine

It’s wild west meets haute cuisine at the Cornerstone Bar and Grill. Longtime locals, Meg and Erik Vorm, welcome you to a Main Street venue as stimulating to the eye as it is to the taste buds.

Recipient of the prestigious AIA Honor Award 2010, the Cornerstone (built in 1884) remains the only building in Ketchum listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Inside its modern décor, you’ll enjoy a seasonally changing array of game, seafood and vegetable dishes, complemented by Jan Hegewald’s handcrafted cocktails and a list of beer and wine that’s both familiar and eclectic.

It’s a local twist on the city-style grill, with an open kitchen featuring buffalo strip loin encrusted with coffee and cocoa nibs, wild salmon on lemon risotto, and the famous mac and cheese. Regular items also include vegan and gluten-free dishes and a better than you’d expect children’s menu, all with a Main Street price point, so there really is something for everyone.

Call to reserve the Mafia table downstairs in the intimate stone-walled grotto, or watch the action from above in the spacious skybox surrounded by historic bricks fired in old Ketchum, or make a night of it in the bustling main-level bar with its comfortable banquette and Main Street watcher booth. Check out the guest bartender every Wednesday and bring the kids for Happy Hour Playdate in the skybox. Watch the calendar for Pirate Night, Abba vs. The BeeGees, and Use Your Words: an original poetry, prose and music event, and other themed party nights.

The Cornerstone Bar & Grill always serves up a night to remember, making it the new Ketchum tradition.

Phone: 208.928.7777 Location: 211 Main Street, Ketchum Hours: Bar, 4 p.m. to midnight; Dining: 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., nightly Beverages: Full bar, excellent wine list, favorite beers Reservations: Recommended Type of Cuisine: Innovative American with French blessing Service: Bar, dining, above-average children’s menu, private parties Website: www.cbgketchum.com 132 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Cristina’s Restaurant and Bakery european-style trattoria and pasticceria

For 19 years, Cristina’s Restaurant and Bakery has been serving up a delicious array of seasonally-inspired recipes for a devoted clientele who come to the charming, salmon-colored house in Ketchum to enjoy the company of friends, good conversation and satisfying food.

“Food is really about people and friendship,” says Cristina. “In Tuscany, it’s not just about the food. We sit at the table for four hours, but we don’t eat for four hours. We talk, we laugh, we cry.”

From her signature soups to her freshly baked breads and breakfast pastries, everything Cristina offers in this cozy, European-style trattoria is steeped in her Tuscan heritage. Choose from traditional Tuscan recipes such as Scampi al Dragoncello, Tortellini in Brodo, and Zuppa di Farro, along with homemade pastas, fresh salads, thin crust pizzas and a variety of daily specials. And don’t forget the deli, which overflows with a tantalizing assortment of hot and cold entrées, salads, appetizers and imported and domestic cheeses, salami and olives.

Cristina’s two cookbooks, Cristina’s of Sun Valley and Cristina’s Tuscan Table, have garnered raves from sophisticated reviewers to legions of local regulars. Cristina’s Tuscan Table was selected as one of Food & Wine Magazine’s favorite 25 cookbooks of the year and appeared in their annual Best of the Best cookbook in 2008. All the cookbooks are available at the restaurant.

If you dream about the perfect meal, you can find it by following Cristina into the pages of her books or . . . you can come to Cristina’s Restaurant. As Cristina says, “At my table, there is room for everyone!”

Phone: 208.726.4499 Location: 520 2nd Street East, Ketchum Hours: Breakfast, Mon-Sat, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Lunch, Mon-Sat, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Sunday Brunch, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal, plus sunroom dining Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Casual European Service: Dine in, takeout, bakery, private dinners

Globus

gourmet asian fusion with a twist

il Naso a taste of Italy

There are some restaurants where the menu itself is a feast.

How does fried Black Pepper Calamari sound? Or Stuffed Ahi Tuna Roll, with Dungeness Crab, Avocado, Sesame Soy Vinaigrette and Wasabi? Try Organic Mushroom Spring Rolls with Lemongrass, Chilies and a Ginger Emulsion. For entrées, try the Ginger Crusted Black Cod with Israeli Couscous, Shaved Brussel Sprouts, Shemiji Mushrooms and Carrot Broth. Or try the Natural Local Pork Baby Back Ribs with their special Honey Barbecue Sauce.

Finish the meal with one of their house-made desserts or ice creams.To fully appreciate the range of offerings that Executive Chef Tyler Stokes invents, one should frequent Globus at the very least a few times each season as the menu changes with the leaves.

Owner Wendy Muir says Stokes is creative, innovative, enthusiastic,and passionate—adjectives that shine through the dishes of organic vegetables and natural meats. Sous Chef Ryan Stadelman is a great complement to Chef Stokes.

There’s a wide selection of imported beers and a boutique-style wine list that certified Sommelier Robert Jensen helped to create.

Heading into its 19th year, Globus has a loyal following and is a favorite of anyone who appreciates an eclectic menu.

Hint: According to the Food Network’s Rachel Ray, the calamari here is the “best on the planet.” Indulge yourself online at www.globus-restaurant.com, where lovely photos of this gourmet Asian restaurant’s welcome exterior and graceful interior are accompanied by mouth-watering descriptions of the offerings.

This urbane restaurant with gourmet Italian fare is special whether you drop by après-ski to dine at the bar, enjoy the candlelit dining room to persuade romance, or to celebrate a special occasion. il Naso pleases on every level.

Owners Alyson and Shawn Tierney insist on an environment that is as aesthetically pleasing as their fare. The restaurant is visually appealing for its glow at dusk, and the smells of herbs and garlic lure you in where you will find meals that are fresh, organic and comprised of local ingredients.

Enjoy calamari, veal scallopini, spaghetti and meatballs, homemade ravioli and nightly fresh fish specials and risotto made daily by Executive Chef Kate Metzger.

The wine list is extensive, and the knowledgeable staff will help you choose just the right bottle to make the experience complete.

Phone: 208.726.1301 Location: 291 E. 6th, Ketchum Hours: Winter, 5:30 p.m. daily; Summer, 6 p.m. daily.

Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, sake, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Gourmet Asian Service: Dine in, takeout, kids’ menu, catering Website: www.globus-restaurant.com

Phone: 208.726.7776 Location: 480 N. Washington Avenue, Ketchum Hours: 6 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Italian Service: Dine in, takeout Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 133

Ketchum Grill

among the best ski restaurants in America

The Kneadery

best breakfast in the Northern Rockies

If you want to dine next to a celebrity, best get a reservation at the restaurant run by Ketchum’s celebrity chef. That would be Scott Mason, whose Ketchum Grill is in one of the charming old houses left standing in the face of demand for grand accommodations.

And the bonus is the fabulous food, featuring Mason’s famous innovations, ultra-fresh ingredients and service that combine to earn Ketchum Grill a nod as one of the eight best ski-town restaurants in America by Snow Country Magazine.

The cuisine is “New American, with Idaho emphasis,” which means such entrées as Grilled Black Canyon Idaho Elk, Braised Idaho Lamb Shank and Duck with Mountain Huckleberries.

Mason and his wife Anne (pastry chef for the restaurant) are supporters of the movement to promote local, seasonal food, with a dedication to healthy, natural and homemade. There is an excellent wine list, as well.

The boyishly handsome Mason is usually seeing to the fish, the steaks, all the great stuff that comes out of the kitchen. But on occasion he’ll come out to meet and greet. Asked what celebrity customer made the Masons know they had “made it,” they replied: “Lance Armstrong. But JFK Jr. was a regular in his day.” Oh, did we forget to mention Mason bikes to work most days, even in the winter?

photo: five b studios

The Kneadery has been the local’s and visitor’s favorite spot for breakfast and lunch for over 30 years. Established in 1975, this establishment combines wholesome fresh food with a rustic Idaho atmosphere.

Whether you’re headed out for a day of hiking, or spent the morning skiing the slopes, you’ll want to fuel up with a wholesome nutritious meal at The Kneadery.

All meals start with the freshest ingredients—locally baked organic breads, fresh whipped eggs, seasonal fruit and top quality meats. From the huge omletes and pancakes, to the fresh salads and burgers, there’s something for everyone.

Great food is just the beginning at The Kneadery. Service with a smile and the authentic décor complete the package. Owners Duffy and Sheila Witmer have been collecting the Western artwork that has filled The Kneadery and The Pioneer Saloon for decades.

Come see why so many have made The Kneadery Ketchum’s best restaurant for breakfast for 15 years.

Phone: 208.726.4660 Location: 520 East Avenue, Ketchum Hours: 5:00 p.m. to 10-ish nightly Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended at www.ketchumgrill.com Type of cuisine: New American with Idaho emphasis Service: Dine in, takeout, kids’ menu, catering Website: www.ketchumgrill.com 134 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Phone: 208.726.9462 Location: 260 N. Leadville Avenue, Ketchum Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer and wine Reservations: Not accepted Type of cuisine: Idaho American Service: Dine in, takeout, kids’ menu, catering

Michel’s Christiania 1959 “The Christy” 2010

No other restaurant in Ketchum is as steeped in ski history as this one; 2009 marked its 50th anniversary.

On the walls are photographs from owner Michel Rudigoz’s time as coach to the U.S. Women’s Ski Team during the golden years when a number of Sun Valley locals made it to the Olympics. These include Christin Cooper, Abbi Fisher-Gould and Maria Maricich. Olympic Gold Medalist Picabo Street gave a signed pair of skis to adorn the place, as did Italian Champion Alberto Tomba. But you don’t have to be a ski aficionado to enjoy a meal here–Ernest Hemingway came so frequently he had his own table. Salmon with sorrel sauce, filet mignon with morels, lamb shank and fresh Idaho trout are just a few of the tantalizing entrées that keep locals and tourists coming back.

Idaho potatoes and Michel’s authentic French recipe make “pommes frites” an unforgettable treat! Homemade dessert selections include crème brulee, fresh fruit sorbets, profiteroles and tarte tatin.

Rudigoz, formerly of Lyon, France, has made Sun Valley his home since 1972 and the restaurant his creative expression since 1994. Every evening you will find him lighting candles from table to table in the dining room, warmly greeting guests. Drifting through the bar, he encourages patrons to enjoy a wide selection of classic specialty cocktails in the Olympic Bar’s warm, casual atmosphere. Of course, the full dining menu is available there as well. Executive Chef Laurent Loubot leads the culinary team at your service nightly.

Phone: 208.726.3388 Location: 303 Walnut Avenue, Ketchum Hours: Bar 4:45 p.m., dinner 6 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: Beautiful, seasonal patio dining Beverages: Beer, wine, full bar Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Traditional French Service: Dine in, bar service, private parties

Pioneer Saloon Old West meets new . . .

No visit to Ketchum is complete without a stop at the steakhouse affectionately known as “The Pio.” Owner Duffy Witmer has been working door to floor for 30 years to make sure everyone who comes into his saloon has a memorable meal.

Prime rib, steaks, fresh seafood, ribs­—you won’t leave unsatisfied.

The Pio is typical of an earlier Idaho when ore wagons rattled down Main Street and business was done with a handshake over a beer. An interior décor of natural woods, mounted game and period firearms helps create an authentic saloon atmosphere.

You can stop in for a drink at the cowboy bar any night and choose from a wide variety of beers, wines and liquors. Mosey on in to the dining room where most seats give you a view of a busy kitchen cranking out delicious, tender beef, grilled trout and overstuffed Idaho bakers.

The Pioneer Saloon sits in the heart of Ketchum, the gateway to the Sawtooths and a mile from Sun Valley, the oldest and most elegant ski resort in America. The surrounding area is a recreation-lover’s paradise year-round and, since 1950, The Pioneer has become a traditional stop.

This is the place for tourists, locals and anyone with a big appetite for history and great food.

“If you haven’t been to The Pio,” says Duffy, “you haven’t been to Ketchum.”

Phone: 208.726.3139 Location: 320 N. Main Street, Ketchum Hours: 5:30 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: No Beverages: Beer, wine, full bar Reservations: Not accepted Type of cuisine: American steakhouse Service: Dine in Website: www.pioneersaloon.com Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 135

Hillside Restaurant

The Ram

expertly prepared meals that entice all guests Authentic, casual, yet undeniably sophisticated, The Ram Restaurant is the perfect blend of pioneer Idaho in its décor and pioneering chefs in its fare. It’s the expertly prepared meals that entice guests to this storied restaurant, said to have been one of Ernest Hemingway’s favorites.

Adding to The Ram’s ambiance, longtime local entertainer Larry Harshbarger is open to play your requests on a baby grand as you enjoy an appetizer of escargot or share the alpine favorite, a Gruyere or Emmental cheese fondue. Anything you want to drink can most likely be found at The Ram’s full-service bar.

Enjoy a bottle of wine as your feast continues with a repertoire of Idaho lamb, trout, steaks or fresh seafood. Save room to enjoy a dreamy dessert and after-dinner coffees.

After dinner, you can extend this European experience with a stroll around the village shops, or by taking in a summer concert at the Sun Valley Pavilion.

Phone: 208.622.2225; reservations at 208.622.2800 Location: Sun Valley Village Hours: 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. nightly (closed Wednesdays) Outdoor Dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, full bar Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: European and American Service: Dine in 136 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

...where fine dining is a work of art!

Riccabona’s

where fine dining is a work of art . . .

Located in a cozy log cabin in the heart of Ketchum, Riccabona’s offers an elaborate, yet refined, menu presenting wild salmon, lamb, veal, steak and seafood dishes prepared with a Mediterranean flair. The food quality and presentation are spectacular, the service is superb, and the setting of both the main and private dining rooms is romantic and January 24, 2007 elegant, with fresh-cut flowers, intimate candlelit tables and original works of art adorning the walls.

Cocktail “We have taken great care in Party designing6:30–7:30 our menu to offer an exceptional dining experience,”Private says proprietor Steve Riccabona, “and the menu Dining 7:30 features many local favorites, including our famous Wienerschnitzel with Lingonberries Spaetzle and pesto-crusted Rack of Lamb.”

FeaturingandSnake River Farms Kobe Beef Tenderloin Some of the popular appetizers include Oysters, Crab Cakes, Sautéed Please call for more detailed information and reservations Calamari Strips and Baked Escargot. The entrée menu also includes several 208-726-1166 fresh seafood entrées including Halibut prepared en Papillote, Wild Alaskan Salmon withRestaurant Blackberry 380 Sauce andAvenue Risotto, and delicious Felix’ s Hillside First North Ketchum,Pan-Seared ID 83340 Sea Scallops with Black Trumpet Mushrooms with Citrus Beurre Blanc and Risotto.

The chefs regularly prepare special soups, salads and entrées. In addition to dinner service, Riccabona’s is open for lunch on a seasonal basis and is famous for a number of open-faced sandwiches and salads. The open-faced Beef Tenderloin with avocado, arugula and applewood bacon is garnished with an original Italian pesto drizzle, and the calamari sandwich with a San Franciscostyle Louie dressing.

To complement any entrée selection, Riccabona’s provides a vast array of fine wines. The wine cellar includes boutique wines and bottles from some of the most famous wineries of the Pacific Northwest, California, Italy and France.

Riccabona’s offers an elegant and intimate atmosphere for private parties and special events. During summer, the garden patios expand the seating capacity and provide spectacular mountain views for a cocktail party or group dinners. The staff of Riccabona’s is also available for private parties and catering, or preparing dinner in your home. You haven’t experienced the charm of Ketchum/Sun Valley until you’ve dined with Steve and Victoria Riccabona.

Join us for a special and unique dining experience

Phone: 208.726.1166 Location: 380 N. 1st Ave, Ketchum Hours: Lunch served seasonally—call for hours. Dinner, 6 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: Summer Beverages: Beer and wine Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Fine dining with a Mediterranean flair Service: Dine in, takeout, private banquet room, catering Website: www.riccabonas.com

Roosevelt Grille

classic ski town restaurant and bar Tom Nickel already had a successful endeavor on Ketchum’s Main Street, so for his second offering to the downtown dining scene, he went back to the well and created the wonderful and always original Roosevelt Grille.

Fourteen years later, this popular establishment appeals equally to both locals and tourists with an enticing menu, professional staff and comfortable vibe. Guests can enjoy an ice-cold brew at the popular bar, relax with a cocktail around the cozy fireplace, or settle into a comfy booth for a superb dinner where they will have the very tough job of choosing from the eclectic menu that Nickel characterizes as “creative interpretations of classic bistro fare.”

“We’re inspired by our guests, our staff, our personal travel and our colleagues from other restaurants to keep the menu fresh, varied and interesting. And increasingly we recognize the need to offer food that is healthy and to source it from close to home. All of our beef is hormone and antibiotic free from a family of ranches in Idaho and Oregon. And we’re working hard to serve only sustainably harvested seafood.”

Customer favorites include the Pan Broiled Ruby Red Trout, Grilled Flat Iron Steak brushed with savory béarnaise butter, Seared Alaskan Sea Scallops with jalapeño-cream sauce, New Orleans-Style Shrimp and Sausage Jambalaya, Braised Idaho Lamb Shank with pinot noir reduction and Honey-Glazed Chicken basted with soy, ginger and orange zest. And their extensive bar menu serves up the best burgers and small pizzas in town!

Whether your outing means enjoying a bowl of homemade soup by the fire, a quick brew at the bar or a special dinner with friends, this place is not to be missed. The Roosevelt . . . Ketchum’s classic ski-town restaurant and bar and the local’s favorite for more than 14 years!

Phone: 208.726.0051 Location: 280 N. Main Street, Ketchum Hours: Bar and dining room at 5 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: Rooftop deck Beverages: Beer, wine, full bar Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: American bistro and steakhouse Service: Dine in, takeout, kids’ menu, private banquet room Website: www.rooseveltgrille.com

Sawtooth Club

downtown Ketchum at its best

Whether window shopping, gallery hopping or just gathering to meet good friends, The Sawtooth Club, a mainstay in Ketchum’s downtown scene, has been a Valley favorite for more than 24 years. Always busy with a great mix of locals and visitors, The Sawtooth Club offers a unique blend of American steakhouse classics and fresh seafood and pastas, all prepared with their signature creative flair.

“Our mesquite-wood fire generates the tremendous heat which sears in the natural flavors and juices and imparts a variety of subtle tastes and aromas to whatever we’re cooking,” explains owner Tom Nickel.

From the Mesquite-Grilled Ribeye Steak brushed with smoked chipotle reduction to the superb Chicken Senegalese, their famous Rack of Spring Lamb, Flame-Broiled Breast of Duck or the WoodGrilled Pork Tenderloin, everything on this irresistible menu is distinctive and delicious. One taste and you’ll know why—in five different years a local readers’ poll has recognized The Sawtooth Club as the “Valley’s Best Overall Restaurant.”

After dinner, or all on its own, the long and welcoming bar, cozy fireside couches and eclectic “café menu” make The Sawtooth Club’s bar just about the most popular watering hole in town. Here you can relax around the large central fireplace and enjoy an order of their amazing fresh steamer clams or delicious spring rolls with one of 20 wines by the glass or 10 international microbrews on tap. The Sawtooth Club really does have everything you could ever want for your night on the town. Don’t miss it. The Sawtooth Club . . . Still and always, this is downtown Ketchum at its best!

Phone: 208.726.5233 Location: 231 N. Main Street, Ketchum Hours: Bar, 4:30 p.m.; dining room, 5:30 p.m nightly Outdoor dining: Seasonal Beverages: Beer, wine, full bar Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Creative American dining/casual bar Service: Dine in, takeout, kids’ menu Website: www.sawtoothclub.com Winter 2011 | sunvalleymag.com 137

Sushi on Second modern global cuisine

Sushi on Second is second-to-none in Ketchum for creating a magical evening of food, friends and fun. Established in 1994, it is the Valley’s oldest sushi restaurant. But don’t let age fool you. Head Sushi Chefs Zack Venzon and Cuyler Swindley are at the center of a talented crew of young sushi chefs that delight in creating dishes that are as appetizing to look at as they are to eat, like their famous, “Who’s your Daddy” roll.

See why Bon Appétit Magazine wrote, “Sushi on Second, the best sushi I’ve had in years.”

The menu consists of global cuisine mixed with a healthy dose of Northwest experimentalism that creates a truly unique culinary experience. Chefs John Rust and Ashley Weber are behind their nightly specials, which keep local diners coming back, often twice a week. Be sure to try the sushi, of course, but some of John and Ashley’s current creative dishes include a white wine chili poached Sea Bass topped with lemon cucumber & organic Idaho peach relish over coconut curry risotto, Idaho Kobe beef Carpaccio, Soy ginger glazed Ahi Tuna with fresh Idaho berries & tomatoes over arugula with wasabi vinaigrette, Grilled wild Alaskan Salmon over shiitake mushrooms, spinach rice pilaf with lemon caper sauce & grilled Idaho organic eggplant, and Spicy Thai lobster soup with glass noodles, to name a few.

The full wine, champagne, beer and sake bar is fitted with a flatscreen television to see the latest scores, snow and fishing reports. But whether you are sitting in one of the two private, screened tatami rooms or at the 20-seat sushi bar itself, all eyes in the restaurant invariably wind up on the sushi chefs. Knives a-blur, they chop and slice the finest seafood available, which is flown in fresh from locations such as Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and Japan by their own seafood import company, Idaho Seafood. Come in and taste why Sushi on Second has been consistently over the years voted Ketchum’s best restaurant for sushi and seafood. To take a virtual tour of the restaurant or to check out our full menu, please go to www.sushionsecond.com.

Phone: 208.726.5181 Location: 260 Second Street, Ketchum Hours: 5:30 p.m. nightly Outdoor dining: No Beverages: Wine, beer, sake, soft drinks Reservations: Recommended Type of cuisine: Asian fusion Service: Dine in, takeout Website: www.sushionsecond.com 138 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

Trail Creek Cabin

an unforgettable experience that inspires tradition

What can be more romantic than a winter horse-drawn sleigh ride through the pines to a candlelit, 74-year-old rustic cabin with a roaring fire, roaming accordionist and a hearty meal? The unparalleled ambience and offerings of Trail Creek Cabin are so unique that even locals make the trek an annual family tradition. Some guests come by snowshoe and cross-country skis, while those who prefer four wheels can easily gain access to the cabin, located just a short drive from the Sun Valley Lodge.

Once seated in the cabin or an adjoining cozy new yurt, diners can relax with a drink from the full bar. Enjoy a hot toddy while studying the menu, which offers a wide array of Western-style fare.

Start with a bowl of soup du jour to warm you. Then choose from a varied menu that includes wild game—appropriate for the cabin, which once hosted author Ernest Hemingway—Idaho mountain trout, steaks and ribs. Fabulous desserts include a chocolate brownie mousse.

During the warmer months, sit outside and cool off on one of our two decks above Trail Creek. Enjoy a summer cocktail from the outdoor bar and dinner at sunset.

Dinner reservations should be made well in advance. The cabin grounds are available for special functions and now offer summer dining as well. No matter how you get there, get there for an unforgettable experience that could become your tradition.

Phone: 208.622.2800 Winter Sleigh Ride & Dinner Reservations: 208.622.2135 Location: 1.5 miles east of the Sun Valley Lodge, Trail Creek Road (1/2 mile past the Sun Valley Club) Hours: Tues-Sat, Bar 5 p.m; Dinner 5:30 p.m to 9 p.m Beverages: Wine, beer, full bar Reservations: Required Type of cuisine: Western Service: Dine in

Restaurant

Contact

Cuisine

The Cellar Pub 400 E. Sun Valley Rd., Ketchum

208.622.3832 thecellarpub.com

American

CIRO Restaurant & Wine Bar 230 Walnut Ave., Ketchum

208.727.1800 cirosunvalley.com

Cornerstone Bar & Grill

Location

Seasonal menu using local producers; woodburning oven; family friendly

211 Main St., Ketchum

208.928.7777

Cristina’s Restaurant & Bakery 520 2nd St E., Ketchum

208.726.4499

Globus 291 E. 6th St., Ketchum

208.726.1301 globus-restaurant.com

Gourmet Asian

208.726.7776

Italian

208.726.4660 ketchumgrill.com

New American with Idaho emphasis

260 N. Leadville Ave., Ketchum

208.726.9462

Idaho American

309 Walnut Ave., Ketchum

208.726.3388

Traditional French

208.726.3139 pioneersaloon.com

American steakhouse

iL Naso

480 N. Washington Ave., Ketchum

Ketchum Grill 520 East Ave., Ketchum

The Kneadery Michel’s Christiania

Pioneer Saloon 320 N. Main St., Ketchum

Urban Western Cuisine

The Ram Sun Valley Village 208.622.2225

Riccabona’s 380 N. 1st Ave., Ketchum 208.726.1166

Casual European bakery, catering, and take-away

European and American Fine dining with a Mediterranean flair

Roosevelt Grille 280 N. Main St., Ketchum

208.726.0051 rooseveltgrille.com

Sawtooth Club 231 N. Main St., Ketchum

208.726.5233 sawtoothclub.com

Creative American dining/casual bar

Sushi on Second 260 Second St., Ketchum

208.726.5181 sushionsecond.com

Asian fusion

208.622.2800

Western

Trail Creek Cabin

1.5 miles east of the Sun Valley Lodge

American bistro and steakhouse

K P

Ketchum

G I

E F

L

J M N C O

A H

B D

A

The Cellar Pub 400 E. Sun Valley Rd.

B

CIRO 230 Walnut Ave.

C

Cornerstone Bar and Grill 211 N. Main St.

D

Cristina’s 520 2nd St. E.

E

Globus 291 E. 6th St.

F

il Naso 480 N. Washington Ave.

G

Ketchum Grill 520 East Ave.

I

Michel’s Christiania 303 Walnut Ave.

J

Pioneer Saloon 320 N. Main St.

K

The Ram Sun Valley Village

L

Riccabona’s 380 N. 1st Ave.

M

Roosevelt Grille 280 N. Main St.

O

Sushi on Second 260 Second St.

H

N

P

The Kneadery 260 N. Leadville Ave.

Sawtooth Club 231 N. Main St.

Trail Creek Cabin 1.5 miles past Sun Valley Lodge

Visit our website at

www.woodriverfinedining.com 140 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2011

www.korbel.com

Celebrate Responsibly. Š2010 F. Korbel & Bros., Guerneville, Sonoma County, CA. Producers of fine California mÊthode champenoise champagnes for 128 years. KORBEL is a registered trademark. Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

PHOTO BY KEVIN SYMMS

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