Our Sun Valley Serenade - February 16, 2016

Today was a postcard-perfect Sun Valley day, with bright sunshine, although oddly, some of the high bowls never softened up enough to permit a good bump run.  That weather-and-conditions stuff is the kind of information you can only learn from skiing an area for a while. 

I took a short Ranger Tour after lunch, which consisted of skiing one run with National Forest Service Ranger Renée, and another guy who turns out to work for Guest Services.  You stop a few times on your way down one run, and Ranger Renée tells you all kinds of interesting natural and historical and technical facts about the mountain and the area.  Apparently during the last close fire in the area, in 2013, they turned on the snow guns on the mountain in order to protect the area.  It worked, and the resort was so grateful to the (female) fire captain who managed the whole thing that they offered her a lifetime ski pass.  Unfortunately, as a Federal employee, she was not able to accept it.  Bummer, eh?

Most locals talk about how incredibly crowded it is this week.  We do not see these crowds, except at dinner.  These people have no idea what a crowded ski area looks like. 

If you don’t ski, you wouldn’t know that ski equipment is about as cutting-edge technology as you can get in the entire universe.  Here is a sample of what our equipment is made with:

invisible science

aluminum technology

powered by metal

powered by quantum physics

handcrafted by robots

FAT (free absorption technology)

concept overlap

one step ahead of the future

dryfinger technology

Now we’ll play a game and you can guess which piece of equipment has which of those technologies:  Peter’s skis, his gloves, my skis, my boots, Bill’s skis, and his gloves.  Here’s a hint:  when the last one was discovered, we had a soaring chorus of:

Dry-FINGer

He’s the man, the man with the driest touch

His hands are DRYYYYYYYYY.

Things get pretty silly on a ski lift. 

We hope to eat at the famous and trophy-head-bedecked Pioneer Saloon, but arriving a little after 6 find a two-hour wait and impossible volume so we recover at the Warfield Distillery and Brewery which has a lovely Negroni with their own gin for Mom and a burger with umami jam – whatever that is – for Peter. 

After dinner we drive out to the original resort, to see all the lights – it is rather a winter fairyland of white lights – and to check out the Sun Valley Village.  When Averell Harriman started this place, he consciously wanted to create an alpine-style resort here in America.  So he built a whole village-y complex with an inn and restaurant, with quaint Tyrolean-style architecture.  Even the ski instructors, all imported from Austria at first, had to wear little embroidered jackets and brimmed hats.  It must have been quite a scene.  Some of that spirit remains in the buildings and the German Gothic-style script spelling out Sun Valley everywhere.  I hear there is even a Konditerei, and you can find schnitzel somewhere.  I’d like to eat at the Ram, where Harriman dined with the stars, but it is deemed a bit much by the management, a.k.a. Bill.