STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Norm Leopold remembers when Sun Valley furnished ponchos to drape over his legs while riding three chair lifts to the top of Baldy. Luanne Mandeville remembers coming here in 1968 when there were warming boxes at the top that she could stick her hands in to warm them after the long ride.
Neither needed anything of the sort on Thanksgiving Day as Sun Valley launched its 82nd winter ski season.
With temperatures climbing into the 50s, skiers and boarders were shedding clothes as the first day of skiing resembled the last day of skiing during the 2016-17 season.
Spring skiing on Nov. 23!!!!
“It beats rain in Seattle,” said Don Davies, who was relishing his Vitamin D fix atop Baldy.
A couple good dumps of snow and cold temperatures leading up to Thanksgiving Week enabled Sun Valley Resort to open College Boulevard from top to bottom, along with Middle and Lower River Run, Roundhouse Slope, Lower Canyon, Sunset Strip and 42nd Street.
“We’re off to a great start, and we hope to get the Warm Springs side open by next weekend,” said Mike Fitzpatrick, director of marketing and public relations for Sun Valley.
Jake Evans, a sophomore at Wood River High School watched as skiers sent rooster tails of snow flying behind them as they schussed down College in the corn-like snow.
He’d been counting the days before Sun Valley opened for the past 60 days.
“I was so ready for this,” he said. “Who wants to stay home and watch Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade when you can be out here skiing!?”
Evan Blash, another high school student, woke up at 5:30 a.m. to get to the lifts by 6 in hopes of being first in line. But, he had to return home when he realized he’d forgotten his ski pants. Still, he was third in line—enough to make the podium, so to speak.
“I’m going to get as many runs as I can in between now and 4,” he said.
Austin Cobb, just out of Middlebury College with his friend Danny Sundali, pronounced his first run of the day a little firm—“like Eastern skiing.” But that didn’t last long.
“I’m gunning to get my 100-day pin this year,” he said, referring to a tradition Sun Valley started for its faithful last season. “I only skied 88 days last year. But I’m determined to get it this year. One day down, 99 to go.”
Norm Leopold was among dozens of Opening Day Skiers who have rarely missed an opener in decades. He first came to Sun Valley as a baby with his ski-loving parents in 1955. And he worked as a bellboy at the Sun Valley Lodge during the mid-1960s to pay his way through law school.
“In the early years, you had to ride three chairs to the top, and they had ponchos to cover your legs to help you stay warm,” he said. “There was no snowmaking and I imagine they had snow machines that dragged something behind them to groom the runs.”
Now a judge living in Hailey, Leopold learned to ski under ski legends Sigi Engl and Sepp Froelich, two of the Austrians Union Pacific Railroad magnate Averell Harriman recruited to teach skiers in Sun Valley’s infancy.
“The Austrian Ski School was considered the best in the world in those days,” he said. “And they taught me everything I know—it was very elegant, as they were wonderful skiers.”
Sun Valley Ski Instructor Cleve Johnson reminisced about how he came to Sun Valley in 1973 from western Washington with $200 in his pocket, no job and no guarantee he’d get one. But he was determined to make it happen because, he said, Sun Valley was the mecca of the skiing world.
This will be the 44th year he’s taught skiers to carve up the snow.
“One of my clients was Spanish royalty,” he said. “She was a very cultured woman and, through many years of selective breeding, she was incredibly beautiful. How else could a redneck from Central Idaho spend a week with Spanish royalty!!?”
Susan Scalon groaned, chagrined that her legs were feeling like toast by 11 a.m., despite her preseason workouts.
“Everybody’s legs are sore, but it so much better than last year when we were just skiing Lower River Run on opening day,” she said. “I just texted a friend in Colorado and told her I was boarding the gondola and asked her how the snow was there. She hasn’t responded so that’s not a good sign. And I’ve heard Utah doesn’t have much snow, either. We’re so fortunate.”