Armed with a 2 day lift ticket that we bought online at Liftopia.com, we headed to Sun Valley Ski Resort early Tuesday morning. We put in a full day on a nearly empty mountain. You have to understand that Sun Valley is really in the middle of nowhere. There are no other towns north of Sun Valley in Idaho. Basically, you hit Canada before you hit another town.
It is a very high end town with some amazing homes and the nicest ski lodges I have ever seen. The ski area is run at a loss by the owner (some oil guy). By spending his billions, even if some of his business endeavors are in the red, he avoids paying too much in taxes. I don't quite understand it but it made more sense when our host explained it. Speaking of our hosts, Mr. Roger "Cowboy" Purington and his wife Anne Dickinson were super nice to open their home to us for two nights. They are members at Ridgewood and spend a good deal of time in Sun Valley, their second home.
Tuesday evening, we went to the Pioneer Saloon for a steak dinner followed by $2!!!! beers at a bar called Whisky Jacques. Our tab was $17...awesome. I guess we had one $3 beer.
Wednesday morning, after a slow start, we went back over to the mountain for some more skiing. After a solid 10 or 12 runs on the 3000 foot vertical mountain, we were done. I don't think there were even 500 people on the mountain today. There just was nobody there. Like your own private mountain. I highly recommend Sun Valley to every ski enthusiast.
What I do not recommend is doing the drive from Sun Valley to Jackson Hole in the dark. 260 miles in the snow on roads covered in snow with the GPS as our only link to the outside world. Cell phone service was intermittent at best. Don't worry Mom...we drove slow and were very careful.
We just got here around 10pm...a 6 hour drive with one Subway stop in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We are staying in Teton Village at the Inn at Jackson Hole. We are right at the base of the mountain and we will be here through Sunday. Neither one of us had enough energy to even walk 300 yards to the Mangy Moose Pub. Don't worry though, I'm sure we will spend plenty of time there over the next couple days.
That's it for tonight, check out some pics from Sun Valley below.
Reed
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