There are ski resorts and there are ski resorts. With all due respect to the mountains located close to the major metropolitan areas, they will never be classy. It is both because of their customers and because of them themselves. On one side you have day trip crowds, huge parking lots, traffic jams, soccer moms and their kiddies following the mama ducks on the slopes, on the other side you have greedy corporations providing you with smelly bathrooms and the best experience possible for as long as they make the biggest buck possible. I still remember when I went to Snoqualmie for the night skiing when they had a huge line and one lift working with a perfectly working lift right next to it not running. The Snoqualmie owners knew they had us. The passes are already paid and the closest resort is three hours away. The 3 hours away guy just cannot compete with the 45 minutes guy. All that is just not conducive to produce that very special ski vibe.
My firm belief is that the best ski resort there can be is the one in the middle of nowhere with a single lodge. Have you realized that when it is not too crowded people become friendlier? When the omnipotent Mother Nature is throwing a snowstorm at you, the primordial instincts (telling you that the only help you can get is from the other human beings) all of a sudden make you quite a bit more philanthropic.
The smaller remote resorts do care about their customers who made a sacrifice in terms of their precious time and brought their money from across the other side of the country. In my books, the eternal question of Vail vs Aspen has been solved long time ago. Aspen being smaller and remote wins over huge crowded Vail close to Denver. Now, Aspen is indeed a bit far from where I live, so, here is my Sun Valley trip report.
Sun Valley is a quintessential “in the middle of nowhere” ski resort. It’s about three hours away from Boise, state capital that is only 200 thousand people and still the biggest city in the whole state. Boise is one third of Denver in its population and Sun Valley is twice as far from Boise as Vail is from Denver. I agree there are places that are more remote but for my taste the place is remote enough.
What is the Sun Valley’s longest run? Vertical drop? To be honest have no clue, there are sites out there measuring things up and down with such a precision that at some point I feel like I’m not traveling to a beautiful unique place but instead upgrading my iPod with the newer version that has twice as many songs in it, and the screen is 30% brighter. I am looking for that special vibe and you know what? Sun Valley had it.
Sun Valley has quite a bit history. If I consider this place remote now, how remote it was in 1936 when it opened up? Only very rich people could afford to travel for that long. On the other side, it was the first resort in the US with the chair lifts. Essentially that meant that you did not have to be all that fit to climb the mountain to be able to ski down. Rich and famous flocked to the place and the Sun Valley lodge (which is now almost 80 years old?) probably has seen more celebrities then all the other resorts combined.
There is nothing fake about the lodge, it is solid wood, concrete, honest to God beams, and heavy glass. It feels very different from the cheap drywall built “Disneyland franchise like” Vail.
Back then the place was so glorious that it could afford to host Ernest Hemingway. I mean really, no joking, you can visit room 206 in the lodge where Hemingway stayed. To advertise the place, Sun Valley owners where even shooting movies about the place, and these where not the movies they would show in the lobbies of the hotel, these where fully budgeted Hollywood blockbusters.
The traditions stayed as I could barely escape the porter who wanted to help me to roll my bag all the way to the room. The resort itself is pretty small, nevertheless it has an Opera house and instead of smallish Jacuzzi tubs it has real heated pools that you can use for lap swimming. The food was fantastic, and the lodge on top of the mountain actually had mulled wine! I could never understand the pleasure of drinking COLD beer on top of an already chilly mountain. Guess what, Sun Valley was THE only place serving hot Glühwein across all of the ski resorts I have ever visited. I have this impression that the tradition of serving cold GMO corn syrup laden Budweiser comes from the cheap dive bars, what I don’t understand how is it supposed to be classy in places like Vail?
So, yes Sun Valley is special, the scenery is magnificent, it still keeps its standards high and does not try to poison its visitors but beyond that, I feel like the old glamor is dissolving. If I could name Sun Valley differently, I would call it “Faded Glory”. The giants used to walk this place but since then they are all gone. I actually did visit the opera house to watch “Sun Valley Serenade” and everything was great except I was the only person in the whole room. Of course it had a feeling of a private show but gosh it felt lonely and desolate. The reality is that now Sun Valley is just one of 500 ski resorts scattered across the US. If in 1939 visiting Sun Valley could mean seeing a decent fraction of the US elite, now it just means that you are visiting a five star resort. There is still a chance to see Mark Zuckerberg (I had my breakfast every day right where this photo was taken) or take the Arnold (Schwarznegger) run on the mountain but overall I feel like the magic is gone.
As you could imagine I tried to spice up my trip and here are some photos, enjoy!