SPECIAL SKI ISSUE: Sun Valley, Idaho : The Sun Also Rises : Hemingway’s favorite ski resort is going downhill no longer

Sun Valley is not the biggest ski resort in NorthAmerica, the highest or the most luxurious. It does not have the longest ski runs or the most snow. It’s surely not the easiest place to get to.

But it is Sun Valley. And many ski experts agree that, after years of neglect and decline, Sun Valley once again ranks among the best, anywhere.

I sampled a week of the Sun Valley renaissance late last season, and it seems to me that Sun Valley is successful again because everything works well--without making a fuss about it.

Sure, there are some eye-popping new features such as elaborate day lodges and high-speed chair lifts. And it can be a bit grand and pricey--most ski resorts are. But it’s unpretentious. Friendly without being back-slapping gregarious. Western without being rowdy.

And it is Sun Valley.

Before Aspen, before Vail, before condos and 747s, back when it took a week’s ocean voyage and a train trip to reach the Alps, there was Sun Valley. It was a magic kingdom somewhere out in the Rockies at the end of a two-day rail trip on a Streamliner.

Sun Valley was sunny open mountain slopes, bronzed skiers carving perfect turns on virgin snow, a cozy inn with thick carpets, logs blazing in a massive stone fireplace, the jingle bells of a horse-drawn sleigh.

Sun Valley was Ernest Hemingway, Darryl Zanuck, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable. Sun Valley was Gretchen Fraser, the first American to win a Winter Olympic medal, at St. Moritz in 1948. (You can see Fraser’s medals in Sun Valley Lodge at the restaurant that bears her name.)

Today Sun Valley may be the nation’s most complete all-year mountain resort, offering extensive cross-country ski trails in winter, and a variety of summer activities that would satisfy anyone but a confirmed hermit.

And it’s drawing a new generation of stars and celebs such as Donna Karan, Bill Gates, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, and Richard Zanuck who skied with his father-director as a boy.

Sun Valley was the brainchild of Union Pacific Railroad baron W. Averill Harriman, who set out to build an alpine ski resort in the best location possible. Well, the best location that could only be reached by Harriman’s railroad. Sun Valley opened on Dec. 23, 1936. America’s first destination ski resort.

Fifty-eight years and a couple months later, I spent most of a March week at Sun Valley, to see if “it” was still happening, to mimic the song from the 1941 film “Sun Valley Serenade” with Sonja Heine, Glenn Miller and others. The film, a frothy pre-war romantic comedy, helped Sun Valley become known as the nation’s top ski resort and is shown several times a week at the Sun Valley Opera House adjacent to the Lodge.

The aura of history is hard to escape. On a day in which I struggled through fog and a wet snowfall on Bald Mountain, there were two events that linked more than half a century of Sun Valley chronicles.

First, the local newspaper reported the death, at age 83, of Friedl Pfeifer, one of the dashing experts imported from Austria’s Arlberg--the region that gave the world the modern downhill skiing technique--in the 1930s to turn Harriman’s development dream into reality. Pfeifer later moved on to create a resort of his own, in a place called Aspen.

On that same day, 23-year-old Picabo Street, a child of Baldy’s slopes, was in Italy winning the 1994-’95 World Cup downhill trophy, the first time that any American had gotten the prize. The news quickly spread from ski run to ski lift. “Didja hear about Picabo?” a grinning lift operator asked his riders.

For Sun Valley to make a comeback, there had to be a decline. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Sun Valley became frayed and tattered. Passenger trains no longer rolled into nearby Ketchum, or anywhere near it. Flying to Sun Valley wasn’t easy (still isn’t).

New resorts in Colorado and Utah with direct flights from Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles eclipsed the aging resort and drew away the in-crowds. On my first visit to Sun Valley, in 1970, someone had written this on a stairwell wall: “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” It seemed a fitting Sun Valley lament.

The comeback followed Salt Lake City businessman Earl Holding’s purchase of the resort in 1977. In the past five years, he has spent an estimated $30 million on lodges, snow-making machines and lift improvements.

In 1993 and 1994, Sun Valley opened two stunning new day lodges, one at the Warm Springs base and one up on Seattle Ridge. They are built of massive white pine logs; they have fireplaces and overstuffed chairs; the restrooms have marble floors and brass-plated fixtures. The even more expansive River Run base lodge, with more than 100,000 square feet of floor space, opened this fall.

But the bottom line is the skiing.

“Bald Mountain has the finest alpine skiing on earth,” said Dick Dorworth, 56, a veteran ski instructor and mountain guide who came back to Sun Valley after years in Aspen. “For good skiers, there’s nothing like this.”

*

In fact, Bald Mountain can be intimidating to beginners. The easiest runs, marked in green on the trail map, would be more-difficult blues at most other resorts. The runs are long, up to 3,400 feet in vertical descent.

Greenies need not despair, however, for they have a nice little hill all their own, Dollar Mountain, Sun Valley’s original ski area. This was the site of America’s first chair lift. Legend has it that a creative Union Pacific employee patterned the lift after a device used to load bananas onto a boat.

The Sun Valley makeover has been so successful that the resort was ranked No. 6 among all ski areas in North America by Skiing Magazine this year. It jumped from No. 22 to No. 2 in Ski Magazine’s poll--eclipsed only by Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia.

Experts raved: “The best cruising mountain on the planet . . . Sun Valley is everything, has everything . . . Distinctly American and Western without ever being hokey.”

Alas, no resort can guarantee good weather. The March Sunday that I flew to Boise, and drove to Sun Valley--a 10-hour grind from my Long Beach home--was one of those rare days when successive warm Pacific storms pelted the area with rain. The snowline was at 7,500 feet on a mountain that only reaches 9,150 feet. The next morning I peered out my second-floor window at the Lodge and saw . . . almost nothing. There was swirling snow, fog and the fuzzy outline of the ice rink immediately behind the Lodge. Bald Mountain was lost in the murk. I decided to salvage the day with some cruising on little Dollar Mountain.

Dollar Mountain, with an underwhelming vertical drop of 628 feet, has a number of beginner and easy intermediate trails. Dollar’s slopes are open and treeless. It’s reminiscent of Sun Valley’s early days--basic and uncomplicated. At Dollar, beginners can ski without fear of being blitzed by experts, or would-be experts. It is nice, as well, for older duffers like me to warm up creaky muscles and recapture a little technique before going to the big mountain.

Sloppy wet snow flew sideways in the wind as a kids’ ski school class clomped from the rustic Dollar day lodge, a dozen bundles of nervous energy encased in Gore-Tex and topped by bug-eye helmets. “Wow!” exclaimed one tyro Tyrolean. “Are we going to ski in this?”

The weather gradually improved. By early afternoon, I was able to find some nice ridges that had not yet been skied. There was a modest exhilaration on these little virgin runs as the snow slipped like silk beneath my skis.

It may be a small mountain, but it was fun.

*

By afternoon, the clouds had lifted enough that you could see where you were skiing, although the gunky snow still grabbed my skis like California’s infamous Sierra cement.

The barometer rose. The following day was clear and blessedly colder. I cruised the easier bowl runs and Broadway Face off the summit ridge. At the bottom, you have the option of taking Chair 12 straight back to the summit, or Chair 14 up and to the left to Seattle Ridge. Four easier trails run from Seattle Ridge down to the base of the two chairs. And then you have the choice again: the summit or back to Seattle Ridge.

Just this one spot, perhaps a quarter of Bald Mountain’s skiable area, offers a variety of broad open slopes, groomed and ungroomed terrain, and steeper expert runs down gullies running from the summit or through the timber.

My legs had turned to jelly by early afternoon. I spent a lot of time sipping coffee and gazing into the giant stone fireplace at Seattle Ridge Lodge. The building sits spectacularly on its ridge at 8,500 feet. The Wood River Valley fans out on one side; the spires of the Sawtooth Range on the other.

At first, it feels strange to clomp around in ski boots on the plush carpets and area rugs--the lodge, after all, is more opulent than many resort hotel lobbies--but adjusting to such comfort did not take long. An hour later, with the ski patrol trying to clear the mountain, I managed to convince my quadriceps that even though they were on fire, they could make it back to the base at River Run. It was a tiring, but fun day of skiing, with lots of variety.

However, there is far more to Sun Valley than downhill skiing. The Ketchum area and the Wood River Valley region may have a greater variety of activities, both winter and summer, than any other American resort. This is, for instance, one of the few Western resorts with backcountry heli-skiing.

I tried to count the kilometers of fine cross-country ski trails listed in the guidebooks, giving up at well over 200. And there is an expanse of rolling open country for those who prefer to break their own trail.

There are sleigh rides with dinner at the end, dog-sled rides, ice skating, and swimming in the giant circular hot pool at the Sun Valley Lodge. Backcountry skiers can stay overnight in yurts. If you must, there is snowmobiling.

Ketchum, built by 19th-century miners and railroaders at the foot of Bald Mountain, is an easy walking town, parsed by wide straight streets, and with a good cross-section of restaurants and night spots, art galleries and bookstores. This being the 1990s, there are also plenty of specialty coffee places and pasta joints.

You can visit Ernest Hemingway’s grave in the Ketchum cemetery, although I did not. Hemingway’s last home is not open to visitors but I did make the short hike through snow late one afternoon to the modest Hemingway memorial alongside Trail Creek a mile up the Sun Valley Road from the Lodge. It consists of a bronze bust of the author atop a simple rock foundation.

The creek gurgled. Touches of pink touched the mountain peaks. I could take in the entire white-blanketed valley from here. The silence was sublime. The air took on a bite. Papa gazed unflinchingly toward the horizon, where the sun would also rise. A magic moment.

For the skiing alone, I might prefer Mammoth Mountain, perhaps out of personal bias toward the Sierra Nevada. For atmosphere and sheer grandeur, I would return to Zermatt or Wengen in the Swiss Alps. The Tetons overlooking Jackson Hole provide the most dramatic backdrop of any American resort. Vail is a great mountain and the village has a certain charm.

But for a little bit of the best of everything, Sun Valley is hard to beat. It is happening at Sun Valley again.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Sun Valley Variations

Getting there: There are several ways to get to Sun Valley. From LAX, Alaska Airlines offers a connecting flight to Boise, about a three-hour drive from Sun Valley; restricted advance-purchase fares start at $148, round trip. Southwest flies direct from LAX to Boise, starting at $128. Delta has connecting flights to Boise starting at $128. Delta also has flights to Hailey, 13 miles south of Sun Valley, via Salt Lake City and its commuter line, SkyWest; advance-purchase fares start at $224.

Where to stay: The Lodge at Sun Valley offers a number of packages. Best bet this season: Club Sun Valley Week, Jan. 13-20, $601 per person double occupancy, includes double room at the Lodge for seven nights and a five-day lift ticket.

The economy Sun Valley Inn has a wide range of options, including condos, apartments and deluxe cottages. Its Club Sun Valley Week package begins at $461. For information on the Lodge and Sun Valley Inn, telephone (800) 786-8259.

The Elkhorn Resort at Elkhorn Village (one mile south of The Lodge at Sun Valley) includes studios and apartments as well as standard hotel rooms beginning at $66 per person; tel. (208) 622-4511.

Where to eat: The Sun Valley Lodge dining room has a reputation for excellence and rates four stars from the Auto Club; dinner $21-$30; tel. (208) 622-2135.

For more information: Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber of Commerce; tel. (800) 634-3347.

--B.S.