It’s No Picnic Outfitting This Elite Fleet of Rafters

When some two dozen rafts barrel down the Salmon River on Wednesday, New York investment banker Herbert Allen will be in his ceremonial post at the head of the caravan.

Guides accompanying the other 200 or so captains of industry and their families will be under strict orders not to pass the 64-year-old billionaire host and the handpicked favorites on his raft. As the convoy docks for lunch at the end of the three-hour trip, Allen will expect to be handed a plate of food, hot off the grill, the moment his feet hit the shore.

Billed as a rugged romp through the wilderness, the white-water rafting trip is a signature event of the exclusive Allen & Co. investment conference, which begins today with the arrival of its elite invitees. But outfitters say the rafters are so pampered that even the porta-potties are posh. Said one local outdoorsman, with a bit of dry understatement: “It’s a high-maintenance group.”

For 22 years, a who’s who of the corporate and media worlds has converged on this resort town to fraternize and frolic on Allen’s dime. Among this year’s 213 guests and their invited families are such regulars as Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone and billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett.

The most notable newcomer this time: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, along with media moguls Michael Eisner and Rupert Murdoch, is a scheduled speaker.

No one from Allen & Co. would talk about the gathering. Although growing numbers of reporters have shown up in recent years, hoping for some face time with the moguls, everything about the event is supposed to be kept secret -- including the guest list, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.

Sources say Allen spends an estimated $10 million wooing current and prospective clients during the five-day event at the swanky Sun Valley Resort. He leaves fruit and flower baskets in his guests’ rooms and treats them to hayrides, fly-fishing, horseback riding, yoga, skating lessons and golf.

But perhaps none of the week’s activities is more logistically challenging -- or more revealing about the folks who come to Sun Valley on their private jets -- than the raft ride.

“This is no ordinary group,” said Betsy Barrymore Stoll, former owner of the rafting company that has handled the trip since the conference started in 1983. “Allen & Co. is very high-quality, and [they] expected you to be as organized as they were.”

No guest has suffered more than a scratched knee while shooting the rapids. But sheriff’s deputies, emergency medical technicians and “life-flight” transportation are on standby because the nearest emergency clinic is 45 minutes away from the launch site near the remote outpost of Sunbeam, located 75 miles north of here.

One year, when former Vice President Walter Mondale was on the flotilla, arrangements were made so Secret Service agents could line the riverbanks. Guides say security has been heightened since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Not every mogul, of course, is eager to don a bathing suit or a life jacket in front of his or her colleagues and competitors. Some would rather keep their feet on land.

“The rapids are mild, but a lot of people are scared to death of them,” said sports executive Dave Checketts, who made a failed bid for the Dodgers and has been a regular on the rafting trip.

Several others, who have taken the raft trip once or twice before, found the ritualistic water fights, ambushes and dunkings a tad sophomoric and did not return to the river.

The eight-mile journey is fodder for the kind of local river lore that’s not usually associated with tycoons of any stripe. There’s “Opie Rock,” for one. That’s where director Ron Howard’s boat got stuck in the shallows during the Allen excursion more than a decade ago.

And then there’s the oft- repeated mishap of Murdoch, the Australian media baron. In 1983, he fell overboard and floated, feet first, down the river.

Some estimates put the cost of the Allen & Co. rafting trip at about $150 a head, or about $30,000 for some 200 guests. “They wrote the biggest check of the year,” said Stoll, who sold the River Co. in 1990. The current owner refused to discuss any aspect of the outing, fearing that he might irk his best customer.

Stoll said the tips weren’t bad either, tucked discreetly inside individually addressed envelopes.

“They would ask us to give them a list of every person who provided a service and then delivered this pouch full of money,” she said. “I think they gave my manager $200.”

No detail is too small when the potential to offend is so big. Stoll said that if the head of Coca-Cola Co. was in the crowd, for example, you didn’t dare serve Pepsi.

Such exacting demands, she said, kept her company on its toes. Stoll vividly recalls the time she was asked to have lunch served promptly upon the rafts’ arrival. She thought she was following those orders when she arranged for the crowd to sip beer, wine and other beverages as they waited about 15 minutes for the chicken to finish up on the grill.

“We were politely told that he did mean it when he said he wanted the plate of food handed to him when he got off the boat,” Stoll said. Luckily, she said, the investment banker gave her a second chance after the faux pas.

One river outfitter in Sunbeam, Randy Hess, owner of White Otter Outdoor Adventures, said he had tried once or twice over the years to lure away the lucrative contract.

But his rival Ron Gillett, the owner of Triangle C Ranch in nearby Stanley, said he wanted no part of the group and its snooty attitude. Guides have been ordered to keep quiet -- unless they are telling guests when to paddle. Allen doesn’t want them to interrupt any chitchat that may lead toward a deal.

“They’re too good to talk to the guides,” Gillett said.

Because of the ongoing competition between the local rafting companies, the River Co. takes extra precautions. One or two guides typically camp alongside the rafts the night before the Allen & Co. outing to keep anyone from letting the rafts loose and derailing the trip.

“I’d do the same thing,” said Jared Hopkinson, owner of Sawtooth Adventure Co. in Stanley. “The river companies have been known to pull pranks on each other.”

Stoll said that when she oversaw the event, it took about 200 people to make it work.

In the early days, before Sun Valley grew to include its own bus services, she had to send to Boise and Twin Falls for first-class motor coaches to transport the group to Stanley. She stocked each bus with two hostesses, mostly business owners from Sun Valley who took the day off to tend to the well-heeled travelers. One year, a bus broke down. Since then, the River Co. has traveled with spares, all luxury class, of course.

At 6 a.m. on the day of the ride, Allen & Co. would provide a meticulous seating arrangement for the buses, Stoll said.

“He [Allen] had people carefully assembled; he knows who needs to talk to who,” she said. “You better not let anybody switch buses, even though these high-powered people do what they want.”

More than one mega-deal has gone down in Sun Valley over the years, including Walt Disney Co.’s $19-billion purchase of Capital Cities/ABC, which was born after a chance conversation in a parking lot between Eisner and Buffett in 1995.

But the moguls who have been on the river ride say there’s more horsing around than horse trading.

“You take these people out of their high-stress jobs and they turn into little kids,” one veteran guide said.

Checketts recalled jumping from his raft two summers ago to dunk one of Allen & Co.’s partners, an investment advisor who would later assist Boston real estate magnate Frank McCourt in his pursuit of the Dodgers.

The sports executive joked recently that if he had known then that the Allen partner would ultimately open the door for McCourt, “I would have drowned him.”

As the Allen team pulls into the Sun Valley Resort today for one of the most grueling assignments of the year, among the gear it will be unpacking is a vanful of red plastic buckets for the water fights that invariably break out on the Salmon River. The buckets are the only authorized artillery. Guides are asked to disarm guests who smuggle in additional weaponry.

One guide said Eisner and several friends showed up one year toting giant water pistols.

“I let them keep them,” the guide said. “I didn’t want to make waves.”