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4th Annual Health & Wellness Section In This Issue SECTION 2
Local Special Olympian Heads to South Korea
Snow Castle for Ski Patrol Safety Week Read about it on PG 3
Page 5
Vee Riley Talks Shares Her Dream Board and Poetry Page 11
J a n u a r y 2 3 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 4 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Dave Dingman looks back at…
SKI THE RAILS: Saturday’s Ski the Rails is nothing short of a grand party—a party that stretches 12 miles along the Wood River Trail.
Nordic Fest to Include Marley in the Mountains, Snow Bikes STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
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aster skiers from throughout the United States are expected to kick and glide events into Sun Valley Turn to page 12 this week for the for a comprehensive schedule of events. fourth annual Sun Valley Nordic Festival. They will test their wax and stamina in three races, including the Boulder Mountain Tour, which will be figured into crowning the National Masters champions. And the party animals among them have the option of joining locals in a variety of entertainment choices ranging from Marley in the Mountains to the Banff Film Festival. The Marley and the Mountains reggaefest will start at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, outside in the Sun Valley Center for the Arts lot across from the Ketchum Post Office at Fourth and Second streets. Organizer Danny Walton said the festival, now in its fifth year, is the only annual winter-on-snow reggae festival in the country. The lineup includes Pato Banton of England, Soulmedic of Hawaii, Mega Banton of Jamaica, Voice of Reason from Idaho and Obie Won from Ohio. “We’ve assembled a stacked lineup of roots and dancehall,” he said. While Marley in the Mountains adds another layer to the festival, the festival is fast gaining momentum across the United States as a premiere Nordic event, anchored by the Boulder Mountain Tour cross-country ski race, which has evolved into one of the longest running marathon races in the nation since Brent Hansen and Julie Gorton won the first in 1973. Sun Valley’s recent designation as an Olympic training site for Nordic skiing only adds to that. Sun Valley’s role in cultivating Olympians will be recognized Wednesday when six skiers, including two-time Olympic medalist Picabo Street, are inducted into the Sun Valley Ski Hall of Fame. Street will be honored in a ceremony at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Ketchum’s nexStage Theatre, along with Elephant’s Perch owner Bob Rosso, Sun Valley Nordic coach Rick Kapala,
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{his}tory
Dave Dingman Sits in His work, The Dingbat, an experimental aircraft out of mahogany and spruce called “The Dingbat.” courtesy Photo
BY KAREN BOSSICK
A
copy of a 1963 cover of LIFE magazine hangs in a corner of Dave Dingman’s library, its presence dwarfed by the books and other trinkets stacked up under the cathedral ceiling in his home north of Hailey. Dingman is one of two men on the cover, which marks the first time an American team has stood atop Mount Everest. But most friends only learn about Dingman’s involvement as an afterthought. He’d rather talk about the next experimental aircraft he hopes to build. “It was pretty heady at the time, but I was soon back to working 14 hours a day, so busy working my butt off in an operating room I didn’t think much about Everest for the next 40 years,” said Dingman. “I still don’t think much about it—it is an important part of my past, but I prefer to think of my future and new challenges.” That said, Dingman will be talking about his trip up Everest for the next few weeks as Americans celebrate the 50th anniversary of the milestone in which Jim Whittaker—a familiar face around Sun Valley—became the first American to stand atop the 29,029-foot mountain. It’ll start at 6:30 tonight when Dingman appears with Broughton Coburn, the author of a new book about the expedition, at the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theatre. And it will climax in late February when he joins fellow climbers at a reunion organized by the American Alpine Club in San Francisco. Dingman was 26 and a surgical resident at the University of Maryland when he was picked to join a team of 19 climbers, 32
PRESENTATION TONIGHT Dr. Dave Dingman will speak briefly tonight when Broughton Coburn presents a look at the first American expedition to Mount Everest as recounted in his new book, “The Vast Unknown.” The presentation will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theatre on the Community Campus in Hailey. Admission is by donation, with proceeds going to the Compassionate Young Leaders Program. The program is grooming 15 high school students to perform service projects in India.
sherpas and 909 porters. He was one of only two clinical doctors on the expedition. “In junior high I found a book in the library about the 1924 expedition with (George) Mallory and that sparked my interest. Growing up in Michigan, I didn’t know much about mountain climbing but I convinced my parents to send me to summer camp in Estes Park—in those days parents sent their kids to camp to evade polio,” Dingman recalled. “Tom Hornbein, who was on our trip up Everest, was my counselor there. The next year my family vacationed in Jackson and I climbed Grand Teton with Willi Unsoeld, who also ended up on the expedition. By the time Norman Dyhrenfurth assembled his team, I had a track record, having guided for three seasons in the Tetons and having climbed Mount McKinley and some mountains in the Andes.” The expedition, made up primarily of climbing guides from Mount Rainier and the Tetons, spent a month trekking to base camp from Kathmandu, in contrast with today’s climbers, who
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