sun Hailey
•
Ketchum
•
Sun Valley
•
Bellevue
•
Carey
•
s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Fools’ ever-popular acting classes start in July and you can sign up now
the weekly
Page 15
Kane review’s Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris Page 12
Scottish Festival this Saturday in Hailey
J u n e 1 5 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 2 4 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Jima Rice discusses innovation and entrepreneurship Page 17
read about it on PaGe 5
wildflower walks
Jennifer Biondi Blue Camas By KAREN BOSSICK
T
hey look like lakes of blue alongside Highway 20 north of Mountain Home. But they’re actually fields of star-shaped flowering blue camas. They grow in moist meadows and that’s why they can be found in great profusion in the Centennial Marsh near Fairfield. But they also can be found along creeks on Dollar Mountain and other nearby areas in the Wood River Valley. The plant can stand as tall as two feet with grass-like leaves. The sixpetal flowers, which range from pale lilac to deep purple, open a few at a time from the bottom upward revealing yellow stamens. The Shoshone and Bannock Indians used to harvest the bulbs in the fall, boiling them or roasting them in pits. Often, they’d dry them and pound them into flour with rock pestles. Added to bread and soup, the camas root would last them until the next spring when the hunting and gathering cycle started all over again. Other times, the Indians would mix them with crickets that they had driven into a trench and then set sagebrush afire on top, roasting the mix. The bulbs possess unbelievable protein with nearly three times the nutritional punch of an equal amount of liver. In 1878, white emigrants and camas combined to provoke Idaho’s last Indian war. The trouble started when Indians from the Fort Hall Indian Reservation flocked to the Camas Prairie for their annual bulb harvest, only to find pioneers’ hogs rooting out the camas bulbs despite an 1868 treaty that had set aside the prairie for the Indians. The Indians, who were starving because of the meager rations allotted them at Fort Hall, went on the warpath. Chief Buffalo Horn and a few hundred followers burnt haystacks and buildings in the area, prompting many of the settlers to flee to Hailey. The Indians burned wagon trains, stole horses and cattle and pillaged farms before Gen. Oliver Howard’s troops caught up with them at Steens Mountain in central Oregon. The ending of the Bannock War opened the door for miners and others to flock to the Wood River Valley. These lovely flowers, once mistakenly thought to be in the lily family, were a little late to show this year, thanks to the cool wet spring. But they reached their peak this past
continued, page 19
Above: Jennifer Biondi does some cornering in the pump park. Top Right: Jennifer biondi rides over an A-frame comprised of logs.
head bike honcho
A slice of heaven at Idaho Bike Ranch Photos & Story By KAREN BOSSICK
â€œâ€ŚI love teaching people front-wheel lifts and rear-wheel lifts and little tools they can stash in their pocket so they don’t have to get off their bikes when they encounter rocks or downed trees.â€? –Jennifer Biondi Head Honcho, Idaho Bike Ranch
J
ennifer Biondi has remade 160 acres of woods into a biker’s paradise with rollers, doubles, gaps and banked corners. Now she’s ready to take bikers by the handlebars and show them how to ride the planks, ladders, drop boxes, teeter-totters and A-frames she’s hid in those woods. Biondi is the head honcho at the Idaho Bike Ranch—Mark Baumgardner’s two-wheeled playground nestled on the South Fork of the Boise River in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. “It’s a great feeling to get up every day and do something you love in an area that resembles a slice of heaven,� said Biondi. “Working with excavators and designers to construct the pump park and BMX course was like a dream come true. And I love teaching people front-wheel lifts and rear-wheel lifts and little tools they can stash in their pocket so they don’t have to get off their bikes when they encounter rocks or downed trees.� Biondi was product manager for Bell Sports helmet and bike accessories in Santa Cruz, Calif., for much of her life. But when the Internet economy collapsed six years ago, she seized the opportunity to buy a house in Hailey and more fully engage in her pas-
sion for the outdoors. She had done sports all her life, attending San Jose State on a basketball scholarship, competing in a USSA slalom and boardercross series in the Tahoe area and surfing and skateboarding to abandon. But she found her calling at a mountain bike clinic at Whistler Ski Resort. “I learned so much I wanted everybody to learn what I did,� she said. It didn’t take her long to get her wish. By October 2009, she and Baumgardner were mapping out a plan for a bike ranch near Baumgardner’s heli-ski lodge between Ketchum and Fairfield. The Bike Ranch kicks off its second season today, sporting a new partnership with the Ketchum-based SCOTT USA. “They’ll provide demo bikes so that if someone is being held back by their bicycle, we can put the right wheels under them,� Biondi said. Biondi said the Bike Ranch will be a prime location for SCOTT and other bicycle manufacturers to do photo shoots and research and development testing away from prying eyes. And it will give bikers and non-bikers alike a chance to learn new skills that will kick their riding up a notch. Over the past few weeks, Biondi and Baumgardner have built more trails integrating
There’s more to this story: Read more about the Idaho Bike Ranch on page 6 ladders, A-frames and fallen trees—among them, a log that looks like a tuning fork. And Biondi just returned from Portland, where she checked out what the Beaver State had to offer. “Some of their stunts are more advanced. But we’re doing everything incrementally,� she said. “As we grow, we will introduce more advanced stunts. And some of those will come about because industry wants a certain stunt for a photo shoot or something like that.� Biondi says she hopes that the Idaho Bike Ranch will help put Sun Valley on the map as a mountain bike destination. “Sun Valley was one of the top mountain bike destinations 25 years ago when it hosted a national downhill mountain bike competition. But somehow it dropped off the radar. We want to change that—bring in people from other parts of the country, even other parts of the world,� she said. “At 46, mountain biking makes me feel young. And I want everyone to share in that feeling.�
tws