sun Energy Efficient 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
Soul Recovery Promises Permanent Healing
the weekly
Page 8
Halloween in the Valley PaGe 5
Don’t Miss The Wood River Valley’s Most Comprehensive Calendar PageS 10 & 11
Glen Shapiro Puts His Focus on the Road Page 13
O c t o b e r 3 0 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 4 4 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Kerrin McCall’s Home is
JT Holmes in Kazakhstan. COURTESY PHOTO: BRADEN GUNEM
Warren Miller’s Ticket to Ride Includes Local Skier and Band See it Friday and Saturday BY KAREN BOSSICK
L
et Sun Valley Olympian Pete Patterson guide you across the glaciers of Greenland. And let Finn Riggins set the beat for launching you off the ice fields of Norway when the 64th Warren Miller ski flick, “Ticket to Ride,” premieres at the Sun Valley Opera House Friday and Saturday. The film shows at 7 p.m. Friday and 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday. This year’s film lets you tag along with Seth Morrison, Andy Mahre and Tommy Moe to the Tordrillo Mountains “in the middle of nowhere” northwest of Anchorage, Alaska—by 1956 Beaver airplane. It takes you along with Chris Davenport as he climbs the west face of the Eiger in Switzerland—and skis it. It takes you through the tree glades of the Flathead Valley of Montana, speed riding deep inside the Tian Shan range of Kazakhstan, on Iceland’s Troll Peninsula and down on what Olympian Seth Wescott calls “the epicenter of big lines” near Valdez, Alaska. The latter is full of surprises as Wescott and Rob Kingwell ski a giant half-pipe of a gully and charge through avalanche debris side by side. The film takes a serious look at climate change, which threatens our ticket to ride, as well, as Chris Davenport makes a detour from Aspen’s terrain park to Somerset Coal Mine where a massive capturing plant converts methane waste to electric energy for Aspen Ski Resort. “Those of us that get out and ski and snowboard get it—we love our environment,” said Davenport, as he shares his concern about the uncertainty of future winters. “We love our snowy winters and we understand the importance of environmental responsibility.” Film attendees have a chance to win ski vacations, heli-trips, gear and other prizes. Everyone attending will also receive a voucher for a free lift ticket to Soldier Mountain and a voucher for $25 off a purchase of $100 or more at Sturtevants in Ketchum. Tickets are on sale at Sturtevants, the Opera House box office at 208622-2244 and eventbrite.com. Buy 10 or more tickets and get $30 or more off, plus a free film, by calling 1-800523-7117. tws
Kerrin McCall sells her functional floor coverings nationally.
STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
K
errin McCall traces her interest in art and the environment back to her ancestor, Charles Wilson Peale, an American Revolutionary soldier, painter and naturalist who lived from 1741 to 1827. Peale created a natural history museum now known as the Peale Museum in Philadelphia—the first in the United States, if not the world. And he filled the museum with portraits he had painted of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Meriwether Lewis and other contemporaries, as well as an impressive collection of insects, birds, mammals, minerals and ethnographic artifacts. He also organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. “I read in ‘National Geographic’ where one of every four of his descendents were involved in art or the environment. He even named his children after artists like Rembrandt and Rubens,” said McCall. It appears that McCall, who followed friends west from her childhood home in Connecticut in the 1970s, got a plethora of Peale’s genes. She makes a living as an artist, her custom, hand-painted floor canvases appearing in “Better Homes and Gardens Building Ideas.” And she also has a deep interest in the environment, even spending several years partnering with Ketchum filmmaker Jim Dutcher to raise a wolf pack in the Saw-
Kerrin McCall relishes the openness of her small home.
tooth Mountains. Both interests are well represented in her two-story home a few stones’ throw from Baldy in the Warm Springs area of Ketchum. At 1,600 square feet, it’s four times larger than the 400-square-foot passive solar cabin she built in Indian Creek north of Hailey in 1978. But it’s nowhere near as large as the McMansions that dominate so much of Ketchum. The walls are built of Durasol blocks made of wood chips from recycled groundup pallets. Colored Portland cement covers the inside walls; stucco, the outside. “The walls are a thick foot—made of permeable materials that allow the air to flow through so you don’t get a toxic buildup. And here I am in town yet my house is very quiet and peaceful because the walls are so solid,” said McCall, who designed the home 17 years ago. Tiny windows with low eaves high on the walls of the north side of her home allow light without much heat leakage. South-facing picture windows that extend from the ceiling to the floor allow the winter sun to warm the house. The 5-inchthick floor absorbs the heat from the sun, radiating it back at night, so McCall is able to heat most of her house with a highly efficient and clean-burning Danish woodstove on the coldest days of winter. McCall attributes part of her interest
“…my home allows as much nature in as possible.” –Kerrin McCall in conservation to New Englanders’ typically conservative use of energy. “The houses back there are big and drafty. When you’re cold, you put a sweater on. If you leave a room, you turn the light off. I could heat my home in Indian Creek with a half-cord of wood each winter. And I could leave it for a week in midwinter and it never got colder than 50 degrees,” she said. “I wanted to continue that here. So much is happening to the planet—but we have so many opportunities to reverse it. I choose to use very little natural gas, for instance, because it’s so bad for the environment.” McCall’s kitchen blends into the dining room and living room. “I knew it was going to be a small house so I wanted it to be as open as I could make it,” she said. “And my home
continued, page 17
t c e l E e R
RANDY
HALL MAYOR for
Leadership
Experience
Vision
Paid for by Randy Hall for Mayor Campaign