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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 Hailey Students Find Senior Solutions in Pursuit of LEGO League Championship
Taize Services Begin Anew Tonight Page 6
Powder Festival Begins Thursday Page 8
Enter to Win Another Great Giveaway from The Sun Page 15
read about it on PaGe 5
D e c e m b e r 5 , 2 0 1 2 • Vo l . 5 • N o . 4 9 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Share the Spirit of Christmas by buying local this weekend and see part of your purchase go to local charities.
Share the Spirit Spreads the Love PHOTO & STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
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bout 50 Ketchum merchants are offering a unique way to spread the Christmas spirit around this weekend. Those retailers are participating in Share the Spirit whereby they donate 10 percent or more of their sales Friday, Saturday and Sunday to the non-profits of their choice. Iconoclast Books, for instance, has chosen to give a percentage of its sales to Company of Fools. Bellissimo is supporting the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley. The Elephant’s Perch is supporting the Blaine County Recreation District. And Silver Creek Outfitters is supporting St. Luke’s Wood River Foundation. Many of the stores are offering goodies and special promotions to entice shoppers and add to the festivity. Silver Creek Outfitters, for instance, is offering a catered reception from 5 to 7 p.m. opening night featuring nibbles from Ketchum Grill and its new Enoteca Italian restaurant scheduled to open in mid-December in the old Starbucks building. NourishMe will have a wine tasting on opening night. The non-profits, in turn, are encouraging their patrons to shop at their benefactors through Facebook postings, e-mails and postcards. St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center has decorated its lobby with posters encouraging its employees and visitors to shop at Silver Creek Outfitters—its benefactor. The campaign keeps shopping dollars in the community while raising money for local non-profits. “Isn’t it great?” said Company of Fools artist Denise Simone. “You buy a gift for your family, and eat, the same time you’re giving to an organization that gives to the community, so your shopping dollars add and add and add and go on and on and on.” “It’s like nerve endings running around with everyone spreading the same message,” said Doug Brown, who heads up the Wood River Economic Partnership (WREP). The event is sponsored by SVPN, WREP and the Copy Center at Giacobbi Square. Terry Ring of Silver Creek Outfitters and others got the idea going in 2006 but shelved it when the recession hit. Justin Williams of SVPN calls it a powerful example of philanthropy that speaks to the fabric of the community. “There are two things that are synonymous with Christmas—fun and giving. And that’s what we’re known for in this Valley,” he said. “We’re tying the idea of sharing the spirit into the festivity of the holidays.” This year’s Share the Spirit weekend was organized on short notice.
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kis will get Keith Anspach down the mountain—or even up the mountain. But his snow bike will take him anywhere. “It’s super fun riding up the stairs on them,” he said, pedaling his bike across the snow at Dollar Mountain and up the steps of Carol’s Dollar Mountain Lodge for emphasis. “You can climb a tree with one of these if you have the legs to do it.” Anspach is one of a growing number of Sun Valley residents that have added snow bikes to their arsenal of snow toys. Retailers across snow country can hardly keep the bicycles, which are perched on monster-size fat tires, in stock. And Backwoods Mountain Sports has sold more snow bikes this year than ski packages, said Anspach. At four inches wide, the tires are four times the width of road bike tires. And with just 10 to 30 pounds of pressure in each tire, they allow Anspach and others like Mark Carnes to float on top of powder that regular mountain bikes would sink in to. “I can ride to the top of Quigley Canyon and it’s like riding a monster truck—the bike blows through everything,” said Carnes. “They’re quick and they handle corners well. The tires are not so wide that they’re cumbersome. But they are efficient. And, even as big as these bikes are, they have all-aluminum frames so they only weigh about 30 pounds,” he said. Fat bikes, as they’re called, debuted in Sun Valley a couple of years ago. But they had their birth in the mid-1980s in Fairbanks, Alaska, where mountain bikers tinkered to come up with the ultimate bike to ride the 1,049-mile Iditarod sled dog race course from Anchorage to Nome. Brian Williams, who works at Backwoods Mountain Sports, lived in Fairbanks then and watched fat-bike creator Simon Rakower weld You can use bar mitts with snow bikes. But Keith Anspach has found that he does fine with his ski gloves. “And even then I’m usually too hot,” he said.
HAPPINESS IS . . .
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YOU’RE A GOOD MAN,
CHARLIE BROWN
Dec 208 . 578 . 9122 FRPSDQ\RIIRROV RUJ