what you’ll find in this issue
Baldy’s Crown Jewels, Part 2 Warm Springs & Seattle Ridge Lodges
FAMILY OF WOMEN FILM FEST Page 16 SOUL SPOTS Pages 18-19
THE BLATANT COUNTY NEWS THE BLATANT COUNTY NEWS Pages 21-24
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Sun Valley Co.’s Warm Springs Lodge’s expansive windows reflect a few early bird skiers preparing to head up Challenger lift on Tuesday morning. The lodge provides a great base camp for the west side of Bald Mountain. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
BY DICK DORWORTH This is part two of a two-part series.
T
here has always been a certain mystique to the Warm Springs side of Bald Mountain. Even before there were ski lifts on Baldy, everyone knew about the fine skiing potential on the Warm Springs side. People had known it since 1938, when legendary American ski racer and photographer Dick Durrance convinced Sun Valley Resort to cut a run on the north side of Baldy for the 1939 Harriman Cup downhill. The only lifts in Sun Valley at the time were on Dollar, Proctor and Ruud mountains, neither of them large
enough for a world-class downhill, and the 1939 Harriman downhill (the third year of the race) marked the course on Baldy as a classic of the time. The second Harriman to be held on Baldy (in 1940) took place on what are now International and Warm Springs runs. That race is one of the best and most memorable in American ski history, and it was won by Durrance—his third win of the prestigious cup. The Resort opened the first lifts to the top of Baldy for the 1939-40 season on the River Run side. The Resort did not install the first Warm Springs lifts until 1965, but during those intervening years serious Baldy skiers commonly rode up the River Run lifts, skied down the Warm Springs side of Baldy and caught a ride back around to River Run (in much the same spirit as today’s out-ofcontinued on page 5
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Sun Valley Co.’s Challenger lift offers skiers and snowboarders the only nonstop ride to the top of Baldy. It lifts its passengers about 3,000 vertical feet from Baldy’s Warm Springs base in just ten minutes. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
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BALDY’S CROWN JEWELS, continued FROM page 4
Warm Springs Lodge was designed by Ketchum architects Ruscitto/Latham/Blanton and its interior by Lauren Tyler, the wife of Sun Valley’s general manager at that time of the Lodge’s construction. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
continued on page 10
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BALDY’S CROWN JEWELS, continued FROM page 5
Seattle Ridge Lodge is the most remote of Baldy’s day lodges. Visiting the lodge requires a trip to the top of the mountain and quick ski or snowboard over to Seattle Ridge. Those who make the trek will be rewarded with views that are out of this world. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
bounds skiers go into The Burn or Bassett Gulch). When the Warm Springs and Limelight lifts opened in 1965, a private home near the bottom was turned into the North Face Hut, which provided food, drink, shelter, warmth and, on sunny spring days, outdoor entertainment. It was a modest, no-frills building and business as popular as it was unpretentious. The resort removed the two original lifts at the Warm Springs base in 1988 and replaced them with the Challenger lift (which takes skiers to the top in one ride instead of two), and the Greyhawk lift, which trans-
ports skiers about half way up the mountain’s Warm Springs side. After buying the resort in 1977, Sun Valley Co.
such lodges throughout the ski industry). He chose to start with Warm Springs. The late Holding’s original idea included the site
son. The American skiing community had never seen anything like it. The ski industry took note, and day lodges at virtually every
Holding was closely involved with every aspect of the transformation of Sun Valley and, at one point during the process, architect Nicholas Latham commented, “With each project, Earl becomes more and more sophisticated.” owner Earl Holding eventually decided to transform Baldy’s day lodges (and, in the process, the standard of
of the North Face, and the current 16,000-square-foot Warm Springs Lodge was opened for the 1991-92 sea-
major ski area are now no longer lacking in frills. Expanding the very concept of a log cabin, the
Warm Springs Lodge combined Old World luxuries with the rustic elegance already in existence in the Resort’s Sun Valley Lodge. With two large rock fireplaces and extensive windows through which to view the mountain, the lodge provides fine dining, a bar and a retail store. Shortly after the lodge’s construction, Snow Country Magazine rated the it as the “Best Day Lodge in the Country,” thereby expanding the mystique of Warm Springs into the consciousness of the larger American skiing public. At the end of Warm Springs Lodge’s first continued ON page 11
Seattle Ridge Lodge was also designed by Ruscitto/Latham/Blanton and its interior by Lauren Tyler. The lodge’s inaccessible site presented many obstacles to construction and required the use of helicopters during the process. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
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BALDY’S CROWN JEWELS, continued FROM page 10
Virgin so-called “corduroy” snow beckons skiers to Baldy’s Seattle Ridge area on Monday morning. Courtesy photo by F. Alfredo Rego
season, construction began immediately on the 18,000-square-foot Seattle Ridge Lodge, located at 8,800 feet on the crest that runs west and south from the Baldy’s summit. The inaccessible site presented many obstacles to construction and required the use of helicopters during the process, which continued up to the day before it opened on Christmas Day, 1993. The Resort built the Seattle Ridge lift the previous summer so skiers could access the lodge as well as the skiing below it, which is labeled intermediate terrain and strains the skills of many intermediate skiers. Both lodges were designed by Ketchum architects Ruscitto/Latham/ Blanton who have also planned all of the subsequent edifices that have so spectacularly altered Sun Valley over the past few decades. The interior decoration of both Warm Springs and Seattle Ridge lodges
was designed by Lauren Tyler, the wife of Sun Valley’s general manager at that time, Wally Huffman. Holding was closely involved with every aspect of the transformation of Sun Valley and, at one point during the process, architect Nicholas Latham commented, “With each project, Earl becomes more and more sophisticated.” Yes, and as with the Warm Springs Lodge two years earlier, Seattle Ridge Lodge won Snow Country Magazine’s “Best Day Lodge” award the year it opened. Along with River Run Lodge, Seattle Ridge Lodge and Warm Springs Lodge comprise Bald Mountain’s “crown jewels”, or “Triple Crown”—in the words of Holding. Both the mountain itself and the experience it provides to those who ski its slopes are enhanced dramatically by the three warm and welcoming treasures. tws
Act Two For ‘Tenor’ In the many years that the nexStage Theatre has been producing shows in the Wood River Valley, only two productions have been brought back. The first of these was in 2007, when performances of the Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” were curtailed because of the Castle Rock Fire. Now, the theatre is pleased to bring back “Lend Me A Tenor,” this time because of the wonderful response from audiences who saw the original show over Thanksgiving this year. The second run will give a chance to visitors and those who missed the show the first time around to see the production. The show will open tonight at 8 p.m.—with free champagne—and will continue Jan. 1-3 at 7 p.m. It runs just over two hours. Tickets cost $25 for general admission and $35 for reserved seating. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 726-4857.
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