Snow in Idaho

Growing like a snowball rolling down a hill, skiing had 50,000 U. S. devotees last year, may have 100,000 this year. Like golfers, skiers are perpetually dissatisfied --with snow conditions, terrain, the necessity for climbing up a hill after sliding down. To find the miseries of skiing at a minimum, skiers all over the world have heretofore had to go to the Alps, preferably St. Moritz. Last week, the tiny tank town of Ketchum, Idaho (pop. 220) was ready to set itself up as famed St. Moritz's U. S. rival. Just outside Ketchum, 6,000 ft. above sea level in a white notch of the Sawtooth Mountains, the doors of Sun Valley Lodge, built to be the No. 1 wintersports resort of the Western Hemisphere, will this week open to a covey of 250 skiers and celebrities topped by Cinemactress Claudette Colbert and Poloist Tommy Hitchcock.

In Sun Valley's outdoor, glass-walled swimming pool, for which the water has to be cooled because it comes from natural hot springs, will paddle notables like Robert Pabst (beer), Julius Fleischmann (yeast), William S. Paley (Columbia Broadcasting), Ward Cheney (silk). Arrival of Hollywood bigwigs like Producer Sam Goldwyn and Actor Gary Cooper for Sun Valley's premiere, is likely to leave Ketchum profoundly bored. Because the town is too small for a cinema theatre, they are unknown. Proprietors of Ketchum's Brant Hotel and its $2-a-day tourist camp dislike their new rival, expect it to spoil their trade. Rates at Sun Valley Lodge start down from suites at $48 a day to two-cot cubicles at $16 a day.

Cost of the Sun Valley development was about that of one of Producer Goldwyn's colossal spectacles--$1,000,000. When the skiing boom started, Union Pacific's Chair-man William Averell Harriman dispatched Count Felix Schaffgotsch, expert Austrian skier, on a 5,000 mi. trip to find the best skiing terrain on Union Pacific's extensive Rocky Mountain routes. Sun Valley--then a nameless dent in a State previously famed mainly for potatoes and Senator Borah-- was Count Schaffgotsch's choice. Among its natural advantages: slopes free from timber, surrounding peaks up to 12,000 ft. above sea level to shut off cold northern winds, snow from December to April, sun hot enough for skiing without a shirt.

Most artificial advantage of Sun Valley is Sun Valley Lodge. It is built of concrete poured into timber molds to look like wood, decorated by Marjorie Oelrichs, wife of Bandleader Eddy Duchin. whose theory was that its guests would be so sick of snow that anything white would be offensive. Most delectable feature of Sun Valley for ardent skiers will be the world's most elaborate rigs for pulling humans up hills. An ordinary rope ski-tow, with padded bars to lean on, will function on Proctor Mountain (named for Sun Valley's ski expert and chief of guides, Charles Proctor). Where the 3,050-ft. towline ends, skiers will not even have to remove their skis before relapsing into "chairlifts" which will carry them 3,500 ft. higher, at 400 ft. a minute.

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