A letter from a local
America’s first ski town still skis best.
Bald Mountain is the best pure ski hill in America — 3,400 feet of continuous fall line, no flats, lifts five minutes from the espresso — and it invented the chairlift, so the lineage is real. Locals lap it before work in a way that would be smug if it weren't so cheerful.
Summer is Adams Gulch's smooth singletrack five minutes north, the Big Wood River's dry-fly water right through town, Sawtooth views an hour up the road at Galena, and the White Clouds for the big days. Hemingway finished his days here for reasons that become obvious by June.
Sun Valley money floats the amenities, but Ketchum keeps a working soul — patrollers, fishing guides, writers. Seventeen years and the light off Baldy at dusk still stops me.
— Vic