Seattle’s surprising ties to Sun Valley ski resort date to before WWII

KETCHUM, Idaho – While Hollywood features prominently in Sun Valley lore – in its early days the resort enthusiastically invited movie stars to bolster its reputation – Seattle’s vibrant winter sports scene played a significant role in building up Sun Valley’s ski culture.

Bald Mountain’s Seattle Ridge – named for “the rugged skiers” of Seattle who “ski their own Cascades in raincoats,” per Seattle author and Sun Valley resident John Lundin – is just one clue to a decadesold connection. Wander around and you might see the familiar logo of Sturtevants ski shop – the Bellevue snow sports store actually started in Sun Valley. Ketchum also boasts some distinct Seattle businesses: you’ll find Ballard-based Sonic Boom Records, and former First Avenue boutique Baby & Company.

For a small town that’s a 650-mile drive from Seattle, the relationship between the two has run surprisingly deep since the resort’s inception.

For starters, Sun Valley was almost founded on Mount Rainier. In November 1935, Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch began touring the western U.S. at the behest of Averell Harriman, board chair of the Union Pacific Railroad, in search of a place to build a ski resort. Harriman became enamored with winter sports after the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, and was convinced the snowy western half of the country held fertile slopes for a destination resort similar to those populating the Alps. A shrewd railroad baron, Harriman also expected that a glamorous resort most easily reached on his train would be good for business.

Until he stumbled upon Ketchum, the count found the best skiing on the flanks of Washington’s tallest volcano. Paradise was already a popular weekend destination for ski touring, however, and Schaffgotsch’s mission was to locate an exclusive resort farther away from population centers. Nixing Rainier, he said, “You can’t take the mountain away from the people.” After Sun Valley got up and running, Schaffgotsch recruited Austrian ski instructors – many devoted Nazis like Schaffgotsch, who died in combat during World War II.

Seattle skiers who cut their teeth at Mount Rainier – where U.S. Army mountain troops who later fought the Nazis trained – were quickly lured by the promise of state-of-the-art infrastructure and instruction. Sun Valley unveiled the world’s first chairlift when it opened in December 1936, an ingenious invention that revolutionized snow sports.

“It is hard to envision now the impact that Sun Valley had on Washington’s skiing community,” Lundin writes. “Skiing in Washington was done in private ski clubs or on local mountains, which involved climbing up the hills since there were no ski tows. Ski gear was rudimentary and there were limited ski lessons available at best.”

Tacoma-born Gretchen Fraser took advantage of Sun Valley’s lifts to train as a competitive ski racer. She won the first U.S. gold medal in alpine skiing at the 1948 Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and became a national sports icon. Back home, New York City, Tacoma, Portland and Vancouver, Washington, all held parades or banquets in her honor.

While not an Olympic champion like his wife, Don Fraser is a U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Famer who won marquee Northwest races in the 1930s. The Evergreen State couple met on the 1930s racing circuit and later became pillars of Sun Valley’s early ski culture. Gretchen was inducted into the first class of the Washington Sports Hall of Fame in 1960 and posthumously into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

A long line of world-class racers has emerged from the slopes of Bald Mountain, which has minted 56 Olympians over the decades including household names like Picabo Street, who won gold at the Nagano Games in 1998. A statue of Street, the first American to win a World Cup downhill final, will be unveiled during the March FIS Ski World Cup Finals championship in Sun Valley’s Festival Meadow – where it will join statues of Fraser and the valley’s other women winter sports stars.