The Sun Valley Company last month released its 10-year master plan for Bald Mountain. It is an ambitious, generally positive, three-phase plan. Nonetheless, any big plan can and should be improved when possible.
The proposed terrain expansion down Guyer Ridge from the International run will open up new advanced-skier runs, but it will also push more and more people to the very edge of Baldy's most significant avalanche hazard. On big snow days, waves of skiers peel off the backside of the International boundary and into uncontrolled terrain. The Guyer Ridge expansion will draw many more skiers—some able, some not—into dangerous out-of-bounds terrain.
What's more, the sure increase in out-of-bounds injuries presents a dilemma for the Sun Valley Co. and its ski patrol. Does patrol management, which is committed to serving guests in bounds, send limited manpower out of bounds as increasing numbers of people are hurt there? If the patrol doesn't go from the top, is the county willing to send, and pay for, Blaine County Search and Rescue to go from the bottom?
The development of beginner runs in "Seattle Ridge South," terrain commonly referred to as Turkey Bowl, also raises operational questions. Relegating beginners to a thumb-shaped outcropping of the ski area is asking for trouble. Getting injured skiers off Seattle Ridge takes a lot of time and the use of a snowmobile in a crowded, skier environment. Evacuating injured skiers from Seattle Ridge South will be even more problematic. Furthermore, the path out of the new area to the Seattle Ridge drainage will take skiers and boarders underneath significant avalanche terrain.
The installation of a gondola up River Run via the Roundhouse Restaurant seems innocuous enough until one considers that the Christmas chair will be removed in the process. Skiers and boarders who now enjoy cycling through runs like Christmas Bowl, Ridge, Cut Off and Rock Garden will be faced with the hassle of taking off their equipment each and every lap to get on the gondola. If they choose to avoid the gondola, the Lookout Express chairlift will become a mountain bottleneck.
The beloved "chair to nowhere," Chair # 11, is slated for the junk pile as well. The effect of taking that chair out will be to funnel all bowl skiers through Little Easter Bowl or down Gun Tower Road, not an ideal traffic flow.
Skiers and boarders will be faced with more gondola-loading hassles when a gondola replaces the Challenger chairlift on Warm Springs. Sun Valley Co. will never hear the end of the complaints. Mountain users like to keep moving, hence the demand for high speed quads. Getting in and out of gondolas is not what they have in mind.
Seasoned skiers will also resent the proposed snowmaking and concomitant grooming of Upper Hemingway and Upper Cozy. Witness Upper Greyhawk: It is great skiing the day it is groomed and an icy slide for life for days afterwards. Unless the company can freshen the runs with new snow and grooming every night, it will effectively lose those runs for days at a time.
The positives in this master plan are many: replacing and upgrading the Lookout and Roundhouse Restaurants; replacing fixed-grip chairs with detachable quads; developing a terrain park on lower Greyhawk; and 100 acres of new terrain south of Olympic Ridge.
We urge Sun Valley Co. to consider addressing some of the negatives, issues that will surely be of concern to its customers.
