SURELY everyone is on drugs in the ski resort of Sun Valley, Idaho. They can't possibly be this nice, this happy, this generous, without Xanax in the water supply. If you're looking for a town that epitomises all that is good about America, without the saccharine aftertaste, then look no further than Ketchum, home to 3000 residents year round, at the base of Sun Valley Ski Resort.
It's the kind of place where service comes with a smile, where people are called Trip and Chad and Hudson and Blain, nothing is ever too much trouble and organic, gluten-free and soy milk are the order of the day.
But don't go mistaking it for a hippy town. Sun Valley and Ketchum attract the big guns who park their private jets at the airport. Schwarzenegger, Eastwood and Hanks all own property here. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's kids grew up here and still roam these streets and motivational guru Tony Robbins has a second home and brings his top-end disciples to town each year to personally heli-ski with him for a hefty price tag to get closer to "God". Hollywood has had a long association with Sun Valley. Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and members of the Kennedy clan brought old-world glamour to Sun Valley Lodge.
Glenn Miller, John Payne and Milton Berle even filmed Sun Valley Serenade here in 1941 and the Sun Valley Resort Lodge has a dedicated channel on the in-house television playing the film 24/7.
That's not all. Hemingway lived in the valley and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in the lodge's suite 206, and sadly took his own life in Ketchum. But enough of celebrity. I'm here to go skiing and it appears I am alone. The lack of lift queues is at first disconcerting; the mountain caps the number of lift passes sold for each day.
Silver-haired attendees carry my skis, place them in the gondola, wish me a pleasant day then their colleague at the top of the mountain takes my skis from the gondola and places them in perfect alignment on the snow. All I have to do is click in. I suspect if I asked them to ski for me they'd do that, too.
Silver is the colour of the day. It's mid-week and silver tops, both male and female, have donned their Bogner ski suits and are clinking hot chocolate mugs in the lodge at the top. But don't be fooled by their clearly retired status. These folks can ski and ski hard, giving younger thighs a burn for their money.
Sun Valley is divided into two separate mountains.
Bald Mountain, nicknamed "Baldy", is where intermediates, advanced and expert skiers descend on perfectly pitched slopes, no flats, no plateaus, just 1036 vertical metres of consistent downhill skiing and boarding on more than 2000 skiable acres. Expect bowls of powder, tree runs, groomed piste and plenty of off-piste to keep everyone whooping in that American high-five way. Dollar Mountain is a separate mountain five minutes away that caters solely to beginner skiers and boarders, which means no out-of-control skiers or boarders on Baldy. Beginners have 10 runs and 191 metres of vertical rise on treeless terrain accessed by five lifts.
Even better news for snowboarders and skiers who like the Park and Pipe is the Snow Park Technologies-designed terrain parks on Dollar Mountain. There are three parks for different levels filled with rails, jumps and box features for beginners to experts. For the adventurous, Epic Quest offer heli-skiing day trips with Sun Valley Heli Ski, the first commercial heli-skiing operation in the United States. But back to the ultimate silver fox, Alan Pennay. You'll spot the tall, debonaire Australian turned Sun Valley resident, resplendent in chinchilla coat, tickling the ivories at the Duchin Lounge surrounded by women half his age begging for him to play it again.
He owns Pennay's at River Run condominiums (apartments to us non-Americans), the only true ski-in, snowmobile-out apartments on the River Run side of town. He's known for old-school Tuesday night soirees that leave Wednesday morning a blur and is the ultimate host in a town filled with them. Everyone knows Pennay. Including my boot fitter at River Run Custom Ski Boot Fitting, who took my mangled feet from boot bruised to heli-ski fit in less than a day.
His daughter was the nanny to Demi's children and he owns a pot-bellied pig called Priscilla who lives in his house and wears custom-made pig snow shoes to enter the weekly Sunday afternoon "dinner tray" toboggan races on the lower slopes. It's that kind of town, filled with characters, each with a story.
Julie Harvey also has a story. Yes, she's Australian but this isn't Whistler Blackcomb. Australian accents are still rare here and we are still considered a novelty despite two living in town. I meet Harvey at the
Harvey Arts Project gallery (harveyartsproject.com) in the gentrified "old" part of town.
Her gallery is dedicated to Aboriginal art and she is the exclusive representative in the US of Papunya Tula Artists from the Western Desert of Australia. The walls of the gallery are lined with modern indigenous art including stunning pieces from Weaver Jack (the first Indigenous artist to be shortlisted for the Archibald Prize) that even an art cretin such as myself can recognise. Ketchum is the last place I expect to see a high-end, modern Aboriginal art boutique, until I remember the clientele who live in these hills and I now think Harvey is a genius. Sun Valley's local airport makes the resort easily accessible for Australians with direct flights from Los Angeles. But a storm is brewing and I may not get out.
A couple of blokes sitting at the table next to me at breakfast at Cristina's bakery laugh and suggest I need someone with a private plane. I laugh and ask if they have one I can hitch a ride on.
As they leave my breakfast host informs me one of the two owns a national football team and probably has a fleet of private planes. That's Sun Valley. Be careful who you talk to, they may just be in the movies, or at the very least have a private plane.