There are some men and women in the world that spend their entire life looking for the meaning of life. I’ve spent my entire life looking for the free lift ticket.

After five decades of making ski movies, I have to tell you that I have just been selling freedom all of those years. That’s because streets are straight and our bodies are round and we don’t belong in square houses or offices on those straight streets.

For years, a lot of people I have talked to in cities around the world have told me that they only want to quit their jobs and move to a ski resort and get a high paying job with short hours and get powder snow days off.

A lot has changed since Averill Harriman, the President of the Union Pacific Railroad, came back from learning to ski in St. Anton Austria in 1933. He saw that Hitler would be closing down European ski resorts and decided to build the first destination ski resort in America.

In 1934 Harriman hired Count Von Gotschalk to search for the perfect spot for this far out experiment. The Count decided on building the resort in a remote Idaho mining and sheep town called Ketchum. He decided to build it there because he knew from his experience some important things:
1. A ski resort should be below 6,000 feet because of the potential respiratory and cardiovascular complications for visitors.
2. A ski resort has to have abundant snow--but not too much; lots of sunshine; and existing public transportation to get to the place from far away.
3. A ski resort cannot be close to a major city because of the potentially large weekend crowds that might overwhelm the place. (This was in 1934.)

The end result of the search was Sun Valley, and I think there are many lessons to be learned from the history of skiing in Sun Valley.

Sun Valley
When Harriman paid Mr. Brass who sold him the 4,000 acre ranch for $4.00 an acre, Harriman asked Brass: “Where do you winter your cattle in the valley?” Mr. Brass showed him where the warmest winter spot was, and it is where the Sun Valley Lodge was built. The lodge went on top of the largest pile of cow manure in the Wood River Valley.

Sun Valley was conceived and built when there was no such thing as a chair lift, fiberglass skis, safety bindings, metal edges, snow making machines, snow grooming machines, double, triple or quad chairlifts, high speed detachable chairlifts, plastic ski boots, shaped skis, fat skis, snowboards, helicopter skiing, condominiums, and ski resorts with more different lift ticket prices than the Molly Brown airline company.

There were no such places to ski in the 1930’s such as Vail, Beaver Creek, Aspen, Snowmass, Telluride, Alpental, Alpine Meadows, Whistler Blackcomb, Heavenly Valley, Park City, Snowbird, Palisades Tahoe, Big Sky, much less the thought of a private, members only, ski resort called the Yellowstone Club in Montana.

When Sun Valley was built there was no such thing as professional ski racing, highly paid Olympic amateur competitors, mogul contests, mountain bikes, aerial contests, X games, global warming, $92 a day lift tickets, or $720 a day private- lesson ski instructors.

Environmental Myopia
Environmentalists say: “There is no need for any new ski resorts in America today.” Yet one day this winter, Keystone had 21,800 people on its hill in one day, while Vail had 26,000, and Aspen had 20,000. Their permits are for the same amount of acreage they had the day they opened many years ago. Even though over 75% of the Forest Service operating budget is from the tax on lift tickets, there has been very little ski area expansion—only more crowding. The freedom that skiing represents and embodies is being curtailed.

I think that with the environmentalist attitude existing today, no one alive to day will ever see another major ski resort opened in America. I also believe Hannes Schneider had it right when many years ago he said: “If everyone skied, there would be no wars.”

Editor’s Note: This is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller.