The Best 10 Days of Skiing Sun Valley Has Ever Seen

This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.

Something Spectacular
This Way Comes

Bald Mountain is not an impressive sight. From the valley below, it deceptively looks like a wooded mogul that scratches the sub-alpine. No couloirs, no inspiring rock outcrops, no jagged alpine teeth, no tram perched on a precipice. In the world of ski resorts, it is aesthetically, the girl next door. Sun Valley had flown under the radar for nearly forty years thanks to its ho-hum curb appeal, and the fact that the only interstate within hundreds of miles passes more than 80 miles to the south. Few had gotten the memo that Sun Valley is a true skier’s mountain, which is fine with all of us who live here.

When the World Cup Finals came to town in the spring of 2025, though, revellers and racers from all over the world saw what we love about our home mountain. With skiable aspects descending almost 360 degrees from the summit down consistent and punishing fall lines, Baldy is a place where you can bend a ski and let ’er rip. It’s a place that begs to be raced. But until this past season, it had never hosted the elite of the sport. Sun Valley has hosted a World Cup before, in 1977, but just the tech events. So while locals got to witness Ingemar Stenmark, Phil Mahre, and Lisa-Marie Morerod shine in the slalom and GS, notably missing were the speed events for which Baldy is so well suited, and downhill stars such as Franz Klammer.

2025 would be, in a place filled with incredible athletes, the highest concentration of the highest caliber athletes to ever descend on Sun Valley.

News of the World Cup coming to town didn’t exactly put locals at ease. A third of the mountain was closed all season for the venue build, and every expert in town prognosticated over the outcomes. Locals shared rumors, spread small-town gossip, and searched for points of intrigue.

Bar talk went: “We are just renting our house out on Airbnb for like $5,000 a night and going on vacation; you know we just can’t deal with the crowds.” Some were certain that “this place is going to just fill up with the Veuve Cliquot chugging glitterati in fur covered boots,” but simultaneously worried it was “going to be all hype and no one is going to show up.” but also contradictorily concerned that “there won’t be anywhere to park.” My crew was simply bummed to have lost the Upper Greyhawk parking lot for several months, leaving us homeless for beer drinking after the lifts close daily. 

The crowds turned out. More specifically, skiers who love skiing came to witness. If you had friends from places like Snowbird, Jackson Hole, Crested Butte, Killington, or [enter any American ski resort here], chances are you got a call or a text asking if you had a place for them to crash. We were hosting a party with the perfect guest list.

Town buzzed morning and night. Foreign dialects murmured in the bars and on the streets. Every race was packed with spectators, the grandstand roared at each run in excitement, fans lined the courses, people freaked out over seeing Lindsey Vonn, and autograph seekers wrapped around city blocks waiting to catch a glimpse of a favorite racer or legend.

Having a weather dependent event in this region at this time of year is a roll of the dice. March can be hot and dry, cold and milk bottle, or the mother of schizophrenic spring conditions.

Bald Mountain, one of arguably the best T to B arc parks anywhere, is so damned steep and consistent that building the downhill course took millions of gallons of water, hundreds of ranchers, carpenters, ski bums, and most of the winter to create a barely FIS-palatable white ribbon of death. The buzz became the weather forecast. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, downhill day produced one of the most banger spring powder cycles in years. The race was delayed, then cancelled. The sorrow of not getting to see this work of art carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey by the world’s best passed quickly, and we just skied our balls off.

Baldy was firing. The mountain rang with hoots and hollers of World Cup fans getting after it. We made tons of friends on a powder day and, as the weather glassed off, drank whiskey with them. As it turns out, our guests were just like us: a motley posse who freaking love skiing and ski culture.

The rest of the event went off in spectacular fashion. The American women, in particular, put on a historic performance on their new home course, with Vonn capping her improbable comeback with a silver in super-G, and Mikaela Shiffrin notching her record 101st World Cup win with a gold in the slalom.

Holistically speaking, it was the best ten days of skiing the Sun Valley has ever seen.

This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.