Report from Sun Valley, Idaho

Here’s a report on last month’s trip to Sun Valley, Idaho.

We changed planes in Denver, surrounded by Scientists, to get a regional jet to KSUN, one of the nation’s most dangerous airports (see U.S. local and federal governments respond to an urgent safety situation (2016), regarding a safety problem recognized by the Feds no later than 2009).

I talked to the pilots after the flight and learned that special sim training is required to operate at this airport. Here’s a best-case instrument approach plate for an aircraft that can climb at 420 feet per nautical mile (might be tough after an engine fails in an airliner):

Notice that the aircraft can’t land unless the lowest clouds are no lower than 900′ above the runway (minimum descent altitude (MDA) without seeing the runway is 6180′ and the runway is 5289′ (TDZE at the top)). That’s essentially visual flying conditions. “What if you’re at 200′ above the runway and a vehicle or another aircraft drives onto the runway?” I asked. “That becomes an ‘extraction’, not a missed approach,” the pilot responded. “Can it be done on one engine?” was my follow-up. “No.” (i.e., there are no good options for a go-around once close to the runway in the event of an engine failure). You can see from this plate that an airport built at JUNOL, just 10 nm south of KSUN, would be idiot-proof.

The downtown hotel recommended by the lawyer with whom I was working, a coronapanic refugee from San Francisco who never did go back to the office, was quoting $1,700 per night. I decided on the budget option of one of the last rooms at the venerable Sun Valley Lodge for $750 per night. While the elites swan around in their G-Wagons, Grenadiers, Ferraris, and restored classic cars, the local post office reminds the peasants how to renew their Medicaid:

(Why don’t the peasants get rich working in town and become ineligible for Medicaid? Most of the servers and cleaners in the village seemed to be from Eastern Europe, here in the U.S. on temporary work visas.)

Returning to swanning around, here are the resident swans in front of the Sun Valley Lodge:

The restaurant at the lodge isn’t abusively expensive, but if you want to save some $$ and honor Maryland’s leading citizen you can zip over to El Niño Y Pupuseria in downtown Ketchum for the inexpensive snack (pupusas) that purportedly resulted in Kilmar Armando Ábrego García being targeted by unspecified gangs in his native El Salvador. The restaurant is quite smoky inside so don’t go unless the weather is nice enough for dining at the outdoor tables.

For soups, sandwiches, and salads at breakfast and lunch hit Bigwood Bread Bakery & Cafe instead (recommended by a local). Grumpy’s was the recommended hamburger joint, but we didn’t try it.

Make reservations in advance for the Thursday night barbecue at Galena Lodge, which features good company at big tables and live music. Drive beyond Galena to the Galena Summit Overlook (8,440′ above sea level according to my phone), if not all the way to Stanley (next town north after Ketchum). Do some hiking on side trails before coming back to Galena Lodge and the easy trails that begin right from there. It would be great to have a Tesla full self-driving car for this journey so as to appreciate the scenery on both sides of the road.

Downtown has an interesting free museum on the opposite corner of an intersection from the library. Part of the museum features Ernest Hemingway. Note the #Truth that the Spanish Civil War was against Fascism. The progressives who traveled to Spain were definitely not fighting for Stalinism, forced collectivization, and the killing of roughly 7,000 Catholic priests.

Stickers in the gift shop remind patrons that the library and the museum are united under the sacred Rainbow Flag:

The Library has an awesome treehouse plus the usual books:

If you’ve got a lot of leftover climbing rope, the library stocks BDSM 101:

They’d just begun to run the lift up to the top of “Baldy” (just over 9000′):

It’s unclear why a 1940s or 1950s car is the right choice for mountain roads, but we saw quite a few beautiful classics in and around town. 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville:

1948 Buick Roadmaster in front of the (unimpressive) supermarket (drive 20 minutes south to Hailey to get to an Albertson’s):

And we found the same car later at the National Ballet of Canada performance in the Sun Valley Village:

Sun Valley is an awesome place to spend the summer, but it desperately needs a better airport. It’s not as offensively ritzy as Jackson, Wyoming (maybe because Idaho imposes a state personal income tax rate of over 5 percent vs. 0 percent in Wyoming?). It’s reasonably flat and easy to walk around. The access to trails and outdoor activities is as good as anywhere in the U.S.

What about as a year-round home, either in Ketchum or in Hailey (probably more practical)? Aside from the skiing opportunities, one big plus for young people seems to be college admissions. The kids I talked to who’d gone to high school in Idaho had been admitted to all of the colleges where they applied whereas the kids I know in Maskachusetts, except for one bizarrely superhuman half-Asian boy (admitted even to Harvard, the gold standard for Asian hate!), were rejected almost everywhere.

Related:

• Big Sky v. Jackson v. Park City as a summer destination