Resorts

Since 1977, the Holding family has transformed this historic Idaho resort while honoring its fabled past.

On a February morning in 1977, Sun Valley executive Wally Huffman was summoned to owner Bill Janss’ office. There he met a middle-aged couple, Earl and Carol Holding, and was told to show them around the resort. Two days later, Huffman responded to a disturbance in Upper 5, a dormitory above the Ram Restaurant. There he found the Holdings stuffing mattresses through the windows to fall two stories onto the kitchen loading dock. Huffman called Janss and asked, “What should I do?” Janss replied, “I think you should do whatever Mr. Holding tells you to do.” The Holdings had purchased Sun Valley.

Janss had bought the resort from Union Pacific about 13 years earlier. He was an accomplished skier and had revitalized the mountain, but he was not a hotelier. They were now in a severe drought with minimal snowmaking, few skiers, and little cash flow. A sale was imminent. Corporate giants Disney and Ralston-Purina passed. The Holdings had built up the Little America franchise and owned Sinclair Oil; they knew the hotel business and had working capital. They had driven through Sun Valley only once, that summer, and then Earl saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about Disney’s play on the property. Something clicked. He made some calls, visited the resort again, and within two weeks had a deal. Janss said, “His timing was perfect.” And the mattresses flew out the windows.

(Photo top of page: Sun Valley in 1937.)

The Holdings were not skiers and to the locals, according to Huffman, “a complete unknown.” Unemployment was running at 27.5 percent that dry winter, yet the first reported act by the Holdings was to fire 1,400 employees. Under Janss, anyone with a pulse could get a job that came with a season pass or limited access to the mountain. Poof! The jobs and perks were gone. Not a good start for the new owner of a legendary ski area. Locals were incensed. But in truth it was the Janss Corporation that had to fire the employees as the Holdings had purchased only the assets; many workers were hired right back. There was, however, a new mission and strategy. Carol Holding remembers, “Why would anyone who didn’t know how to ski buy a ski resort? That wasn’t why we bought it—to come here to ski. We bought it to run as a business.”

Earl Holding came from a poor Salt Lake City family and even at eight years old was mowing lawns and doing minor landscaping. He had an extraordinary work ethic and kept at it. He served in the Army Air Corps in WWII and then pursued a degree in civil engineering at the University of Utah. One night while studying in the library he was introduced to Carol Orme, an 18-year-old student from Idaho Falls, Idaho. “He was tall, had brown hair, and piercing blue eyes,” she remembers. They were soon inseparable. Earl had saved nearly $10,000 from his landscaping work, and Carol had $400. With that they purchased a fruit orchard at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was the first of many diverse and profitable businesses that would eventually run Earl Holding’s net worth to over $3 billion. With a smile Carol says, “He got my $400 before we were married, but it turned out to be a good investment.”

From the orchard, to the Little America gas station/hotel in Wyoming (with its famous repetitive highway signage featuring a penguin), to Sinclair Oil, to more hotels, the Holdings were hands-on owner/operators. They learned to be self-sufficient and deal with chores and problems themselves. That was the work ethic they brought to Sun Valley and it was not initially well-received.

“It wasn’t easy when you see bumper stickers that said, ‘Earl is a Four-Letter Word,’” says Carol. “We weren’t very welcome to begin with, but Earl started to turn this into a profitable business, and more people came, and everything got better. I couldn’t ask for more wonderful people than the local people. They really supported us and if it hadn’t been for them, we wouldn’t have made it.”

Earl Holding’s love of growing things is traceable to his landscaping years, the orchard, and his Wyoming and Arizona hotels. He brought that with gusto to Sun Valley. In the first spring he directed the planting of over 7,000 aspens and conifers around the village and golf course. The people doing the work were the newly re-hired employees. They had to learn to break down corporate departments and chip in where required. The Holdings worked right alongside them. Huffman remembers making beds and cleaning rooms, others served food and bussed tables. Hours were long, the work strenuous, and not everyone cottoned to the Holding’s methods, but the new owners never asked anyone to do something they wouldn’t do themselves and eventually found people who supported their style.

The Holdings and their children, Kathleen, Ann, and Steven, all learned to ski. For Earl, it was not recreation; he needed to ski to attend to mountain operations. According to Carol, “His work and his play were one and the same.” Carol and the kids, however, enjoyed the fun and challenge of skiing. Carol set a goal to ski Exhibition, one of Sun Valley’s more intimidating runs, and she did. She also became a dedicated runner and eventually competed in a marathon. But Earl was all about work. His contributions to the resort have been an inspired mix of maintenance, modernization, and masterpieces.

Almost every roof in Sun Valley—previously heated by a steam plant to promote snow melting—had to be redone as a modern cold roof. The Lodge and Inn were remodeled, the golf course redesigned. On the mountain, quad lifts replaced single and double chairs. Three spectacular day lodges were built at the Warm Springs and River Run bases and high on Seattle Ridge. These grand log and rock structures have interior finishes that exceed most resorts and delight guests. Two other mountain lodges, the fabled Roundhouse and the Lookout Restaurant, have also been remodeled. Over the years, a huge automated snowmaking system has been dialed in and a quality snow surface is virtually guaranteed from Thanksgiving to Easter. Expanded skiing acreage came with the development of the Frenchmen’s Bend area, a sheltered bowl with adventurous runs just above Ketchum. Grooming, the ski school, and patrol are all top-notch. And in addition to all the Sun Valley improvements, Holding acquired Snow Basin in Ogden, Utah and was a key player in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Holding was relentlessly thorough in both his new projects and day to day management. According to Wally Huffman, he would discuss details and alternatives ad nauseum, far past the point when most felt a decision was nigh. “He had the vision…way beyond the standards of what any of us were used to.” Carol was always there as a sounding board and affirms he was tireless: “He set a very high bar for everyone and he didn’t want to waste any time.” He was driven: “He just always said…give it all you’ve got, and that’s what he’s done.”

Then tragedy struck. Perhaps it was due to his herculean workload or simply a natural life event, but just after Christmas in 2002, Earl suffered a stroke.

It was devastating for the family, staff, and locals whose respect and admiration he had earned. He was 76, and according to his doctors, this was the endgame. Carol recalls a remarkable moment in the ICU when a physician addressed the family: “’We can’t do any more. We suggest you call hospice.’ And Kathleen looked at the doctor and said, ‘You don’t know my Dad.’” And she was right.

Earl recovered, and in time, returned to work, though Carol stepped up and took on more responsibility. She was the driving force behind a new day lodge at Dollar Mountain because she wanted a better facility for children. She told Earl: “If you don’t build me a lodge over there, I’m going to put a tent up.” The lodge was completed in 37 weeks. They then forged ahead on other projects.

A gondola was built connecting River Run plaza to the Roundhouse, serving skiers by day and diners by night. They sculpted the White Cloud Nine golf course with tons and tons of topsoil graded onto a ridge above the valley. The landscaping and views are stunning. The luxurious Sun Valley Club restaurant was added nearby, and it took the golf and Nordic skiing experiences to new heights. They also created a marvelous amphitheater for outdoor events. With sweeping contours that echo the surrounding mountains, structural elements with bold flourishes, and the same elegant travertine marble that adorns the Getty Museum and St. Peters Basilica, the Sun Valley Pavilion is a work of art unto itself.

Earl Holding died in April 2013. Most people connected to the resort and local communities have only gratitude for his vision and contributions. The Holdings have now been stewards of the resort longer than Union Pacific and Bill Janss combined. Yet despite all the improvements, it remains much the same as it was during the formative years of the late 1930s. In addition to what they did, it’s what they didn’t do—radically change or over-develop Harriman’s storybook Austrian village. Today one can walk into Sun Valley feeling the same ambiance skiers experienced over 80 years ago. It’s like stepping into your grandmother’s snow globe.

The Lodge and Inn interiors were recently remodeled again. New service buildings and employee housing have been constructed. There’s a lift and more skiing acreage planned for Seattle Ridge. Additional development at the River Run base may be coming as well.

Sun Valley is one of the last great family owned resorts and Carol feels their children will carry the legacy on: “They all have the work ethic…I think they love Sun Valley like we do and want to keep it like it is…where people can walk the streets and feel like they’re in the country…the soul of Sun Valley, that’s what we want to keep.” 

David Butterfield is a filmmaker and writer who grew up in Sun Valley.

Stewards of Skiing History

The Holding family will be honored with a Stewardship Award for the preservation of Sun Valley’s skiing heritage at the 28th annual ISHA Awards banquet on December 10, 2020 in Sun Valley.

In a region of Norway rich with military history, skiers can ride a NATO train through a tunnel to the top of the mighty Gaustatoppen. BY JIMMY PETTERSON

A few odd ski areas exist in a time warp—living tributes to a bygone era of skiing, before the advent of snowguns to make the snow and fleets of snowcats to flatten it to perfection. These mountains are dedicated to freeriders, with few or no groomed pistes. La Grave in France was one of the first. Austria has the Krippenstein, and in the French Pyrenees, the cable car hauls freeriders up the Pic du Midi.

Norway has its own exclusive off-piste mountain—Gaustatoppen, near the village of Rjukan—with a lift that must rank among the strangest of all time. And the region has a fascinating backstory... 

Small vertical, big results: A 750-f00t-high ridge in Ontario has spawned many of Canada’s Olympic and World Cup champions. By Lori Knowles

Creative Canadian marketers call it the Blue Mountains but locals know it as the escarpment—a rim overlooking Georgian Bay, a geological landmark of Southern Ontario with a vertical drop of 750 feet and a 2.5-mile-long strip of steep ski runs that have produced some of the world’s greatest ski racers: 1980 Olympic bronze medalist Steve Podborski; four-time Olympian Brian Stemmle; three-time World Cup downhill winner Todd Brooker; and six-time World Cup ace Laurie Graham. An impressive number of Canada’s top competitors spent their formative winters along this ridge: riding tows, dancing through gates, schussing icy chutes.

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Installed at a small New York ski area, the world’s original high-speed detachable quad had the right idea with the wrong execution. BY JEREMY DAVIS

The opening of the Doppelmayr Quicksilver SuperChair at Breckenridge, Colorado in 1981 is often cited as the first operation of a high-speed, detachable quad chairlift. While this lift is certainly the world’s first successful detachable four-seater chairlift, an earlier prototype operated approximately a decade earlier in the most unlikely of places—a community ski area in Utica, New York.

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A local manufacturer, Mohawk International, bid $114,000 and was awarded a contract to build a four-person detachable chairlift with stationary loading. Skiers would be taken up the mountain sideways, at a speed of 600 feet per minute. A 2,500-per-hour capacity was planned, which would far exceed any other lift’s capacity at the time. Sue Baum, the local Parks and Recreation Commissioner, envisioned the lift running year-round, with summer rides to a summit observation and picnic area.

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In 1943, Manhattan Project scientists took to the snow. They’ve never quit. By Seth Masia

In July 2018, newspapers around the American Southwest noted the 75^th anniversary of the founding of Los Alamos National Laboratory, in 1943 code-named the Manhattan District. Less widely reported, in November: the 75^th anniversary celebration of the Los Alamos Ski Club, owner and operator of the nonprofit Pajarito Mountain ski area in New Mexico.

The Los Alamos club, uniquely, was founded by nuclear physicists. Many of the young scientists recruited to develop a British-American atomic bomb were Central European refugees from Nazi-occupied lands—men and women who, in their university days, spent holidays climbing and skiing in the Alps. The rest were recruited from physics and chemistry departments across the United States, Canada and Great Britain. According to Deanna Morgan Kirby, in her excellent history Just Crazy to Ski, average age of the new population was 26. If ever there was a demographic destined to ski, it was this population of fit and intellectual adventurers.

The new laboratory inhabited the campus of the Los Alamos Ranch School, a college-prep academy for boys that emphasized rugged outdoor living. At 7,320 feet elevation, the school got snow in winter. The kids played ice hockey on Ashley Pond (named for the school’s founder, Detroit businessman Ashley Pond), and skied up 10,440-foot Pajarito Mountain, seven miles to the west. The U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project chose the site for its splendid isolation from population centers of any description. The Army then bulldozed much of the site to build new labs, workshops and housing. Scientists arriving at this secret destination in the summer of 1943 found a dusty construction site surrounded by the scenic splendor of high desert. Everyone worked long days, but had Sundays free to hike, climb, ride horses and otherwise recreate in the mountains. Winter brought skating parties and, of course, skiing.

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In northern Vermont, a “crazy idea” has become a world-class, award-winning cross-country and outdoor center. By Peggy Shinn

In February 2014, as the Olympic torch was lit in Sochi, Russia, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont was having an opening ceremony of its own. Around a bonfire, locals raised glasses of cider and toasted Hannah Dreissigacker, Susan Dunklee and Ida Sargent, three of Craftsbury’s own who were competing in biathlon and cross-country skiing at the Winter Games. 

The three athletes, who grew up skiing at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) and went on to compete for its elite Craftsbury Green Racing Project, were the first of many Olympians that the COC hopes to celebrate. This past winter, Sargent scored several top 20s in World Cup sprint races, including a fifth in a team sprint with former Dartmouth teammate Sophie Caldwell. In biathlon, Dunklee earned her second World Cup podium, finishing second in a sprint race in Presque Isle, Maine. Teammate Dreissigacker competed in her third world championships, with her best result coming in the sprint race (she finished 18th). 

These three world-class athletes symbolize how far the COC has come from its humble beginnings. In 2015, Craftsbury Nordic was named the Cross Country Club of the Year by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, honored for “stepping up to host national-level events” like the U.S. Masters National Championships and two USSA Super Tour weekends with nearly 800 starts each weekend. COC also won the 2015 John Caldwell Award, the highest honor given by the New England Nordic Ski Association. Both organizations lauded COC for its superior organizational skills, homologated race courses with snowmaking, its new eco-friendly day lodge and training facilities, and its commitment to developing the next generation of racers. It’s also a popular destination for recreational skiers, who stay for a weekend—or longer—in the dorm-style lodge, lakeside cottages and brand-new cabins.

The story begins in 1973 when, as family lore goes, Russell and Janet Spring wanted to escape the “rat race” of Stowe, Vermont. After graduating from Yale, Russell—the brother of ski market-research pioneer and former ISHA chairman Jim Spring—had moved there to become an alpine ski instructor in 1950. A few years later, he met and married Janet. They started a family, and Russell became a stockbroker for F.I. DuPont in its Burlington office.

“He was driving back and forth to Burlington every day to lose lots of money,” says his son, Russ. “The market was doing poorly, and he got sick of it.”

So Russell and Janet bought half of a cattle ranch in Wyoming. But the deal fell through when their partner’s husband ran off with a hired hand. Instead, the Springs moved to Craftsbury, where Russell founded the Craftsbury campus of Windridge Tennis Camp. 

Driving back and forth to Windridge every day, Russell passed Cutler Academy, a defunct boys school on Big Hosmer Pond. He proposed an idea to his family: buy the property and start a sports center. “We all voted a resounding no,” remembers Russ with a laugh. “But in our family, it wasn’t really a democracy. [Dad] voted yes, and we obviously know what happened.”

With two partners, Arlen Smith and Dean Brown, Russell leased the property in 1975 and purchased it a year later. Thus was born the Craftsbury Sports and Learning Center, soon to be renamed the Craftsbury Outdoor Center. The center offered cross-country skiing in the winter and kids’ soccer camps in summer. Campers and skiers stayed in Cutler Academy’s former dorms and ate in the dining hall, where the Springs served famously delicious food.

“We started with one rickety snowmobile and one little piece of stuff to drag behind it,” said Russ. “I was the snowmobile driver, and Russell and Janet were the ski instructors.” 

The 25 kilometers of trails were mostly old sugaring and logging roads. But the trail layout and grooming were better than at other nordic centers at the time, and they had an experienced director, John Brodhead, to help maintain them. A former Middlebury College nordic combined skier, Brodhead started in 1980 and is retiring in December 2016. 

The operation saw very few guests in its early years. Undeterred, the Springs kept expanding the trail network. Russell also expanded the Center’s programs, including a summer sculling camp—the “crazy idea” of a long-time friend who saw Big Hosmer Pond as an ideal rowing venue. Two of their first sculling coaches were Olympic rowers Dick Dreissigacker and Judy Geer; Dick and his brother, Pete, had recently started an oar-building business in nearby Morrisville. They would soon come out with the Concept 2 indoor rowing machine that’s now ubiquitous in fitness centers across the country. 

In 1981, Brodhead started an event that’s now an annual institution at the COC: the 50-kilometer Craftsbury Marathon. The race now attracts around 500 skiers each year, including some of the nation’s top cross-country skiers, past and present. He also started nordic programs for both kids and adults that brought the community to the COC, including the Dreissigackers with their three kids, the Dunklees, and the Sargents. 

In 1994, Russell let his son Russ have a hand in running the COC. “He was still actively involved, but he stopped making all the decisions unilaterally, which was the only real difference,” says Russ. “I was allowed to make decisions as long as he agreed with them.” 

In 2007, Dreissigacker and Geer proposed buying the COC through a family foundation. Russ and his sisters thought it was a good idea. But Russell was opposed to it. “He was bound and determined to keep it in the family,” said Russ.

After a few years of conversation, Russell conceded when he realized that Dreissigacker and Geer believed in his original vision and wanted to improve it, not change it. They were all for simple, comfortable lodging and a focus on outdoor, human-powered sports. They also wanted to start a resident program for elite athletes and add more community fitness programming.

Dreissigacker’s and Geer’s nonprofit foundation purchased the COC in 2008. A year later, the Craftsbury Green Racing Project was born. Funded by the COC, Dick and Judy’s foundation, and corporate sponsors, the CGRP typically attracts NCAA Division I graduates who aspire to compete at the World Cup level in cross-country skiing and biathlon (as well as rowing). In addition to Hannah Dreissigacker, Dunklee, and Ida Sargent, CGRP’s Caitlin Patterson and Kaitlynn Miller have competed in World Cups. 

Conceived by Middlebury graduate Tim Reynolds, the CGRP allows athletes to train full-time while earning their keep by working at the COC. They teach fitness programs, coach kids in the popular Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club, and maintain the garden, among other chores. They also helped to design the new energy-efficient, spacious fitness center and ski lodge that opened in June 2014.

In 2012, the CGRP added a year-round rowing team, and CGRP rower Peter Graves (no relation to the well-known ski announcer) finished 13th in the quad scull at the London Olympics. Four CGRP rowers won 2016 Olympic Trials, but in the end, failed to qualify the men’s quad for the Rio Games.

While Olympians ski the trails and ply the water of Big Hosmer Pond, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center remains a community resource—and a community itself.

“Its success is primarily built on the vision and generosity of Dick and Judy, who are way too humble to tell you that,” says Lindy Sargent, Ida’s mom. “We call it our ski family, and it includes all the racers and parents of racers around New England and now the U.S. Ski Team. But it started with the club, and everyone who skis at Craftsbury is part of the family.”