While finishing up my autobiography the other day I decided to include some of my old cartoons from a book I published in the summer of 1947. It’s called “Are My Skis on Straight?” Two cartoons in particular pointed out rather clearly what inflation has done to skiing.
When Ward Baker and I walked through the Challenger Inn lobby the first time, we had never paid more than $2.50 to ride a chairlift in Utah or California and never more than $2 to ride a rope tow anywhere.
Imagine our surprise when we saw the rates posted on the bulletin board and they read as follows:
Chairlift: single ride $3.
Chairlift: all day, $4.
Chairlift: one-month pass, $75.
Chairlift: season pass, $150.
But Sun Valley, at that time, was undeniably the best in the world and worth it.
There is no need to quote the rates of chairlifts and gondolas today because most people I know who ski have already looked up next season’s price on the Internet. I have not checked them yet myself, but the last time I looked at them many major ski resorts charge over $100 per day.
Going back to my cartoon book, the luncheon menu was a real shocker to Ward and I in January of 1947. The price for a hamburger was 75 cents and a cheeseburger was a $1. Coffee was 25 cents and a pot of tea was 35 cents.
This is the time of year that the ski areas are scrambling to find good employees to fill the slots needed for the winter, but when the Sun Valley Lodge was built out in the middle of a cow field, the only people who lived there were ranchers. There were no employees available in the Wood River Valley where it was built, so Averill Harriman, who owned the Union Pacific Railroad headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, offered the following job opportunities: a round-trip ticket on his train from Omaha to Ketchum, Idaho, room and board and $125 a month. A lot of the people that applied and received the free train ticket, traveled to Sun Valley and never used their free return ticket to Omaha.
Many of the ski instructors came from Austria because Averill Harriman, who was president of the railroad, had skied in St. Anton for four or five winters until the World War II loomed too ominously on the horizon.
When Sun Valley opened, there was only one motel in Ketchum, so when Harriman built the lodge he also built accommodations for all of the people who came there from Omaha and they put two people in a comfortable room with shower and toilet facilities down the hall.
That first winter in Sun Valley, in 1946 changed my life forever. I was born and raised in Hollywood, California and I was lucky enough to wrap my pair of wet, woolen gloves around a soggy wet rope tow at Mount Waterman and start on my life-long journey. You had to pay 25 cents per ride on the single chairlift to the top of the mountain to access the rope tow servicing the part of the hill that was flat enough for learning. The freedom that I found that first time on that flat rope tow has been with me ever since. I don’t know what I might have done instead of skiing my life away all over the world since that first day on skis without edges.
Just don’t pay any attention to the inflationary prices of today’s ski world, particularly when you’re buying time on the side of a hill with total freedom stretched out below you.
Whether you are from Omaha, Nebraska, or any other city, set some time aside right now so you can go skiing or snowboarding as soon as the snow arrives. The 75 cent cheeseburger is definitely a thing of the past, but deep white snow and cobalt blue skies are waiting for you to leave your own tracks on the side of a hill of your choice.