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In the early 1930s, after becoming Chairman of the Board of Union Pacific Railroad, Averell Harriman chose to go on the offensive rather than wait out the Depression. He launched an ambitious modernization program for Union Pacific’s passenger trains, which had seen revenues decline by more than half over the previous decade. The results were dramatic: by 1934, passenger service revenues rose 21.4 percent, followed by another 34.7 percent increase the next year. Stockholders were delighted, receiving a generous six‑cent per share dividend in 1935.
To complement his modern trains, Harriman sought to boost tourist traffic. He extended service to Yellowstone National Park, joined in the development of the Grand Canyon, and most famously, envisioned America’s first destination ski resort in the mountains of central Idaho. Lacking expertise in identifying a U.S. counterpart to Switzerland’s St. Moritz or Austria’s St. Anton, Harriman consulted a European acquaintance who recommended Count Friedrich Schaffgotsch, an experienced instructor from Hannes Schneider’s school in St. Anton. For reasons still unclear, it was Friedrich’s brother, Count Felix Schaffgotsch, who ultimately answered the call.
Thus, in an era defined by Hannes Schneider’s Alpine Touring schools—where skiers climbed slopes before descending—and by Europe’s spectacular destination resorts, yet with virtually no ski lifts, the foundation was laid for the birth of America’s first destination ski resort: Sun Valley.
Schaffgotsch on a summit behind the Twin Creeks Subdivision discovering Sun Valley, February of 1936 / Below Alpine Touring Sun Valley's Boulder Mountains
Felix Schaffgotsch of Austria, Alf Engen of Norway, and Charles Proctor of Hanover, New Hampshire were among the first to truly envision Sun Valley’s surroundings as a potential alpine skiing center. Their collaboration began in 1935, when Engen was hired by the Union Pacific Railroad to guide Schaffgotsch through the Wasatch Range of Utah in search of a suitable location. Engen even led him through the mountains outside Pocatello, Idaho, considering sites on Mount Bonneville, Haystack Mountain, Scout Mountain, and Mount Putnum as possible candidates.
I was fortunate to interview Engen many times during my years as a ski instructor in Utah’s Intermountain Division in the mid‑1970s and early 1980s. Later, in 1995, I interviewed Friedl Pfeifer, Sun Valley’s second Ski School Director, who clarified that Union Pacific officials had originally hired Frederic Schaffgotsch, a ski instructor from Hannes Schneider’s Arlberg School, not his brother Felix. According to Pfeifer, Frederic was unable to travel to the United States and sent Felix in his place.
Once the Sun Valley site was chosen in February 1936, Schaffgotsch returned in March with Charles Proctor, coach of the Dartmouth and Harvard ski teams; John Morgan, an early ski expert; and Alf Engen of Salt Lake City to evaluate the terrain for the new resort. Proctor, a Nordic competitor at the 1928 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz (which did not yet include alpine skiing events), had met Sir Arnold Lunn in Mürren, Switzerland, and became the first American honorary member of the Kandahar Ski Club in St. Anton, Austria.
Together, the group explored the lower, treeless slopes of Sun Valley, ultimately selecting the sites that became Proctor Mountain, Dollar Mountain, and Penny Hill (the sledding hill). They also examined Bald Mountain, Sun Mountain, and Morgan Ridge, but judged them too advanced for the resort’s early operations.
Alf Engen
Charles Proctor
John Morgan
Harriman and FDR 1934
That summer, Count Schaffgotsch returned to Austria to select an Austrian ski school staff for Sun Valley’s grand opening. When he arrived for the 1936–37 winter season, he brought with him Hans Hauser, Joseph Benedikter, Franz Epp, Roland Crossan, Alfred Dingl, and Joseph Schwenighofer, all hailing from Salzburg and its surrounding region. Later, Hans’s brother Max Hauser would join the group.
According to Otto Lang, Sun Valley’s third Ski School Director (whom I interviewed in 1996), none of Sun Valley’s initial instructors were direct members of Schneider’s Arlberg Ski School. However, Hans and Max Hauser had operated an unofficial Arlberg school of their own on the slopes of Gaisberg near Salzburg. Lang himself would go on to establish the first official Hannes Schneider Arlberg Ski School in the United States, opening in the winter of 1935 on Mount Rainier, Washington.
Still, being an Austrian instructor in Schneider’s era meant teaching the Arlberg method of downhill skiing, and this was precisely what Sun Valley’s inaugural ski school offered—even without official Arlberg status. The star of that first school, Hans Hauser, became its first director. Hauser was among Europe’s finest skiers, winning the Austrian combined championships three times (1933, 1934, 1936) and capturing the downhill race at the FIS tournament in Innsbruck in 1933. His skiing style was renowned for its elegance—an artistry that, according to Dorice Taylor, Sun Valley’s publicity writer for over 30 years, could be matched by no other skier, past, present, or future.
Hans Hauser and Schaffgotsh
Max Hauser
Hans Hauser and his Autograph
Sun Valley Ski School December 1936
To complement Sun Valley’s Ski School, built in 1936, the resort unveiled the world’s first chairlifts on Proctor Mountain and Dollar Mountain. Prior to this innovation, downhill skiing was almost entirely accomplished through alpine touring techniques—walking or skiing uphill before descending. Aside from the occasional rope tow in the United States, an aerial tram and J‑bar in Switzerland, and a surface lift in Chamonix, France, there was no true mechanized uphill transport for skiers.
The chairlift revolutionized alpine skiing more than any other advancement. Suddenly, skiers could make 10 to 20 downhill runs per day, compared to the 1 or 2 runs possible under the strenuous alpine touring method. This rapid increase in practice accelerated skill development and fueled the sport’s popularity, transforming alpine skiing into a mainstream pursuit.
Adoption was gradual, but by the mid‑1960s, chairlifts were being installed at a rate of 50 to 70 per season, firmly replacing alpine touring as the primary means of accessing downhill terrain. Even Austria’s famed Arlberg slopes—home of Hannes Schneider’s ski school—did not see a lift until 1938, underscoring Sun Valley’s pioneering role in shaping the future of the sport.
To further complement Sun Valley’s Ski School, a series of Alpine Touring sites were explored in the spring of 1937 by Hans and Max Hauser, Franz Epp, Florian Haemmerle, Walter Prager, Alf Engen, and Charles Proctor. Their expeditions surveyed a wide range of terrain, including Morgan Ridge, Sun Mountain, Bald Mountain, Johnston Peak, Durrance Peak, Amber Lakes Basin, Rock Roll Peak, Galena Summit, Galena Peak, Baker Creek, and the towering spires of the Pioneer Mountains—behind what would soon become the site of Pioneer Cabin.
That summer, Pioneer Cabin was constructed as Sun Valley’s first Alpine Touring mountain retreat, offering a base for ski mountaineering in the surrounding peaks. In the summer of 1938, an additional room was added to accommodate growing interest. The cabin’s location was chosen by Alf Engen and Charles Proctor, whose vision helped establish it as a cornerstone of Sun Valley’s backcountry heritage.
Pioneer Cabin 1948 Spring
Pioneer Cabin May 1996
Pioneer Cabin May 1996
Pioneer Cabin 1985
Dick Durrance finishing first 1937 Harriman Cup Downhill
That spring, Sun Valley hosted both the U.S. Collegiate Championships and the first international ski race ever held on North American soil—the Harriman Cup. At the collegiate event, Dick Durrance, America’s premier men’s ski racer at the time, captured his second title and was soon invited to compete against the world’s elite in the Harriman Cup.
In March 1937, the Harriman Cup instantly drew the finest skiers from across the globe to Sun Valley’s slopes. The race was staged on an unnamed peak in the Boulder Mountains, just north of the present‑day Sawtooth National Recreation Building. This site, lacking lift service, was chosen over Proctor and Dollar Mountains because it offered the vertical drop necessary for a true European‑style downhill race. (Bald Mountain had not yet been developed.)
The favorites included Walter Prager, Durrance’s coach, and Hans Hauser, Sun Valley’s first Ski School Director. Yet when the times were tallied, it was Durrance—formerly of the Dartmouth ski team—who emerged victorious. He went on to win the Harriman Cup again in 1938 and 1940, becoming the first racer to retire the trophy. In recognition, the mountain whose slopes hosted the inaugural race was named Durrance Mountain in the winter of 1938.
With its 3.5‑mile course and 4,000‑foot vertical drop, ski legends Walter Prager, Alf Engen, and Charles Proctor declared the Harriman Cup downhill of 1937–1938 to be the longest and most challenging in the world.
On the recommendations of Dick Durrance and Walter Prager, Florian Haemmerle, a German from Markt Oberdorf, Bavaria, joined the Sun Valley Ski School in the spring of 1937. Haemmerle had emigrated to New York in 1929, driven by Germany’s worsening economic conditions, where he worked as a painter. While living in New York, he often rented skis and competed in local races at Lake Placid, where his skill caught the attention of Dartmouth College’s coaching staff. Soon after, he was hired as an assistant to Walter Prager, Dartmouth’s head coach and former instructor under Hannes Schneider. In this role, Haemmerle coached America’s top racer of the 1930s, Dick Durrance, as well as John Litchfield, who would later become Sun Valley’s first non‑Austrian Ski School Director.
Meanwhile, the political storm clouds of the Second World War began to engulf Austria’s ski resorts. Many of the nation’s finest skiers either fled to the United States or perished in the conflict. On March 12, 1938, Hitler annexed Austria into Germany in the Anschluss, claiming Nazi sovereignty over all German‑speaking peoples. Swept up in the political fervor, some of St. Anton’s instructors—newly indoctrinated Nazi followers—openly opposed Schneider’s anti‑Hitler stance. As a result, Hannes Schneider was arrested and imprisoned, while his ski school was left divided between renegade Nazi instructors and loyal Austrian traditionalists.
Upon his release, Schneider and his family fled to the United States, settling in North Conway, New Hampshire, where he continued his work on American slopes. With Hitler’s Germany closing most of Europe’s developed ski resorts, Sun Valley emerged between 1939 and 1941 as the world’s premier alternative to a European ski vacation, attracting talent and visitors who might otherwise have gone to the Alps.
Florian Haemmerle
Victor Gottschalk pictured right with a client at Pioneer Cabin
Andreas Hennig
For Florian Haemmerle, being the lone German in a ski school dominated by “outspoken Austrians” proved nearly impossible, especially against the backdrop of rising German aggression in Europe. Ready to resign after his first year, Haemmerle was persuaded by Averell Harriman not to waste his talent. Instead, Harriman encouraged him to develop Sun Valley’s lift‑less expanses, a challenge Haemmerle embraced with skill and enthusiasm.
To further complement Sun Valley’s Alpine Touring program, Austrian specialists Andreas Hennig and Victor Gottschalk joined the school in 1938 and 1939. Together with Haemmerle—though to a lesser extent—they pioneered ski routes across some of Idaho’s most formidable ranges: the Pioneer, Smoky, Boulder, Lost River, Lemhi, Sawtooth, White Cloud, Soldier, and Salmon River mountains. Many of these peaks were so arduous that few had even attempted summer ascents.
Their trailblazing efforts gave Sun Valley a new dimension of “high‑elevation skiing”, distinct from the lower, lift‑served slopes. More importantly, these alpine touring routes extended the ski season far beyond the traditional closing months of late March and early April. In the precipitous bowls of the surrounding peaks, snow lingered well into summer, allowing skiing experiences that were virtually unmatched anywhere else in the United States.
Andreas Hennig of Salzburg, Austria, a close friend of Hans Hauser, possessed an extraordinary love for both climbing and skiing. To Hennig, “a mountain was a gift of nature to mankind—something to be admired and to be awed by.” Before arriving in Sun Valley, he had already built a formidable reputation in the Alps as a ski mountaineer and rock climber, with an enviable list of first ascents to his credit.
I first spoke with Andy in 1976, when he recommended that my inaugural Sun Valley ski mountaineering descent be Johnston Peak via Uncle John’s Gulch in the Pioneer Mountains. From that moment, I was hooked. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, I skied hundreds of Andy’s routes, which he shared with me generously and without hesitation.
Andy passed away in 1993 in my hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, but his legacy endures. To this day, I continue to ski the routes he pioneered, each descent a reminder of his vision, his generosity, and his reverence for the mountains.
Skiing Hennig's Ski Routes in the Sawtooth Wilderness
Skiing Hennig's Ski Routes in the Sawtooth Wilderness
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