The winter of 1938–39 marked a pivotal change in leadership at Sun Valley’s lift‑served ski school, as Averell Harriman sought to strengthen its ranks by engaging some of Hannes Schneider’s finest instructors. Harriman did not stop with the Austrians; he also secured the talents of Switzerland’s best skier, Friedl Pfeifer.

During his ten years as an instructor at St. Anton, Pfeifer became one of Schneider’s top trainers and among the most accomplished racers in Europe. In the late 1930s, he won the Grand Prix de Paris and the Grossglockner Championships three times, and twice claimed honors in international races at Sestriere, Italy. In 1936, Pfeifer captured the combined downhill‑slalom title at the Arlberg‑Kandahar and triumphed in the Hahnenkamm Downhill at Kitzbühel, Austria.

Balancing his racing career with teaching, Pfeifer occasionally guided prominent figures, including Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s assistant, and Hollywood star Claudette Colbert. His expertise was further recognized in 1933, when he was summoned to train the Austrian Women’s Ski Team, which featured rising talents such as Elli Stiller, who, in 1948, would become Sun Valley’s first female instructor.

Pfeifer fled Austria in 1937, just one week after the country was annexed by Germany, to avoid conscription into the German army. Arriving in Sun Valley that same year, he coached the U.S. Women’s Olympic Ski Team. By 1938, Pfeifer had been appointed Director of the Sun Valley Ski School, and he soon selected as his assistant director the legendary instructor Otto Lang, further elevating Sun Valley’s reputation as the premier destination for alpine skiing in America.

In 1929–30, Otto Lang undertook the rigorous exam required to become a government‑licensed ski instructor and mountain guide. He studied relentlessly and reported for the test in early November at the Mitterberg Alpe‑am‑Hochkönig near Salzburg, just after the first snows of winter had fallen. Unknown to Lang, Hannes Schneider had dispatched his top instructor, Luggi Foger, to observe the candidates and prospect for future talent. Foger was instructed to pay close attention to “this Otto Lang fellow.”

Lang passed the exam with distinction, earning not only certification but also Foger’s approval. By Christmas, he was called to duty at Schneider’s Ski School in St. Anton, where Schneider quickly took a personal liking to him. The two would remain close friends for the rest of their lives.

Lang departed Austria in the winter of 1935 and established America’s first official Arlberg Ski School on the slopes of Mount Rainier, Washington. The year before, in 1934, he had accompanied Schneider to New York’s Madison Square Garden, where they demonstrated alpine skiing to an American public increasingly eager to embrace the sport.

By 1939, Lang had joined the Sun Valley Ski School as assistant director, alongside fellow Austrian and Kitzbühel ski champion Sigi Engl, further solidifying Sun Valley’s reputation as the premier hub of European‑style instruction in the United States.

Like many of his fellow Austrians, Sigi Engl fled the rising tide of German aggression and found refuge in the Yosemite Valley of California, where in 1938 he succeeded Swiss ski great Jules Fritsch as Ski School Director. Engl’s worldwide racing prominence placed him among the finest skiers of his generation, mirroring the stature of his Austrian predecessors.

Yet it was during his 21 years as Director of Sun Valley’s Ski School that Engl made his most enduring mark. He became the innovative principal in teaching not only the United States but the wider world how to ski. For these unprecedented contributions, Engl was inducted into the American Ski Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, Michigan, in 1971, and in 1975 was awarded Austria’s Gold Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service to Alpine Skiing by the President of Austria.

That same year, at the request of his longtime friend and teaching colleague Konrad Staudinger, the Sun Valley Company honored Engl by renaming “No‑Name Bowl” on Bald Mountain to “Sigi’s Bowl.” Engl passed away in 1982 at the age of 71, his ashes placed on the run that now bears his name. His legacy stands alongside those of Hannes Schneider, Friedl Pfeifer, and Otto Lang, as one of skiing’s greatest teaching‑racing innovators.

Not to leave the Swiss out of the picture, Fred Iselin also joined the Pfeifer Ski School in the winter of 1939, becoming one of its co‑directors and adding his own mark to Sun Valley’s growing reputation as the epicenter of alpine instruction in America.

As Bald Mountain developed, Sun Valley’s Alpine Touring School also thrived with the construction of the Owl Creek Cabin, built below the prominent 10,400‑foot summit of Silver Peak (also known as Saviors Peak) in the Smoky Mountains north of Sun Valley. More lavish than its Pioneer Mountain predecessor, the Owl Creek Cabin offered guests easier access to extensive backcountry skiing terrain.

The slopes and bowls behind the cabin were thoroughly explored by Andreas Hennig and Victor Gottschalk, with fairly direct access to the Galena Summit Road. Its proximity to the road also gave Hennig a quick passage over the divide to the mountains he most longed to develop—the rugged and spectacular Sawtooths.

Yet, as the winds of war began to sweep across Europe, both the expansion of Sun Valley and the promise of its Alpine Touring program were soon placed on hold.

From 1939 to 1941, Friedl Pfeifer’s Sun Valley Ski School thrived, attracting some of the finest skiers in the world, until the outbreak of the Second World War abruptly ended their historic endeavors. Unlike the Alpine Touring School led by Florian Haemmerle and Andreas Hennig, Pfeifer and several of his German‑speaking instructors faced a far more forceful disruption.

In December 1941, the FBI descended upon Sun Valley and Ketchum, searching for German spies. They departed with three arrests: Friedl Pfeifer, Hans Hauser, and Sepp Froehlich, a new Austrian addition to the school. Taken to Salt Lake City, the men were interrogated as possible Nazi informants.

With Pfeifer’s sudden removal as ski school director, Otto Lang, one of Hannes Schneider’s top instructors, briefly assumed leadership until Sun Valley shut down for the war effort in 1942. Eventually, authorities determined that the three outspoken instructors posed no threat to national defense. Each was given a choice: serve in the U.S. Army or spend the war in an internment camp in North Dakota.

While in Salt Lake City with his new bride, Pfeifer chose not to return to Sun Valley. Instead, alongside Dick Durrance, he helped develop Alta, Utah’s first ski resort—laying the foundation for one of America’s most storied ski destinations.