The winter of 1938-39 would also see a change of leadership in Sun Valley’s “Lift-Served” school as Harriman engaged Hannes Schneider’s best ski instructors into its ranks. Not stopping with the Austrians, Harriman would also engage the prescience of Switzerland’s best skier. In his 10 years as an instructor at St. Anton, Friedl Pfeifer became one of Schneider’s top trainer as well as on the best racers in Europe. Three times in the late 1930’s Pfeifer won the Grand Prix de Paris and Gross Glockner championships and twice took honors in international races at Sestriere, Italy. In 1936, he won the combined downhill-slalom title in the Arlberg-Kandahar as well as the Hahnenkamm Downhill in Kitzbuhel, Austria. Pfeiffer even blended teaching occasionally with his tight racing schedule guiding prominent world figures as Hitler's assistant Rudolf Hess as well as Hollywood's leading lady, Claudette Colbert. Pfeifer's gifts were further utilized when in 1933 he was summoned to train the Austrian Woman's Ski Team, which included talents such as Elli Stiller (Stiller in 1948 will become Sun Valley, Idaho’s first female instructor). Pfeifer fled Austria in 1937; one week after it was annexed by Germany, to avoid being inducted into the German army and arrived in Sun Valley that same year where he coached the women’s Olympic ski team. In 1938, Pfeifer acquired the ski school director’s position and soon choose as his assistant director the world’s greatest instruction, Otto Lang.

1929-30 Otto Lang took the exam required to become a government-licensed ski instructor and mountain guide. Otto studied relentlessly and reported for the test in early November at the Mitterberg Alpe-am-Hochkonig, near Salzburg after the first snows of winter had fallen. Unknown to Lang, Hannes Schneider had sent his number one instructor, Luggi Foger to the exam prospecting for future instructors. Foger was given specific instructions to pay close attention to this "Otto Lang fellow." Lang passed the exam and most importantly Foger's judgments and was called to duty with Schneider's School just before Christmas. (Schneider took an immediate liking to Lang and for the rest of their lives they would remain close friends). Lang departed Austria the winter of 1935 and started America’s first official Arlberg ski-school on the slopes of Mount Rainer, during the winter of 1935. Lang also accompanied Schneider to New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1934, demonstrating Alpine Skiing to an American public becoming ever thirstier for the sport. In 1939, Lang joined the Sun Valley Ski School as its assistant director along with fellow Austrian Ski Champion for Kitzbuhel, Sigi Engl.

Like many of his fellow Austrian’s Sigi fled inaugurations of Germany’s Austrian aggressions to the Yosemite Valley of California where he took over the reins as Ski School director from Swiss Ski Great, Jules Fritsch in 1938. Sigi, through his worldwide racing prominence, equally mirrored his Austrian predecessors, as one of the world’s greatest skiers. However, during his 21 years as Sun Valley’s ski school director, he became the innovative principal in teaching the U.S. as well as the world how to ski. For such unprecedented contributions Engl, in 1971, was inducted into the American Ski Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, Michigan, and in 1975 awarded, by the President of Austria, that country’s Gold Medal of Honor for distinguished service to the sport of alpine skiing. In 1975 Sun Valley Company, at the request of his longtime friend and teaching colleague Konrad Staudinger, honored him by re-naming “No-Name Bowl” on Mount Baldy to “Sigi’s Bowl.” Engl passed away in 1982 at the age of 71, leaving a legacy equaling that of his friends Hannes Schneider, Friedl Pfeifer, and Otto Lang, as one of skiing’s greatest teaching-racing innovators. His ashes were placed on the ski run which now bears his name. Not to leave the Swiss out of the picture, Fred Islein also joined the Pfeifer Ski School in the winter of 1939 as well becoming one of its co-directors.

As Baldy developed the Alpine Touring School also thrived with the building of the Owl Creek Cabin below the prominent 10,400-foot summit of Silver Peak (Saviors Peak) in the Smoky Mountains north of Sun Valley. The Owl Creek Cabin was even more lavish than its Pioneer Mountain predecessor and offered guests much easier access to backcountry skiing terrain. The terrain behind the cabin was extensively explored by both Hennig and Gottschalk, with fairly easy access to the Galena Summit Road. The cabin’s close proximity to the road also gave Hennig a quick leap over the pass to the mountains he truly wanted to develop, the Sawtooths. However, the winds of war lay near and this along with Sun Valley’s development was soon placed on hold.

From 1939 to 1941, Pfeifer’s ski school thrived, attracting some of the best skiers in the world until the Second World War brought an immediate end to their historic endeavors. However, unlike Haemmerle, Hennig and the “alpine touring” school, Pfeifer’s as well as some of his German-speaking instructor’s, induction into the U.S. army took somewhat of a differing forceful twist. In December of 1941, the FBI descended upon the little community of Sun Valley/Ketchum looking for German spies. Upon the FBI’s departure, they didn’t leave empty-handed. Arrested as possible Nazi informants were Friedl Pfeifer, Hans Hauser, and a new Austrian addition to the school, Sepp Froehlich.

All three men were taken to Salt Lake City where they were interrogated. Upon Pfeifer’s unscheduled departure as ski school director, another of Hannes Schneider’s top instructors, Otto Lang, took over the reins for a brief period until Sun Valley shut down for the war effort in 1942. When it became clear that these three “outspoken members of Sun Valley’s ski school” posed no threat to the national defense, a choice was given to each. They could either spend the war in service with the United States army or at an internment camp in North Dakota. While in Salt Lake City with his new bride, instead of returning to Sun Valley, Pfeifer, along with Dick Durrance, aided in the development of Utah’s first ski resort, Alta.