Embedded Files
Skier on the summit of Salzburger Spitzel / Below Floren Haemmerle painting near Pioneer Cabin
In February 1939, another Austrian from Salzburg, and a close friend of Hans Hauser, joined Sun Valley’s alpine touring ski school. Unlike many of his countrymen, this newcomer possessed an extraordinary passion for climbing and skiing any mountain. To Andreas “Andy” Hennig, “a mountain was a gift of nature to mankind, something to be admired and to be awed by.”
Before arriving in Sun Valley, Hennig had already earned a formidable reputation in the Alps as both a ski mountaineer and rock climber, with an enviable list of first ascents to his credit. His expertise made him the natural choice to assist Florian Haemmerle in leading the alpine touring center.
By this time, the frictions that had once divided Sun Valley’s two ski schools had softened into friendships. So close had the bond become that both heads, Hauser of the Alpine school and Haemmerle of the touring center, shared quarters at the Pines Chalet, Sun Valley’s boarding house for instructors.
In the summer of 1940, construction was completed on the Owl Creek Cabin, a hostel even more lavish than its Pioneer Mountain counterpart. With this new base in place, Harriman’s alpine touring duo went to work, guiding, teaching, exploring, and ultimately conquering Sun Valley’s most remote and formidable slopes.
Andreas Hennig, and to a lesser extent Florian Haemmerle, pioneered ski routes down arduous peaks in the Pioneer, Smoky, Soldier, White Cloud, Sawtooth, Salmon River, Lost River, and Boulder Mountains, ranges so rugged that few had dared even summer ascents. Their trailblazing efforts gave Sun Valley an entirely new medium of “high‑elevation skiing,” distinct from the lift‑served slopes closer to the lodge.
Equally transformative, these ventures extended the ski season well beyond the traditional closing months of late March and early April. In the precipitous bowls of the towering encircling peaks, snow lingered astonishingly into the summer months, allowing Sun Valley to offer a season of skiing unmatched in America.
Victor Gottschalk, pictured right and his client at Pioneer Cabin 1948
Owl Creek Cabin
It was not uncommon for Andreas Hennig to still be guiding and teaching well into July, his feats of summer skiing marking an unprecedented chapter in American alpine adventure. Yet these exploits came to an abrupt end with the onset of World War II and the closing of Sun Valley in the winter of 1942.
Both Florian Haemmerle and Hennig joined the U.S. Army, commissioned into the famed 10th Mountain Division, where their skiing and mountaineering expertise was put to use training American troops. Haemmerle, the 45th man drafted and one of the oldest, was assigned a non‑combat role due to ill health contracted from a faulty yellow fever vaccination, the Army’s notorious “Y53 episode”, which plagued him for the rest of his life.
Haemmerle’s military service began with training at Camp Hale, high in Colorado’s frozen Rockies. From there, he was sent to Michigan to test winter equipment for the Army, and later to West Virginia, where he taught rock‑climbing skills to soldiers preparing for the cliff‑lined beaches of Normandy.
Florian Haemmerle’s artistic talents were also enlisted during the war, as all the drawings of skiing and mountaineering in the 10th Mountain Division’s handbook were his. Like Haemmerle, Andreas Hennig first tasted life in the 10th at Camp Hale, but his service quickly took on a far more combatant character. Fighting in the rugged Italian campaign, Hennig was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for rescuing a wounded officer under heavy fire in the Apennine Mountains. Ever the mountaineer, he was even reprimanded for skiing behind enemy lines because, as he quipped, “the snow was better over there.”
These experiences left a lasting mark. Upon returning to Sun Valley after the war, Hennig quietly honored his fallen comrades by naming several nearby peaks in their memory. Prior to the war, only three mountains visible from Pioneer Cabin—Cobb, Old Hyndman, and Hyndman Peaks—were named, along with Silver Peak above Owl Creek Cabin. Behind Pioneer Cabin, Hennig christened Handwerk Peak for Ted Handwerk, a Sun Valley Ram Bar waiter killed in Italy while serving with the 10th, and Duncan Ridge for Captain Jonathan Duncan, former manager of the Sun Valley Lodge who also fell in Italy.
In 1947, Haemmerle returned to the mountains of Sun Valley in poorer health, but like Hennig, he too placed names upon several Pioneer summits. He christened Salzburger Spitzel in honor of his Austrian friends from Salzburg, Max Hauser, Hans Hauser, and Franz Epp, with whom he had feuded during his early days at Sun Valley. He named Goat Mountain for the many billies seen upon its summit, and Florian Nudl for himself. With the aid of Hennig and Victor Gottschalk, a new Austrian addition to Sun Valley’s alpine touring school, ski routes were etched down their frames, weaving memory and adventure into the very landscape.
Sep Froehlich and Andy Hennig reading Sun Valley Ski Guide 1948
Victor Gottschalk
Andy Hennig and Alf Engen skiing in Sun Valley's Boulder Mountains
Alpine Tourist skiing in Sun Valley's Boulder Basin, 4th of July 2017
Boulder Basin Skier July 1948
After the war, Andreas Hennig, Florian Haemmerle, and Victor Gottschalk continued guiding guests through the vast, lift‑less surroundings of Sun Valley. Yet the advent of vastly improved transportation up the slopes of Bald Mountain, coupled with tremendous advances in alpine skiing techniques, signaled the beginning of the end for the resort’s pioneering alpine touring school.
Only one brief resurgence of Sun Valley’s short‑lived alpine touring past occurred in the summers of 1947 and 1948, when Averell Harriman and Hennig teamed up to breathe new life into the fading sport. In the summer of 1947, after touring the striking, snow‑filled bowls of Boulder Basin, one of Hennig’s favored alpine touring sites, Harriman directed Pat Rogers, Sun Valley’s general manager, to promote spring and summer skiing.
Within a week, two jeeps were made available to transport skiers up to Boulder Basin. For a few weeks, summer alpine touring enjoyed a burst of popularity once again, offering guests the rare thrill of skiing high alpine snowfields under the warmth of the Idaho sun.
Alpine Tourist skiing in Sun Valley's Boulder Basin, 4th of July 2017
Slalom races were even staged on July 4, 1948, an event covered by Seattle Movietone News that briefly rekindled enthusiasm for alpine touring in Sun Valley. To encourage this revival further, Andreas Hennig, at Harriman’s request, began work on Sun Valley’s first, and to date, most comprehensive alpine touring guidebook. Published in 1948, Hennig’s Sun Valley Ski Guide detailed extensively the resort’s many regions suited for both alpine skiing and alpine touring. Such publications were common in the Alps, and Harriman hoped this manual might rejuvenate interest in Sun Valley’s alpine touring program. Yet the momentum never fully returned.
The winter of 1952 marked the unofficial end of Sun Valley’s alpine touring school. Tragedy struck when avalanches swept down Baldy’s Lookout Bowl, claiming the life of Victor Gottschalk, and another on Bromaghin Peak destroyed the Owl Creek Cabin. These disasters eulogized the dire close of a historic institution.
Even so, alpine touring did not vanish entirely. Florian Haemmerle, with his “old gentleman’s club,” and Hennig, with his “seasoned ambitious clients,” continued to tour occasionally after 1952, though without the sanction of the Sun Valley Company. Hennig, in particular, never abandoned his dream of developing Sun Valley’s vast mountainous surroundings into an alpine touring center equal to those of Europe.
From the late 1940s through the early 1970s, Hennig, together with Aspen Ski School Director Fred Iselin, Sun Valley 10th Mountain veteran Willy Helming, and occasional partners Leif Odmark and Alf Engen, made numerous descents in the Pioneer, Lost River, Boulder, Smoky, White Cloud, and Sawtooth Ranges. This partnership culminated in the publication of the Sawtooth Mountain Guide in the early 1950s, a lasting testament to their vision and pioneering spirit.
Boulder Basin July 28th, 1948
Skiing the Slopes of Boulder Peak in the late 1940s
Soon Florian Haemmerle and Andreas Hennig joined the ranks of Sun Valley’s alpine school on a full‑time basis. Without the deep alpine touring traditions found in Europe’s destination resorts, Sun Valley’s touring program quickly gave way to the exceptional piste skiing of Bald and Dollar Mountains, and to an alpine ski institute that, under the guidance of some of the most prominent ski school directors in history, would come to be regarded as the finest in the world.
Sun Valley’s entry into this elite circle began modestly under Hans Hauser (1936–1939), but its rapid ascent to global greatness occurred under one of the most influential figures in skiing history: Friedl Pfeifer.
Born in 1911 at St. Anton, Arlberg, Austria, Pfeifer grew up in snow‑bound isolation where skiing was not a pastime but a necessity. At age 14, he joined Hannes Schneider’s ski school, and when not racing, taught others Schneider’s revolutionary “Arlberg Technique.”
Over the next decade, Pfeifer became one of Schneider’s top instructors and among Europe’s finest racers. In the late 1930s, he won the Grand Prix de Paris and the Grossglockner Championships three times, claimed victories twice at international races in Sestriere, Italy, and in 1936 captured the combined downhill/slalom title at the prestigious Arlberg‑Kandahar.
Like his mentor Schneider, Pfeifer fled Austria in 1938, just a week after the Anschluss, to avoid conscription into the German army. His journey eventually brought him to Sun Valley, via Australia, later that same year. Upon arrival, he coached the U.S. women’s Olympic ski team and represented the new resort as a racer. By the fall of 1939, at Harriman’s request, Pfeifer assumed control of Sun Valley’s alpine ski school, ushering in an era that would cement the resort’s reputation as the world’s premier ski institute.
Friedle Pfeifer and Hannes Schenider in Sun Valley / 1939
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse