Embedded Files
Virginia Hill
When Virginia Hill arrived in Sun Valley in January 1950, her notorious affiliation with the mob, and with legendary gangster Bugsy Siegel, who had been murdered in her home only a few years earlier, quickly became common knowledge among resort employees. Many of them were frequent benefactors of her lavish generosity, often receiving $100 tips. Rumors circulated that each week, Hill received a shoebox filled with $100 bills, presumably hush money to ensure her silence about underworld figures.
With such dependable affluence at her disposal, hiring a ski instructor was no obstacle. Soon, she secured the exclusive services of Hans Hauser, who followed her to Colorado. On February 24, 1950, the two were married. Later that year, in November 1950, Virginia gave birth to their son, Peter. Yet the marriage quickly soured, and divorce soon followed, closing a brief but dramatic chapter in Sun Valley’s storied history.
In 1966, Hans Hauser returned to his hometown of Salzburg, where he acquired a position managing a casino. One evening, his brother Max invited him and his ex‑wife, Virginia Hill, to dinner. After the meal, Hill chose to walk home alone. The next morning, her body was discovered—her cause of death listed as poison and suspected suicide.
Years later, in 1974, Hauser himself was found dead, an apparent suicide by hanging. The tragedies cast a long shadow over Sun Valley’s early ski school legacy.
In a conversation with Rainer Kolb, Sun Valley’s ski school director from the mid‑1970s through the late 1990s, Max Hauser made a peculiar observation: both Hill and Hans had identical smiles on their faces when their bodies were found.
A murdered Bugsy Siegel
Emile Allais skiing with Otto Lang in Sun Valley
Otto Lang continued as Sun Valley’s ski school director through 1950, where his pragmatic embrace of innovative concepts elevated American alpine instruction to new heights. Among his notable hires were Austrian downhill champion Toni Matt, famous for his daring 1939 schuss down the headwall of Tuckerman’s Ravine on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, and French World Champion Emile Allais, whose revolutionary methods challenged the traditional Austrian system.
Allais’s approach circumvented the snowplow‑to‑stem‑to‑rotation sequence of the Arlberg Technique, leading skiers more directly into parallel turns. His system eliminated the need for upper‑body rotation to initiate a turn, streamlining the learning process. Yet despite these innovations, many of Hannes Schneider’s fundamentals remained dominant at Sun Valley. Upon Allais’s departure, only minor adjustments were made to Lang’s Arlberg‑based teaching sequences, ensuring continuity while acknowledging the influence of modern technique.
Toni Matt
Tuckermans Ravine
Sun Valley's 1950 Ski School
Otto Lang, a true legend of American ski instruction, published two books on the subject before turning his passions toward film and a career in Hollywood. With his departure, John Litchfield assumed control of the Sun Valley ski school in the winter of 1950–51. As the first non‑Austrian to lead a program steeped in the tradition of attracting the world’s finest skiers, Litchfield faced a tall order. Yet in his brief tenure as director, he upheld that legacy with distinction.
Litchfield grew up in Auburn, Maine, later joining the Dartmouth ski team, where he competed alongside Dick Durrance and studied under Walter Prager, the Swiss skiing champion of the 1930s. His first visit to Sun Valley came in 1937, during an intercollegiate competition between Dartmouth and the University of Washington, coached at the time by Otto Lang. Overwhelmed by Sun Valley’s treeless slopes, Litchfield returned in 1939 to help cut ski trails under Friedl Pfeifer’s guidance.
By the winter of 1939–40, Litchfield had become a member of the Sun Valley ski school, instructing celebrities such as Gary Cooper and Van Johnson. His promising career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, when he volunteered for service with the 10th Mountain Division, joining many of his fellow Sun Valley instructors in bringing their alpine expertise to the U.S. Army.
John Litchfield
Pravda, Eriksen and Spiss / Silver Gold and Bronze 1952 Oslo Medalists
John Litchfield trained at Camp Hale alongside fellow Sun Valley and Ketchum residents and ski school colleagues Florian Haemmerle, Fritz Earle, Sepp Froehlich, Sigi Engl, and Ted Handwerk. He saw combat during the 10th Mountain Division’s Italian campaign but managed to endure the war uninjured.
Upon returning to the United States, Litchfield traveled to Colorado, where for three years he assisted Friedl Pfeifer in the creation of an infant Aspen. By 1948, he was back in Sun Valley, serving as Otto Lang’s head instructor, and upon Lang’s departure, became the resort’s first American‑born ski school director.
As director, Litchfield proved himself a capable administrator and charismatic leader, but his greatest legacy lay in his hiring practices. Under his leadership, Sun Valley attracted some of the finest skiers in the world. Among them were 1952 Olympic gold medalist Stein Eriksen of Norway, Christian Pravda of Austria, and later 1952 bronze medalist Toni Spiss, also of Austria. Their arrival cemented Sun Valley’s reputation as a ski school that not only preserved its Austrian heritage but also embraced international excellence at the highest level.
John Litchfield’s goal as director was to preserve Sun Valley’s international flavor while maintaining the highest standards of skiing excellence, objectives he achieved with remarkable success. In 1953, however, with the outbreak of the Korean War, Litchfield returned to service with the U.S. Army.
His departure opened the door for another of Austria’s great champions. Sigi Engl, from Kitzbühel, assumed the role of Sun Valley Ski School director and would rule its slopes for the next quarter‑century. Under Engl’s leadership, the school entered yet another epoch of alpine skiing superiority, marked by instructional ingenuity and a continuation of Sun Valley’s tradition of attracting the world’s finest talent.
Jack Reddish, Stein Erikson, Sigi Engl and Christian Pravda
Sigi Engl and Groucho Marx
Without question, Sun Valley’s role in the development of world alpine skiing is unprecedented. Its ascent into the history books was propelled by a remarkable collection of individuals whose ambitious natures and intriguing lifestyles converged in the snow‑covered Alps of the Wood River Valley.
Sun Valley’s strong Austrian heritage has endured the test of time, with its mountains serving as proving grounds for what worked—and what did not—in the evolution of skiing. In the embattled carnage of the teaching slopes, the methods of Hannes Schneider, Professor Kruckenhauser, and their disciples ultimately prevailed. Though the extremes of their techniques have been tempered by advancements in equipment, slope grooming, and uphill transportation, the fundamental essentials of their theories remain central to ski schools worldwide.
This foundation established the primary organizational structure of a ski school headed by a director, guiding students from the snowplow through the stem turn to the advanced curriculum of parallel skiing. Even in the emerging disciplines of freestyle skiing, Sun Valley pioneered the way. Yet, as history has shown, the eyes of the world most often followed the ski racer—and in this arena of alpine competition, Sun Valley’s contributions have been nothing short of spectacular.
With the possible exceptions of Kitzbühel and St. Anton, Austria, no ski resort in the world has hosted more Olympic alpine skiing medalists than Sun Valley, Idaho. From the first alpine medals awarded in 1936 to the present day, Sun Valley has been home to a remarkable roster of champions.
The story begins with Émile Allais, who captured bronze at the 1936 Garmisch‑Partenkirchen Games in Germany. In 1948, at St. Moritz, Switzerland, Sun Valley’s own Gretchen Fraser made history by securing America’s first alpine Olympic medals—gold in the women’s slalom and silver in the combined.
The 1952 Winter Games in Oslo, Norway marked another high point. From the United States, Andrea Mead Lawrence achieved an extraordinary double victory, winning gold in both the women’s slalom and giant slalom. Meanwhile, Sun Valley’s international ties shone brightly as Stein Eriksen of Norway, along with Austrians Christian Pravda and Toni Spiss, dominated the men’s events, claiming five of the nine medals awarded.
Later decades continued the tradition. At the 1972 Sapporo Games, Sun Valley native Susan Corrock earned a bronze medal, while at the 1984 Sarajevo Games, Christine Cooper took silver. The legacy carried into the 1990s, when Picabo Street, another Sun Valley local, electrified the world stage with silver at Lillehammer in 1994 and gold at Nagano in 1998.
It was on the slopes of Sun Valley that the division between alpine skiing, riding a lift uphill to ski down, and alpine touring—walking or skiing uphill before descending—was most clearly defined. Before 1936, before the invention of the chairlift, nearly all downhill skiing relied on alpine touring techniques.
The construction of chairlifts on Proctor and Dollar Mountains in 1936, followed by Bald Mountain in 1939, marked a turning point. Alpine touring began its rapid decline, while alpine skiing quickly became the primary means of enjoying a downhill run.
Sun Valley’s ski school recognized this unique moment in skiing history not as a follower, but as a leader. Its curriculum shifted toward the American impatience for learning to ski quickly, streamlining instruction to match the new technology of lift‑served slopes.
Until 1952, the Sun Valley Company maintained both disciplines with separate alpine skiing and alpine touring schools. Yet the relentless march of technological progress in uphill transportation ultimately decided the matter. By the mid‑1950s, Sun Valley officials discontinued the alpine touring school, closing the chapter on a pioneering but short‑lived tradition.
Bodi Miller / Salt Lake City Winter Olympics 2002
Florian Haemmerle / Sun Valley, Idaho 1941
While technical advancements in equipment and slope grooming have evolved considerably over the years, the biomechanical makeup of the human body has remained unchanged. As a result, the fundamental principles of balance, the way the body stabilizes itself while standing on a pair of skis, have altered very little.
As some might argue, Sun Valley’s place in the history books was shaped by the circumstances of its era, revealed through the vision and determination of its pioneering founders. Yet beyond those historic times, an everlasting mountain spirit of resourcefulness endured, transcending generations and creating a uniqueness found only in Sun Valley.
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