The Ski Journal • Volume 13, Issue 2 • HEMINGWAY AND SQUAW VALLEY

In Sun Valley, ID, the locals revere two things above all else: skiing and Ernest Hemingway. I had never been a fan of the author. A hundred pages of his protagonist fighting a fish had the same appeal to me as being stuck on a chairlift on a cold, windy day. His anti-Semitic writings and infamous womanizing made most of his other lauded works easy to abandon on shelves.

But in Sun Valley there is no skipping over Hemingway. The author is buried nearby under six feet of earth (and three more feet of snow, at least during my visit). Deeper into the woods, a eulogy Hemingway wrote for a local man was repurposed for his own memorial. He also looms large in the establishments he frequented, such as the Duchin Bar, Trail Creek Cabin, and Christiania Restaurant, where he supped on his last meal and then, at home with a shotgun, ended his life the next morning.

For every pair of wooden skis and 1930s poles flanking a dining room’s fireplace, one is almost certain to encounter a photograph of the author choking the life out of some already-dead pheasant, posing with his shotgun, or fraternizing with the locals.

I visited Sun Valley last season largely for the slopes, yet Hemingway inserted himself into every one of my experiences. As I waited to dine at the Pioneer Bar, a massive buffalo head jutted from the wall just above a 12-gauge shotgun Hemingway had used to bump off birds. After shooting through the trees on my descent toward Warm Springs Lodge, Hemingway—the name of a diamond trail at Sun Valley, which led into a Hemingway blue square and ended with a Hemingway green circle—winked its single black eye at me. And on a trip to the library’s local history room, the author charged his way into the place. Books by and about Hemingway made up more than a third of the collection and a bull-furred bota bag he had sipped from was displayed among other Hemingway-handled paraphernalia.

Most drastically was how Papa, as he liked to be called, interrupted the Sun Valley Museum of History’s Skiing exhibit. On one of the museum’s four walls, the sport’s earliest years were encapsulated through a few artifacts—hickory skis, bamboo poles and ancient boots (without insulation, ankle support, or a toe piece)—revealing the daring it required to ski in the 1930s. The next decade, when the world returned to war, the museum told the story of the 10th Mountain Division—American soldiers on skis who fought Germans in the Italian Alps. The displayed white skis and the parka with wolverine trim not only showed the advancement in technology (though it was still quite primitive then), but it also alluded to the deadliness of these ski missions.

To depict the next two decades, the museum’s artifacts presented ski hardware that had become lighter and more durable, with improvements like cable bindings, aluminum shaft poles and boot buckles that replaced laces. Then came a jarring transition: photos of Hemingway blasting clay pigeons from the sky, an initialized shotgun case and typewriter (both of which may or may not have belonged to Hemingway), and his personal physician’s kit, as though anything that touched the author’s inner ear was somehow priceless.

To be clear, Hemingway had no real connection to skiing. In Sun Valley Resort’s Hemingway Suite, where, in 1939, he was invited to be the property’s writer-in-residence, the literature notes that when Hemingway was introduced to the ski school director at Sun Valley, “Papa slapped him on the back and said, ‘You and I are going to be good friends, as long as you don’t try to teach me to ski.’”

Hemingway came to Sun Valley because the area wanted a rugged outdoorsman to help promote the outdoor adventures the town had to offer. In a way he was skiing’s first influencer. In the room that would become the Hemingway Suite, the author would complete his novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hemingway came to Sun Valley after the war in Spain with his new wife, Martha Gellhorn, who had just as bravely reported from Spain, where she and the author met. Gellhorn, it should be noted, describes the Spanish Civil War as “the only time in [Hemingway’s] life” that he “was not the most important thing there was.”

Hemingway would visit Sun Valley year after year during the warmer months to hunt and fish. Between the late 1940s through the late 1950s, however, the writer stayed away. In 1959, Hemingway returned to Idaho with his fourth wife and purchased a home near Sun Valley. He killed himself two years later.

It seems as if the town guzzles Hemingway down like a favorite drink. In fact, while waiting for my table at the Pioneer Saloon, I read the cocktail menu and noticed a Hemingway margarita.

“Did Hemingway drink margaritas?” I asked the bartender. The writer had always struck me as a whiskey drinker.

Photo Caption: “Sun Valley is a magical place—it always seems to be sunny, yet they still get some amazing powder days.” Photo: Grant Gunderson

The Ski Journal - Volume 13, Issue 2

HEMINGWAY AND SQUAW VALLEY

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