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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 21, 2014 - 10:02pm PT
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Of course I don't live there any more, but I grew up "working-class" in this hotbed of rich-folks.
But since Smithsonian Magazine names it, how could I not share? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/20-best-small-towns-to-visit-in-2014-180950173/?utm_source=facebook.com&no-ist
15. Ketchum, ID
(The Trailing of the Sheep Festival; Tim Tower)
Located adjacent to Idaho's famous Sun Valley, the tiny town of Ketchum, Idaho (population: 2,706) is hardly an unknown spot—Ernest Hemingway lived (and died) here—though perhaps sometimes overlooked for its more recognized neighbor.
Miners settled in Ketchum—originally named Leadville—in the 1800s, and in 1880, Ketchum was one of the most prosperous mining towns in the Northwest. By the 1890s, however, a new industry had taken over; shepherds passing through the area would drive their sheep through Ketchum, toward the Sawtooth, Boulder and Pioneer Mountains. By the 1920s, Ketchum was the largest sheep shipping station in the United States. The legacy of sheep shipping is celebrated to this day with the Trailing the Sheep Festival, held in Ketchum and nearby Hailey. The festival takes place over four days in October, with exhibits, storytelling and a parade through the streets of downtown Ketchum.
Visitors looking to explore a different legacy can check out Ernest Hemingway's last house and grave. The prolific American author lived in Ketchum from 1959, when he bought a house in the town, to 1961, when he committed suicide in the same house. Hemingway's house is open to the public; his grave is located in the Ketchum Cemetery, and a memorial, dedicated to the author, stands one mile east of the Sun Valley Lodge.
Beyond the historical, present-day Ketchum is a celebrated center for arts and culture in the Wood River Valley. The town is home to 20 art galleries and boasts a year-round lecture series, as well as various musical and theatrical productions at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.
Of course, it's perfectly fine to visit Ketchum in search of outdoor adventures. Like Sun Valley, Ketchum is nestled near the base of Bald Mountain, which is known worldwide for its fine skiing.
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this just in
climber
north fork
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Mar 21, 2014 - 10:06pm PT
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Easilly one of the best thread titles ever. Gotta love small towns, it's a blessing and a curse that everyone knows everyone..
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 21, 2014 - 10:08pm PT
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I may have been the first on ST to sneak a four-letter word into a thread title!
It's a big night!
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Mar 21, 2014 - 10:09pm PT
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Don't have time to read this all right now fritz but dipped in dogshit will make a fine route name lol cheers! Oh congrats on being from one of the best little towns, no surprise. If you are from there that it.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Mar 21, 2014 - 10:24pm PT
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It's no surprise that great areas to live would sneak up around you.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 21, 2014 - 10:28pm PT
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Trailing the sheep festival...? noted...
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 21, 2014 - 10:34pm PT
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RJ! Sheep are part of our Idaho culture.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 21, 2014 - 10:37pm PT
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I can see that thru your sheepish grin...
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Heyzeus
climber
Hollywood,Ca
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Mar 21, 2014 - 11:08pm PT
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I haven't been there in a long time, so I have to ask- with all that sheep history, was there ever a Basque presence there? Are there any Basque restaurants? I love the Basque food!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 21, 2014 - 11:22pm PT
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I grew up with lots of Basque friends, whose parents or grandparents had totally assimilated into American culture.
Sabalas had the Dry-cleaners, and their son went on to the Air Force Academy.
Larrigans the gas & oil tanks and delivery business,
Goinnchea, was the garbage collector, which became a big business.
Ubaraga was a chef at Sun Valley and the son my age became a banker,
Cenarussa was the son of the long term Idaho Secretary of State.
and many more.
There was a great Basque eatery 12 miles south of Ketchum, in Hailey, in the long ago.
I think the only Basque restaurants remaining in Idaho are now in Boise and that urban area.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 21, 2014 - 11:44pm PT
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There is still a basque presence on the eastside ..Out by bald mt. there is a large sheep watering tank with pornographic basque pencil drawings dating back to the 50's...there are also some drawings from the tour de france with the name of federico bahomantes..unfortuneately the pencil drawings are disappearing..
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2014 - 12:15am PT
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RJ: There was lots of bored Basque sheepherder tree art on aspens in the area around Ketchum, when I did not have a decent camera to photograph it. I remember some nudes, but nothing too rique.
North of Choss Creek is an area with lots of Native American Petroglyphs. The Basque sheepherders added to the rock art.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2014 - 12:17am PT
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Tami! Re your comment!
Oh Fritz you look guilty of something in that pic. Are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes???
It does get lonely out in the Idaho hills.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2014 - 12:33am PT
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Ron! Property taxes (the last time I looked) were the lowest in Idaho. It helps the little-people when a lot of wealthy folks build huge "vacation-cottages."
There was some concern a few year back that the Ultra-wealthy were forcing the merely rich out of the area.
I am friends with a number of working-class forks that still love living there.
However! Heidi verbally double-slapped me about this time of year in 1991 and proclaimed:
"I'm tired of being poor white trash in the land of the rich, and I'm really sick and tired of 6 months of winter."
We've been much happier on our ranchette in Choss Creek ever since.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 22, 2014 - 03:29am PT
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Gneiss.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
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Mar 22, 2014 - 11:04am PT
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While I'm sure that Ketchum was once a cool burg, it sucks bad these days, in my opinion. I keep hoping it'll burn & run all those Damn millionaires out.
I'm sorry they appropriated your town Fritz.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 22, 2014 - 11:24am PT
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Agreed captain sir! Small mountain towns that became ski areas quickly became play areas for the super rich with the locals reduced to service providers.
Aspen, Telluride, Steamboat Springs, Ketchum....et al.
Even more hideous are places like Vail and Mammoth that were built from scratch for the same purpose.
Lamb chops and rack of lamb are on the menu in most upscale restuarants in ski towns....hell, they've even forgot what sheep are for.
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Heyzeus
climber
Hollywood,Ca
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Mar 22, 2014 - 12:14pm PT
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For Basque food lovers, I found this: http://www.buber.net/Basque/Food/charley.html
I found some I didn't know about, and some I used to frequent closed. Sorry for the thread drift- cool history on the Basques in Ketchum though.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2014 - 12:15pm PT
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Skully! Re your comment: While I'm sure that Ketchum was once a cool burg, it sucks bad these days, in my opinion. I keep hoping it'll burn & run all those Damn millionaires out.
I'm sorry they appropriated your town Fritz.
Ketchum was a great place to grow up in the 50's & 60's, before all the development happened starting in the late 60's. I went off to college in the late 60's and did not move back until 1984. After that, I did not seem to fit into a very changed area, although I do love those mountains.
Besides the Basques, the other Europeans that had a significant impact on the area, were the Austrians & Swiss. From the time Sun Valley started in the 1930's through the 50's, you had to be Austrian or Swiss to be a ski instructor. A lot of them were very good people and many of them married rich women. My family ended up friends with one Austrian family named Goodman in the mid-1950's and eventually discovered that dad Goodman was a 3rd generation Montana lad. He wanted to ski instruct and faked an Austrian accent for the job.
Ernest Hemmingway came and went before the boom started. He was well-liked by the locals, since he enjoyed drinking with them. My father plowed his snow, and always was invited in for a drink when the job was done. The one time I was along, at about age 11, my father left me in the truck with the engine & heater running.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Mar 22, 2014 - 12:36pm PT
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Being from Idaho AND Los Angeles I found it rather "off-putting" to come out of the Idaho wilderness after climbing Mt Borah last summer and arrive at the Ketchum city limits dirty, tired and in need of dinner and a place to stay. It felt like I had arrived in Beverly Hills. (A place I frequently visit just a few miles from my home.)
Even after truely horrible food in Challis, Idaho, I just could not bring myself to stop and went straight on through to Hailey, Idaho where I found a decent Mexican cafe and a good cheap hotel by the airport.
I'm sure Ketchum is great and I'd like to go there for a ski trip some time. I've got plenty of plastic to pay the rates and all. It was just too much culture shock on that day.
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John M
climber
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Mar 22, 2014 - 01:20pm PT
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I'm glad you brought up the yuppiedom done to these small towns Skully, I was reading the lists and thinking the same thing.
Since many of our favorite areas are now overrun by yuppies living their dream, what are the great small towns that average folks could still live in? Ones without a starbucks, but with a good mexican restaurant, or a good cafe, decent property prices and great wilderness nearby? I would love to see a thread on this.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2014 - 01:33pm PT
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Spider: Although much of what Ketchum has become bothers me, I'm still real fond of the Pioneer Saloon and steakhouse, which is a Ketchum icon. Best Prime Rib on earth, & when I so rarely visit, the bosses call me Mr. Brooks. Only bar/steakhouse in existance where management remembers my name.
Mouse! The Leadville! Ketchum's first coffee house! The photo dates from around 1968 and I know/knew 7 of the people in it. You'll meet one this summer at COR.
Mouse! I did consider using I'll be totally immersed in Canine Excrement! My hometown is a top 15 small town! but, it wouldn't fit in the Title space.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Mar 22, 2014 - 03:57pm PT
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Fritz - Duh, I should have called you.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Mar 23, 2014 - 10:30am PT
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I spent a week in Sun Valley in January, '97. The skiing was the best I've found in the US (Cran-Sierre was a little better).
What can you say, things change. Life tends to happen while you are making other plans.
I remember some of the freedoms I had in the '70s that sure as hell wouldn't fly today.
Anyway, back in '97 I took off one of the days from skiing and Greg, Bill and I went shooting automatic weapons with some of the locals in Hailey. To get out of the ten degree cold we all hung in a van while one person would shoot. Then he'd bring the now hot rifle back into the van, so that between the body heat, farts, and lightly smoking weapons we could easily take our gloves off to reload clips without needing to run the engine.
We had a blast for hours, and at one point the conversation turned to a relatively recent local property owner named Bruce Willis, who had gotten into trouble with the tree huggers for moving some rocks in a stream bed.
You could hear the resentment in their tone even though they didn't like the tree huggers involved.
hell, they've even forgot what sheep are for.
Is there something ewe should tell angela?
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 23, 2014 - 11:13am PT
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Mouse! Always a small world in Idaho. Heidi was raised on a farm north of Caldwell, but doesn't remember any Shaws.
Also a small world that we both know Connie Maricich.
Connie was quite the interesting and fahionable lady. Several of us young climbers had secret crushes on her in the early 70's.
Ron! Another old climbing buddy, Mark Sheehan, was living in Hailey in the 1990's, and had a big love for legal machine guns. He worked for the Sheriff's Dept at that time.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Mar 23, 2014 - 11:28am PT
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Cops have all the good guns.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 22, 2014 - 07:30pm PT
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Rather amazed to back into this from an Idaho climbing blogsite today.
[url=http://s541.photobucket.com/user/riverridgeray/media/Idaho%20misc/Sunvalleybeerebay160.jpg.html]{{img}}h~~p://i541.photobucket.com/albums/gg399/riverridgeray/Idaho%20misc/Sunvalleybeerebay160.jpg[/img][/url]
Sun Valley Beer can, produced in Pocatello, Idaho, likely in the 1930's or early 1940's. One sold on E-Bay Feb 2014 for $160.00 + $6.00 shipping-----empty.
Even the old empties from the area are expensive!
eBay item number: 291079718922
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Apr 22, 2014 - 11:12pm PT
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That's a beauty Fritz....
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2014 - 10:15am PT
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Bruce, per comments upthread dipped in sheepshit didn't fit in the thread title area.
I learned: "Well, I'll be dipped in dogshit!" from a climber friend, Avery Tichner, back in the late 1970's. Some on ST still remember Avery, who was quite the character and a very good climber.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 19, 2019 - 06:54pm PT
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I would not go there
Doesn't even have a phone booth
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 19, 2019 - 07:09pm PT
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Ketchum continues to attract folks who have the money to live there. They enjoyed a big snowfall in Feb. this year, & the friends I still have in the area are mostly sick of being arse-deep in snow.
I can't claim to be a Ketchum local, since my parents moved there from Twin Falls Idaho when I was an infant.
Here's a photo, I found this winter, of my father getting me used to cold water in Boulder Creek, a few miles north of Ketchum.
The early exposure must have worked, since I have been good with playing in cold water since then. I remember my mother talking about what a good baby & toddler I was to take fishing, since "he never tried to drown himself."
Fritz & Heidi on a very low water Middle Fork Salmon trip in 2002.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Mar 20, 2019 - 10:03am PT
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my father getting me used to cold water in Boulder Creek
LOL!!! Us mountain lovers owe a lot to our dear old dads, I’ll never forget mine strapping me, totally exhausted onto his waist belt for a forced march out of a wilderness fishing trip. A good subject for a thread.
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