Idaho's own Papa, Hemingway, may have described that run best in A Moveable Feast: "Finally towards spring there was the great glacier run, smooth and straight, forever straight if our legs could hold it, our ankles locked, we running so low, leaning into the speed, dropping forever and forever in the silent hiss of the crisp powder. It was better than any flying or anything..."

Sun Valley resort was founded for much the same reason as the famed Canadian Pacific Chateaus of western Canada—to increase railroad passenger traffic by attracting people to the west. Averell Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad built the destination resort, which soon featured the world's first chairlift. It was designed by a railroad engineer, who made use of banana-loading technology from the tropics.

Does that make Sun Valley the Banana Belt of the Northwest? With four out of five sunny days, an average temperature of 28 degrees and 220 inches of average annual snowfall, strong argument can be made for ideal conditions. And for those days when Mother Nature isn't obliging, the mountain has installed the world's largest automated snowmaking system, which now guarantees a white blanket over nearly a third of the resort's full 2,054 skiable acres. Bald Mountain's vertical drop is impressive—3,400 feet from a 9,140 foot summit.