The ‘Sixth Sense’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ star’s 20-acre lakefront ranch sold after seven years on the market.

Actor Bruce Willis has officially sold his 20+ acre lakefront ranch property in Hailey, Idaho, just 12 miles south of Sun Valley. In 2011, Willis listed the estate for $15 million with Sotheby’s, then re-listed it in 2016 as a co-listing with Engel & Völkers Sun Valley and Keller Williams for the same price. While the home’s final sale was only a fraction of the original listing price, Willis’ listing represents the single biggest residential sale ever in the Hailey area. Travis Jones was the listing agent with Engel & Völkers Sun Valley.

The far-from-modest, 8,400-square-foot home was fully rebuilt by Willis in 2003, and currently features six bedrooms, a guest house, and a gym. Willis also added several streams and ponds to the property, along with an impressively grand heated pool that features waterslides, waterfall features, and a rope swing.

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SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — Mountain peaks pierce the sky like emerald pyramids as we weave through Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest, more than two million acres of gorgeous green that’s home to Baldy, one of the Smoky Mountains’ highest summits.

After spending a day discovering the hipster comforts of Boise, we’ve driven three hours east to this massive wilderness, where the blue sky is free of clouds and mountain goats scale the golden granite, for a late summer getaway. Sun Valley is the posh resort area that includes Ketchum and Hailey, towns that Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks and other Hollywood elite call home.

To wrap one’s head around how much nature is here — and just how deeply your soul will surrender to it — crunch the numbers: The region is home to more than 1,000 lakes, 3,000 miles of rivers and countless mountain trails and equestrian routes. There is so much to do in the summer, you almost forget about the world-class skiing that’s defined Sun Valley since 1936.

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KETCHUM — The dates have been set for Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ 50th Arts & Crafts Festival — a cultural highlight of the Wood River Valley’s summer season. This free event will take place Aug. 10–12 on the lawns of Atkinson Park in Ketchum. Festival hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 10. Weekend hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Center uses a rigorous jury process to select artists and craftspeople to exhibit work at the Arts & Crafts Festival. According to the Art Fair SourceBook, a comprehensive guide to the top-selling art fairs and craft shows around the country, the event is ranked in the top 100 fine art festivals in the U.S.

Each year, the three-day outdoor fine arts show gives Wood River Valley residents and visitors the opportunity to interact directly with artists and learn what’s new in the world of arts and crafts. In addition to the exhibition, the festival includes artist demonstrations, food vendors and a free kids’ craft area.

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First 5 months of 2018 outpace prior years in city

Looking across Ketchum, the story of new commercial property development is no longer solely focused on new hotels.

The construction of the Limelight Hotel on Main Street and the anticipated construction of the Auberge Resort Sun Valley hotel were the major new commercial development projects in Ketchum in 2015 and 2016, according to building activity reports maintained by the city government.

The city recorded those projects when their developers paid their building-permit fees; the Limelight wrapped up construction in 2017 and the Auberge will have until 2021 to complete construction.

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Forbes, April 4th, 2018

Sun Valley in Idaho offers just about everything an outdoor enthusiast might dream of doing in one location. Skiers and snowboarders relish its more than 2,000 skiable acres and 40 kilometers of cross-country tracks. But don’t discount its warm-weather outdoor activities, as droves of people come here for hiking, mountain biking, golf, fishing, shooting and horseback riding, as the summer season has surpassed the winter season as the busiest time of year at the resort. And that’s just the beginning.

A resort for all seasons.
Indeed, Sun Valley is a year-round destination that benefits from a high mountain desert climate, low humidity and sunny skies for 80 percent of the year. The average daily high temperature during its coldest season, between mid-November and late February, is a comfortable 32°F, while the average temperature during the summer months is an enviable 81°F.

“The old saying here,” explains Steve Haims, who has lived in the area since 1978 and is employed by Sun Valley as its Director of Nordic Sports, “is that people come for the winter and stay for the summer.”

It is easy to understand why.

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After all the excitement from Monday’s women’s giant sla-lom finale of the 2018 Toyota U.S. Alpine Championships on Baldy, Sun Valley will make a quick turnaround two days later and stage another major U.S. Ski and Snowboard (USSA) event. Roughly 70-80 men and 50-60 women from across the U.S. are expected for the USSA U.S. Junior National Alpine Championships that will put a lively spring skiing punctuation mark on the 2017-18 winter sea-son at Sun Valley Resort.

The Sun Valley Ski Educa-tion Foundation (SVSEF) along with title sponsor Smartwool will host top U.S. juniors for competition in the USSA championship event set for Wednesday through Friday, March 28-30. Featured in the three-day series are one competition in super giant slalom, one in giant slalom and one in slalom for men and women.

SVSEF also hosts a Ketchum welcome ceremony, awards ceremonies after men’s and women’s races, and a gathering for parents, coaches and offi-cials at Ketchum’s Limelight Hotel on Thursday.

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U.S. halfpipe skiers take 3 medals at PyeongChang

U.S. freeskiing halfpipe coach Ben Verge started skiing at Dollar Mountain as a kid. When he got older, he coached for the Sun Valley Ski Team. This week, his team struck gold at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

    “I definitely remember skiing on a leash on Dollar,” Verge told the Idaho Mountain Express in 2014. “And my dad used to ski with me in a baby backpack on Baldy. I don’t think they even allow that anymore!”

    On Monday, U.S. team member Brita Sigourney, of Park City, Utah, won a bronze medal in the women’s freeskiing halfpipe competition. On Thursday in South Korea, Reno, Nev., skier David Wise won a gold medal in the halfpipe. His teammate Alex Ferreira, of Aspen, Colo., took silver.

All four men’s halfpipe Team USA skiers qualified for the finals; Aaron Blunck, Ferreira and Torin Yater-Wallace took the top three spots, respectively. Wise took the eighth spot in the qualifying round.

    Verge grew up in the Wood River Valley, graduating from Wood River High School and ski racing with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation until he was 19. He left a carpentry job to coach freestyle skiers for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation until 2011 and was named Freeskiing Coach of the Year by the U.S. Ski and Snowboarding Association in 2012.

    Four years ago, Verge was U.S. freeskiing halfpipe coach during the first Olympic Games to host the sport. U.S. skiers Maddie Bowman, of Salt Lake City, and Wise each brought home gold medals from Sochi, Russia.    

     Verge started skiing in Sun Valley when his parents, Judi and Gus, put him on skis at the age of 18 months.

    The couple had come to Sun Valley on their honeymoon and never left. Gus Verge dedicated his career to the ski industry, creating the popular Reflex ski pole line in the early 1980s and serving as president of Smith Optics for years.

    Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation coach Pat Savaria, who Verge called one of his most important coaches and mentors, said young Ben was not only a great skier, but a great asset to the program.

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Titan of ski filmmaking launched career, genre in Sun Valley

Warren Anthony Miller, a ski-film pioneer in Sun Valley and lifelong pillar of the genre, died Wednesday at his home on Orcas Island, Wash. He was 93.

Born in Hollywood, Calif., in 1924, Miller took to the outdoors—and to photography—at a young age, surfing on a homemade board, hiking and camping with friends. Having fallen in love with skiing in the San Gabriel Mountains in the late 1930s, Miller turned his full attention to the burgeoning sport after serving in the Navy during World War II.

While famously living with friend Ward Baker in a teardrop camper trailer in Sun Valley Resort parking lots in 1946 and ’47, subsisting on tomato soup made of ketchup and hot water, Miller melded his love of skiing and his love for filming, sparking a prolific career of annual self-narrated ski films that as much defined the genre as propelled it forward.

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KETCHUM, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) – Taste and Craft, formerly known as Taste208, was first held in 2010. Now, in 2018, the founders decided to close the Boise event and move it to Ketchum.

According to the release, the founders say they want to move the event to the Wood River Valley during the Trailing of the Sheep Festival come this mid-October.

“We started Taste & Craft to support a new and growing craft beer, wine, and spirits scene in Boise. With the food & beverage experience reaching maturity in Boise, we have been looking for the right chance to engage a new community in partnerships and to work with a non-profit that develops strong community connections. The opportunity to move to Wood River and open during such an extraordinary festival was one we couldn’t pass up,” said Courtney Feider, Founder of Taste & Craft in a press release.

More details will be available in March along with the release of early bird tickets.

Idaho is the fastest-growing state in the union.

Half of its neighbors are in the top five. All but one are in the top 13.

The “but one” is Wyoming. It’s dead last. 51st out of a possible 51 (our ranking is adjusted for population and includes Washington, D.C.). Wyoming lost 1.0 percent of its population in 2017 even as Idaho was gaining 2.2 percent.

On the surface, the two states appear to have much in common. They share a border, a birth month (July 1890) and even — for a few brief heady months in 1863 — membership in the “Idaho Territory.”

So why are so many people leaving Wyoming while Idaho booms?

For clues, look at the full ranking. The Pacific Northwest and Mountain West are extremely well represented at the top of the chart but Wyoming and West Virginia are stuck to the bottom. Those two, and others in the lower echelon, have something in common: resource dependence. In their case, it’s primarily coal mining.

Wyoming has long been the nation’s coal king. The vast operations of the Powder River Basin produce more coal than all but a handful of states put together. But cheap natural gas has reduced power plants’ dependence on the mineral and, with it, its price and production. Wyoming’s mines are shipping out fewer tons of coal and getting paid less for each of them.

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