Ready to Roll

Whatever your speed

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There’s a father and son who prefer to ride a unicycle up and down Carbonate in Hailey, but for those who feel more steady with more wheels under them, the Valley has outdoor shops to help you choose the right ride. Once you feel ready, you can venture out in many directions going solo or with a group. Like most sports in the Valley, it’s not just for health, it’s a way to truly live in your community.

Around Town Biking

Skiing may have transformed Sun Valley. But it was mountain biking that transformed the trails in the hills surrounding Sun Valley.

Before mountain biking emerged in the early 1980s, hiking trails followed old mining roads or sheep trails. They often plunged straight down, forcing early mountain bikers on the original stump jumpers to lock on their brakes and slide through turns. “You had to do so much pushing that we made T-shirts that said: ‘You ain’t hiking—you ain’t mountain biking,’ recalls Mark Deffe.

Butch Harper, then a USDA Forest Service supervisor, organized community gatherings to iron out conflicts between hikers, equestrians and the new kids on the block.

He worked with bikers to retool existing trails to be more user-friendly and to build additional trails. And when the Forest Service ran out of money to maintain trails, the mountain bikers stepped up with money and free labor through the Big Wood Backcountry Trails organization.

“I’ve ridden all over and we definitely have some of the best trails there are,” says Ketchum mountain biker Don Wiseman. “We are the land of the single-track.”

Outdoors retailer Bob Rosso likes to compare Sun Valley’s trails in terms of the Valley’s popular Wagon Days celebration.

“I always say we’re sitting in the hub of a wheel. The spokes go out 360 degrees. And whatever spoke you ride out on, there’s a trail,” he says. “Most of us who live and work here don’t eat lunch. We ride instead. We can be out on a trail in the blink of an eye. And there’s very few places in the world that you can do that.”

Sun Valley has everything a biker could want, from hassle-free pavement biking on the Wood River Trails bike path, which stretches 21 miles from Ketchum through Bellevue, to chairlift-aided mountain bike riding atop 9,150-foot Bald Mountain.

But it’s best known for its network of cross-country trails.

“It’s got endless single-track, which you don’t find a lot of elsewhere. And the trail surfaces are so smooth,” says Greg Stock, who moved here from Colorado and Alaska. “The first time I rode here, guys were flying around the corners and it just blew me away. In Colorado, you come to a corner and you have to hold up because there’s liable to be a boulder field in front of you. And in Alaska there are roots everywhere.”

Sun Valley built five miles of new trails on its new nine-hole golf course across from the Sun Valley Lodge last summer. The three-mile trail that nearly circles the course is wide and gentle—about as easy as it gets—but chock-full of scenic vistas.

The gravel path, which attracts hundreds of elite skiers during the Boulder Mountain Tour, parallels Highway 75 and the Big Wood River for 19 miles between Galena Lodge and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area Headquarters. It boasts spectacular views of the Boulder Mountains where Clint Eastwood filmed Pale Rider and offers stone benches and a spotting scope for watching mountain goats 1½ miles north of Prairie Creek.

Many locals bike the 1,100-foot gain in elevation to Galena Lodge for lunch before turning around.

“It’s not really an adrenalin rush for experienced bikers and it’s not really a technical ride, but it’s long enough to hold my interest,” says Ketchum resident Nicole Ramey.

Other easily accessible and more challenging trails can be found in Greenhorn Gulch, five miles south of Ketchum out Greenhorn Gulch Road. The area features several loops, including the Mahoney Butte Trail, which loops around a conspicuous butte. Its trails can be ridden south to Deer Creek or north to the Warm Springs area.

Oregon Gulch, a popular trail seven miles north of Ketchum, passes through a gently rolling meadow past a beaver pond before climbing over rocky outcroppings and immersing itself in a thick pine forest. The first few miles are easy, but eventually bikers will come to ledges and tree roots that require many a veteran to get off and push. >>>