In 1964 my grandpa Art and his buddies drafted the bylaws of the Rotarun Ski Club for the purposes of founding a community ski hill in Croy Canyon outside Hailey, Idaho. The men were granted a 99-year lease from the local tycoon, J. George Arkoosh, who owned the land upon which the small mountain sits. Arkoosh owned the Comet Mine, and the Tulenide No. 1 Mine, and a department store.

Land secured, they set to work soliciting funds for a 1500 foot J-bar lift apparatus, a warming hut, a system of lights, and a mess of grooming equipment. Their first fundraising prospects appear to have originated from a handwritten list entitled Known Skiers of the Wood River Valley. 

They also raised money, like any good ski club would, by hosting Warren Miller ski film viewings. Here is a receipt for the rental of Ski A-Go-Go and American Ski Technique.

Warren Miller got his start in the Wood River Valley, living and skiing out of a teardrop trailer in the Sun Valley parking lot just up the road from my grandparents’ house. I consider Miller’s wonderful and wholesome ski films to be one of the Great True Pleasures of Life, along with motel swimming pools, high mountain mornings, wilderness hot springs, night skiing, and huevos rancheros with coffee.

This is the famous slope of Rotarun. Or rather, this is the slope of the J-bar apparatus and an accounting of each lift terminal and the crucial distances and components.

This is a blueprint of a lift terminal with J-bar. Today Rotarun has a poma. When I was in Idaho last my mom and I spent a lot of time remembering our favorite ski contraptions and lift apparatuses, including the rope tow of my kinderhill, Chipmunk Hill, in Challis, Idaho.

The Chipmunk Hill rope tow was powered by an old International pick up truck that was permanently parked at the middle of the hill. The lower-slope cable ran over the rear, left axle, and the upper-slope cable ran over the rear-right axle. Thus, if you wanted to go to the top of the hill you towed up the lower cable all the while preparing yourself to make a bold and awkward switch to the upper cable. Because the old pick up was hauling the cable with 220 horses at thirty five miles an hour, the rope tow was constantly sawing through mittens, jerking children to the ground, and generally causing a lot of consternation and hilarity. As children we were terrified of the rope tow. We watch it whir past for several minutes before closing our eyes and grabbing on. If you practice diving into lakes from high cliffs you know about this feeling and about waiting around for your body to conjure some sudden sickening courage. 

To take some of the buck and spirit out of the experience, practical adult skiers of the area manufactured a proprietary kind of contraption made from a door hinge and a couple of pieces of wood, which they clamped over the cable, thereby creating a private, perpendicular handle to hang onto. The tow hinge was sometimes taken a step further with the addition of a short length of rope that connected the hinge to an ammo belt worn by the skier. Thus attached, the skier would be yanked to the top of the hill by their waist. When the skier reached the top of the hill he would hurry up and disengage the clamp, tuck the wood-handled hinge into his ammo belt and hit the slopes.

As you guessed, the hinge and belt encumberment made the transition from the lower-cable to the upper-cable super tense and it was not uncommon for there to be a large, angular pile of adult “hinge” skiers clogging up the switch yard and saying all manner of swear words.

This is Rotarun’s lower, electric pulley, which ran with twenty horses.

This is my Grandpa Art, great founder of Rotarun and namesake of Art Richards Mountain.

This is my lifetime season pass!