With its punishing climb of nearly 1,000 feet in less than a mile, Ruud Mountain is one of the most challenging hikes in the Sun Valley area. It is also steeped in the history of Sun Valley skiing.

The mountain is named for Norwegian ski-jumping champion Sigmund Ruud, who helped design the 40-meter ski jump built there in the summer of 1937. Before World War II, Ruud Mountain hosted many of the world’s best ski jumpers during the prestigious Harriman Cup competitions and later served as a training ground for future U.S. Olympic teams. It also featured in the 1965 film Ski Party, starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, with performances by James Brown and Leslie Gore.

The hike’s defining landmark is the historic Ruud Mountain chairlift. Constructed between 1937 and 1938, it was the third chairlift ever built. Sun Valley’s first two chairlifts—on nearby Proctor Mountain and Dollar Mountain—opened in 1936 but were dismantled decades ago, leaving the Ruud Mountain lift as the oldest surviving chairlift in the world. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

By today’s standards, the original chairs were remarkably primitive: narrow wooden seats suspended from a moving cable, with no safety bar, footrest, or place to carry skis. Yet the lift was revolutionary and helped establish Sun Valley as the birthplace of modern destination skiing in America.

Its design came from an unlikely inspiration. Union Pacific engineer James Curran adapted the mechanism from conveyor systems used to load bunches of bananas onto ships, replacing the hooks with chairs. That ingenious idea became the blueprint for virtually every ski chairlift that followed.

While the lift’s upper terminal building was reconstructed in 2015 to faithfully match the original—which had finally succumbed to nearly 80 winters of snow and weather—the towers, machinery, and much of the lift itself remain original, offering hikers a rare opportunity to stand beside one of the most important landmarks in skiing history.

Sources:
Sun Valley Magazine — “Ruud Mountain: Sun Valley’s Forgotten Era of Ski Jumping” (December 20, 2023)
City of Sun Valley — Comprehensive Plan/Historic Resources section