summer 2006
about us

from the editor

Our valley’s towns are like rivers of gold, they are full of precious nuggets: your stories.

As this magazine approaches its 20th year, it does so with a new design and a new mission, to pan for those nuggets. We are here to celebrate the people of this valley, to reveal your stories, present your passions and investigate what matters to you.

With this in mind, we are proud to introduce a new feature, the Sun Valley Guides. Highlighting three residents, we present their stories and let them be your guides to their slice of Sun Valley life. Step into the warmth of a pre-dawn bakery; tinker alongside Elbie in his shop; and discover what a housewife can achieve with a vision and some muscle.

In our two arts profiles we strive to sample the passions this valley can incite. Meet the Boise-born couple whose Camas Prairie-inspired rugs help Afghan weavers climb out of poverty. Follow Jules Frazier’s 20-year odyssey chronicling rodeo queens, a journey that began in 1985 when she was crowned Miss Hailey Rodeo.

As summer rolls into the valley it does so on a cruiser. A sunny-day inventory of the streets of Hailey, Bellevue and Ketchum serves up countless of these retro rides. Clearly, we are in the grip of cruiser fever. Michael Ames was sent to investigate the rise of this beach-born phenomenon in our mountain town.

Among the biggest news events of 2005 was a 40,000-acre wildfire in the Sawtooth Valley. The devastation of a piece of our favorite playground deserved closer examination. We tasked Shea Andersen to explore the catastrophe.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Sun Valley Guide, and I welcome your comments and thoughts on it and on what you would like to read in future issues. After all, this is your magazine. Thanks for being with us and I hope you continue to enjoy your journey through life in Sun Valley, with us as your guide.

— Jennifer Tuohy, Editor
editor@sunvalleyguide.com

contributors

Michael Ames is a multi-purpose writer for the Sun Valley Guide/Idaho Mountain Express and author of The World Beard and Moustache Championships: The First Official Book. When not recovering from semi-regular knee surgeries, Ames also works as an instructor with the Sun Valley Ski School. Come summer, he can be found river-walking, golf-scrambling and thinking that he should learn to enjoy fishing. Currently, Ames is in the market for a custom cruiser to call his own.

Shea Andersen prefers his fires small and contained by a ring of large river rocks. A former wildland firefighter, he has been a news reporter for the last 10 years, including one year at the Idaho Mountain Express. He has written for Reuters News Service, High Country News and Salon. He and his wife live in Boise, where he is the news editor
for Boise Weekly.

Rebecca Meany counts eating other people’s cooking as one of her many joys in life. She struggles every spring to keep alive a few clusters of flowers in her yard and enjoys the minimal results while spending lazy mornings reading history books and newspapers on her deck. She has moved out of Idaho several times, but eventually comes to her senses and returns.

Megan Thomas, a fifth-generation Idaho gal, reconnected with her inner cowgirl after graduating from Colby College in Maine. Western inclinations brought the avid skier back to work as a staff writer for the Idaho Mountain Express. These days she anxiously awaits the Mackay Rodeo revelry and everything that comes with it—the worn hats, country music, swing dancing, barbecues and plate-sized belt buckles. In her spare time, she enjoys trail runs in the Wood River Valley and trail rides along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.

staff

publisher
Pam Morris

editor
Jennifer Tuohy

copy editor
Barbara Perkins

writers
Shea Andersen, Michael Ames,
Steve Benson, Dana DuGan,
Angela Erickson, Gregory Foley,
Diana Kapp, Jason Kauffman,
Rebecca Meany, Pat Murphy,
Megan Thomas

photographers
Paulette Phlipot,
Chris Pilaro,
David N. Seelig

art director
Evelyn Phillips

production manager
Tony Barriatua

ad production & web site designer
Richard Trevillian

graphic artists
Erik Elison, Joscelyne Hallock,
Richard Trevillian, Heather Van Houten

business manager
Connie Johnson

marketing/sales director
David Thouvenel

advertising executives
Miranda BeVier, Randy Carroll,
Gayle Kerr, Rita Marie, James Mitchell,
William Pattnosh, Jerry Seiffert

Idaho Press Club Awards, 2005

1st—General Excellence
1st & 3rd—Serious Feature, Gregory Foley
1st—Light Feature, Jennifer Tuohy
1st—Photography, Chris Pilaro
2nd—Light Feature, Pat Murphy
2nd—Website, Special Purpose, Rich Trevillian
3rd—Light Feature, Michael Ames

Idaho Press Club Awards, 2004

1st—General Excellence
1st—Light Feature, Dana DuGan

The Sun Valley Guide is published summer, fall and winter by Express Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340. For advertising and content information, call (208) 726-8060. ©2006 Express Publishing Inc.