Podcast #207: Sun Valley COO & GM Pete Sonntag

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.

Who

Pete Sonntag, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Sun Valley, Idaho

Recorded on

April 9, 2025

About Sun Valley

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The R. Earl Holding family, which also owns Snowbasin, Utah

Pass affiliations:

* Ikon Pass – 7 days, no blackouts; no access on Ikon Base or Session passes; days shared between Bald and Dollar mountains

* Mountain Collective – 2 days, no blackouts; days shared between Bald and Dollar mountains

Reciprocal pass partners: Challenger Platinum and Challenger season passes include unlimited access to Snowbasin, Utah

Located in: Ketchum, Idaho

Closest neighboring ski areas: Rotarun (:47), Soldier Mountain (1:10)

Base elevation | summit elevation | vertical drop:

Bald Mountain: 5,750 feet | 9,150 feet | 3,400 feet

Dollar Mountain: 6,010 feet | 6,638 feet | 628 feet

Skiable Acres: 2,533 acres (Bald Mountain) | 296 acres (Dollar Mountain)

Average annual snowfall: 200 inches

Trail count: 122 (100 on Bald Mountain; 22 on Dollar) – 2% double-black, 20% black, 42% intermediate, 36% beginner

Lift fleet:

Bald Mountain: 12 lifts (8-passenger gondola, 2 six-packs, 6 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Bald Mountain’s lift fleet)

Dollar Mountain: 5 lifts (2 high-speed quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Dollar Mountain’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him (again)

Didn’t we just do this? Sun Valley, the Big Groom, the Monster at the End of The Road (or at least way off the interstate)? Didn’t you make All The Points? Pretty and remote and excellent. Why are we back here already when there are so many mountains left to slot onto the podcast?

Fair questions, easy answer: because American lift-served skiing is in the midst of a financial and structural renaissance driven by the advent of the multimountain ski pass. A network of megamountains that 15 years ago had been growing creaky and cranky under aging lift networks has, in the past five years, flung new machines up the mountain with the slaphappy glee of a minor league hockey mascot wielding a T-shirt cannon. And this investment, while widespread, has been disproportionately concentrated on a handful of resorts aiming to headline the next generation of self-important holiday Instagram posts: Deer Valley, Big Sky, Steamboat, Snowbasin, and Sun Valley (among others). It’s going to be worth checking in on these places every few years as they rapidly evolve into different versions of themselves.

And Sun Valley is changing fast. When I hosted Sonntag on the podcast in 2022, Sun Valley had just left Epic for Ikon/Mountain Collective and announced its massive Broadway-Flying Squirrel installation, a combined 14,982 linear feet of high-speed machinery that includ