There’s no end to the variety of restaurants, cafes, and bakeries in the Sun Valley area and greater Wood River Valley, and complementing those eats are a bounty of fresh, locally grown ingredients as well as homemade creations from area bakers and cooks. Whether you’d like to enjoy a meal completely cooked from scratch while you dine out or simply want to pick up locally made cooks to enjoy at home or on the road, Ketchum, Sun Valley, and Hailey are home to many spots to eat local made and sourced food. Restaurants So many restaurants within the Wood River Valley make many of their ingredients from scratch, source locally grown food, or buy already made products from local producers. It would take up this whole blog entry to go into each in depth, but here’s just a selection of the best spots to eat local goods. In Hailey, try dinner spot CK’s for globally inspired farm-to-table cuisine made with sustainable ingredients and lots of Idaho suppliers. Also in Hailey is high-end bike shop and pub the Powerhouse, which offers a selection of burgers, tacos, salads, and fries made with house-made, locally sourced ingredients. Ketchum dinner restaurant The Covey makes …
Searching for Sun Valley
What We’re Made Of: Reflex Ski Poles
The epic skiing and snowboarding available in the Sun Valley area has inspired entrepreneurs in the area for decades, from the founding of Scott USA in 1958 to Smith Optics in 1965 to more modern brands like Wolf Ski, 5B Ski Factory, Mountain Approach, and Research Design Skis. Originally founded in 1979, Reflex Ski Poles has had a resurgence after the brand was reborn in 2020, helping to fill the void left by so many of these iconic Sun Valley brands either leaving the area or shutting down altogether. Reflex has taken the passion of the rowdy, local ski community and channeled it into making the best ski pole in the industry, in what they refer to as “the OG ski town for OG skiers.” The Beginning: 1979 The origins of Reflex lie in another Sun Valley-based company, Scott USA. It’s no surprise that Gus Verge, a Scott USA employee in charge of pole manufacturing, would find himself thinking about how to improve the ski pole. Though Scott USA founder Ed Scott invented the first aluminum ski pole and vastly changed the market, Verge saw a hole in the market for a ski pole that performed better and outlasted all others. He promptly left Scott and along with friends and …
What We’re Made Of: Waterworks- Lamson
While some companies, like Smith, or Scott, are considered shining examples of entrepreneurs and brands coming out of the Sun Valley area, Waterworks-Lamson has been in business in the area (and beyond) close to 20 years. Created originally as a way to simply release fly-caught fish better, Waterworks-Lamson is now sold worldwide and has developed many more reels and rods than their original Ketchum Release tool innovated in its namesake town. How It Started The company that would become Lamson, and later Waterworks-Lamson, was started in 1996 by brothers Michael and Ryan Harrison and Michael’s brother-in-law, Mark Farris. The trio had moved to Ketchum in 1989 and were designing bike technology in the world of high-performance cycling, creating and patenting cutting-edge components like frame designs and mountain bike suspension systems. As outdoorsmen who loved skiing, biking, and fishing, Ketchum seemed the perfect place to live and test out bikes and, later, fly-fishing gear. The three men were avid fisherman who found themselves frustrated with the hemostat, the go-to at the time for releasing fly-caught fish, for the harm it caused the fish and the fly. With their product design background, they came up with a solution, an innovative tool that …
24 Hours With A Local: Designer/Builder/Sculptor Wes Walsworth
Ketchum native Wes Walsworth no longer plays music (other than as a hobby), but he may be best known to many in the Sun Valley area—and beyond—as a member of punk/bluegrass band the Scotch Greens, which formed in Sun Valley in 1998 before relocating to San Diego. It was while living in San Diego that Wes began to tap into some of his family’s woodworking roots; his father was a builder, and his grandfather was a woodworker. Wes grew up with a woodworking shop at his house and eventually learned finish carpentry and worked for his father. In San Diego he started working for Taylor Guitars and become a luthier, someone who builds or repairs string instruments. After coming back to the Wood River Valley on and off for many years, Wes traveled to Australia, where his professional woodworking career would begin. Wes Walsworth was living on a winery, which had lots of discarded wine barrels that were going to waste. He started taking them apart and using his woodworking skills to create furniture—the rest, as they say, is history. More than a decade later, Wes has created a name for himself as a renowned furniture designer/builder, with designs sold …
What We’re Made Of: DECKED
Local company DECKED has created a product that appeals to many of the kinds of people who call Ketchum home: outdoors people, tradesmen/contractors, and just about anyone who drives a truck. It was while innovating a way to organize a truck bed that DECKED founders, Jake Peters and Lance Meller, came up with the idea for DECKED’s drawer system, tapping into the market of truck accessories that few had or have since. In its almost ten years as a company, DECKED has grown from a small-footprint, servicing mom and pop accessory stores, to a multi-national company available directly from manufacturers like Ford and Chevrolet distributed into 27 countries on six continents. The Origin Story Like the origin of so many products, DECKED’s drawer system was the result of necessity. Ketchum local Lance Meller was a snowboard rep and pickup truck owner who built his own plywood drawer system for the bed of his truck, which allowed him to sleep in it while on the road while also storing his snowboard samples. After getting a new truck, Meller realized he would have to build another system from scratch, with no real roadmap for doing so. He partnered with DECKED founder, Jake …
Visit Sun Valley, Sustainably!
Traveling sustainably is an important aspect of modern-day travel, and being mindful of our environmental impact while traveling has never been more critical. Fortunately, there are simple things we can all do to help preserve the environment and make our travels more sustainable. From using reusable items to picking up litter, shopping locally, and reducing our carbon footprint, these small actions can go a long way in helping protect the places we love to visit. In this blog post, we’ll cover some easy ways to travel sustainably while enjoying all that the Ketchum area has to offer. Bring reusables! Did you know that Americans use over 100 billion plastic bags each year? If 25% of families used 10 fewer bags per month, we would save 2.5 billion bags per year! Grab that reusable bag and water bottle and hit the town! This is a simple way to do your part when out and about and stopping in shops and groceries. Plus, our local tap water is out of this world. Pick it up! It can be a damper to roll up to a campsite, trailhead, lookout, or even a park and see pieces of trash around. Be sure to pick …
S.A.A. – Spring Activity Anxiety
An intertwined combination of spring & winter can lead to a potentially chaotic outbreak of Spring Activity Anxiety. Symptoms most commonly associated with S.A.A. include: severe indecisiveness, confusion, and obsessive over packing of vehicles with sporting equipment. Patients are urged to remain calm, analyze possible activities, and cram as many said activities as possible in to one day to quell bouts of insanity.
24 Hours with a Local: Trailhead Bicycles Owners Kyle Wies and Andy Solomon
After several years of working for Fitzgerald’s Bicycles in Victor, Jackson, and Idaho Falls, friends and business owners Kyle Wies and Andy Solomon—and Andy’s wife, Erin—decided to open their own bike shop in Hailey after seeing a hole in the market for a year-round bike shop. The two met at Fitzgerald’s in 2015 when Andy bought a fat bike from Kyle—two years later, Andy was working there too. They opened Trailhead Bicycles in April 2022 and have been busy ever since. Andy and Kyle live fairly opposite lives: Andy and Erin are parents to their 6-year-old daughter, Finley, and shop dog 11-year-old Elliott (if you’ve been in the shop, you’ve likely seen this huge, loveable guy) who all live in Woodside. When not on the bike, Andy and the family can be found outdoors doing it all—lake days, paddle boarding, hiking, and biking, of course. Kyle lives by himself in Ketchum, commuting daily to Hailey by biking on the bike path or reading on the bus. Kyle’s a big runner and reader when he’s not biking, and the two friends also like to get together to watch soccer. Assuming the trails are dry and ready for biking (a bit of …
24hrs with a Local: Sawtooth Avalanche Center’s Annie DeAngelo, April
Since making Sun Valley her home ten years, Annie DeAngelo has embraced all of the professional, recreational, and social aspects the area has to offer. As Education Coordinator for Friends of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center, Annie wears many hats, coming up with events and ways to reach new people, putting on the education programs the org has been running for years, and collaborating with other local organizations. Prior to working with Friends of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center, Annie DeAngelo taught middle school math and science for the Community School for many years. She’s also been a NOLS instructor, taught ski school, interned with ICL, and is unofficially the Grumpy’s Social Director. Her and her partner, ski patroller and Sawtooth Mountain Guide Toria, live in west Ketchum with their pit bull-chihuahua-poodle mix Xander. When not working, Annie is a woman of “endless” hobbies, as she describes it, but her biggest are whitewater SUPing, cooking, gardening, hunting, mountain biking, skiing, and playing in band Miscellany 7 (formerly Miscellany 5, but they’ve since acquired two more members). While most days are ideal days in Sun Valley for Annie DeAngelo, she described her perfect one here, taking a few liberties because, after all, this …
24hrs with a Local: Hockey player Mike (Taco) Curry, March
If you’ve seen a Sun Valley Suns hockey game in the last ten years, then you already know Mike Curry, better known as “Taco” to those in the know. The Alaska native moved to Ketchum about ten years ago and has been playing defense for the Suns ever since. When he’s not on the ice, Mike works from his home in Warm Springs doing headhunting for Walmart Global Tech. In the winter, he enjoys snowboarding and snowmobiling (in addition to hockey, of course) and in the summer spends lots of time on the lake water skiing and doing a bit of fishing. We caught up with Mike to see what his perfect March day in Sun Valley entails. How does your morning start? Mike: I’d start out with breakfast at either the Kneadery or something quick at Wrapcity. At the Kneadery I like the cowboy benedict—it’s rock solid. At Wrapcity I get the Mayday wrap. What’s after breakfast? Mike: I’d hit the mountain for a couple runs, nothing too crazy. I’m a snowboarder, so I try to stay off steep pitches so I can cruise; usually I’ll do Broadway top to bottom for my first run of the day. …