Signals Up for the Snowball Express

This is the skier's season, when the snow trains start hooting their way into the snow country loaded with skis

Like bright flags signaling the ski train engineer to go! go! go!, the jumble of colorful skiers' baggage at Los Angeles Union Station (right) stands for the beginning of skiing and the skier's holiday mood this time of year. The Angelenos in question are leaving their own publicized heaven on Union Pacific's Snowball Limited for seven days of Sun Valley's fabulous high mountain skiing (left). Mass migrations to the bright, fresh world of skiing are getting to be a countrywide phenomenon. Regularly, winter trains set out from Boston, Chicago, New York and Detroit—luggage racks filled with parkas, gloves and goggles, aisles jammed with sweatered skiers, baggage cars piled with expensive hickory skis—headed for ski depots like North Conway, N.H., Montpelier, Vt., Lake Placid, N.Y. and Petoskey, Mich. Overhead—not to forget the airlines—another contingent was winging on longer trips: Easterners going to the west and the Rockies; Chicagoans to Vermont and the Green Mountains; Texans to Utah's Wasatch Range. Add to these the skiers that went by car (the greatest number of all) and you will have a sum of several million: all the skiers in the U.S. who arrived at one or another of the country's 250 major and minor ski areas last winter.

Did they have a good time? Take a look at the next four pages of color pictures of Sun Valley, and you will see what may prompt an estimated 300,000 to join the ranks of the sport this year in favor of the same kind of thing. All aboard for winter!

Cooling off after a warm swim, Mrs. William Stout plunges forth into snowdrifts just outside one of the valley's pools. Up to his eyes already is Richard Van Houten III.

Relaxing blissfully in one of the valley's steaming pools, guests enjoy the best of two worlds, a summery swim after spending the day skiing wintery mountain.

Stepping happily through flakes that proclaim skiing will soon be superb, Sun Valley skiers and a lodge bellboy (center) make their way down ski resort's main walk.

Greeting guests that have joined them, Sam and Nanette Grossman pause in their lunch on the sundeck of Roundhouse, high above the slopes of Christmas Bowl.

PHOTO

JOERN GERDTS

SKIERS IN SUN AT END OF THE LINE: SUN VALLEY SLOPES

FIVE PHOTOS

JOERN GERDTS