July 16, 2026

The jets thinned out over the weekend and the valley went back to being itself. Allen & Company came and went without a deal anybody will admit to, which is roughly what happens every year. What's left behind is the ordinary July, and the ordinary July is the one that actually touches your life.

Also this week: your watering days now depend on your house number, Magic Reservoir is down to 7.4% with the gates shut, 1,065 acres burned east of Bellevue because somebody lit a firework, 614 housing units want in between Hailey and Bellevue, and Ken Burns talks on a lawn for free Saturday.

One new thing, down in Out & About. We're covering Stanley now. Not as part of the valley, because it isn't one, but because plenty of you drive over Galena all summer and nobody tells you what's waiting when you get there. The section's called Over Galena and it runs every issue, including the ones where the answer is nothing. This week the answer is Saturday. Here's the week.

Top of Mind

Ketchum's water rules are live. Nobody waters Wednesday.

It passed. The council voted unanimously on July 9, the same night we told you the vote was coming, and ran all three readings through a single hearing to make it enforceable fast. It's Ordinance 1280. Councilman Spencer Cordovano was the one member absent.

Stage 1 is what you're living under, and it comes down to your house number. Odd addresses water Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Even addresses get Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Nobody waters Wednesday. And nobody waters between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., any day, any address. That window runs May 1 to September 15 from here on, not just this summer.

Some of what got reported as rules isn't. Keeping each sprinkler station under 30 minutes and trimming indoor use about 10% are recommendations, not requirements. Drip and bubbler irrigation is exempt. So are new plantings, and so are private wells.

Here's the part that changes your July: enforcement doesn't start until August. This month is a declared education phase, and city spokesman Daniel Hansen says they're already out talking to people. So the rules are real and the fines aren't, yet. When they land, the ordinance allows fines, misdemeanor charges, and shutting your water off entirely. Stage 2 only triggers if the Northwood well drops 25% over seven straight days, which the city calls very rare. Stage 3 is an emergency the mayor declares and the council ratifies.

One more thing, and it's the reason we're spelling all this out. If you go to the city's own website to look it up, you'll get the wrong answer. The "About Our Water" page still publishes the old schedule: June 15 to September 1, no odd and even, no Wednesday rule. Don't check there. Check here.

Mayor Pete Prekeges, on the fact that Ketchum had no staged system until now: "[It] blew my mind that we didn't have these stages."

Source: Idaho Mountain Express

Town Hall

CountyA firework started the Martin Canyon fire, and it burned 1,065 acres. It went up on BLM land in Muldoon Canyon east of Bellevue about 5:23 p.m. on July 9, ran through grass and sagebrush on sustained winds toward the ridge above Slaughterhouse Canyon, and only eased around 3 a.m. when the temperature dropped. Slaughterhouse Canyon closed and residents were told to be ready to go. That lifted late Friday morning. An individual has admitted to starting it. Here's the part worth sitting with: fireworks were already illegal, both on BLM ground and countywide under a Blaine County resolution that runs May 1 to October 31. The ban existed. It didn't matter. BLM finished its investigation on July 14 and handed its reports, photos and body camera footage to the Blaine County Prosecutor's Office, which hasn't decided whether to charge anyone. [Eye on Sun Valley]

CountyMagic Reservoir is 7.4% full and the gates are shut. The Big Wood Canal Co. closed them on July 9 after another thin snow year, and Fish and Game answered with a salvage order that runs through October 1: no bag limits, no possession limits, on the Big Wood below the dam from the railroad trestle down to the Highway 75 bridge, plus the Richfield Canal. Be clear on the geography before you grab a rod, because it matters. That's the water below Magic, out toward Richfield and Gooding. It is not the river you fish in Hailey or Ketchum, and the order doesn't cover the reservoir itself. You still need a 2026 license and permission on private ground. Fish and Game's Kenzie Baratti says the best salvaging happens in the three days right after a closure. Set this next to the watering ordinance and you've got the whole summer in two facts: up-valley gets assigned days, down-valley is already out. [IME]

HaileySix hundred and fourteen housing units want in between Hailey and Bellevue. The council voted unanimously Monday to set the terms for reviewing an annexation application for Flying Hat Ranch, the project being called Blaine Crossing: 108.8 acres into Hailey, roughly 143 more to be requested from Bellevue, plus 25 acres of recreation with the BCRD. The mix is workforce and market-rate housing, light industrial, commercial, and a hotel. Oppenheimer Development Corp. pays the city $35,000 so taxpayers don't fund the studies, and the application shows up in two to four weeks. For scale, River Bend is 81 units. This one is 614. It already has a fight around it: County Commissioner Lindsay Mollineaux published a guest opinion calling it a bad deal for Hailey, and Mayor Martha Burke said she and her planning staff were insulted by it. The best thing said all night came from resident Elizabeth Corker, in favor: "My children cannot afford to live here. They are in their 20s and 30s. I look around this room, and we are not the commons. We are the older generation." [IME]

Sun ValleyElkhorn Road is closed until August 7, and you're going through Ketchum instead. About 750 feet of it, from near Boulder Court west to the Highway 75 intersection, shut Monday while ITD rebuilds the four-way at Highway 75, Elkhorn Road and River Ranch Road. That's 26 days. The detour runs you through town via the Dollar, Saddle and Sun Valley Road intersection, which is the only other way out of Sun Valley worth the name, so leave early. Crews work 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, traffic control stays up around the clock, and they say they'll keep the bike path open where they can. ITD's Jesse Barrus says eating the closure now is what keeps the intersection work from sliding into 2027. [IME]

KetchumThe local-option tax hike isn't on the November ballot yet. Council only directed staff to proceed, with Tripp Hutchinson opposed, and the first of three readings is July 23. The ask is retail to 8.5% and lodging to 13%, about $2.19 million a year for streets, with a city study putting roughly 82% of the burden on visitors. Worth knowing while you decide: the existing base LOT already throws off about $3.87 million a year, and it expires in December 2027 if nobody reauthorizes it. [Eye on Sun Valley]

KetchumAbout 50 people turned out in Town Square on Saturday to protest Allen & Company, and Carole King spoke. The new Sun Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America organized it, joined by Boise and Southern Idaho members, and marched up Sun Valley Road before turning back at the four-way. King, who has decades of ties to south-central Idaho, kept it short and told people to say thank you and look each other in the eye. Two counter-protesters showed. No arrests. Allen & Company declined to comment, as it does about everything. [IME]

Sun ValleyTwo U.S. Army Black Hawks landed on the lawn above Trail Creek Cabin on Saturday around 11:20 a.m. and left about 1 p.m. The Express asked the resort, the police chief, and a security guard why. Nobody would say. We don't know either. We just think you should know it happened. [IME]

Sun ValleyOne piece of good news, and it's about the dark. Sun Valley Resort is the first resort in the country certified by DarkSky International, through the program it runs for lodging, for cutting light pollution and keeping its fixtures pointed at the ground instead of the sky. The resort already sits inside the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, 1,400 square miles of protected night that's been in place since 2017. COO Pete Sonntag put it plainly enough: the outdoors has always been the point here, and the night sky is part of the outdoors. They'll tell you the best looking is from Baldy, Dollar, or up at Galena Summit. We'd add that it's free, it's every clear night, and it's the one amenity in this valley nobody can price you out of. [IME]

Out & About

This weekend

Tonight, Thu July 16  Mimi Avins on how television grew up in the 1970s, at the Sun Valley Museum of Art, 5:30 p.m. She edited fashion at the LA Times and wrote for Vogue and Rolling Stone, and she started a TV seminar at the Community Library a decade back. Free, and they'd like you to register. [info]

Tonight, Thu July 16  Hailey Rocks: Dead Winter Carpenters at Hop Porter Park, 6:30 to 9 p.m., free, all ages. The Liberty Theater afterparties start back up with this one, 9 to 11. [info]

Fri July 17  The Hometown Olympian Celebration honors eight valley athletes from the Milano-Cortina Games. Muffy Davis opens at Champions Meadow at 5:15, everyone parades to Ketchum Town Square at 5:30, remarks and presentations follow, then Running with Scissors plays 6:30 to 8 with a food truck, ice cream, and autographs. Chase Josey, Jake Adicoff, Jesse Keefe, John Steel Hagenbuch, Sammy Smith, Laurie Stephens, Ryder Sarchett and Peter Wolter are the honorees. Hilary Knight is invited. Storms are a real possibility, so check before you walk down. [info]

Sat July 18 to Mon July 20  The Sun Valley Writers' Conference at the Pavilion. Passes are gone and so are the individual Pavilion tickets, but the lawn talks are free and nobody checks anything at the door. Saturday: Robert Macfarlane at 12:15, Ken Burns at 5. Sunday: Jill Lepore and David Sanger with Abby Phillip at 1:30, Michael Pollan at 3, Amor Towles at 4:30. Monday: Ada Limón reading poetry at 1:30, Simon Rich at 3, Rick Atkinson at 4:30. First come, first served on the grass, big screen, and Tent B has shade, fans and closed captioning if the weather turns. Bring a blanket and a low chair. You can't save seats. [info]

Sat July 18 to Mon July 20  Two more ways into the Writers' Conference without a pass: the livestream is free to anyone, and the Argyros runs a watch party for $25 a day with a big screen, live music and drinks. And if you're a valley student, teacher or library staffer, you get free Pavilion seating when there's room. Show a school or library ID at the Bookstore Tent info desk 30 minutes before a talk. [info]

Sat July 18  Whit Henry's Galena Grinder at Galena Lodge. The 50-mile marathon rolls at 7:30 a.m., the 25-mile cross country at 9, with 10-mile, 7.5-mile and 1.5-mile options for everyone else. Water and bananas on the long courses, food and awards after. Early starts, so the field should be down before the afternoon builds. [info]

Sun July 19  Jazz in the Park: the Van Paepeghen Sextet at Rotary Park on Warm Springs Rd, 6 to 8 p.m., free. Second to last of the season. Picnics yes, low chairs only. [Visit SV]

Every week

Thursdays, 6:30 to 9 p.m.  Hailey Rocks, Hop Porter Park, Hailey. Free, through Aug 20. Kota Dosa next week, with the Concert Truck opening. [info]

Thu, Fri, Sat, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.  Live Music in the Pasture, Hotel Ketchum's backyard. This week it's Luc McCann, Joel Townsend, then Mark and Karen. [info]

Sat 10 to 2, Wed noon to 4  Wood River Farmers Market, in its 25th season. Hailey Saturdays at Roberta McKercher Park, Ketchum Wednesdays at Forest Service Park. It started in 2000 with 13 vendors in an Atkinsons' parking lot because Tuesdays were slow. [info]

Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.  Ketch'em Alive, Forest Service Park, Ketchum. Free, through Aug 11. July 21 is Left on Tenth, Portland by way of Bozeman, playing funk, ska and most things adjacent. Food vendors on site. They're at a bar in Stanley the next night, which is down in Over Galena. [Visit SV]

Sundays, 6 to 8 p.m.  Jazz in the Park, Rotary Park, Ketchum. Free, and it ends July 26. [Visit SV]

Wednesdays, 6 to 9:30 p.m.  Wicked Wednesday at the Wicked Spud in Hailey. Free music, a different local nonprofit every week, 23 years running. [Visit SV]

Coming up

Tue July 21  Old Crow Medicine Show at the Argyros, 7:30 p.m., $88 to $190. They were busking on corners in 1998 when Doc Watson found them playing outside a pharmacy in Boone, North Carolina. Two Grammys and an Opry membership later, here they are. [tickets]

Tue July 21  Novelist Virginia Evans at the Community Library, 5:30 p.m. Free, but register, and seating is tight. She's on the Writers' Conference stage that Saturday too. [info]

Wed July 22  The River Run Summer Series starts: free music, food trucks, an outdoor bar and lawn games at the base, 5 to 8 p.m., and the gondola runs late until 7. Six Wednesdays, through Aug 26. No lineup announced yet. [Visit SV]

Fri July 24  Sun Valley Tour de Force. About 150 supercars staged around downtown Ketchum, 5 to 8 p.m., free to gawk at. [info]

Sat July 25  Sun Valley on Ice: Ilia Malinin, the reigning Olympic and world champion, on the outdoor rink. Doors 7:30, skating 8:30, $85 to $325. Buffet tables sell whole; grandstand seats sell one at a time. [tickets]

Sun July 26  The BCRD turns 50 and throws a party at Galena Lodge, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free, including the drinks and the fries. [info]

Over Galena

Fri July 17  Music on the Lawn at Redfish: Hillfolk Noir, 6 to 8 p.m., free and open to anyone. The lodge runs these Wednesday, Friday and Sunday through Sep 6. The lawn sits on the lake and the Lakeside Grill serves through the set. One caveat: Friday's forecast over there is 80% thunderstorms after noon, the wettest day of their week. [info]

Sat July 18 to Sun July 19  The Sawtooth Festival, 9 to 6 Saturday and 9 to 3 Sunday. Arts, crafts and food, 75-plus regional vendors, run by the Stanley-Sawtooth Chamber. Two things they say plainly and we'll repeat: no outside food or drink, and there's no wifi and no banking on site. It's a town of 116. Bring cash. [info]

Sat July 18  Dead Winter Carpenters at Velvet Falls, 8 p.m., free. It's the same band playing Hop Porter Park tonight, so if they land for you in Hailey, they're 75 minutes away on Saturday doing it again. Mountain Village has it as a special show with the Dave Nudo Band, who play both Friday and Saturday. Check this before you load the car: Friday's show is 21 and over, Saturday's is all ages. Up there that's set show by show, not by the house. [info]

Sat July 18  The Sawtooth Observatory opens, 8:30 to 11 p.m. at Stanley Pioneer Park. The Idaho Dark Sky Alliance is throwing a first-light party for it, with extra telescopes spread around the park and astronomers to run them. Free, but take a ticket so they can count you. Now read the dark-sky item up top again: the resort's own advice was to go look from Galena Summit, and this is the far side of that same pass, in that same 2017 reserve. Saturday night up there is 6% chance of rain and a low of 46. Bring the coat you didn't pack. [tickets]

Wed July 22  Left on Tenth at the Kasino Club, 8:30 p.m., free. Tuesday they're at Ketch'em Alive, Wednesday they're over the hill, Thursday they're in Big Sky. That's the second band in seven days to play the valley and then Stanley, and the reason is on the map: the town sits on the road from Ketchum to Montana, so 116 people get a bar that books well above its weight. [info]

Standing up there all summer: the street dance on Ace of Diamonds Thursdays 6:30 to 10 (Good Friends tonight, and again at the Kasino Saturday), trivia Wednesdays at the Kasino, and porch music at Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays 6 to 8 (Jen and Johnny tonight, and it's a dinner crowd, so call 208-725-3000 first).

Mark it down

Mon July 27 to Aug 20  The Sun Valley Music Festival, 42nd season, opening with pianist Orion Weiss at the Pavilion at 6:30. It's free and it always has been. The mechanics people get wrong: concerts run about an hour, bars open at 5:30, free public seats open an hour before, and any reserved seat nobody claims gets released at 6:15. Bring a blanket for the lawn, not a tarp. [info]

Aug 14 to 16  The Sun Valley Arts & Crafts Festival, 57th year, at Atkinson Park. 126 artists from 27 states, juried. [info]

The Dirt

River and fish. The Big Wood is at 318 cfs at Hailey, about 65% of normal for the date. Two things about that. First, the free fall is over: the river dropped 31 cfs in a single day around July 10 and has been flat for 48 hours, which is what hitting summer baseflow looks like. Second, and this is the strange part, 65% is better than last week's 63% even though there's less water in the river. The historical median falls faster in mid-July than the river does now. The calendar is catching up to the Big Wood, not the other way around. Meanwhile Silver Creek sits at 110 cfs, which is 109% of its own normal, because spring-fed water doesn't care what the snowpack did. Green Drakes are done on the Big Wood, right on the schedule we gave you. It's caddis, Grey Drakes, Rusty Spinners, Baetis, PMDs and Pink Alberts now, on size 16 and 14 parachutes in the seams. Tricos are building on Silver Creek, early like everything this year. [Silver Creek Outfitters]

Fish early, and we can prove it. Silver Creek's gauge ran 61 degrees at 8 a.m. yesterday and 68.5 by 4 p.m. It touched 71.6 on Saturday. Silver Creek Outfitters and Picabo Angler both told anglers to mind the water temps this week, and neither one put a number on it, so here's the number. Seven degrees of swing in a day is the whole argument for morning fishing, and it has nothing to do with hatches. Play them fast, keep them wet.

Over Galena. If the drive's in your weekend, the water over there reads like ours. Valley Creek at Stanley is 166 cfs, about 75% of normal for the date, and we're naming it carefully because it's a tributary, not the Salmon. There's no live gauge on the Salmon at Stanley. The one that carries the name quit in 1925 and nobody replaced it. Nearest live reading on the Salmon itself is below the Yankee Fork near Clayton, 868 cfs and about 77%, on better than twice the drainage, so it's a bigger river by the time anyone measures it. Floating? You need a free self-registration permit in the boat, one per group, year round. The closures people mix that up with are a month out, Aug 15. And Galena's clear: no work zones anywhere between Ketchum and Stanley, so the only cones are the ones you already know about in town. [Sawtooth National Forest]

Trails. We owe you a correction here. We said the Fox Creek drainage would be shut into early August. That's not what the Forest Service says. Trail 149 closes for one morning between July 13 and 17, with trail guards on the ground, while a helicopter sets a 70-foot bridge in two pieces. The whole operation takes about 90 minutes. After that the closures are intermittent, possibly through Aug 1, and the district says it's working to keep the trail open. Now the good part: that's the same helicopter flying concrete to the new lift towers on Baldy this week, and coordinating the two jobs saved somewhere around $100,000. Best seat for the show is the ridge on the Taylor Canyon trail across the highway. Elsewhere: eight sheep bands are out, including Deer Creek southwest of Poison Flatts, Warm Springs between Lodgepole and Red Warrior, and Baker Creek up at the top of Oregon Gulch. Keep the dog close around the guardian dogs. Deadfall is heavy this year on the outer trails. [Sawtooth National Forest]

Mountain. A second correction. We said the top of Baldy is closed all summer. It isn't. The summit closure is this week's helicopter window, and no hiking or biking goes above the Connector Trail intersection through Friday. It opens back up Saturday. What is closed all season is Lookout Lodge, for the lift rebuild, which means no restrooms or drinking water inside it. Portables outside, real facilities at the Roundhouse. Lifts run Wednesday through Sunday, 9 to 4, the Roundhouse 11 to 3, and the gondola sits dark Mondays and Tuesdays. [sunvalley.com]

Fire. Danger is high up north and very high down south, and the valley still has no fire restrictions. None. The Sawtooth's Minidoka district, down by Burley, went to Stage 1 on July 1. We haven't, in a month that has already produced 1,065 acres from a firework, plus reports of more fireworks fires near Colorado Gulch and out at East Magic. Our take: whatever the threshold is, we're probably past it. Up north, the Cabin Creek fire near Alturas Lake is contained. It stopped at seven acres, and the federal incident record puts containment Tuesday evening, a few hours after the last story anybody wrote about it. Contained isn't out, and nobody's declared it out yet. The Forest Service traced that one to an unattended campfire somebody cooked on between July 11 and 12. Two fires this week, both started by a person. Air here is clean, AQI 16. Thursday through Saturday brings 88 to 89 degrees and afternoon thunderstorms, with Friday the wettest at 60%. Storms on grass this cured are their own kind of news. [Sawtooth National Forest]

Open House

We told you last week we'd run the second-quarter sales numbers when the Board of Realtors put them out. We were wrong twice. They don't publish them on a website at all, they send them to the press, and the report isn't finished anyway. The last three took seven to ten weeks after the quarter closed, so expect this one somewhere between mid-August and early September. We'll run it then. If you want to poke at real numbers now, the county assessor keeps a public dashboard of five years of sales you can filter by town and price, though it tracks deed sales, which is a different animal from the Realtors' MLS figures. [Blaine County]

What's actually moving: Ketchum's P&Z takes up the Guyer Hot Springs subdivision this afternoon at 4:30 at City Hall. It's up to 20 lots on 8.92 acres in Warm Springs, five single-family homes in phase one and 12 to 15 lots after that, with a rezone request on the developable ground and the avalanche zones and floodplains pushed to agricultural and forestry. There's already a dispute about it: the project manager says the public notice misstated the housing contribution, five deed-restricted community units versus four workforce units that aren't. The city says the notice was fine and the count isn't settled. [IME]

One number worth filing as the short-term-rental rules come apart: a study the Board of Realtors commissioned counted 840 short-term rental units in the valley in 2024, and 81% of them were in Ketchum or Sun Valley. Whatever deregulation does, it does it up-valley first. [IME]

Table Talk

Open now: Timbers at Bigwood, the clubhouse restaurant at the reworked Bigwood golf course, 115 Thunder Trail in Ketchum. Wednesday through Sunday, 11 to 9, closed Monday and Tuesday, with more hours promised. Reservations on Resy, but the bar and lounge take walk-ins. Matt Robinson runs it, poached from the Roundhouse; Taite Pearson, an Idaho native who guides fishing when he isn't cooking, built the menu. Birdie's Snack Shack by the fourth tee is open six days now. And yes, we noticed the name. [info]

Coming this fall: The Observatory Sun Valley finally named its restaurants. The all-day American room is Joan, the coffee spot is Odin's Corner, and the pool bar is Andy's Watershed. Joan is named for Joan Blank, a Ketchum local remembered for pulling people together with warmth and music, which is a better reason to name a restaurant than most. Nicola Cavicchini runs the kitchen, hired in June off a run through CordeValle, Rosewood Miramar Beach and the Four Seasons Maui. The Viceroy at 300 River Street East still says fall. [info]

New and valley-wide: Liza Green, who co-founded Café Della, launched The Greenmarket, an online food hub that connects the valley to southern Idaho farmers and ranchers. Order Saturday morning through Sunday midnight, pick up free in Ketchum, Hailey or Bellevue, or pay $15 to have it brought to your door. [info]

Filed under it's not just you: the Highway 75 construction is hurting Ketchum restaurants, and somebody finally said so on the record. Bronwyn Nickel, who owns the Sawtooth Club, says morale is down, crews hit unavoidable traffic at 7 a.m., and supply deliveries run late. She expects the hangover to outlast the cones, especially on hiring. Jeweler Jessica Herner put May and June this way: comparatively empty. [IME]

Last week we said we were chasing a rumor about an up-valley coffee shop quietly closing its Ketchum location. We chased it. The only Ketchum coffee closure we can document happened last fall, which makes it history rather than news, so we're letting it go. Either the tip pointed at something we haven't found, or the valley's coffee supply is intact. Keep the tips coming either way. They beat press releases every time.

The Party Line

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Fixes from last week. Yuja Wang at the Argyros is Saturday July 25, not Thursday the 23rd, and it's sold out, so if we put the wrong night in your calendar, that's on us. The Fox Creek closure is one morning, not a month. And the top of Baldy isn't closed all summer, just through Friday. We'd rather tell you than let it ride.

Go sit on the grass Saturday. Ken Burns at 5, it costs nothing, and the only thing standing between you and it is a blanket and a little weather nerve. Water on your assigned day. And if you see the helicopter over Fox Creek, that's about a hundred grand of good planning flying overhead.

See you next Thursday.

The Bigwood Brief

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