11:55 AM PDT on Thursday, April 14, 2005

Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho - Sun Valley is used to hosting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, but a planned Sept. 11 visit by the Dalai Lama could draw 100,000 for one event - and that has law enforcement and tourism officials scrambling.

AP

The Dalai Lama headshot, Tibetan religious leader

Details such as visitor housing and security loom large.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists will visit the famous mountain resort community on the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that rocked America.

Walt Femling, the sheriff of rural Blaine County, met visit organizers Wednesday, accompanied by officials including his disaster services coordinator. He said he fears the event could dominate his officers' time in coming months.

According to a tentative schedule, the Dalai Lama will speak at a land preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy, located south of Sun Valley near the tiny town of Picabo, population 50.

"They will helicopter His Holiness to the site, down the long sliver of valley and high mountains, to this open space filled with thousands of waiting people," according to a statement provided to the Associated Press by the local visitors bureau.

On Sept. 12, he'll meet U.S. business leaders in a private session, followed by an afternoon visit with as many as 12,000 Idaho children.

Finally, on Sept. 13, he is scheduled to bless a Tibetan prayer wheel in a ceremony in nearby Ketchum.

The Buddhist leader lives in exile in India and leads Tibetans who have resisted half a century of Chinese rule. A call to his New York office to discuss why he chose Sun Valley for the Sept. 11 anniversary visit was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Event planners include Renee Klein, who worked with the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics organizing committee. She says shuttle buses will be needed, to help ferry visitors staying in accommodations as far away as Boise and Salt Lake City.

The Sun Valley area, made famous by celebrities including Ernest Hemingway and actor Gary Cooper - and now Tom Hanks and Jamie Lee Curtis - has hotel and condominium space for just 5,700 people, tourism officials said.