Jackson Hole magazine // Winter 2015

WINTER 2015

WOLVES

Twenty years after their reintroduction, the predators are firmly established in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Why are they still controversial?

ADVENTURE

Yurting in Style

OUTDOORS

Nordic Skiing

ART

Fine Art Photography

DESIGN

Climbing Rooms

A N A U C T I O N O F PA S T & P R E S E N T M A S T E R W O R K S O F T H E A M E R I C A N W E S T

2 014 AU C T I O N H I G H L I G H TS O V E R 1 1 M I L L I O N I N S A L E S A N D 2 0 N E W W O R L D R E C O R D S E S TA B L I S H E D

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LOT 105, RICHARD SCHMID (1934- ) YELLOW ROSES Estimate: $75,000 – $100,000, SOLD: $187,200

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Jackson Hole

Winter 2015

Features 64 Schools of Skiers

Yeah, the Jackson Hole Air Force is hardcore.

But have you seen the seventy-somethings who shred Tower 3 Chute?

BY BRIELLE SCHAEFFER AND MAGGIE THEODORA

76 The Rebirth of a Ski Hill

The first step—and the only one supported by most everyone—in the attempted revival of Snow King Mountain debuted this fall. Will it be enough, or are more changes to come?

BY BEN GRAHAM

64

BRADLY J. BONER

Page

P H O T O G A L L E RY

86 Subzero

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF DIENER

92 Lobos at Twenty

Wolves have restored wildness to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, but they’re still as controversial today as two decades ago.

BY TODD WILKINSON

ON THE COVER: “Normally when I see wolves, it is just in passing,” says Wapiti, Wyoming-based photographer Sandy Sisti. But in 2012, Sisti—whose images have been used by VIA, Outdoor Photographer, Defenders of Wildlife, and World Wildlife Fund—stumbled upon Yellowstone’s Canyon Pack when it had a kill near the road in Hayden Valley. “This was such a unique experience,” she says. Sisti watched the pack for six hours. “They’d eat, and then they would clean their faces on the snow, and then go into Alum Creek and drink,” she says. “As the day went on, you could tell they didn’t like to have people around. They eventually pulled the elk carcass way far back, and you couldn’t see it anymore.” Sisti isn’t sure what wolf this is but thinks it is 871M. See more of her work at wildatheartimages.com.

6

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

UNMATCHED EXPERIENCE EXCEPTIONAL RESULTS

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Charles M. Russell (1864–1926), Wild Horses (detail), watercolor on paper, 20 × 29 inches, Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000

Jackson Hole

Winter 2015

Page

Best of JH

20

Womentoring, Subarus, Teton County/Jackson Recreation Center, and Hula Hooping

28

PIQUED

JEFF DIENER

TETONSCAPES

115 Winter Camping,

Warm and Easy

JHMR’s yurt comes with a cook.

BY DINA MISHEV

120 Cold-Weather Casting

Fanatics fish on in winter.

BY KELSEY DAYTON

124 Après with Art

Get your culture on at the Third Thursday Art Walks.

BY CAROLINE MARKOWITZ

34 Meet the Locals

BODY & SOUL

Everything you need to know to get high

BY JEANNETTE BONER

NIGHTLIFE

about drinks.

DINING

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

ART SCENE

Some of our favorite winter stuff

Q&A

Missy Falcey, Tom Mangelsen, and Anna Gibson

ON THE JOB

Jamie Yount forecasts avalanches for WYDOT.

BY DINA MISHEV

BUSINESS

People die backcountry skiing every year, but the sport is still growing.

BY RACHEL WALKER

40 Let It Slide

44 Backcountry or Bust

DESIGN

50 Climb On

130 Altitude 101

134 Belly Up Jackson’s bars aren’t always just

BY MORGAN DINSDALE

138 The Epic(urean) Quest Stories make food even better.

Some home gyms here aren’t what you’d expect.

BY MOLLY ABSOLON

LOOKING BACK

BY ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

OUTDOORS

It’s not all downhill (skiing).

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

166 JACKSON HOLE MAPPED 168 CALENDAR OF EVENTS

108 Nordic Paradise

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Page

150 Pretty as a Picture

102 The Pass

10

GETTING OUT

Photography is fine art.

BY KATE HULL

AS THE HOLE DEEPENS 158 Jackson Hole Was Nicer

Before You Came Here

BY TIM SANDLIN

ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

JH Living

120

102

14-1314

13-1705

ART. BEAUTY. PROVENANCE. Representing the region’s most important properties.

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65 S. Main Street Driggs, ID 83422

Greetings from the Editor THIS YEAR, COMING off one of the best Indian summers in my eighteen years in the valley, I’m ready for winter. Last year, when it snowed in the high mountains the second week of September and never melted, I was physically and mentally unprepared. It was my first winter here that, around March, began to feel long. Writing now at the end of October, recovering from a hike up to the 11,000-some-foot Lower Saddle in Grand Teton National Park, as well as three days in a row of playing tennis—outside— I’m inviting Mother Nature to send us the biggest dump she’s got ... and keep it coming even into April if she wants.

Jackson summers are fabulous, but our winters are fairy tale, whether you’re a skier or not. Cocolove might make the thickest, creamiest hot chocolate in the world. In Grand Teton National Park, rent historic snowshoes and go on a guided tromp with a naturalist. Take a horse-drawn sleigh ride into a giant herd of elk. Wander along the main Cache Creek trail just outside of downtown and maybe you’ll spot a moose. Catch a performance of New York’s Metropolitan Opera—in HD—at our Center for the Arts. Eat one of the best sushi meals of your life inside a log cabin that was formerly a blacksmith’s studio. One small town isolated in the mountains of northwest Wyoming having all of

this almost makes Cinderella seem real.

If you’re a local, I hope this issue inspires you to make the most of your town. Better yet would be if it teaches you something new. Interested in building your own climbing gym at home? Have you ever thought about fly fishing in winter?

Maybe writer Kelsey Dayton can convince you to try (“ColdWeather Casting,” p. 120). Visiting? Turn immediately to “Altitude 101” (p. 130) for tips on how to best deal with the valley’s location at six thousand-some feet above sea level.

I hope everyone reads about the care that goes into the rustically elegant baked goods at Persephone Bakery Boulangerie & Cafe (“The Epic(urean) Quest,” p. 138). Enjoy your favorite treat there and then explore the area’s Nordic skiing (“Nordic Paradise,” p. 108), or wander through a gallery with fine art photography (“Pretty as a Picture,” p. 150). Take in our entire art scene on a Third Thursday Art Walk (“Après with Art,” p. 124) if your schedule allows.

Wolves have now been in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for twenty years after they were extirpated from the area early in the twentieth century. While the reintroduction of the species is every bit as emotionally charged, complex, and controversial today as it was in 1995, there’s no denying that wolves are again a part of the region’s tapestry. Todd Wilkinson takes a look back—and also forward—at wolves in “Lobos at Twenty” (p. 92). Whatever your stance on the issue of wolves, I hope you’ll enjoy this issue of the magazine. – DINA MISHEV

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

magazine

Jackson Hole

Winter 2015 // jacksonholemagazine.com

It’s snowing hard outside. What’s your favorite thing to do?

PUBLISHER

Kevin Olson

GET OUT IN IT!

EDITOR

Dina Mishev

Call in sick, ski powder, and medicate with blood orange margs at Spur Bar in the village.

(Kevin - blindfold)

ART DIRECTOR

Colleen Valenstein

Grab a bagel sandwich from Pearl Street and go searching for a safe line to ski in the park or on the pass.

PHOTO EDITOR

Bradly J. Boner COPY EDITOR

Stalk wapiti in the woods.

Pamela Periconi Drive to Dairy Queen for an Oreo brownie sundae.

Laps on the south

side of Teton Pass.

Wiener schnitzel, apfelstrudel, and a Blaufränkisch at Stiegler’s. Ski it off the next day.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Molly Absolon Julie Butler Morgan Dinsdale Ben Graham Caroline Markowitz Joohee Muromcew Brielle Schaeffer Maggie Theodora Rachel Walker

Jeannette Boner Kelsey Dayton Listen to the snow Clark Forster fall on a night skin Kate Hull up the King.

Kim Mills Tim Sandlin Joseph Shelton Angus M. Thuermer Jr. Todd Wilkinson Stand in line for

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Price Chambers Henry H. Holdsworth Sofia Jaramillo Sandy Sisti Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

Take the fat bike for a and the dogs session up Cache Creek.

Jeff Diener Daryl Hunter Jonathan Selkowitz David Stubbs Ashley Wilkerson

first tram and charge Rendezvous Bowl.

DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING

Adam Meyer ADVERTISING SALES

Deidre Norman

Practice yoga.

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT COORDINATOR

Oliver O’Connor AD DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Lydia Redzich Andy Edwards Sarah Grengg DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Snowboard! And then go for beers and a late lunch

at Snake River Brewery.

Amy Golightly DISTRIBUTION

Hank Smith Pat Brodnik Jeff Young Kyra Griffin OFFICE MANAGER

Kathleen Godines

© 2015 Jackson Hole magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. No responsibility will be assumed for unsolicited editorial contributions. Manuscripts or other material to be returned must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope adequate to return the material. Jackson Hole magazine is published semiannually. Send subscription requests to: Jackson Hole magazine, P.O. Box 7445, Jackson, Wyoming 83002. (307) 732-5900.

Email: dina@jhmagazine.com. Visit jacksonholemagazine.com.

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

13

Contributors FINE RUGS

Serving Jackson Hole Since 1990 Ben Graham (“The Rebirth of a Ski Hill,” p. 76) is a reporter for the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

When not covering health care and local political issues for the newspaper, he tries to spend as much time outside as possible with his wife, Alice, and his temperamental pup, Leroy, an undersized Bernese Mountain Dog. Ben moved to Jackson from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he wrote for the Kathmandu Post and other Nepali publications.

Rachel Walker’s (“Backcountry or Bust,” p. 44) first reporting job was the environmental beat at the Jackson Hole News. Now based in Boulder, Colorado, she has fifteen years of journalism experience that includes daily newspaper reporting, magazine editing, and freelance writing. Rachel’s articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, Backpacker, Skiing, babble.com, grist.org, and others. She visits Jackson as frequently as possible, often with her family in tow, and dreams of relocating to the valley.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Caroline Markowitz (“Après with Art,” p. 124) began blogging in 2012. Jackson Hole magazine is the first print publication she’s written for.

Before moving to the valley in 2014, she lived in San Francisco and New York City, working for the men’s e-commerce clothing company Bonobos and leading outreach efforts for Shelter, a documentary film chronicling the “design for good” movement.

In addition to writing, Caroline is the founder of the local granola company Born to Crunch and coaches lacrosse at Jackson Hole Elementary.

Jack Stout

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Teton scapes

business

PRICE CHAMBERS

Katharine Conover, left, was Melissa Turley’s mentor in the inaugural Womentoring class.

Leading Ladies Womentoring assists valley women in becoming leaders.

BY KIM MILLS

ELISABETH ROHRBACH, RENDEZVOUS Lands Conservancy’s managing park director, secured her first nonprofit leadership position before her thirtieth birthday. It was the first time she had been recruited to oversee an organization. It was also her first experience managing a flexible yet demanding schedule and negotiating the salary she wanted to earn. “We talked concretely about asking for whatever you feel you need,” Rohrbach says of a mentoring group she was involved with at the time she transitioned. “In addition to hearing success stories, I also felt like I had allies going forward. I felt like they were rooting for me.”

WOMENTORING LAUNCHED WITH eight mentor/mentee pairs. Today, sixteen mentor/ mentee pairs are chosen annually—the pro20

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

gram runs from September to May—through a competitive application and thoughtful matchmaking process. For the past three years, only about half of the applicants have received a slot. Womentoring’s alumna network, including mentees and mentors, now numbers nearly two hundred, many of whom keep in contact via periodic, small group dinners.

Each mentoring term starts with a group dinner where the mentor/mentee pairs are announced. Tanya Mark, a personal trainer, nutritionist, and massage therapist, felt “nervous and excited” that September night in 2007 when she discovered Shelley Simonton, the then-executive director of the Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project, was her mentor. Despite their differing careers, the two were a perfect match. “I found it supervaluable to have an outside perspective,” says Mark, who in 2011 founded her own wellness coaching business, Body Nourishment Wisdom. Mark and Simonton met regularly over tea, lunch, or a walk and “discussed salary negotiations, self-worth, and designing my work hours around what I wanted my life to be like,” Mark says.

WOMENTORING IS THE professional mentoring component of Womentum, a local nonprofit dedicated to empowering women.

Madelaine German, the soulful voice behind the band Maddy and the Groove Spots,

reached a point in her life where, “I knew I wanted more from both myself and my relationships,” she says. That’s when she applied to be a Womentoring mentee. “I wanted to be surrounded by women who were leading the kind of life I envisioned,” says German, who was in the class of 2014.

County Commissioner Melissa Turley was not only one of the founders of Womentum, but was also in the inaugural class of mentees. She had recently taken over the board presidency at Girls Actively Participating! and wanted to learn how to chair a nonprofit board.

Turley was paired with Katharine Conover, Community Foundation of Jackson Hole’s president. By the time her stint as a mentee was over, Turley had sharpened her management and budget skills, and also decided to run for public office. At Womentoring’s annual May wrap-up, Turley announced her candidacy for Town Council. “Wanting representation, but also knowing I was growing my network, helped me feel empowered,” she says.

When Turley was elected in 2006, she was the only woman out of the ten elected members of the Town Council and County Commission. Today, including Turley (a Teton County Commissioner since 2012), there are four women on these boards. Town Councilwoman Hailey Morton (since 2012) is also a Womentoring alumna. Beyond Turley and Morton, nearly one dozen Womentoring alumnae are civic leaders: Wyoming State Representative Ruth Ann Petroff, County Commissioners Barbara Allen and Smokey Rhea, and County Treasurer Donna Baur, to name a few. Approximately ten Womentoring alumnae hold executive director positions in local nonprofits, including Grand Teton National Park Foundation (Leslie Mattson), Latino Resource Center (Sonia Capece), and Teton Raptor Center (Amy McCarthy).

Alumnae also own local businesses. The Womentoring class of 2013 alone included two of them: While still mentees, Ali Cohane opened Persephone Bakery Boulangerie & Cafe, and Jessica Marlo founded Healthy Being Juicery. “To feel the overwhelming support and excitement from all the members of Womentum as we were opening the cafe was an incredible boost of confidence,” Cohane says. womentumwyo.org JH

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Teton scapes

culture

Subaru Nation In Jackson Hole, it’s easier to count cars that are not Subies.

THE YEAR WAS 1974. Around the country, everyone was going crazy for the Ford Pinto and the Plymouth Valiant. Here in Jackson Hole, we were getting our very first glimpse of a Subaru. Subaru ad campaigns at the time touted vinyl bucket seats that reclined to seventeen different positions and an electric rear-window defogger while saying, “It’s like a spirited woman yearning to be tamed.”

As racy as Subaru’s ads were, when “a Subaru rep came to Ray [Weeks] and wanted him to become a Subaru dealer, he was hesitant,” says his daughter-in-law, Lisa Murphy Weeks. “Nobody really knew what a Subaru was.”

The rep gave Weeks, who already had a car dealership in town, a Subaru, though, and told him to drive it. At the time, Ray, who died in 2001, and his wife, Coreen, lived up at Game Creek. “They could only access their house via a road that was little more than a horseback trail or a jeep road. It was very, very rough,” Murphy Weeks says. “The Subaru zipped up that and up the pass. Basically, Ray

BRADLY J. BONER

BY JULIE BUTLER

drove the sh-- out of it.” According to Coreen, Ray called the Subaru rep and said, “This car was made for this town.” “That is how Subaru came to the valley,” says Murphy Weeks.

Today, they seem to own the valley’s roads. In 2013, Outbacks, Foresters, and Crosstreks made up 62 percent of all car registrations here. If you look at Jackson Hole’s Subaru market compared to those across the rest of the country, between July 2013 and July 2014 only two (Juneau, Alaska, and The Dalles, Oregon) had higher Subaru registrations than us. In 2014, Subaru estimated Teton Motors, the valley’s Subaru dealership, would sell twenty-two Foresters. It sold sixtytwo. It also sold twice as many Outbacks as

Jessie Watsabaugh has owned the 1991 Legacy wagon Olivia Bolivia Banana Fernando Cologne since 2010.

Unnamed, white 2001 Outback, 228,300 miles; owner (since 2002), Reagan Warsinske “I have never named my Subaru, but she’s always been good to me,” says Warsinske, a mother of two boys, ages ten and twelve. “We’ve been together for 220,000-plus miles. She has taken me on many moves cross-country from Utah, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Washington, and back to Wyoming,” she says.

“She doesn’t like it when my husband drives her—he pushes her,” Warsinske says. “For a while, every time he drove her, the check-engine light would come on,” she says. “Also, he hit a snowbank and cracked the bumper. When we lived in Wisconsin he hit a raccoon on the same spot of the bumper that we never had fixed. I baby her. I want her to last.” The family has hauled everything in their Outback, from their sons to Christmas trees, bikes, skis, fishing poles, and paddleboards. “She’s the only car my boys have ever known,” Warsinske says.

Snowball Subie, blue 2006 Tribeca, 141,000 miles; owner (since 2008), Jenny Karns “I loved my first Subie [a silver 1984 wagon] and drove it till the bitter end,” says Karns, a lifelong valley resident. It was nearly twenty years old when it died. “One time I parked it on the Town Square. When I got back in, I went to put the key in the ignition and realized I was in the wrong vehicle!” she says. “I slinked out hoping nobody saw me and found mine a few doors down.”

When she went to sell her next Subaru, an Outback, and upgrade to the bigger Tribeca, the Outback was stolen. “This crazy guy had test-driven it and had a key made,” she says. “He drove it all over Yellowstone for a week, pretending to be a big-time wildlife photographer.”

A mother of three kids, Karns plans on driving Snowball as long as possible. “Between all my kids, all their gear and mine, it’s kind of like a clown car,” she says.

Subaru expected.

Many of us do seem to have special relationships with our Subies. Some name them.

Others creatively paint them. Many hold onto them for decades. “I love my Subaru!” says Reagan Warsinske. “I may need to enter some sort of support group.” Perhaps sitting next to her in that group would be Amber Payne Lewis, who has “WRX” tattooed on the inside of her lower lip. Now twenty-three, Lewis has had a Subaru WRX since she was sixteen. What is it about these cars? JH

Subie stories Olivia Bolivia Banana Fernando Cologne, 1991 multicolored Legacy, 200,140 miles; owner (since 2010), Jessie Watsabaugh “Depending on who you talk to, I may have the ‘worst’ car in Jackson,” Watsabaugh says of her Subie, which, by her estimation, has “probably twenty layers of paint on it.” Watsabaugh has been the primary artist, “but every now and then I have friends over, and we bust out some paint.” What have they painted? Flowers, pirate art, the Teton Range, and the eyes of Watsabaugh’s cat, Albus.

Oh, there’s finger painting, too.

Of the Subie’s inventive name, Banana Fernando comes from a dessert at one of Watsabaugh’s favorite Japanese restaurants in Salt Lake City. “The last name is an inside joke between me and two of my best friends,” she says.

“A number of years ago we started referring to ourselves as the ‘Colognes.’ We’re a family. The car is included.”

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

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Teton scapes

community

Teton County/Jackson Recreation Center

complete with couches and a foosball table— for parents and kids to hang out. An adjacent room doubles as a meeting space and a spot for cake eating and present-opening at pool birthday parties. “It’s really a multipurpose room,” Ashworth says. “We could use ten more of those, and I guarantee you they’d be full.” In the aquatic area, metal stingrays that hang from the ceiling between and above the various pools were designed, fabricated, and donated by Jackson sculptor Ben Roth. Julia Hibbert Wolf painted a mural of sea life— manatees and fish—on the walls pro bono.

The publicly funded center has a low barrier to entry. Membership and punch cards are priced affordably. Fitness classes are about one-third the cost of classes at private gyms and studios. “It’s a resource that folks who are really into it really love it,” Ashworth says.

So that all may play

PRICE CHAMBERS

BY BRIELLE SCHAEFFER

A CIRCLE OF silver-haired women bob in a lap pool during water aerobics while a ski bum hoards the jets in the nearby hot tub, soothing his muscles after a morning on the slopes. Towheaded two-year-olds pedal on pastel-colored tricycles in the gym where soccer enthusiasts play indoor tournaments.

Twenty-somethings race through the doors to make it on time to a ski fitness class while, in a communal conference room, a nonprofit board takes up court.

Welcome to the Teton County/Jackson Recreation Center. Last year, 34,000 people used the facility on East Gill Avenue. Some 2,400 people bought an annual membership and 160 purchased ten-visit punch cards.

Residents use the center most heavily in the winter; year-round, valley visitors make up nearly half of the center’s users. On rainy 24

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

At the Rec Center, kids have waterfalls and a slide. Adults get a hot tub and steam room.

and stormy days, the center gets close to capacity. “It’s well used and well loved,” says Steve Ashworth, Teton County/Jackson Parks & Recreation director. “We’re lucky we have it in a community our size.”

BUILT IN 1994, the rec center was one of the first projects in the county funded by a special 1 percent sales tax. “Basically, a citizen action group got together and did a feasibility study with the parks and rec board,” Ashworth says. “They got it on the ballot, and it passed quite overwhelmingly.”

Since then, the rec center has evolved with locals and also with locals’ help. The entryway has become a makeshift lounge—

THE CENTER’S SKI fitness classes are one of the biggest attractions in the winter with some seventy-five people taking advantage of the inexpensive rates to get in shape for the ski season. Rec center front desk clerk Ben Arlotta has taken the ski fitness classes himself and says they make a world of difference. Without them, he wouldn’t get his ski legs until well into January. “With ski fitness, I’m able to hit the first powder day all day long,” he says.

Indoor soccer is also a hit in the winter, especially among Jackson’s sizable Latino population, Arlotta says. “We’ll have upwards of forty-five or fifty people in the gym.”

There’s also indoor volleyball, basketball, and pickleball. Leagues and open gym times accommodate each interest.

The sauna, steam room, and hot tub in the aquatic center are always packed in the wintertime. “I’ve seen upwards of twenty-five people trying to use the hot tub at the same time,” Arlotta says. (It’s sized to perhaps accommodate ten people comfortably.) Early morning lap swimmers get their workouts in in the twenty-five-yard lap pool.

Others use the pool to practice their kayak rolls. Rendezvous River Sports leaves boats there for people to use throughout the season. Tykes with floaties splash around in the other pools or fly down the winding water slide. “You see so many different types of people here,” Arlotta says. “We’re creating human soup.” JH

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scapes

personalities

Jumping Through Hoops, Happily Ryan Mertaugh wants you to smile, whether by hula hooping yourself or seeing him.

BY JULIE BUTLER STANDING ATOP THE 13,775-foot Grand Teton at 11:30 a.m. early last August, the sun was out, warming Ryan Mertaugh and his girlfriend, Annie Tonoli. It was Mertaugh’s fourteenth time on the top of the highest peak in the Tetons. As usual, he was on the summit with a hula hoop twirling steadily around his waist. Tonoli, who stood across from him, had her own hoop spinning. This was business as usual for the couple: standing atop a mountain hula hooping.

But Mertaugh was about to deviate from business as usual. The twenty-eight-year-old let his hoop drop and handed his cellphone to a friend so that person could take photos. Mertaugh was about to propose to an unsuspecting Annie. “She was distracted with her hoop while I was getting into position to propose,” Mertaugh says. “It worked out perfectly.”

WHILE SEVERAL LOCAL couples get engaged atop Teton summits every summer, few couples do so while hula hooping. Mertaugh had a hula hoop as a child, but it wasn’t until he was a college student in Michigan that he got into hooping with a vengeance. He’d twirl one around his waist to and from classes, a two-mile route. The activity not only made him smile, but it also inspired smiles from people he encountered along the way.

“I have always been interested to try things that push my abilities to adapt to 26

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

changing environments,” Mertaugh says.

“This ‘urban hooping’ presented me with challenges, problems to solve, and friendly and amazing interactions with my fellow students.” It was during these commutes to and from class that he began thinking of the greater challenges—anything that pushed the limit of being able to maintain a consistent hoop while performing some sort of task or trick—one might devise for a hula hoop.

“How far can one run while hula hooping?” he asks. “How narrow of a knife-edge ridge can I walk across while hooping?”

Today, Mertaugh incorporates a hoop in almost all of his outdoor activities, from slacklining to trail running, skiing, biking, and mountain climbing. “Hoop-skiing [downhill] is a skill I’m still perfecting, and by ‘perfecting’ I really mean failing miserably at,” he says. “But someday I will figure it out. Until then, I’ll just have fun.” He has, however, successfully hoop-telemarked parts of Glory Bowl and the Middle Teton.

He has even brought hooping to his work.

An eighth-grade French teacher at Jackson Hole Middle School and a Spanish teacher at Summit High School, Mertaugh hopes to teach at least one French class this school year while the kids are hooping. “Physical activity has been proven to increase academic success. Why not apply physical activity by means of a hula hoop to a French lesson?” he asks. “It’s all about having fun and learning, and yes, these can be accomplished at

the same time.”

But it’s high-elevation hooping that has made Mertaugh a movie star. Kind of. Over the past two years, he has summited all eight major Teton Range peaks—Nez Perce, Cloudveil Dome, South Teton, Middle Teton, Grand Teton, Mt. Owen, Teewinot, and Moran —and, at the top, hula hooped in celebration of his success. On each summit, either Utah State University film major graduate Madison Pope Bayles or Mertaugh himself captured the scene on film.

Last August, Bayles and Mertaugh submitted the seven-minute film, Teton Hooping Contingency, to the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The short film doesn’t just capture Mertaugh’s summit hooping, but those are the best parts—showing his unmitigated joy upon reaching the top of a mountain and sharing his hoop (or hoops) with fellow climbers.

When climbing the Middle Teton, he spent the night prior in the Garnet Canyon Meadows, a popular camping spot. Mertaugh had brought seven or so hoops with him. “Everyone—artists from Burning Man, a solo first-time climber headed toward the southwest couloir of the Middle, and a couple headed up the Grand for a birthday climb—came together and hooped into the evening,” he says. “This was an incredible experience for me due to the atmosphere it created around the camp.”

The experience, of course, also created lots of smiles. JH

BRADLY J. BONER

Teton

Ryan Mertaugh twirls a hula hoop on the 12,804-foot summit of the Middle Teton.

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JH Living

1

Tasty energy snacks from large and small producers across the country? Sounds great! That won’t freeze in our ski packs? Even better! And shipped right to our front door? Where do we sign up? Meet The Feed Winter Sport Box. Several days after chatting with a Feed expert about your training objectives and your tastes, expect a customized box of energy-rich goodies to arrive at your home. Included will be a variety of mostly fruit-based bars and treats—oatbased bars often harden in cold weather—many of which you can’t find in stores around town. We loved the Taos Mountain bar and the Bearded Brothers energy bars. Starts at $45, including shipping, thefeed.com

2

Windproof underwear is so 2000. Fleece underwear is just gross. So how’s a winter athlete to prevent a frostbitten derriere? Valley women have been rocking down skirts for a couple of years now. (We particularly love them on the Glory bootpack when there’s a raging subzero tailwind.) Big Agnes’ new Zirkel Circle Skirt is the best one yet: wraparound, just-above-the-knee, stuffed with 700-fill DownTek™ water-repellent down, and with a wind- and waterproof ripstop nylon shell. Are any men man enough to go for one? And yes, the Zirkel comes in a color other than fuchsia: black. $130, bigagnes.com

3

Whether you’re wondering what ski to check out first at Jackson Hole Sports’ Rossignol Experience Center or looking to buy the single perfect ski for our resort, we humbly offer up Rossi’s playful Experience 88. This ski is exceptionally versatile, quick and responsive in short turns and bumps, and, while it’s too narrow for serious float in powder, it loves the chop. $700, 7720 Granite Loop Rd., Teton Village, 307/739-2687, rossignol.com

4

Shaped skis were a nice innovation. Kahtoola’s Microspikes might be the greatest thing to ever happen to snow travel. These minicrampons, which are small enough to fit in your pocket until they’re needed, have no special straps or laces. Just slip them over most any shoe or boot. Once on, they stick to snowy sidewalks, as well as Cache Creek and Snow King’s sometimes-icy trails. They really might be the best thing ever. $64.95, kahtoola.com

5

You won’t say it, so we will: Chest harnesses and helmet mounts for your GoPro (or other POV camera) generally suck. Thank Ullr for Peak Design’s CapturePRO, which lets you mount any action camera, or point-and-shoot camera, directly onto any strap or belt—from backpack straps to PFD straps and even straps on ski boots. There’s no sticky adhesive, helmet, or screws necessary.

The end result? Smoother video and less bulk.

And less suck. $70, at Teton Mountaineering and peakdesignltd.com

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5

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

JACKSON HOLE

YELLOWSTONE CLUB

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Our Discovery Package starts at $449 per night and includes accommodations, on-site ice skating and a sleigh ride for two.* CALL 208.354.1888 TO LEARN MORE.

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Profits from Huntsman Springs will be contributed to the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

JH Living

6

Last fall, longtime area ski guide Tom Turiano came out with Jackson Hole Backcountry Skier’s Guide: South. The four-hundred-plus-page tome far exceeds any ski guide, perhaps ever written anywhere. Seriously. It includes over 1,000 ski routes in the Snake River Range, the northwestern Wind Rivers, the Gros Ventres, the Wyoming Range, the Salt River Range, and the southern half of Teton Pass. Because Turiano, who skis upwards of one hundred days a year, seems as obsessed with history and geology as with skiing, even nonskiers will find the book interesting. Woven through it all is Turiano’s dry, matter-of-fact humor. At twice the price, it’s still a bargain. $95, available online and at local book and backcountry ski shops, selectpeaks.com

7

Jackson-based Stio is behind both our favorite new base layer and the season’s best fashion puffy. We thought base layers were as awesome as they could be until we tried Stio’s new Basis Stretch Merino Crew. Available in men’s and women’s, the only thing more perfect than its fit and feel is its marriage of soft, wicking wool with stretch. Now that we’ve tried a stretchy base layer, we’ll never go back.

We will wear a layer over it, though, at least if it’s Stio’s Hometown Down Parka (men get the Hometown Down Jacket). Yes, it’s stuffed with 650-fill, water-repellent goose down but its best feature in our opinion? The cheery pesto color. $115, $325, 10 E. Broadway, 307/201-1890, stio.com

8

Binoculars you’ll pass down to the next generation? Yes, if they’re made by Lander-based Maven. The new company’s B Series impresses with superior low-light performance, tack-sharp edge-to-edge clarity, and generous depth of field. They stand up to the most expensive binoculars in the world, except in price. By selling directly to consumers, Maven specs are a fraction of the price of their competitors. Our favorite? The B.3, for its midsize optics packed into a chassis compact enough to easily fit into even our smallest daypack. Maven also allows customization—pick the body and one dozen other elements—so you can build your perfect binoculars.

Starting at $500, mavenbuilt.com

9

Of course the new(ish) Teton Gravity Research (TGR) store sells a boot and binding system for the most hardcharging après-skiers around. Meet the Shotzski: a clear, PETG plastic boot that can hold 3.5 ounces of your chosen libation and attaches to a releasable binding (so you can remove the boots and put them in the dishwasher) made from a nylon and plastic compound. Installation of the bindings—sold in sets of four, ski not included—onto one of your old boards requires eight screws and less than an hour. $79.95, 1260 North West St., Wilson, 307/734-8192, tetongravity.com

10

We thought we’d sooner see a unicorn than meet a nonslip winter boot that doesn’t look combat-ready. Swedish Icebug has done it, though. The Diana-L BUGrip® has a suede upper with a full-length zipper and laces for fashion and function. These waterproof and breathable boots hide their best feature on the bottom, however: Soles are lugged and dotted with carbide-tipped studs. $195, icebug.com

piqued 6

JACKSON HOLE

BACKCOUNTRY SKIER’S GUIDE: SOUTH • Snake River Canyon • Caribou Range Teton Pass South • Snake River Core • Palisades Gap • Upper Hoback River • Hoback Canyon Salt Rivers West • Greys River • McDougal Green River • Buttes and Foothills Gros Ventre South • Cache Creek • Upper

BACKCOUNTRY SKIER’S GUIDE: SOUTH

JACKSON HOLE

Thomas Turiano

Thomas Turiano

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

INSPIRED BY THE NATURAL WORLD. INFORMED BY THE REST OF IT.

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JH Living

Missy Falcey “IF YOU CAN learn to know what the things are that fill you up, Jackson presents an opportunity to experience almost anything,” says sixty-three-year-old Missy Falcey.

After fifteen years as its executive director, Falcey retired from the Teton County Library Foundation in January 2014. She “spent four months really trying to learn to be quiet” and also getting out and enjoying Jackson, she says. And then Falcey, who from the mid-’70s through the early ’90s lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (and was a guest at Jerry Garcia’s wedding!), got even more involved in the community than she had been.

Today she teaches yoga and a men’s-only balance and flexibility class, volunteers mediating disputes in small claims court, is part of a collaborative project looking at water quality in Fish Creek, and is a newly appointed member of the Town of Jackson Planning Commission. “One of the reasons I appreciate Jackson so much is that everything is so accessible. An individual can really feel like they’re helping to shape the community,” she says.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Q: What was it about this community that first grabbed you?

A: Moving here and going almost right to work raising money to build a new library—the library was still in a log cabin in downtown then—showed me how much the community is rooted in philanthropy. That really distinguished, and still distinguishes, Jackson.

Q: Why did you move here?

A: We were living in Marin County [California], and my husband at the

time really wanted to move to Wyoming.

He came out by himself and optioned a ranch you had to go through the Wind River Indian Reservation to get to.

Q: But that’s about one hundred miles from Jackson.

A: Right. That ranch didn’t work for me or our two girls. We’re talking about a family used to life in Marin. Driving back to the Jackson airport, we decided to stop in Jackson. We pulled up to the Town Square. It was April and town was dead, but it looked like a place we could try.

Q: What’s it like running a stretching class for guys?

A: Fantastic! It attracts very, very fit guys who are generally muscle-bound from backcountry skiing and mountain biking, and are coming to terms with their inflexibility.

Q: Has Jackson changed you?

A: I’m not a different person, but I do have a very different life than I did in Marin. Jackson has allowed me to discover and express parts of myself that never would have been tapped in Marin.

Jackson nourished needs I have for the outdoors and living in a small town.

Q: What’s the common ground beneath the different groups and projects you’re involved with?

A: I’m protective of this community, not in a pull-up-the-ladder kind of way but of making a community that serves the people that are here today.

Q: You’re an avid fly fisherwoman and were on the winning team at the 2009 One Fly Competition. What does fishing do for you?

A: For me, fishing is about standing in a river with water all around you. That’s my place. Like yoga, it’s an incredibly meditative experience. Sounds pretty woo-woo, I know.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’m not a very good five-year plan kind of person. I’ve just been so fortunate to be in places and situations where interesting, rich opportunities have presented themselves. I’m pretty sure I’m done moving, though. I can’t imagine where I would go after living in two of the most magical places in the country.

INTERVIEW BY DINA MISHEV

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

35

locals

BRADLY J. BONER

JH Living

Tom Mangelsen YOU’VE ALMOST CERTAINLY seen Tom Mangelsen’s work even if you don’t know his name. Mangelsen is one of the most prolific wildlife photographers working today.

His image, Catch of the Day—a sockeye salmon leaping into the waiting jaws of an Alaskan brown bear—has been reprinted thousands of times. It, along with dozens of other Mangelsen photos, is sold at Mangelsen’s Images of Nature Gallery, which has eight locations across the country, including here in Jackson on North Cache St., and also Park City, Utah; La Jolla, California; and Denver, Colorado. Beyond bears in Alaska, Mangelsen has photographed sandhill and whooping cranes in Platte River, Nebraska, bull moose in Denali, and polar bears on the Hudson Bay’s mud flats, and his images have appeared in National Geographic magazine, at the Smithsonian, and in The New York Times. His eleventh book, The Last Great Wild Places: Forty Years of Wildlife Photography by Thomas D. Mangelsen, came out this fall. Jane Goodall, who Mangelsen has worked with on several occasions, wrote the introduction.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Q: Favorite local places to shoot?

A: Oxbow Bend, Gros Ventre River, and Snake River Canyon. They’ve got scenic value and an abundance of wildlife, including in the winter.

Q: What about further afield?

A: The Serengeti in Tanzania is my favorite, also Antarctica and South Georgia Island, Hudson Bay, Alaska, and India.

Q: Ever had any close encounters?

A: A grizzly bear surprised me while I was taking a bath in Igloo Creek in Denali National Park, then stalked me as I slowly retreated buck naked.

Fortunately he paused to eat my soap as I snuck away.

Q: That’s exciting. What about boredom? We imagine you’ve got to wait for a lot of shots.

A: I don’t like dwelling on time being wasted. Those times are part of the bigger picture—learning experiences that eventually add to capturing moments I wouldn’t have gotten without all those hours of observation.

Q: Any examples of waiting it out?

A: In 1999 a family of mountain lions— a mother and three kittens—showed up in a cave on the National Elk Refuge. I spent forty-two days trying to capture a few good images of them.

Q: And? A: The images illustrate a book and film, written by Cara Blessley Lowe, called Spirit of the Rockies.

Q: Those forty-two days led to more than a book and movie, though, right?

A: As Cara and I learned more about the atrocities of sport hunting cougars, we founded the Cougar Fund in 2000.

Q: And cougars were one of the species that you never thought you’d get a chance to photograph, right?

A: Yes. Ninety-nine percent of cougar photos are of game farm animals, and I refuse to use game farm animals.

Q: Why? A: Game farms are places where wild animals are kept and often bred in captivity. Animals at these farms exist for only one reason: to be used as “models.”

Cages are far too small for animals’ health and welfare, and the animals are often shipped by semi trucks across the country. It is cruel and inhumane. The images are often passed off as real moments. Game farms have harmed animals and the profession.

Q: Legend has it you used to be a hell of a bird caller. True?

A: I was twice the “World Goose-Calling Champion.” Every once in a while I’ll get together with old hunting buddies, and we will call ducks or geese sitting at the kitchen table over a beer. I still have it— like riding a bike.

INTERVIEW BY JOSEPH SHELTON

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

37

locals

BRADLY J. BONER

JH Living

Anna Gibson WHEN ANNA GIBSON started high school in fall 2013, she had no idea the success that would soon come her way. Late that September, the then-fourteen-year-old won her first varsity cross-country meet—which was also her first cross-country race. The rest of the season, she finished out of first place only once (she was third). She ended as the girls’ 3A Wyoming Cross-Country State Champion. Gatorade named her the state’s best female runner. That winter, Gibson, previously only an alpine ski racer, decided she’d compete on the Nordic ski team. “I thought it’d be a good way to stay in shape for cross-country,” she says. By that season’s end, she had another individual state title, 5-kilometer 3A Wyoming Nordic Ski State Champion, on her resume. (She also had a team title, helping lead the Broncs to their ninth overall state championship.) Still, Gibson wasn’t ready to relax.

Come spring, she ran on the track and field team, winning a regional title in the 1,600 meters (5:13.96). Through it all, she managed a 4.0 GPA. We actually managed to get her to sit still long enough for a short interview.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Q: Are you competitive in all areas of your life?

A: I’m competitive with myself with almost everything I do. I always want to be better in all areas of my life.

Sometimes my friends that are involved in the same sports get competitive, too; we’ll start comparing test scores or other things that we all did. I think this is good for all of us—we’re all pushed to work harder.

Q: Did you start your freshman year with any grand athletic goals?

A: No. It wasn’t until halfway through the cross-country season that my coach started telling me, “You can do this.

Start training really hard.” At the beginning of Nordic I didn’t know at all how I would do relative to everyone else. I just knew I liked skiing.

Jackson Wyoming Real Estate

Q: What do you feel sports have done for you?

A: I love the identity running gives me.

I love being surrounded by a group of varsity athletes who are motivated to be the best they can be. Sports are not only good for physical health but also for mental health. They’ve also taught me to manage my time and made me well-rounded.

Q: Your name was in the newspaper almost every week for winning some race. Do you keep those articles?

A: I cut them all out and hang them on my wall. I see them and use that as motivation to go race hard again.

live where you love

Q: Was there any one you hated?

A: No. Being in the paper is always an honor. Seeing my name in the black print alongside my teammates each time makes me excited.

Q: What’s your training schedule like?

A: I train almost every day. I switch between Nordic and cross-country. I’ll take a little break between the seasons just to mentally stay ready and not get hurt, too.

Q: What does a “break” look like for you?

A: It’s usually between one and two weeks. During that time I get ahead with my schoolwork.

Q: Goals for the next three years?

A: I want to keep having fun, obviously.

Hopefully I’ll have more state titles in Nordic and cross-country and hopefully track. I also want to start to race nationally a little bit more than I did this year.

Q: What about outside of sports?

A: Grades are really important to me, and I work on homework the majority of the time that I’m not at practice or a race. This doesn’t leave time for much else, and I have found that this is totally fine with me. Sports are my social life.

Making awesome friends comes easily when you go through so much training and racing and time together. It’s hard not to love my teammates.

INTERVIEW BY CLARK FORSTER

JacksonListings.com WilsonListings.com TetonVillageListings.com Broker/Owner

Representing Buyers and Sellers in Jackson Hole since 1989 Teri@TeriMcCarthy.com 307.690.6906

www.JacksonWyomingRealEstate.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JH Living

on the job

Let It Slide As avalanche forecaster for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, Jamie Yount’s job is to predict when and where avalanches will happen ... and then trigger them.

BY DINA MISHEV PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

For his job as Wyoming Department of Transportation avalanche forecaster, Jamie Yount tosses explosive charges from a helicopter to trigger avalanches before they naturally release and potentially injure motorists on roads below.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

“TO LIVE UP at 10,000 feet year-round and, for six months, to pendent job. If it’s storming, we’re superbusy; if it’s not, we get blow up. That’s a hard life,” says Jamie Yount, avalanche fore- caught up,” Yount says. caster for the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT). When Yount says “blow up,” he’s being absolutely SITTING DOWN WITH Yount in his sparse, dusty office off literal. He’s describing the life of the four GAZEX (pronounced the hallway leading out to the equipment/maintenance area in gaz-ex) exploder systems near the top of Glory Bowl and Twin Jackson’s WYDOT administrative building last March, a week Slides, themselves above the final switchback of Wyoming or so after his forty-day stretch ended, he was at the tail end of Highway 22 as it climbs to the summit of Teton Pass. Yount and a brutal cold. “I got sick right after the storms ended,” he says.

WYDOT fire the propane- and oxygen-fueled Teton Pass “My body was worn out and beat down and finally gave up.”

GAZEXes dozens and dozens of times every winter, creating Over those forty days Yount and twenty-some other WYDOT what Yount calls “a pretty big bang.” A powerful air blast roars employees from mechanics to maintenance men, foremen, avout of a high-strength steel pipe overhanging the slope. The alanche control specialists, and engineers worked “lots of early idea is to trigger an avalanche before one rips loose on its own. morning hours and lots of late nights,” Yount says.

“The shock wave sent out by this attenuates through the snow,” On a storm day, Yount is often found in his offing poring Yount explains. “We almost always get snow to move. We might not trigger a big slide, but I’m confident that any instability in the snowpack, it gets it out of there.”

A hard life indeed. Until you compare it with Yount’s own winter stresses. “My worst nightmare is having a natural or skier-triggered avalanche on Teton Pass come to the road and having it get a car,” he says.

Across the country, avalanche forecasting is a fairly niche field. “It’s a pretty small community of people who do what I do,” says Yount, thirty-six. “I know the entire community in the U.S.” Most state Departments of Transportation do not require the services of an avalanche forecaster.

And not all states that do avalanche control use military artillery. “There are eighteen programs in the country that use artillery for avy control,” Yount says. WYDOT is one of them The GAZEX system above Teton Pass uses air blasts to trigger avalanches in two of the most and all use the same weapon, a slide-prone areas, Twin Slides and Glory Bowl. A newer model was installed and used in Hoback M101A1 105mm Howitzer. Each of Canyon last winter. the eighteen is a member of Avalanche Artillery Users Of North America, of which Yount over weather reports and his own notes by 6 a.m. An avid backcurrently is chair. Seven of the eighteen are Departments of country skier himself, Yount actually needs to ski laps on Glory Transportation; the other eleven are ski areas. for work. “Sometimes it gets too busy for me to hike to the top, Yount doesn’t say this outright, but his job truly is a matter but it’s important I at least get to the study plot several times a of life and death. Daily, an estimated five thousand cars travel week,” he says. “If conditions are changing, that’s when it’s Teton Pass (Hwy 22), one of the three major avalanche areas most important to get out there and see what’s really happenthat fall under the purview of WYDOT District 3’s Jackson of- ing. Weather reports and the reports we get from the study plot fice. The other two zones are the Snake River Canyon (U.S. being automated—I can see the amount of and the moisture 26/89) and the Hoback River Canyon (U.S. 191/189). Teton content of new snow from my office—are great, but you learn Pass gets the most attention from the public, but together, so much more if you’re out there.” these two canyons have enough avalanche paths that photo“I spend an hour or two on the computer looking at the copies of photographs of them fill a three-ring binder, which weather and using my own knowledge to make an avalanche sits—its pages crinkled from age and study—in Yount’s office. forecast,” he says. “I decide if we need to take action [do control The three main avalanche zones are the reason that, last work] and then we try to get a press release out up to twelve January and February, with winter storm after winter storm hours in advance.” Yount explains WYDOT tries to do control stacked up—dumping rain and snow on the valley floor and work in the wee hours of the morning. An hour’s closure of fifteen feet at the top of Teton Pass—Yount, along with most Teton Pass during the day is estimated to cause between $8,000 everyone else on WYDOT’s snow removal staff, worked forty and $10,000 of economic loss. “We take that pretty seriously,” days in a row. “I don’t really have a schedule. It’s a weather-de- Yount says. Then there’s also the skier factor. Glory Bowl sees WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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an estimated 80,000 runs by skiers and snowboarders every winter. Unlike ski areas with lifts, Glory Bowl has no operating hours. Recreationalists have access to Teton Pass twenty-four hours a day. It seems there are only a handful of hours of every day there isn’t a car in the parking lot at the top. “People ski up there from before daylight to well after dark,” Yount says. “The skiing and the access are so good. It makes it more challenging for us, but who can blame them for wanting to go up there and ski, though?”

When it comes time to fire the artillery or GAZEXes, metal gates go down on both sides of Teton Pass and no cars can get through. The gates stay down until any slide debris they triggered is cleaned up off the road. The idea is to have the gates up in time for the morning commute. “I love days when I have time to actually ski,” Yount says, “but I like avy control days, too. It’s crazy busy.

I don’t like forty days in a row of it, but it is exciting.”

THE HOBACK AND Snake River canyons don’t have the skier issues Teton Pass does, but they have difficulties of their own. The terrain in the Hoback Canyon is so rough and gnarly Yount can’t get a firsthand look at the snowpack. “It’s not like Glory. I’ve never 42

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

been up the paths in the Hoback in the wintertime, and I will never go,” Yount says. “Instead, I go to little test slopes and try to guess from those what’s going on thousands of feet higher up.”

Then, the canyon is so narrow and the slide paths above so steep, “almost any sort of small avalanche will make it to the road,” Yount says. Finally, there are no road closure gates in the Hoback Canyon, so there needs to be additional staff to stop cars.

Yount says he feels Glory Bowl is the slide path “we have the best handle on.”

Cow in the Woods in Hoback Canyon “gives me so much trouble and so much heartburn. That’s the one I spend a lot of time thinking about. You can’t call them all right all the time. I hate things that get away from me, but it happens and that’s this business.”

Comparing the avalanche danger WYDOT tries to mitigate to those of other programs in the country, Yount says: “Our avalanche problem is not nearly as severe as Little Cottonwood Canyon [Utah] or Red Mountain Pass in Colorado. Red Mountain is probably the most dangerous road in the country, but it has few cars traveling on it. We don’t have the biggest avalanche problem, but average about 5,000 cars a day on Teton Pass. That’s significant.”

Skiing Glory Bowl is one of Yount’s favorite parts of being an avalanche forecaster.

AS YOUNT WAS growing up in Bozeman, Montana, his father was director of Bridger Bowl Ski Area’s ski patrol. “Through exposure to that, I got to know guys at the avy center in Bozeman,” Yount says. “From a young age, I thought theirs was the coolest job ever. It was a long-term goal of mine to become one myself.” Yount graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in meteorology in 2002. “Being able to forecast is a big part of what I do,” he says.

WYDOT has a long history of doing avalanche control on Teton Pass, but when he was hired in 2002, Yount was the first dedicated avalanche forecaster in the department. “Before I came on, they would take someone who was an engineer or in maintenance and have him learn about avalanches,” Yount says.

“With me, it was, ‘Let’s hire him as an avy guy and teach him to also be a WYDOT guy’ rather than the opposite.

It certainly was a good program before I came along, but I like to think I’ve tightened things up a little bit and brought a different perspective. There certainly weren’t any WYDOT guys skiing Glory before I came along. It’s one of my favorite parts of the job.” JH

JH Living

business

Thanks to equipment advances and changes in resort policy, the backcountry is now more accessible than ever— but at what risk?

BY RACHEL WALKER

WHEN ANDY OLPIN opened Wilson Backcountry Sports in 1993, no one skied Mount Glory in the middle of winter. They waited until spring, after days of sun and freezing nights shellacked the snow onto the steep and open bowl that looms high above Jackson Hole. Only then did skiers hike the 1,655 vertical feet to Glory’s summit, carving turns through spring corn snow and avoiding the furious avalanches that often rip down the mountain midwinter.

Fast-forward twenty-two years, and Olpin’s business has boomed—though he won’t say by how much. Suffice it to say that he’s managed to turn a consistent profit, despite increased competition, both locally and online. Bindings and boots do particularly well for the backcountry-skiing-specific shop at the base of Teton Pass. And recently, more backcountry travelers are stopping in to check out Olpin’s array of backpack airbags—packs with inflatable airbags wearers can deploy in the case of an avalanche. The idea is that the airbags keep wearers on top of a slide. In the last several years, these bags have saved the lives of several skiers and riders 44

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

BRADLY J. BONER

Backcountry or Bust swept away in a backcountry user’s worst nightmare: an avalanche.

It’s no surprise that the packs are becoming widely adopted. Unlike two decades ago, today Glory’s slopes are busy with skiers from almost the day the first snow falls in November. The skin tracks leading south of Teton Pass to bowls with names like Telemark and Edelweiss resemble rush hour on most winter weekend mornings. And popular peaks in Grand Teton National Park—once the purview of only hardy and wizened ski mountaineers—rarely offer the midwinter solitude they once did. The masses have discovered the backcountry, and their enthusiasm seems to have no limits, judging by the lucrative winter backcountry gear industry and anecdotal evidence. This isn’t just limited to Wyoming, either.

Throughout ski country, more people, drawn by the promise of adventure, freedom, and fresh snow, are buying gear specific to backcountry skiing.

At first blush, it’s an invigorating trend, one that couples several American ideals: adventure in the wilderness, self-reliance, and fitness. Yet in recent years, winter backcountry avalanche deaths have spiked, highlighting the sport’s risks that are often overlooked (or not even understood) by in-

Exum Mountain Guide Zahan Billimoria leads a group to the 10,552-foot summit of Albright Peak in Grand Teton National Park.

experienced backcountry travelers.

Given that the trend in backcountry skiing and snowboarding shows no signs of subsiding—which is great for business—gear manufacturers, retailers, professional athletes, and avalanche educators want to know: How can we continue to turn a profit and grow and help keep our consumers alive?

FOR MOST PEOPLE, skiing is synonymous with riding a chairlift or gondola up a mountain, and then sliding downhill on snow. The gear is straightforward: stiff, plastic boots that lock into bindings screwed onto skis, or softer snowboard boots locked into bindings screwed onto a snowboard. What’s constant is the fact that your feet are affixed to your board of choice, and the bindings don’t separate from the boards, except in the most severe of accidents.

It’s different for backcountry travel.

Because backcountry skiing and riding usually means getting yourself up the mountain, as well as down, the gear has evolved to make uphill travel easy.

Backcountry skis are mounted with special bindings that release the heel and

THIS GEAR ISN’T cheap. Bindings can run upwards of $400, with backcountryspecific boots and skis costing around $600 to $800 each. Splitboards range between $600 and $1,000, and boots average about $350. Skins for skis or splitboards cost nearly $200. In addition, winter backcountry travelers carry avalanche transceivers ($200-$400), shovels with collapsible handles (in order to dig out buried avalanche victims; $3046

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

$100), a probe to find bodies buried beneath the snow ($30-$100), and special backpacks tricked out with insulated hydration compartments and straps to carry skis or a snowboard. If you want an airbag pack, they cost roughly $1,000, although less-expensive models are apt to hit the market this season or next.

That’s money well spent since the backcountry carries a significant number of risks—the primary one being avalanches, says Dave Furman, hardgoods manager at Mammut, a high-end climbing and skiing apparel and gear company. “An airbag is not so much a rescue tool as it is a burial prevention tool,” he

More, the backcountry was the realm of seasoned mountaineers, athletes who were climbers as much as they were skiers, who didn’t mind slogging uphill for hours in the name of one lap of pristine powder. Some of those pioneers are familiar names in and around Jackson: Bill Briggs, who was the first person to ski the Grand Teton; Doug Coombs, the late freeskiing pioneer; Tom Turiano, author of several backcountry guides that cover the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem; and scores more.

All of that changed around the turn of the twenty-first century when ski resorts stopped punishing those who by-

COURTESY ABS

make for easy climbing. Known as Alpine Touring (AT) bindings, they’re lightweight and can be locked down at the top of the climb so they act like a traditional downhill binding. (There are also telemark bindings, which never lock down at the heel and require a different skiing technique.) To climb, skiers use “skins,” carpet-like strips that glue on one side to the ski’s base. The skins glide uphill, but have traction to keep skiers from sliding backwards and downhill.

Skiers also use adjustable-length poles— again, to help with climbing. Snowboarders often rely on a splitboard, which is a snowboard that can come apart and has flexible bindings to facilitate climbing.

None of this is new. For as long as there’s been backcountry skiing and snowboarding, there has been this specialized gear. What is new is that today’s backcountry gear is as technologically advanced as the boards you’d use inbounds. Skis and snowboards sport the latest features—rockered tips and tails, parabolic shapes, and powder-specific fat shovels and waists—with a fraction of the weight of traditional gear. Today’s backcountry boots are an engineering accomplishment. They can be made flexible for climbing, and then can be locked down for stiffness that rivals some of the best traditional boots on the market.

“Binding and boot technology has been at the forefront of the growth of the sport,” says Eric Henderson, marketing director at Salewa North America, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, and distributes Dynafit backcountryspecific gear, including bindings, boots, skis, packs, and probes. “We’re giving the tools to the more modern, youthful skier so they have just as much fun in the backcountry as they do in the resort, creating something that works for all mountains and all elevations.”

Currently, airbag packs—designed to keep skiers on top of an avalanche—cost about $1,000.

Relatively new technology, less-expensive models should be available in the future.

says. “It’s what helps, hopefully, avoid having to perform a rescue at all.”

The high costs haven’t kept consumers away. According to SnowSports Industries America, alpine touring equipment sales increased 8 percent in 2013 over previous years. Sales of backcountry boots tallied $37 million last season, up 27 percent from previous years.

GEAR INNOVATION IS largely responsible for the increased number of backcountry skiers, says Steve Jones, cofounder of Teton Gravity Research (TGR), an extreme ski film production company based in Jackson Hole. In 1996, when TGR first started, the backcountry-specific gear hardly resembled what exists today, says Jones. “It was a lot clunkier and heavier.”

passed boundary ropes and headed into the backcountry. In 1999, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort was one of the first resorts in North America to open its boundaries, reversing a decades-long policy of confiscating the passes of renegades caught ducking ropes.

Suddenly skiers had easy access to expansive bowls, boot- to knee-deep powder, and awe-inspiring terrain that had previously been reserved for the few willing to risk it. “For anyone who gets into skiing, it’s about freedom, and taking it into the backcountry is a continuation and a whole other level of that sense of freedom and discovery and exploration,” says Jones. “There’s also a lot more people in the world now, so it’s harder to find that solitude at ski resorts. You’re more corralled than you used to be.”

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Courtney B. Campbell Responsible Broker Owner 307-690-5127

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Associate Broker Owner 307-690-9133

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Associate Broker Owner 307-413-8899

Associate Broker Managing Owner 307-690-4339

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140 North Cache Street, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 307-733-4339 or 800-227-3334 www.brokersofjacksonhole.com

BRADLY J. BONER

OVER THE LAST ten winters an average of twenty-eight people, inStudents of an Exum cluding both skiers and Mountain Guides snowmobilers, died in avAvalanche Level I course alanches every year in the learn how to identify weak United States, according and strong layers of snow in a snow pit during a to the Colorado Avalanche multiday class. Students Information Center, also learn how to properly which helps to collect acuse their backcountry cident reports and maingear—particularly their avalanche shovels and tains the national avaprobes—and to identify lanche database (available potential avalanche terrain. at avalanche.org). While avalanches cannot necessarily be prevented, skiers and snow- the boundaries at Stevens Pass in safety. But a new project called Project boarders must educate themselves about Washington and were caught in an ava- Zero, launched in 2013 by the American snow stability before heading out, says lanche. Three in the party were killed, and Institute for Avalanche Research and Sarah Carpenter, co-owner of the two others were partially buried. This av- Education, aims to reduce the number American Avalanche Institute (AAI), alanche received widespread media atten- of avalanche fatalities in the U.S. to zero which is based in Victor, Idaho. tion, in part because of the skill and expe- by 2025. Featuring a consortium of gear “If you go into the backcountry rience of the group, with experts and manufacturers, avalanche educators, without taking an avalanche course, you journalists asking how individuals who professional athletes, and more, the iniare putting yourself into high-conse- had skied all over the world could have tiative seeks to script a consistent avaquence situations without the knowl- made the mistakes that landed a large lanche awareness message that will be edge of how to make a good decision,” group on a risky slope in high avalanche delivered via a hangtag on every piece of she says. conditions. (The New York Times received backcountry gear sold.

In addition to Carpenter’s organiza- a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage.)

The goal of the endeavor is not to tion, avalanche courses are offered scare people away from the backcountry. around Jackson Hole throughout the THAT ACCIDENT, ALONG with other Rather, says Dynafit’s Henderson, it’s to winter. One of the most popular schools high-profile avalanche deaths, some in educate recreationists and encourage is the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Jackson Hole, also focused the spotlight them to take more in-depth snow-safety Institute (JHOLI), which offers a basic on the snow sports industry and prompt- courses. In Jackson Hole, such courses avalanche awareness class and more ed executives to do some soul-searching. are offered by Exum, Jackson Hole rigorous avalanche Level 1 and 2 cours- What responsibility, if any, did they—the Mountain Guides, AAI, and JHOLI. es. About one-third of the participants purveyors of the gear that’s helping so “It can be really, really fun to ski the come from out of town and the rest live many people reach the backcountry— backcountry,” says Henderson. “People in Jackson Hole. The most common have to their consumers? The unanimous move to Jackson Hole for a reason. As a characteristic of students is a mental answer seems to be “a lot.” company and as an industry we are very disconnect between their skiing ability Of course, individuals must take aware of the risk and are attempting to and backcountry risks. personal responsibility for their own unify the messaging around that. We “Skiing in avalanche terwant to take a step backward rain in its natural setting is not and encourage people to learn the same sport as downhill skithe wave before they surf it. ing,” says Jake Urban, co-ownDon’t push their limits but, er of the institute. “Ultimately rather, enjoy the art of skiing.” there is a disconnect because “Go out and get educated,” INTERESTED IN LEARNING more about the Jackson Hole backcountry? In there are individuals who have says Jones. “Take a course, addition to taking an avalanche education course, skiers and snowbeen skiing their whole life on learn about terrain and terrain boarders can also get tours of the valley’s backcountry with the followterrain that’s been mitigated traps.

A lot of safe backcouning guide services: Exum Mountain Guides offers guided backcountry skiing and ski [controlled by ski patrol]. try travel involves the mind. It mountaineering. Prices vary, exumguides.com, 307/733-2297 Drop that same person outside has nothing to do with safety Jackson Hole Mountain Guides offers avalanche education courses, the gates, and they may not equipment. Yes, you need your and guided backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. Prices vary, give the mountains the respect beacon, probe, and shovel. But jhmg.com, 307/733-4979 they deserve.” your most important tool is Jackson Hole Mountain Resort guides can take you to popular backThat lack of respect is not your brain.” country areas beyond the resort’s boundary. The resort also hosts sevnecessarily synonymous with Use it, say the experts, eral backcountry skiing camps each year. Prices vary, jacksonhole. inexperience. In February and then get out there. Fresh com/backcountry-guides, 800/450-0477 2012, sixteen highly experipowder, adventure, and freeBridger-Teton Avalanche Center provides a daily avalanche forecast throughout the season. jhavalanche.org, 307/733-2664 enced backcountry skiers left dom await. JH

Know Before You Go

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Timothy C. Mayo

Founder of Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC Associate Broker-Partner and Manager 32 years of Jackson Hole real estate experience Creator of "TheRealEstateScoreboard.com" 49 years Jackson Hole Resident (almost local) Nature & wildlife photographer Nature & wildlife advocate 307-690-4339 tcmayo@aol.com

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140 North Cache Street, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 307-733-4339 www.brokersofjacksonhole.com

JH Living

design

Climb On

Some home gyms here aren’t what you’d expect.

BY MOLLY ABSOLON PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

THE FIRST CLIMBING wall I ever saw was a “woodie,” built by Todd Skinner and friends in his garage in Lander, Wyoming. The handmade wooden holds had names— Ollie, Fat Boy, Moo, Zeus, and The Bavarian, which was shaped like a beer stein filled to the brim with foam— and you climbed routes according to a sequence of names: Ollie and Monte to Lumpy, throw to Thuggish, ending on Persevere.

The woodie covered one wall of the garage and slanted out at a steep angle over old, dusty mattresses piled up on the floor. Climbers gathered there to train, hang out, egg each other on, and get strong.

I visited Skinner’s gym in 1992. It was early in indoor climbing’s evolution in the United States. The first commercial indoor gym—Vertical World—opened its doors in Seattle in 1987. Europeans had been training inside for a lot longer.

T H E S PA C E W I T H I N

becomes the reality of the building.

–Frank Lloyd Wright

T H E S PA C E W I T H I N

becomes the reality of the building.

–Frank Lloyd Wright

BRITISH CLIMBER DON Robinson is credited with creating the first indoor climbing wall in the mid-1960s. He watched a lot of his friends get hurt in the spring when they jumped from the couch onto the crags and decided it made sense for climbers to train in the off-season to avoid injury. He glued nubbins of rocks onto a brick wall in a hallway at Leeds University so people

jjstiremandesign.com 307-739-3008 jjstireman@wyoming.com 307.739.3008 1715 High School Road, Jackson, WY 83001

Jimmy Chin’s nephew, Sasha Profatilova, climbs on the bouldering wall in the office/ bedroom of Chin’s Victor, Idaho, home. Chin, a professional photographer and climber, built the wall so he could train while he was in between expeditions.

FULL SERVICE INTERIOR DESIGN jjstiremandesign.com | jacque@jjstiremandesign.com

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

51

could rehearse climbing moves when the weather went south. His idea caught on outside of Leeds after a relative beginner named John Synett climbed an area test piece on his first try, shocking the climbing world.

Synett said his success stemmed from the training he’d done on Robinson’s wall. The message was heard loud and clear, and by the 1980s, climbing gyms were common across Europe.

AROUND JACKSON HOLE, the rock-climbing season is short, and most crags are inaccessible or unpleasant once the temperatures drop and the snow flies. Climbers here have few options for staying in shape. (The only commercial climbing gym in the valley, Enclosure, closed its doors in early September.) As a result, many serious climbers in Jackson Hole create some way to train in their homes. For many, this means little more than placing a few fingerboards over doors to hang on or do pull-ups. Others have more elaborate creations.

Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger Rich Baerwald and retired Park Service ranger Maura

Longden have built lots of climbing walls over the years. They moved around for their jobs and often lived far from good outdoor crags, so they’d create something to train on wherever they were. “We had one in Alaska we called the Alaska cave,” Baerwald says. “We joked that it was the best climbing in the Yukon, but basically there is no climbing in the Yukon.”

Baerwald says these earlier creations were practice runs for the penultimate one he constructed last winter in his garage in Victor, Idaho. He and Longden had grown weary of digging their cars out of the snow in the winter, so they decided to build a garage. From the outset, there was no question that building a garage meant building a gym. “We are climbers, and when we thought of building something as big as a garage, a climbing gym was part of the vision. It was kind of like, ‘Oh and by the way, we can park our cars in here when it snows, too,’ ” Baerwald says.

“We wanted the gym to look good. We wanted it to be inviting, wanted warm colors in the winter months— that’s why it’s painted red, like desert rock.

“It’s a good place for contemplation. You come out

Trevor Deighton works out on the climbing wall in the garage of his Victor, Idaho, home on a warm October evening.

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here and get away from the stress of the world. I turn up the music and start bouldering around. Before you know it, an hour has gone by.”

The aesthetics of Baerwald and Longden’s gym were important to them.

They knew that if they just put holds on a plywood board in a cold, dark basement, they’d never use the wall. Their garage gym is heated, has big windows to let in natural light, and comes with a high-quality sound system that fills the space with music. The walls are painted rusty red and a rich cream color that together evoke a sense of the sandstone cliffs of canyon country. Walls are tall and set up so you can either practice lead climbing or boulder without a rope. A loft above provides space for the pair to work out and practice yoga.

“It’s a good place for contemplation. You come out here and get away from the stress of the world. I turn up the music and start bouldering around. Before you know it, an hour has gone by.”

– Rich Baerwald

ACROSS THE VALLEY near the base of Teton Pass, mountain guide and Jackson Hole High School science teacher Trevor Deighton also has a climbing wall in his garage. Like Baerwald and Longden, the wall was part of Deighton’s vision before his home was built. To enable the garage to fulfill its double duty as climbing gym and parking area, a friend of Deighton’s designed platforms for the mattresses that cushion climbers from falls. These platforms can be raised high enough to allow a car to park underneath.

Deighton’s wall was a community effort. Friends pitched in money to buy the plywood, lumber, and holds and provided labor to build the actual wall. To save money, they dismantled an old climbing gym from another garage and salvaged parts. All told, Deighton thinks he spent about $2,000 building his 54

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

climbing gym.

“At the time there was really no other outlet for climbers and guides in the winter,” Deighton says. “We used to come in here after work or after skiing. It was a great way to relax and see friends and get in a workout.”

Deighton’s design fell together more spontaneously than Baerwald and Longden’s. He talked to friends who told him to avoid having any vertical sections and not to bother with elaborate features or walls overhanging more than thirty degrees. The result is a fairly simple design that provides excellent off-season training, although Deighton concedes he uses it less these days than in the past.

“Some of my climbing friends have left the area,” Deighton says. “I don’t really climb out here much on my own. But kids love it, and it’s fun when friends are in town.”

PROFESSIONAL CLIMBER AND photographer Jimmy Chin’s indoor climbing area was built with aesthetics as a guiding principle. This is understandable since he doesn’t have a garage.

Chin’s climbing wall is in the corner of his bedroom/office, a large, open room that features a three-sided desk beneath a towering sleeping loft.

Chin built his gym with the help of friend Jimmy Hartman. Hartman says they spent long hours figuring out what they wanted and creating it, particularly a concrete crack, which they call the Bachar Cracker after a famous boulder problem in Yosemite National Park. To complete that feature the two men pulled an all-nighter. They used concrete to make the hand crack, which severs the prow of an arête. A short overhang provides a quick pump.

“The winters are long in Victor and Jackson,” Chin says. “So I wanted something easily accessible to train on. I love climbing, so it’s fun to have a wall to hang on and move around on during the winters.”

If Chin wants to, he can scramble out of his bed in the loft and start climbing. His desk, which sits under the loft, also provides quick access to the wall.

When he needs a break from work, he can grab a hold and be moving. “Jimmy uses [the gym] all the time when he is home,” Hartman says. “He’ll boulder around with a hands-free headset on, talking to clients.”

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

55

DIY DO-IT-YOURSELF climbing gyms can cost as little as a couple hundred dollars for a few holds on a piece of plywood to thousands of dollars for elaborate features, commercial panels molded into rock-like shapes, textured coatings, and bigger spaces.

But you can start simple. Don Robinson’s first climbing wall was created by inserting and gluing pieces of rock into a brick wall. Todd Skinner’s woodie was built with scrap lumber and holds made by gluing layers of thin plywood into blocks, then sanding and smoothing them into interesting shapes.

Commercial plastic or silicon holds are available from a number of companies, with Metolius being the original manufacturer. Holds typically come in — bundles, with prices varying according 1. metoliusclimbing.com/pdf/How-toto size. A pack of five extra-large holds Build-a-Home-Climbing-Wall.pdf usually starts at around $75. Twenty 2. atomikclimbingholds.com/how-tosmall, simple holds run closer to $50. build-a-rock-climbing-wall The most versatile option for starting out 3. chockstone.org/TechTips/Woodie.htm is to get combination packs of holds in assorted sizes. This will give you the most variety and helps keep your climbing wall entertaining. You may be able to pick up used holds on the Internet or from people who are dismantling their home gyms.

When selecting holds, be sure to consider the

Good sites include:

56

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

texture. Holds can be hard on your skin, particularly some older styles. Yes, these rough holds are grippier, but they feel like sandpaper and can leave your fingers red and sensitive after a few rounds. Your best bet is to read reviews or talk to people about different finishes. Smoother holds feel slippery and insecure but don’t beat you up as much.

The number of holds you’ll need depends on the size of your space. In general, the more holds, the more climbing options you’ll have and the longer the wall will retain its interest. For a bouldering wall, experts recommend thirty-two holds per one 4’ x 6’ sheet of 3/4-inch plywood. You can get screw-on holds or bolted holds, although most people like the bolted variety because they are easier to move when you want to change your routes.

Other options include angles, steepness, and landings. How you combine these usually depends on your climbing objectives and experience. Rich Baerwald says he tried to avoid steep overhangs because his goal was to promote fluid movement and ensure his climbing longevity. If you’re looking purely for strength training, you may want to go with big roofs to get a quick pump.

The Internet has numerous sites offering instruction and ideas for constructing your own gym.

You can peruse photographs, blueprints, and stepby-step instructions. JH

Photographer : Audrey Hall, David Swift

scottsdale,az

jackson,wy

clbarchitects.com

Inspired by Place

Special Interest Feature

SNAKE RIVER COMPOUND

Peak Properties THE FACTOR THAT makes the Jackson Hole real estate market so unusual is the relative scarcity of private land. Ninety-seven percent of Teton County, Wyoming, is publicly owned—either national park, national forest, or wildlife refuge. This computes to just 75,000 privately held acres in a county spanning 2.5 million acres. The guaranteed open spaces and unobstructed views these surrounding public lands afford make the remaining private land a real treasure. Add the abundance of recreational opportunities found in and around the valley, and the quality of life one can enjoy in Jackson Hole is simply unbeatable.

Moreover, many of the properties featured here are secluded, scenic retreats located in the midst of prime wildlife habitat. Most existing and prospective property owners in Jackson Hole cherish this notion, and serve—or will serve—as stewards of nature.

One cannot put a dollar value on waking to the Teton skyline, skiing home for lunch, or listening to a trout stream gurgling through the backyard. In Jackson Hole, “living with nature” is not a fleeting, vicarious experience a person has while watching TV. Here it’s a fact of life, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

LUXURY ESTATE IN INDIAN SPRINGS RANCH

4,917

square feet

4

bedrooms

4

baths

UPON REQUEST dollars

— MLS#

58

Picture yourself here—at home with friends and family— on a sunny winter’s day. This brand new custom residence embodies the finest in mountain contemporary design.

Built to the newest energy codes, its 7.6 acre setting is extremely private, protected and centrally located within the prestigious and gated Indian Springs Ranch.

Benefitting from southern exposures over hundreds of acres of conservation meadows, its twin ponds attract wildlife throughout the seasons.

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates, LLC Exclusive Affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate Carol Linton, Associate Broker - (307) 732-7518 lintonbingle@jhrea.com - lintonbingle.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

4,436

square feet

3

bedrooms

This wonderful compound style property sits on 3.8 acres with the main house right on the banks of the Snake River. In addition to the 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2,250 square foot recently remodeled main house, there is a guest house, garage, large barn and small storage shed.

Endless possibilities and only 15 minutes from the Town of Jackson. NO CC&Rs.

2

baths

1,050,000 dollars

14-2264 MLS#

Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC Jack Stout - (307) 413-7118 jstout@jhrealestate.com - brokersofjacksonhole.com

HEART SIX GUEST RANCH

—

square feet

23

bedrooms

21

baths

UPON REQUEST dollars

10-165 MLS#

Historic dude ranch located north of Jackson, offers an authentic western experience for all four seasons. 83 deeded acres and 486 leased acres. With floating, fishing, hunting and snowmobile permits this ranch allows its guests to experience all that Jackson Hole has to offer, as well as bordering both Bridger-Teton National Forest and the Buffalo Fork River. With a consistent repeat client base, the ranch has proven to be a highly desired vacation destination.

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates, LLC Exclusive Affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate John M. Scott - (307) 690-1009 johnscott@jhrea.com - johnscottrejh.com

MAJESTIC VIEWS ADJACENT TO NATIONAL PARK

2,746

square feet

4

bedrooms

3

baths

Bordering Grand Teton National Park, this impressive 3 acre residential horse property showcases panoramic views of the entire Teton Range. Remodeled in 2002, this tastefully appointed log home features intimate interior spaces and an expansive western facing terrace for enjoying sunsets. In addition, a state-of-the-art barn includes a charming guest apartment, 2 horse stalls and plentiful storage. This is a rare opportunity for unrivaled access to the National Parks while still maintaining a close proximity to Jackson and Moose.

1,985,000 dollars

14-1895 MLS#

square feet

2

bedrooms

2.5 baths

This 4.66 acre property with lovely Teton views features a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath main home with an office, loft and sunroom. Functional and versatile, the property also boasts a 2 bedroom guest house with Jack-and-Jill bathroom, 3-car garage and a bonus room; an outdoor pavilion equipped with commercial grade kitchen appliances; a 3-stall horse barn with hay storage, tack room, loft and caretaker’s quarters; a horse pen and pasture and a climate-controlled greenhouse. This property is one of few in Tucker Ranch that allows horses.

5,900,000 dollars

14-1432 MLS#

4,851

square feet

5

bedrooms

5.5 baths

This sophisticated one story 5 bedroom, 5.5 bath single family home located on the Teton Pines 18th fairway, has been entirely remodeled throughout. Granite chef’s kitchen, hardwood floors, granite baths, cathedral ceilings, exposed wood beams, open living areas, multiple fireplaces and floor-to-ceiling windows are only the beginning. This home is situated to maximize the privacy and tranquility of the outdoor fireplace and patios next to the meandering seasonal stream.

4,500,000

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Mercedes Huff - (307) 739-8135 mercedes.huff@jhsir.com - mercedeshuff.com

TUCKER RANCH HAVEN

3,575

TETON PINES

dollars

14-1792 MLS#

RARE Properties Rick Armstrong - (307) 413-4359 rick@rarejh.com - rarejh.com

70 ACRES ON THE SNAKE RIVER

70

acres

—

bedrooms

Living just North of the town of Jackson is a bit like living in the middle of a national park. From these two developable 35 acre parcels, enjoy Snake River frontage, spring creeks and big mountain views in every direction.

Perfect retreat close to the town of Jackson and across the river from Grand Teton National Park.

—

baths

16,000,000

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Tom Evans - (307) 739-8149 tomevansre@jhsir.com - tomevansrealestate.com

dollars

14-1747 MLS#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Spackmans & Associates - (307) 739-8156 spackmans@jhsir.com - spackmansinjh.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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INTRODUCING SKYLINE 1515

7,760

square feet

5

bedrooms

5.5 baths

6,950,000 dollars

— MLS#

Boasting stunning Teton range views, unparalleled serenity, and supreme luxury, Skyline 1515 is perched atop Spring Creek Ranch. This beautiful 7,760 square foot house with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 baths is new mountain modern construction with a 1,430 square foot oversized 3-car garage. Designed by Dynamic Innovations, built

by Rendezvous Custom Homes, and decorated by Twenty Two Home, Skyline 1515 is scheduled for completion in autumn of 2015.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Teton Partners Real Estate, LLC Collin Vaughn & Jill Sassi-Neison - (307) 413-1492 collin.vaughn@jhsir.com - jacksonholepropertysearch.com

LOVE RIDGE SHORT-TERM DUPLEX

2,000

square feet

3

bedrooms

3

baths

Rare opportunity to own this top-floor 3 bedroom, 3 bath Grand View Condominium located above Snow King Resort. This property offers two large covered patios with views of the Tetons and the Elk Refuge, as well as ski-in/out access from Snow King. Two bedrooms can be locked off to rent separately both short-term and long term. Amenities include alder cabinets, Kohler fixtures, convertible Murphy beds, elevator, 2 covered parking spaces, half bath converted to full pantry, large separate storage area, and one floor living plan.

1,075,000 dollars

14-2356 MLS#

60

Prugh Real Estate, LLC Greg Prugh - (307) 413-2468 g@prugh.com - prughrealestate.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

IN-TOWN CONVENIENCE

3,177

square feet

5

bedrooms

Custom built home in the attractive Karns Hillside neighborhood overlooking town and convenient to all areas of Jackson. With 5 bedrooms and over 3,000 square feet, this is the perfect place to call home. Features include a recent remodel, 2 car garage, and beautiful landscaping with a private backyard.

2.5 baths

1,219,000 dollars

14-2283 MLS#

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates, LLC Exclusive Affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate Budge Realty Group - (307) 413-1364 chadbudge@jhrea.com - budgerealestate.com

REFINED CRAFTSMANSHIP AMONG MOOSE & MOUNTAINS

6,632

square feet

5

bedrooms

7

baths

8,000,000 dollars

14-1678 MLS#

The details are integrated throughout this superbly designed home, conveniently located near the Aspens Market and Teton Village. Property is hidden on 6 acres amid a natural aspen grove, encapsulating water features and tasteful landscaping. The centrally-located chef’s kitchen is ideal for entertaining with a 1,500 bottle wine room, walk-in pantry, double-sided wood burning fireplace and outside sitting areas. 5 well-appointed bedrooms and 7 bathrooms spread throughout the home complement its charm and allure.

Prugh Real Estate, LLC Dan Visosky - (307) 690-6979 d@prugh.com - prughrealestate.com

HUNTSMAN SPRINGS

3,893

square feet

5

bedrooms

5

baths

This homes overlooks the award-winning David McLay Kidd-designed golf course at Huntsman Springs.

Dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows from the living room soak in the golf and towering Grand Teton views. The kitchen, dining and living rooms provide that perfect gathering space for entertaining and relaxing. A Golf Membership is included with the sale, which provides unlimited access to golf, the restaurant, pool and wellness center, boardwalk and fishing ponds.

1,775,000 dollars

14-533 MLS#

Huntsman Springs Real Estate Julie F. Bryan, Broker - (307) 699-0205 jbryan@huntsmansprings.com - huntsmansprings.com

RIVERFRONT RANCH

72

acres

—

bedrooms

—

baths

Enjoy two spectacular riverfront parcels with dramatic Teton views and two creeks that meander through the property. Tall cottonwoods, aspens and pines intermix with lush meadows and riparian areas to create a private wonderland that is home to prolific wildlife including elk and moose all just minutes from town, recreation, restaurants and medical facilities. There are two main building sites on the property and extra entitlements that allow an owner to build additional square footage. This is the ultimate water and view property.

10-2119 MLS#

2,240

square feet

4

bedrooms

3.5

Enjoy south and west facing sunshine and views from this charming 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath farmhouse with two living areas each with a wood burning stove. Beautiful oak hardwood floors in living, dining and kitchen. Large family room with built-in bookshelves and desk. Oversized 2-car attached garage plus large covered carport or work area.

3 acres with no CC&Rs and no HOA fees. Listing agent is related to seller.

baths

UPON REQUEST dollars

— MLS#

Jackson Wyoming Real Estate Teri McCarthy - (307) 690-6906 wyoteri@gmail.com - JacksonWyomingRealEstate.com

NEW WEST BANK PROPERTY

4,700

square feet

6

bedrooms

6

baths

A main home and guest house are quietly nestled on 2.5 acres offering 3 separate living areas. A bridge over a meandering stream provides the perfect welcome to this mountain retreat located in Lake Creek Acres. Completely remodeled in 2013 every aspect of this home has been updated including flooring, cabinets, windows, doors, decking, siding, roofing and all systems. A brand new guest house provides ample living space and the addition of 2 oversized garage bays. This property is capped off with a natural stream, pond, and Grand Teton views.

3,375,000

17,900,000 dollars

ALTA, WYOMING - 3 ACRES, NO CCRS

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Barbara Allen & Bill VanGelder - (307) 413-3510 allenvangelder@jhsir.com - jacksonholerealestateinfo.com

dollars

13-2252 MLS#

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Mack Mendenhall - (307) 690-0235 mackmendenhall@jhrea.com - grahamfaupel.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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CIRCLE LAZY H RANCH ON FALL CREEK

160 acres

3

bedrooms

2

The Lazy Circle H Ranch on Fall Creek is a legacy ownership opportunity in one of the most dramatically beautiful locations in the country just 20 minutes from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Nestled in a spectacular mountain setting surrounded entirely by the Bridger-Teton National Forest, the ranch boasts 160 deeded acres and end of road privacy with seemingly limitless access to public lands and all they have to offer.

baths

— MLS#

acres

—

bedrooms

—

Arguably the finest lot available in Indian Springs. This beautiful building site boasts views of the Grand Teton, multiple ponds, and trees. With enviable privacy, it backs up to the slope of the butte, and the building site is flat and easy to access. Only fifteen minutes to JH Mountain Resort and five minutes to the Town of Jackson, this oneof-a-kind lot is the perfect location for any dream home.

MLS#

62

4.5

dollars

14-1468 MLS#

RE/MAX Obsidian Real Estate Chip Marvin & Fred Harness - (307) 690-0417 chipmarvin@gmail.com - jhobsidian.com

ROARING RIVER RANCH

3,900

square feet

4

bedrooms

Beautiful log lodge located on one of two adjoining 34 acre parcels bordering the National Forest. Breathtaking views of the Pinnacle Peaks and Brooks Mountain Range, over three-quarters of a mile of the Wind River winding through property center, 1.5 acres plus trout pond, hay meadows, barn and corral and no CC&Rs. A rural property to be experienced.

baths

4,950,000

12-2003

4

bedrooms

4

baths

dollars

square feet

Slated for completion summer 2015, the Tall Timber Cottages will be located along the second and third fairways of the Snake River Sporting Club’s Tom Weiskopf signature golf course. Each home will have beautiful views of the Snake River Canyon and surrounding mountains. Highlights include: extensive porches, vaulted ceilings, an open floor plan, exposed timber beams and log accents, high quality finishes and top-ofthe-line appliances.

2,395,000

Fay Ranches James Esperti & Mike Jorgenson - (307) 200-4558 info@fayranches.com - fayranches.com

GRAND TETON VIEWS

9.74

2,939

baths

8,250,000 dollars

NEW CONSTRUCTION - SNAKE RIVER SPORTING CLUB

2,495,000

Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC Doug Herrick - (307) 413-8899 dherrick@jhrealestate.com - brokersofjacksonhole.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

dollars

14-1319 MLS#

Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@jhrealestate.com - brokersofjacksonhole.com

THE LODGES AT FISH CREEK PHASE II

3,111

square feet

3

bedrooms

Construction on these 3,100 square foot, 3 bedroom Lodges, designed by John Carney, will begin in 2015.

Overlooking the East Branch of Fish Creek, they will feature spectacular views of Après Vous and Rendezvous Mountains and on-call shuttle service to and from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty John Resor - (307) 739-1908 jresor@shootingstarjh.com - shootingstarjh.com

SOLITUDE SUBDIVISION

6,314

square feet

4

bedrooms

5

As close as you can get to a historic Yellowstone Lodge outside of the park. The craftsmanship, the design, the finishes and the construction with framed walls—threequarter log exterior and half log interior—is beyond description. Beautiful home with 6,000 square feet, four bedrooms and five bathrooms. The 7+ acre location is rich in native vegetation, streams and ponds and abundant wildlife.

baths

14-1646 MLS#

dollars

H4S4CL SIR#

This immaculate property is situated on 5.2 acres with elevated Teton Range views and extensive landscaping.

It is comprised of 4 bedrooms, three of which have their own en-suite full baths. Unique spaces include a media room, office and library, an oversized study, formal dining area, and sunroom. Three wood burning fireplaces, rare materials throughout, comprehensive technology systems, and European fixtures add to the delights that only this home offers.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Audrey L. Williams - (307) 690-3044 audrey.williams@jhsir.com audreywilliamsrealestate.com

TRAM TOWER TOWNHOMES

3,600

square feet

4

bedrooms

6

baths

5,495,000 dollars

4

bedrooms

3,875,000

2,975,000

—

square feet

baths

baths

MLS#

4,607

5

3.5

dollars

OLD WORLD STYLE & MODERN COMFORT

Ski-in, ski-out Tram Tower Townhome at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Great vacation home with southern exposure sitting right in the heart of Teton Village close to many restaurants and shops. This spacious,3,607 square foot townhome has four bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Furniture is included. Many amenities come with this property including an indoor hot tub and sauna. It also includes the use of an outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts and a fitness center.

2,300,000

Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@jhrealestate.com - brokersofjacksonhole.com

dollars

14-1423 MLS#

Brokers of Jackson Hole LLC John Sloan - (307) 413-1574 jsloan@jhrealestate.com - brokersofjacksonhole.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

SCHOOLS OF

SKIERS Yeah, the Jackson Hole Air Force is hardcore. But have you seen the seventy-somethings who shred Tower 3 Chute?

BRADLY J. BONER

BY BRIELLE SCHAEFFER AND MAGGIE THEODORA

JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN Resort Mountain Sports School instructor and backcountry guide Jamie Mackintosh often brings her groups into Corbet’s Cabin, perched at 10,450 feet at the top of the tram. It’s a great place—protected from the extreme winds and temperatures and the sideways snow often raging that high—for a safety briefing before her skiers tackle some of the resort’s more advanced terrain. Open to the general public, it’s not just ski school and guided groups that take refuge in the cabin.

“I heard these hot-shot financial types from New York griping During a celebratory final ride on Jackson Hole about all the old folks in the cabMountain Resort’s old aerial in,” says Mackintosh, who has tram in October 2006, been with the Mountain Sports Norman Wolff serenades the School (MSS) for thirty-one years Old Dogs, a group of friends now mostly over the age of and has been a National Demo seventy that skis together Team candidate twice. “Those old weekly at the resort. folks were with me, and I knew they could most likely outski this group talking trash.” Mackintosh told the New Yorkers to try and keep up when her “old folks” stepped into their skis. “We ski pretty hard,” Mackintosh says. “Every one of the ‘old folks’ the New Yorkers were complaining about is an expert skier.” The old folks ski Alta 1, Tower 3 Chute, and the Hobacks, all black diamond—or even double black diamond—runs.

Meet the Old Dogs, eighteen friends, pretty much all septuagenarians, who go out with three MSS instructors in groups of six every week from the first week of January through the end of the JHMR ski season in early April (excluding Presidents Day weekend).

While the Old Dogs were the first group of its kind WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

65

PRICE CHAMBERS

Jim Hesser, Bill Maloney, and Bill Campbell are members of the Monday Marauders at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, a twelve-skier group that likes to ski faster than the Old Dogs.

N e w We s t KnifeWorks On the corner of Center and Deloney on the Jackson Town Square Newwestknifeworks.com

66

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

when they started eighteen years ago, today there are upwards of a dozen inviteonly bands of locals averaging probably somewhere just upwards of sixty-five years old that ski with MSS instructors and guides on a weekly basis. The groups all have names. The Monday Marauders.

The Tram Chicks. The OB-1s. The Old Dogs. The New Dogs. We’ve heard rumors of a group called the Hot Flashes.

The Old Dogs even have a logo: a smiling bulldog. (They each have a vest with it on the back.)

“It’s been a slow, organic growth,” says Lexey Wauters, MSS assistant director. “There wasn’t any organized effort on our part to get these groups going.

The Old Dogs started, and I think word just got out. Financially, it’s a great deal.

I think that’s part of the reason, too.”

All groups are under the resort’s Passholder BYOGroup program. From the resort’s website: “Gather six friends, pick a day, and ski or ride with the same instructor (or team of instructors) for ten weeks starting in January. Explore the far reaches of the mountain and your ability, with your friends along for the ride. Bonus: BYOGroups score early Tram or Gondola access.” For the ten weeks, each group member pays $835.

That breaks down to less than $100 per day, a full day with an instructor. Wauters hypothesizes these groups appeal to older skiers because of the time commitment. “I don’t know too many thirtyand forty-somethings that can take a full weekday off for ten weeks in a row to ski,”

she says. “We can certainly accommodate younger groups if they’re out there.”

THE OLD DOGS first formed in 1996.

At the beginning of that season, Jack Nunn, Al Upsher, Tom Glassberg, Stan Trachtenberg, Steve Hancock, and Salisbury Adams met in one of Pepi Stiegler’s race camps. Wanting to prolong the camaraderie and skill-building of the camp, they recruited instructor/ guide Nato Emerson to ski with them once a week for the rest of the season. “It just started as a Wednesday group that skied together with instructors,” says Bill Maloney, a seventy-seven-year-old Old Dog who skis 140 days a year. “Most of the instructors that we have in the Old Dogs have been with us a long time.

They’re all top-of-the-line instructors.”

Over the years, the group grew and required more instructors. Karen Valenstein became the first female member in 1998. Today there are about a halfdozen female Old Dogs. (Out of the 130some combined skiers in all the groups, Wauters guesstimates that about 45 percent are women.)

It’s not unusual for groups to grow out of larger JHMR camps. “AJ Cargill and I took turns teaching a group of women that came out of our old Women Who Rip camp,” Wauters says. “They had such a blast in the camp, they wanted to keep it going.” Wauters remembers that group started around 2000. “It’s still around,” she says. “It has morphed— some originals have left and new women

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PRICE CHAMBERS

From left, Tony and Linda Brooks, Bill Maloney, Bill Campbell, Toby Leith, and Ruthy Peterson are all Old Dogs, the first of the dozen-plus locals’ ski groups founded at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. They ski together weekly all season long.

have come in. Coaches have changed. I think most groups evolve over time.”

Even though groups morph, with members coming and going, there are often waiting lists. “When I moved to

Jackson, I knew there were all of these local groups, but many were full. You couldn’t just come into town and join the Old Dogs or New Dogs,” says Nancy Leon, a sixty-year-old, semiretired for-

mer vice president of a number of Internet startups who moved here six years ago and skis about eighty days a year at the resort and another twentysome in the backcountry. “You come to a community and you want to belong.

You want to get connected and be with people who are good skiers. I subbed into groups for a year and then decided that rather than waiting to be invited to join a group, I’d start my own.” Leon did something with her group that no prior group had done. “I didn’t want a group that skied in-bounds,” she says. “I wanted to go out of bounds.”

Leon enlisted the help of Bruce Keller, one of several MSS instructors who doubles as a JHMR backcountry ski guide, and wrangled together some friends. The OB-1s were born. Because JHMR has a limited number of backcountry permits for the season, it was decided the group got to head out of bounds five of its ten weeks. “We’re all knowledgeable about the in-bounds terrain,” says Leon, who lived and skied in Chamonix for three years after college and is a JHMR ski host. “We’re less familiar with the out-of-bounds areas,

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

BYOGROUPS EACH HAVE their own objective. “Some are more socially minded and others have very specific technical objectives,” says Brian Maguire, MSS director. The OB-1s focus on skiing the resort’s sidecountry. There’s a group of master racers. “A couples’ group is a new one that came up this winter,” Maguire says. The Monday Marauders, a twelve-skier group (split into two groups of six) was started five years ago. Maloney is in that group in addition to the Old Dogs. The Marauders are similar in age to the Old Dogs but like to ski a little faster. (Until recently, the Marauders included eighty-sevenyear-old Pierre Maréchal. But he “dropped out because we’re a little too fast for him,” says Maloney. “He still skis hard, though.” Maréchal has since estab-

SUSAN CRITZER

and we also want to make sure we ski them safely. We have a very challenging snowpack sometimes, and, particularly with your friends, you don’t want the responsibility of taking them to places where there is a risk of avalanches. When we go with a guide, we’re being as safe as we can be.”

Members of the OB-1s ski group march along a bootpack in the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort backcountry. The OB-1s are unique among JHMR’s locals’ ski groups because their focus is out-of-bounds terrain.

lished a group of advanced skiers that are all in their eighties.)

The Old Dogs are focused on improving. “We want to get technically better every year,” Maloney says. And members do. “Everyone in our group gets better every year,” he says. “You don’t have to take a big jump if you improve incrementally every year. By getting bet-

ter it makes it easier on the body, too.”

Sarah Carpenter, who sometimes subs in as the OB-1s’ guide, says, “It’s great to see the groups of people who are really excited about learning and improving.”

Linda Brooks, seventy-four and a member of the Old Dogs and the Tram Chicks for over a decade, says, “The instructors for both of my groups are informative

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Professional free skier Crystal Wright hands out Jackson Hole Babe Force stickers. Wright cofounded the group to support women as they push their limits, gain confidence, and build relationships with others who are excited about skiing and snowboarding.

Jackson Hole Babe Force

BRADLY J. BONER

IT’S FEBRUARY AND the conditions at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Wright was inspired to create the Babe Force by the Jackson aren’t quite perfect. The snow is hard-packed and icy—not exactly Hole Air Force, a clandestine cadre of bad boys who, in the 1980s great for freeskiing. Still, some fifteen women, taking part in a (before it was legal), frequently snuck out of bounds to shred backJackson Hole Babe Force ski day, are getting after it. Really getting country terrain adjacent to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. “I looked after it. They’re ripping Corbet’s Couloir, an experts-only run that, if up to them as a kid,” says Jackson native Wright, who was welcomed you make it as easy as possible, still requires a ten-foot jump at its into the Air Force fold shortly after she cofounded the Babe Force. start. Hadley Hammer doesn’t ease herself in, though. She comes at Instead of being a boys’ club—while there are a handful of Corbet’s with speed and launches— women who have been given Air Force flies—right off the nose. Spectators colpatches, it does remain predominantly lectively stop breathing, waiting to see if a fraternity—the Babe Force is a girl the twenty-eight-year-old Hammer will gang. They got approval to play off the be able to stick the landing. Her skis Air Force name from Air Force veteran touch down on a snow slope pitched at Brian Rutter. Rutter even helped denearly 50 degrees, but she makes it look sign Babe Force’s logo. He is the only easy. Hammer, whose nickname is man to have been given a Babe Force “Sledgehammer,” didn’t just stick the patch. landing, she sent it.

Wright and her friends got the idea Spectators, male and female, shout for the Babe Force after a day skiing encouragement and smack ski poles toexpert runs in Granite Canyon and seeAnyone can get a Jackson Hole Babe Force gether, skiing’s equivalent of clapping. ing dozens of other women ripping it. sticker, but patches must be earned: Only Hammer’s own fearlessness inspiring “Seven years ago you’d barely see any fifteen have been given out in four years. confidence in others, another skier other women in Granite. You’d always shoots into the couloir. She wrecks, but have to ski with the boys,” Wright says. still gets shouts of encouragement and ski-pole applause.

“Now it’s amazing you can go out and ski with other girls.” At a For Hammer’s feat, she’s awarded a rare Babe Force patch, December 2013 Babe Force event, more than one hundred women black, shaped like a slice of pizza, and adorned with snowflakes, showed up to be a part of the documentary Pretty Faces, an all-feskis, and the words “strong, sexy, soulful” by group cofounder and male ski film championed by pro skier Lynsey Dyer. pro skier Crystal Wright. “She definitely inspired other women, my“You get with a bunch of women, and you push yourself harder self included,” Wright says. “It was cool to see her push herself. She than you’d ever push yourself skiing alone,” Wright says. “You see wasn’t being dumb, she was fired up. She got energy from other another girl do it and you’re like, ‘I could do that.’ But you see a guy women, and she gave energy to other women.” do it, and you brush it off.” Part of the mission of the Babe Force is The Jackson Hole Babe Force isn’t affiliated with the Mountain to build relationships between like-minded women. It doesn’t stop Sports School, but it’s about the same things many of the there, though. Wright wants the organization to get nonprofit status, BYOGroups are: pushing your limits and gaining confidence. In the extend into summertime activities like mountain biking, and provide four years since starting the group with cofounders Jess Pierce, scholarships for female athletes to pursue their wildest dreams.

Sara Felton, and Dawn Meckem, Wright has only bestowed fifteen Each winter, the group has three or four organized events, mostly ski patches. “Patches are earned by doing something inspiring, going days any women can join in on. Most of these are in Teton Village, out of your comfort zone, and pushing yourself,” she says. “It’s not but the group is trying to do ski days at Snow King or on Teton Pass about being the best skier or snowboarder on the mountain. It’s to include women who don’t have JHMR passes. about drive and the passion. When I give patches it’s very important Unlike the Air Force, the Babe Force is extremely inclusive. Any to me; I feel like I’m proposing or something. I want women to be woman can be part of the group, even if she hasn’t earned a patch. psyched when they get it, not like, ‘Oh I got a patch. Everyone gets “It’s really cool to bring women together and meet new ski partners a patch.’ ” and inspire other ladies,” Wright says.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

and helpful. With their help, I’ve learned how to ski the harder slopes.”

The OB-1s, who range in age from fifty-eight to their mid-sixties, want to go to places they’re not comfortable going on their own. Two years ago, Keller took the group up Cody Peak and to No Shadows, which none of them had skied before. The difficulty of No Shadows is substantial: between 35 and 45 degrees steep with a committing, cornice-y entrance. But it was the ascent—up a knifeedge, icy ridge in their ski boots with their skis strapped to their packs—that was the bigger test for the group. “We all thought we’d fall off at some point,” Leon jokes.

“The ascent was an adrenaline rush because you’re climbing up there in your slippery ski boots with just your ski poles for balance. It’s a sheer edge, and it’s icy, and you’re just like, ‘get me up there.’ ” The group made it to the top safely; not a single member stumbled, much less fell off.

“Of course after we did that, we did have to think about the down,” Leon says.

“We’re up on this huge face where there have been avalanches that have killed people.” That day, the group found perfect snow, though. “We did No Shadows and had so much confidence that we went and did Spacewalk,” Leon says. “Or maybe it was Zero G.” Either run is a notorious out-of-bounds test piece just south of Rendezvous Bowl. Both have pitches even steeper than that of No Shadows and middle sections no more than fifteen feet wide. “That was pretty amazing,” Leon says. “Everyone is on this high. There’s this real shared experience being happy for your friends, happy for yourself, and happy to be sharing something so special. Everybody likes to connect and belong to something.”

“I THINK FOR every group, it is as much about the social piece of it as it is about the skiing and getting better,” Wauters says. About his two ski groups, Maloney says, “They’re great people, all enthusiastic skiers. It’s a social event every single day we ski together. They’re great friends, and it’s wonderful at our age that we’ve all moved to Jackson Hole and found these friends that like to do what we do.” Brooks of the Old Dogs and Tram Chicks agrees. “I do like the people in my groups,” she says. But she knows what matters most. “What’s really great about the program is that we can get on the early tram.” JH 74

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

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The REBIRTH of a Ski Hill The first step—and the only one supported by most everyone—in the attempted revival of Snow King Mountain debuted this fall. Will it be enough, or are more changes to come?

BY BEN GRAHAM

A LEGION OF spandex-clad teenagers jokes nervously about halfway up Snow King Mountain, perched hundreds of feet above the town of Jackson. It’s November, a time of year when the young ski racers are typically somewhere in Colorado to begin their early season training. A coach waves the group silent.

The first skier shuffles up to the starting line, ski tips pointed directly down the steep slope. In a puff of crystalline flakes, the skier disappears downhill. Farther south on Until this season, the mountain, in an snowmaking at Snow King area that would still be only provided coverage midway up the mountain. showing grass this time New investments in of year, a dozen locals snowmaking infrastructure are spending their lunch now allow for coverage to breaks carving long, the top of the Town Hill, enabling racers—both graceful turns through local and, hopefully in the man-made snow. They future, from afar—to begin descend to the base, hop training in November. in their cars, and make it back to work before their breaks end.

That vision—of ski racers and locals shredding “the King” in the late fall—has driven the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club, Snow King Ski Area owners, and the Town of Jackson on a year-and-a-half-long quest to bring new snowmaking infrastructure to Jackson’s beloved community ski hill. The ski area’s opening day historically has been reliant on the weather. In recent years, that has left skiers waiting until as late as the end of December to begin using the hill.

The $3.5 million snowmaking project is supposed to change that and inject new

life into the mountain, for locals who take a ski lap during their lunch breaks or after work, and for the ski racers who train on the hill. It could also help right the ship for Snow King Ski Area and Mountain Resort, which, like many small ski areas across the country, has been hemorrhaging money for years.

The prospects of a state grant potentially paying for the project initially got it off the ground. Ski area operators applied to the Wyoming Business Council for the grant. It ultimately was turned into a $1 million loan/$500,000 grant package, with the Town of Jackson acting as the guarantor. That left some on the Town Council wary, as the same people in charge of the ski area previously ran the now town-owned ice rink at its base but let it fall into disrepair. But the town agreed to move ahead with the snowmaking project nonetheless.

For the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club, which has been integral to the efforts, it has been mostly about the young ski racers. Previously each fall, members had to travel to Colorado for early season training. If they didn’t, they’d lose out on valuable weeks of practice. “That’s a big handicap for our kids; they lose six weeks of training compared to Vail, Aspen, and Sun Valley,” ski club board president Rick Hunt says. Hunt grew up in town and learned to ski at Snow King. His grandmother was one of the first donors to the ski club around the time it was founded nearly seventy-five years ago. Hunt has seen the mountain in its heyday, and through its decline.

At its peak, Snow King served as the WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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this,” board member Bill Mulligan says. He compared thirty years of weather data in Jackson to Summit County, Colorado, which is home to Breckenridge and Keystone, among other ski areas that start making snow early. The difference was only two or three degrees. “We’re quite confident we have the weather, we just needed the snowmaking system,” Mulligan says.

The snow guns need a “wet bulb” temperature of 29 degrees in order to make snow. The calculation takes humidity into account. That “wet bulb” temperature still can be achieved when the thermometer reads above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on conditions. If the ski club’s projections are right, the end result could be a competitive edge for Jackson’s ski racers, or at least a competitive equalization.

“Every year we go to Colorado, and we usually train at different places there,” Mulligan’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Anya, explains. “I wouldn’t say it’s rocky, but the snow is warmer,” she says of training there. “They usually tell us to bring last year’s skis, in case we hit rocks.” Anya dabbles in a little of everything when it comes to ski racing—slalom, giant slalom, and super-G. She is hopeful the artificial snow will give her and her teammates equal footing with their Mountain West counterparts. “We’re going to get a lot more training than usual. I’m excited because it’s good for competition. A lot of competitors start training a long time before us,” Anya says.

The project also could prove to be an economic boon for the valley if other ski racing teams come to do their early season training here. “The thing that everybody in our community should love is that it brings in visitors to our economy during the shoulder season,” says Kim Kernan, an attorney and Mulligan’s wife. “That’s tax dollars for the county and for the city. It’s a terrific triple win for the ski club and everyone else involved.”

Parents spent a combined $60,000 to send their kids to Colorado last year, she says. That money could soon be staying in the valley. If and when other communities begin sending their racing teams to Snow King for early season training, the overall economic injection into the valley’s economy is estimated to be about $472,000, according to the ski club. Revenue would come from day passes, hotel rooms, and other daily expenses that the visitors would incur in town. The projection of nearly a half-million dollars is assuming a total of about four hundred athletes and coaches come to Jackson during November and early December.

Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen.

Kernan helped the ski club hash out a deal with the ski area in which the nonprofit will take on all the risk of the ski area’s operations for November and early December. The ski club will sell tickets, rent out race lanes, and be on the hook for any losses. One lane will be reserved for the public during that time. Any profits will be split between the ski area and the ski club. The deal that Kernan helped negotiate marks a significant change for two of the oldest ski-related organizations in the BRADLY J. BONER

focal point of winter sports in Jackson Hole, establishing the valley as a ski destination long before Jackson Hole Mountain Resort was built. It was the first ski area in the state when it opened in 1938. Using a cable bought from an oil drilling company in Casper, a rope tow was built in 1939 and operated by Neil Rafferty, who would go on to be the ski area’s manager.

In 1946, Rafferty, with backing from the Jackson Hole Winter Sports Association, built Snow King’s first chairlift. In the following decades, the ski club grew, a hotel was opened at the base, and national teams would come to train on the mountain’s steep ski runs in advance of the start of the World

Cup season. But, because of improvements in snowmaking at other resorts and less-consistent natural early season snow here, the latter hasn’t happened in about a decade. (As recently as 2010, though, members of the U.S. and French technical ski teams trained on the King but that was in midwin- The aspect of Snow King Mountain ter—they were prepping makes it ideal for snowmaking. the slope gets little for the Vancouver Games. North-facing, sun in the winter months.

It does show that national teams are still interested in training on the mountain.) For regular skiers, aging lifts and increasing competition have caused Snow King to lose much of its sheen. Season pass sales have been decreasing.

Better snowmaking capabilities could spark a renaissance, those behind the project claim. “It’s an untapped jewel; I’d hate to see it go by the wayside,” Hunt says. The project has paid for subterranean water pipes and power lines, and new pumping stations. The ski club embarked on a $1.5 million fundraising campaign for snow guns and a water chiller. The goal is for the ski area to be able to produce the eighteen inches of artificial snow required for a base layer by the beginning of November.

The ski club studied historical weather patterns and believes that will be possible if the guns can begin spewing artificial flakes each October.

“The beauty here is our climate is actually fantastic for 78

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

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Snow King IMPROVEMENTS Proposed Yurts

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11

F B

A

E 10 D

9

8

7 C

2

D

A

4 B

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5

1

6

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CHAIRLIFTS Existing permit (USFS) Proposed permit (USFS) Existing SKMR

A

B C D E F

G

Proposed gondola/current Exhibition Lift Cougar Lift Rafferty Lift Proposed East Side Lift Proposed gondola Proposed carpet or platter lift Proposed carpet lift

SKI RUNS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

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Lower Exhibition (existing) Cougar (existing) Lower Elk (existing) Old Man’s Flats (existing) Up, Kelly’s Alley (existing) Towers Run (existing) Top Towers Run (proposed) Glade (proposed) Skiers Left (proposed) Skiers Right (proposed) Far East (proposed)

PROPOSED BEGINNER RUNS A B C D E

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ACTIVITIES Ropes Course (proposed) Zip Line (proposed) Bike Trail (existing) Mountain Coaster (approved) Service Road (existing) Alpine Slide (existing) Run Boundaries (proposed)

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valley. “Historically, Snow King and the ski club have operated with just a handshake agreement,” she says.

Beneath the chairlift and Stanley’s dangling feet, a massive construction project is underway. An excavator is digging a five-foot trench directly up the UNLIKE THE SKIING they hope to as- face of the mountain. A thick cable consist, the process of getting the project nects the machine to a backhoe at the started has been an uphill battle for all summit; this is supposed to keep the exthose involved. Some have been hesitant cavator from careening down the steep to partner with the ski area, which has slope. Rocks and small boulders have been losing hundreds of thousands of been rolling downhill all summer bedollars annually just keeping the lifts cause of the project. The work has reopen. The ski area’s operators view their sulted in trail closures, much to the chacommitment to Snow King, via the an- grin of the locals who view their hikes nual losses they take to keep it open, as a up Snow King as a right, and as vital to public service in itself, according to their daily routines as morning coffee.

Snow King Ski Area and Mountain Water pipes and power lines will be Resort general manager Ryan Stanley. laid in the ditch and extend to the top of All those involved have been able to the mountain, Stanley explains from the find a common point in the snowmak- chairlift with an all-encompassing wave ing project, which has been described as of his hand. The new utilities will power the “backbone” of the mountain’s fu- the snowmaking guns, but they also unture. That has been the favored term of lock new potential for Snow King.

Manuel Lopez, former managing part- Electrical lines and a pipe carrying ner of the ski area. He has been involved drinking water to the top would allow a with the mountain for decades but has restaurant to be built at the summit, a recently taken a step back amidst his possibility Snow King investors have cancer treatment. Lopez has ceded the talked about for years. A gondola also day-to-day operation to Stanley, while has been added to the grand vision for ski hill partner and financier Max C. the Town Hill, one that would scoop Chapman Jr. is taking over as managing tourists and skiers up at the bottom and partner. “The reality deposit them at the is that this is the big- Construction crews spent five months summit. From the last summer and fall working to install gest investment in the necessary infrastructure and new summit, Stanley the mountain proba- snowmaking equipment. points north to a bly ever,” Stanley exshorter peak, which plained on a ride up could be the location the Summit Lift one balmy afternoon of a yurt camp, if things go as planned. last summer. “People need to under- The problem is coming up with the $30 stand that.” million or so needed to get the improve-

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ments built. “We’re setting the stage for aimed at bringing in visitors and insomeone to come in with some money,” creasing revenue during Jackson Hole’s busy warmer months, when travelers Stanley says.

That could be the tricky part. The from across the country flock to Grand Teton and Yellowstone partners who own the national parks. Snow ski area also ran the ho- Pictured here is the Town King would like more tel at the mountain’s Downhill, held annually at the King in March. The course goes of the millions of these base for years, until it from the top of the mountain visitors to stop by the was sold in 2012 to an to the bottom. Until this year, Town Hill. The mouninvestment company. such races could only be held tain currently has an alThe partners lacked the in the late winter. With the new investment in snowmaking, a pine slide for summer financing to renovate top-to-bottom course can now visitors. It first opened the 204-room hotel, happen in late November. in 1979 and today is which originally open from Memorial opened in 1976. The hotel had helped offset the losses from Day to Labor Day. “Right now, the alpine the ski area for years. While the partners slide is how we can keep the lifts open in still have some development rights left the winter,” Stanley says. Snow King has for property at the base, the future—in about 40,000 skier days each winter. (For terms of stable revenue—hinges on the comparison, Jackson Hole Mountain success of new year-round attractions.

Resort had more than 500,000 skier days last winter.) Approximately 70,000 peoTHE SNOWMAKING PROJECT is just ple ride the alpine slide each summer. about the only change in the works for While the alpine slide was state-ofthe mountain that has gained communi- the-art entertainment when it opened ty-wide support. Ski area owners want almost four decades ago, today mountain to add more skiable terrain and replace resorts have zip lines, ropes courses, and aging lifts, but they also have plans for a alpine coasters (a roller coaster that opmishmash of new summer attractions erates without a motor using only gravi-

ty). Snow King would also like to have all of these. The changes were laid out in a master plan submitted to the BridgerTeton National Forest, but each individual proposal still has to be approved before work can begin. (In November, the Town Council approved the alpine coaster.)

Like many ski areas, Snow King operates based on a lease with the forest service.

The Town of Jackson also owns part of the land on the ski hill.

While the projects in the plan may be nothing more than a wish list at this point, based on the funding that is available, that hasn’t stopped some in the community from raising alarms that the “soul” of Snow King could be at stake.

People have used words like “carnival,” “amusement park,” and “Disneyland” to describe some of what the resort operators have proposed outside of the snowmaking project.

A group of residents who live on the hillside just below a proposed ropes course have drawn one of the first battle lines in what could be a more extended fight over the construction of future attractions. Shane Rothman owns a home at the top of Snow King Drive. A proposed “aerial adventure course” would be visible in the treetops above his backyard.

“It’s hurting this community’s character,” Rothman said at a Town Council meeting in July. “It doesn’t fit into the core values of what Snow King has stood for for over seventy-five years.” Town of Jackson Councilman Jim Stanford, who also lives near the base of the King, held a similar view at the same meeting. “A lot of this stuff that’s being proposed for Snow King taken collectively are gimmicks,” Stanford says. “I ask what’s wrong with experiencing nature on nature’s terms? The answer is you can’t make a buck.” The same has been said for the network of zip lines proposed for the ski hill and the alpine coaster. Snow King says the additions are vital to the future operations of the mountain. “I think because we’re a small ski area and the costs of operating in the winter months at the industry standard are quite expensive, the path forward is really to support winter operations through summer operations revenue,” Stanley says. “We’re looking at the snowmaking as the first step of many in turning Snow King around and making it sustainable, which I think is what everyone here wants. People love this mountain.” JH

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JH Living

photo gallery

Subzero -°° -°°

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF DIENER

FOR SOME PHOTOGRAPHERS, the secret to shooting is not found in megabytes and file sizes. More often it’s being in the right place at the right time. For Jackson photographer Jeff Diener, capturing the beauty and grandeur of the Tetons dipped in the deep of winter produces artful photographs, a change of pace from his usual work shooting outdoor gear and products.

“My natural eye as a photographer is drawn to soulful, powerful compositions that pull a viewer into the shot,” says Diener, whose commercial work appears in Backpacker, Skiing, and Runner’s World. “I love to create shots with depth, texture, and mood. The deep shadows and those amazing pastel highlights help with elevating mood and drama.”

When he’s out scouting locations for product and gear shots, This photo was taken Diener zooms in on details that at one of the times of day Jeff Diener make the darkest time of the year considers “the sweet interesting—from hoar-frost-laced spot”—during sunrise landscapes draped in warm light to or just before the sun foggy, subzero mornings. sets. Fog in Teton Canyon allowed aspens “No matter the time of day, it’s to frame the fading always key to simplify composition,” light. “This was shot Diener says. “Zoom in or get closer in a series at sunset to the most dramatic and important during a time of cold, high pressure,” Diener parts of the scene. Snow, fog, and says. “Earlier in the clouds are great for simplifying a evening, I shot some composition, and our winters offer a dynamic backlit images great palette for that.” with the setting sun, but as the valley fog Diener has a few tips for when settled, it blocked you’re out in the Teton winter, when any direct light, so I average temperatures are 5 dezoomed into this scene grees and an average of eighty highlighting the great moody contrasts of inches of snow falls on the valley these treetops pushing floor. “Definitely carry an extra batthrough the fog.” tery in a warm place [if it’s subzero] and a tripod for that golden-hour light,” he says. “Wear thin liner gloves inside warmer gloves or mitts so your skin is never exposed when dialing in the camera.”

He adds, “Whoever said, ‘Don’t shoot into the sun,’ was wrong.

Shooting into the sun can give you some of the most dramatic, dynamic light with the sun star just out of frame or in your composition. Some cameras’ automatic sensors will underexpose, so be prepared to correct for this and have a lens hood to guard against flare when the sun is just out of the frame.” – Jeannette Boner WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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TOP: “It was hard to motivate for this shot, since it was my third attempt at getting this composition,” Diener says. Also, most sunrises in the Tetons are bitterly cold.

“Persistence does pay off, and in this case, I got about ten minutes of beautiful light and valley fog until more clouds moved in and obscured the peaks.”

LEFT: During a pre-dawn scouting mission up Cache Creek on a morning when temperatures hovered around -25 degrees, Diener found these patterns on a cabin window. “This beautiful artistry, the detail and symmetrical structure designed by nature, always blows me away,” he says.

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TOP RIGHT: A frigid day with high winds helps to form this banner cloud flagging off the summit of the Grand Teton. “After a full day of skiing, we headed back to town, and I was able to use a long lens to isolate the final breath of sunset glow backlighting the clouds,” he says.

BOTTOM: Thick hoar frost decorates the branches of a willow along the banks of Flat Creek. Hoar frost is formed from water deposits frozen in humid conditions. Fragile, it covers most every branch on the coldest mornings and gives off a brilliant, sterile glow. “A slight wind or warming of the sun can strip these delicate crystals, so you’ve gotta get out there early before it’s gone,” Diener says.

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LEFT: In Jackson, walking out the front door is sometimes enough to find a great shot. Such was the case for Diener shooting this bridge near his home on Flat Creek. “Here we’re seeing some of the first light on a 30-below morning,” he says. The shadows from Snow King Mountain helped define the snow and cold. “Winter mornings I keep time using that point when the sun finally crests the Snow King ridgeline above town and blasts through the cold.”

BOTTOM: “My eye is always attracted to natural [or manmade] lines that lead the eye into a photo,” says Diener. “The alignment of this fence line in a field near Spring Gulch, tied to the position of the setting sun, pulled me in. The deep shadows and contrast of this light pull out the awesome frozen textures of the snow and make the fence line a powerful piece of the image.”

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COURTESY JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Why did wolves disappear from Yellowstone in the first place?

Roy McBride stands next to six wolves killed in the Upper Flat Creek area in 1902. Wolves were actively hunted in the Greater Yellowstone region in the early 1900s in order to protect livestock and were effectively eradicated from the region by the 1940s.

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Shortly after Yellowstone’s designation as a national park (the first national park in the world) in 1872, the government, prodded by ranchers and farmers recently settled outside the park’s boundaries, took the view that wolves were varmints. Their habit of killing prey like elk and deer, both considered “more desirable” species than wolves, and also of sometimes going after livestock was deemed “wanton destruction” of those animals.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Canis lupus were poisoned and hunted. Even wolves inside Yellowstone were eradicated: At least 136 were killed between 1914 and 1926. By the 1940s, wolf packs were rarely sighted in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Wolves weren’t just poisoned and hunted in this area; by the mid-1900s, they had been effectively extirpated from the Lower 48. In 1974, gray wolves were listed as an endangered species in the Lower 48 and Mexico.

DARYL HUNTER

A pair of wolves pass in front of the mouth of Death Canyon in Grand Teton National Park.

Since their reintroduction to Yellowstone in 1995, wolves have expanded their territory as their numbers grow.

As Smith describes it, a sow grizzly bear and triplet cubs had moved in first on the fresh carcass. Rising on her haunches, whiffing the air, the mother bruin took note of a six-hundred-pound male griz rapidly closing in across the sagebrush. Circling, too, were gray wolves—members of the Junction Butte pack—howling as they dodged the bears, and sending ravens and a pair of bald eagles scattering.

The commotion attracted a large crowd of human onlookers along the road one hundred yards distant. Even Smith, Yellowstone’s senior wolf biologist, couldn’t help but marvel at the scene. “This,” he thought to himself, “is the picture of wildness that America’s first national park is supposed to be in the twenty-first century.”

In fact, considering that all three species—bison, grizzlies, and lobos—had been nearly annihilated in the Lower 48 states only a few generations earlier, he called their convergence a miracle.

Remembering a brutally cold day in January twenty years earlier, Smith started to feel butterflies in his gut. One of the grandest achievements in U.S. wildlife conservation history, the restoration of wolves to an iconic ecosystem from which they had been exterminated, almost never happened.

In 1995, the then-young field man had walked behind a group of notable bureaucrats, which included Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the late U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beattie, and Yellowstone Superintendent Michael V. Finley, as they ceremoniously carried crates of transplanted Canadian wolves to holding pens prior to their release in the Lamar Valley. It ended a sixty-year absence for Canis lupus.

Some thirty-one wolves were turned loose into Yellowstone and another thirty-five into wilderness areas of central Idaho over the course of two successive winters.

Between then and now, offspring of those wolves have

LOBOS AT TWENTY Wolves have restored wildness to Greater Yellowstone, but human attitudes die hard toward the iconic predator.

BY TODD WILKINSON

NO ONE KNOWS for sure what brought down the 1,800-pound bison bull. The strapping behemoth was dead, its mortal end likely hastened by canid fangs applied to jugular vein. When Doug Smith arrived on the scene last August in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, a battle was already ensuing between two of the national park’s most formidable and charismatic predators hungry for a meal.

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DIANE PAPINEAU

Schoolchildren in Gardiner, Montana, line the road just inside Yellowstone National flourished in the Northern Rockies and begun Park to watch a trailer full of gray wolves pass beneath the Roosevelt Arch in January to recolonize in Washington and Oregon, sur1995. These were the first lobos released inside Yellowstone as part of the park’s passing even the wildest expectations of the reintroduction program. architects who brought them back.

“The public forgets,” Smith says, “and new generations of park visitors often take it for who tried to stand in the way weren’t just saying no to wolves. They were saygranted, that wolves not very long ago were ing, ‘Hell, no! Not in this lifetime.’ ” Robert Fanning, who was involved with a gone from this place. Grizzlies had become group called Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd, called wolf reinrare. What gave wolves and bears a second troduction “the greatest wildlife disaster” of the last century. He claimed wolves chance wasn’t an accident. It involved a conwould devastate all prey species and that Yellowstone would turn into a “bioscious decision on the logical wasteland.” part of citizens, governTwenty years on, “some ment agencies, and still aren’t very happy about elected leaders who said it,” says Smith. There are alIn the months right before reintroduction, Renée Askins, the yes to their recovery.” leged exchanges of death threats between “wolf lovers” founder of Jackson-based the Wolf Fund, received mailed death THE U.S. IS a country and “wolf haters.” Still, threats and nasty letters in response to her wolf advocacy. that loves commemothere’s an undeniable silver rating milestones. This lining: Wolves, against long winter, the twentieth odds, are again embedded in anniversary of wolf resthe tapestry of the wild West. toration in the Greater Mike Jimenez, the U.S. Yellowstone Ecosystem, a region that encomFish and Wildlife Service’s wolf coordinator for the Northern Rockies, has been passes all of Jackson Hole, represents a proon the front lines, spending his entire professional career—nearly thirty years— found moment of reflection. studying wolves as a government biologist. His connection to the animals began The events that led up to wolf reintroducin the mid-1980s when researchers were tracking wolves that naturally distion were both dramatic and controversial. In persed southward out of Canada into Glacier National Park. “I remember when the months right before reintroduction, Renée there were no wolves in the Rockies south of Canada. If you had told me twenty Askins, the founder of Jackson-based the Wolf years ago that we would have 320 packs and somewhere around 2,000 wolves in Fund, received mailed death threats and nasty 2015, I wouldn’t have believed you,” he says. letters in response to her wolf advocacy. (She During the last decade, wolves have wandered on the butte above the published some of the hate mail in her book, National Museum of Wildlife Art, passed through South Park south of the Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a town of Jackson, and been spotted in the Cache Creek drainage east of town.

Woman, and the Wild.) Smith says, “Those They’ve denned on the National Elk Refuge just beyond the northern town 94

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limits and, more recently, in the southwest corner of Grand Teton National Park just off the Moose-Wilson Road.

Save for regular sightings by wildlife watchers and the sounds of night howls and tracks left on the ground, they’ve had a mostly discreet and innocuous presence in the valley, which has only added to their mystique.

“Oh, wolves are around, and they will follow wildlife—their elk, moose, and deer prey—that dwell in residential subdivisions, but let’s be clear: We should not have expectations that it’s OK for wolves to inhabit in close quarters the places where people live,” Jimenez says, noting that he caught flack for lethally removing a few wolves that were spending time in the Jackson suburbs. “Humans and wolves can do fine coexisting—at a distance. Wolves, for the most part, don’t represent a danger to us, but they are wild animals and should be treated as such.” A couple of salient facts: No person in the Lower 48 has ever been attacked and killed by a healthy wild wolf, and no farmer or rancher has been run out of business because of lobo attacks on their livestock.

RENÉE ASKINS EARNED a place in the hearts of many as “the wolf lady” of Yellowstone’s modern age. An ardent conservationist, she founded the Wolf Fund in 1986. Its singular ad hoc mission was bringing wolves back to Yellowstone. She promised the Wolf Fund would close the second wolves were re-established.

Recalling a long list of characters who played pivotal roles in making reintroduction happen, Askins says several park officials, including former superintendent Bob Barbee, science chief John Varley, and naturalist-interpreter Norm Bishop, risked their jobs by continuing to advocate for wolves despite fierce political pressure brought against them and orders that they couldn’t promote wolf reintroduction—orders they defied.

Following the writing of a lengthy environmental impact statement, hundreds of contentious public meetings, and collectively millions of public comments submitted—the vast majority supporting reintroduction—the final pieces of reintroduction involved finding wolves in British Columbia and then navigating a gauntlet of legal challenges.

Askins was there at Roosevelt Arch in

1995 to welcome wolves passing beneath the famous portal, the homecoming accompanied by an armed escort from law enforcement that had been warned about possible troublemakers. “My favorite moment was watching all the Gardiner schoolkids, festooned in vibrant-colored mittens, rainbow snow boots, their scarves fluttering like bright prayer flags, as they gathered along the roadside to wave wolves in,” Askins recalls. “I was told there were some displeased teachers that had resisted, but the kids charged out to line the route, oblivious to any adult trepidation.”

Like biologist Smith, she was afraid that a last-minute court ruling would delay reintroduction or halt it. Many worried that wolves, confined to small cages, might not endure the journey. “There were some exceptionally tense hours while the Farm Bureau sued for an injunction to prevent the wolves from being released from their portable kennels into the park holding pens,” Askins recalls. “Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt, there for the celebration, instead found himself speculating to the press about whether Yellowstone’s first wolves would arrive not in kennels but coffins.”

That didn’t happen. An Interior Department attorney’s approval, upheld by a federal judge, cleared the way over yowls of protest and predictions the western way of life was about to collapse.

At first, wolves occupied and thrived in the park and then in remote corners of the region away from people. L. David Mech, considered America’s foremost wolf authority who is best known for fieldwork on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and overseeing the recovery of wolves in Minnesota, knew the real test would come when wolves left the safe confines of Yellowstone. It didn’t take long. The thirty-one lobos released in Yellowstone swelled to more than four times as many in the first few years. Within five years, wolves began inhabiting places where rural people and their livestock live.

HOW WILDLIFE ARE managed in Yellowstone National Park—where hunting isn’t allowed, there is no livestock, and preservation is the objective—is very different from the reality outside the park. “My colleagues with other agencies jokingly say that I work in a wildlife country club,” Yellowstone’s Smith says today.

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BRADLY J. BONER

“I agree with Doug that there is tremenit’s important to understand the perception that people out here have,” Jimenez dous value to having places like Yellowstone says. “Wolves were completely gone and then brought back into areas where where wildlife doesn’t have to be subjected to they weren’t wanted. Getting rid of wolves initially was a source of cultural constant and, in some cases, heavy-handed pride. I often hear stories from people who claim it was their grandfather who human management,” Mech says. “But the fact killed the last wild wolf in their state. They resent the federal government beis, the majority of terrain inhabited by wolves cause we went to Canada, got wolves, and dumped them in their backyards. in the West is found outside national parks. They’re angry with environmentalists because they pushed to make reintroThere, wolves fall under some form of manduction happen.” agement. The question is, ‘What kind?’ ” Lingering, Jimenez adds, is an impression that the federal government lied Not long after wolves were first removed about how many wolves would be re-established and that the rules of the game from protection under the Endangered Species were changed. Jackson Hole’s own John Turner, who grew up at the Triangle X Act in 2008, a group of Wyomingites trespassed Ranch in Grand Teton National Park, was a leader in the Wyoming Senate and on a ranch, used snowmobiles to chase down went on to become national director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under wolves, and killed them. An anti-wolf President George Herbert Walker Bush.

Montanan posted instructions for how to poiTurner believes in using the Endangered Species Act to restore species, but son wolves on his website.

And, in Idaho, a legislator told a Boise-based conservationist that she shouldn’t testify at a wolf hearing in the state capital because harm might come to her. In autumn 2013, a Wyoming hunter shot a wolf in the predator zone south of Jackson, where it was then legal to do so, strapped the carcass to the top of his vehicle, and parked on the Town Square. The Idaho Legislature in 2014 authorized spending $400,000 (plus another $200,000 provided by the federal animal control agency Wildlife Services) to try and aggressively reduce wolf numbers in the state down to their absolute minimum.

Hunters, too, have been harassed and threatened with harm. (Since wolves’ removal from the endangered species Pedestrians stop to photograph a dead wolf on top of a truck parked on the Jackson Town Square in list it has been legal to hunt October 2013. The owner of the truck said he’d shot the wolf in the predator zone near Bondurant while them, although how, when, elk hunting that morning and brought the animal to Jackson so Wyoming Game and Fish officials could and why differ by state.) Just collect a DNA sample. as this story was being completed, a green activist entity calling itself the Yellowstone Wolf Patrol ishe argues that the number of wolves on the ground today far exceeds what was sued a press release vowing to disrupt legal originally proposed. He believes western states were double-crossed. hunts of wolves in the Absaroka-Beartooth Initially, the objective was to have thirty packs and around 300 wolves Wilderness of Montana. “We are not opposed total in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—ten packs, each comprised of to Montana residents filling their freezers with roughly ten wolves, per state. Within half a decade, the regional wolf popuelk, but the wolves were here first and deserve lation blew through those numbers, a biological response to both excepprotection from recreational killing,” says tional vacant habitat and an abundance of natural prey. To avoid having Patrol member Julie Henry. wolves relisted as an endangered species today, states must maintain a minimum of 150 wolves and fifteen breeding pairs (which form the nucleus of IN THE WEST, wolves are different than in wolf packs).

Minnesota, where they were never entirely exToday, there are roughly 2,000 wolves in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, tirpated, and Wisconsin and Michigan, where and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014 stated it is confident that even the population rebuilt from neighboring aniwith states controlling wolf numbers through hunting and management aimed mals. “You don’t have to agree with them, but at livestock protection, the species’ population will remain above 1,000.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, also a Fish and Wildlife Service director (she served under Bill Clinton), is today the president of Defenders of Wildlife. She has a different take from Turner’s. Clark says the population targets that preceded reintroduction were intended to be floors for considering minimum population viability, not ceilings. She is appalled that wolves, as part of an agreement brokered with the Fish and Wildlife Service to facilitate their removal from federal protection, were allowed to be classified as predators over a vast majority of Wyoming—enabling people to kill them any time of year, at any time of day, and for any reason. That liberal provision is now under a legal challenge that, in September 2014, resulted in Wyoming wolves being put back under the umbrella of federal protection. How it gets resolved is, at this point, unclear. “Never before have Americans been stakeholders in the recovery of a species only to watch a state take over management and immediately start treating the animal as disrespectfully as vermin the moment it was delisted,” Clark says. “It goes against the spirit of what wildlife recovery means, especially when many wolves are being killed simply for existing, and are not causing serious impacts to livestock or to huntable game species.”

In neighboring Montana and Idaho, wolves are instead classified statewide as a game species (rather than as a predator). That means their harvest, whether through hunting or trapping, is based on allowable limits.

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve had discussions with many different ranchers in the tristate area and two of the most thoughtful were Wyoming cattlemen Bob Lucas and John Robinette, both of whom run cows on ranches in the vicinity of Togwotee Pass near Dubois.

Wolves haven’t been as bad as they’re portrayed to be nor are they as benign as wolf-adoring environmentalists contend, Lucas says. Most mom-and-pop ranchers operate on narrow bottom lines, and anything that eats into their profit margins is a concern.

Robinette and his wife, Deb, have had wolves and grizzlies literally at the back door of their home in the Dunoir River Valley. They’ve lost beloved pets to both predators, and they’ve had concerns about their grandchildren’s safety.

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says. “Being pilloried by both sides goes with the terrain.”

“Part of this is an urban/rural divide issue in which people on ranches and farms don’t feel like their concerns are being heard or acknowledged by prowolf people from cities who don’t have to live with the animals. They’re concerned about their own survival,” Jimenez says. “It just seems like some of the hardcore conservationists are waiting for hardcore anti-wolf people to come around to their positions. They say, ‘If only ranchers learned to like wolves.’

But I can tell you that it ain’t ever gonna happen—certainly not until rural people feel respected. People need to talk to each other more.”

Of the 320 packs in the Northern Rockies, Jimenez points out that only 19 percent were involved in predation incidents on livestock. “Many of those incidents didn’t involve multiple predations; they involved only one calf or lamb being killed,” he says. “Most wolves are not causing problems for ranchers and for those that do, those animals that are part of the 19 percent, we deal with them quickly.” Across the three states comprising the Northern Rockies, total confirmed depredations by wolves in 2013 included 143 cattle, 476 sheep, 6 dogs, 1 horse, 3 ponies, and 3 goats. Between 2008 and 2012, an average of 199 cattle depredations and 397 sheep depredations occurred annually.

“Although confirmed depredations result in a comparatively small proportion of all livestock losses, wolf damage can be significant to some livestock producers in areas where wolves are present,” the report stated. Compared to the thousands of cattle and sheep that die each year from weather, disease, acNational Elk Refuge officials take notes on a sedated gray wolf during capture and collaring operations. Wolves were again delisted in Wyoming in 2012, and the state took over management of them from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In September 2014, a federal judge invalidated Wyoming’s management plan, which classified the animals as predators that could be shot on sight in most of the state at any time.

Wyoming wolves were then placed back under federal protection.

BRADLY J. BONER

But they’re not fearmongers. When they hear claims that schoolchildren waiting for buses in rural areas need to have protective shelters available to shield them from possible bear and wolf attacks, they roll their eyes.

Both cowboy-boot- and jean-wearing wildlife photographers, the couple’s preference has been to find ways to deter lobos and bears from getting into their cattle without using bullets.

They’ve spent many long nights vigilantly looking after calves in the pasture, employing electric fences and flags, and flashing siren lights. In one incident, government agents came in and lethally removed wolves, against the wishes of the Robinettes, yet it was the Robinettes who received a nasty telephone call and death threat from a person who was upset that wolves had been killed.

Before Jimenez was tapped to oversee wolf management for the federal government in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho a few years ago, he was based in Jackson Hole. His job was to resolve wolf conflicts in Wyoming, which were mostly with ranchers. As part of his duties, Jimenez killed hundreds of wolves that had killed livestock and pets. Environmentalists accused him of destroying too many wolves, and ranchers condemned him for not felling enough. “I’ve kind of gotten used to it,” he

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cidents, eating poisonous plants, and coyotes, losses caused by wolves are, relatively speaking, nominal, yet they accrue a disproportionate amount of blame, says Carter Niemeyer, a former federal depredation expert and author of a book titled Wolfer.

OFTEN FORGOTTEN IN the current discussion of wolf reintroduction is context. In ecology, there is a phenomenon called top-down trophic cascades—essentially rippling impacts that occur in landscapes when key animals, like wolves, are removed from the top of the food chain. After wolves disappeared from Yellowstone in the 1930s, elk numbers in subsequent decades exploded.

By the late 1980s, half a decade prior to wolf reintroduction, the number of wapiti on Yellowstone’s Northern Range—often described as an American Serengeti because of the diversity of large mammals there—reached a whopping 19,000. Range scientists from Montana State University’s College of Agriculture declared, “There were too many elk.” They said Yellowstone’s grasslands were severely overgrazed and that aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees were imperiled because of foraging wapiti. They accused park managers of being inept. State game officials in Montana responded with actions that raised eyebrows, initiating late-season hunts targeting pregnant cow elk to control the population.

After wolves were reintroduced, the elk population tumbled dramatically but not dangerously. Today in Jackson Hole, where the National Elk Refuge and state of Wyoming operate twenty-three feeding stations in winter that nourish thousands of elk, wapiti numbers, even with wolves, are—with only a few exceptions—at or above management objectives. Researchers across the ecosystem note that fewer elk are resulting in more aspen, willow, and cottonwoods. And with more willow, there are more beavers, which, in turn, create wetlands that benefit moose and songbirds and other marsh-dependent species. It is hypothesized that rivers will flow healthier.

Because wolves also kill coyotes, which prey on pronghorn fawns, conjecture is that antelope numbers will grow. And with fewer coyotes, which are huge consumers of rodents, it is suggested that mouse- and ground-squirrel-eating rap-

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HENRY H. HOLDSWORTH

tors are more abundant. um” with existing prey. As the elk population settled to a lower level, so too did Mech guffaws at a popular video posted on the number of wolves, Smith explains. “I expect that in the coming decades YouTube titled “How Wolves Change Rivers” we’ll see elk numbers rise slightly and fall slightly, and there will be a correthat went viral via social media and has been sponding response in wolves.” viewed more than five million times. It portrays It’s true: Some local wapiti populations in the Northern Rockies, subjected a suite of benefits that to wolf predation, have sufwolves have allegedly fered significant losses. brought to the ecosystem.

Biologists, however, attribute Mech says the video both their declines not just to Attitudes about wolves divide across often simplistic beliefs tied to oversimplifies and exagwolves, but to predation also simplistic proposals for how to fix what are considered simplistic gerates them. by grizzlies and mountain liWolf-adoring conserons. That triumvirate of carproblems that aren’t nearly as simplistic as they appear. vationists, he claims, have nivores isn’t the only culprit popularized the image of a either, experts say. Also neces“sanctified wolf ” that can sary to factor in are hard windo no wrong. In a scientific paper, Mech ob- ters, extended drought conditions affecting natural forage and elk reproducserved, “The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner tion, as well as the effects of liberal winter hunting seasons that targeted female except to those who want to make it so.” Beyond elk. Some outfitters who have loudly asserted at public meetings that wolves that, it’s complicated. destroyed their business operate websites advertising high client success rates Attitudes about wolves divide across often for their bull-elk hunts that cost several thousand dollars apiece. simplistic beliefs tied to simplistic proposals for how to fix what are considered simplistic prob- ASKINS SAYS THAT distressing to her is how slow culture can be to change lems that aren’t nearly as simplistic as they ap- and how society arcs on an endless swinging pendulum struggling to find pear. Wolf effects, Mech says, will play out over equilibrium. “What bothers me? The radio collars still being put on wolves to decades and will constantly evolve. Elk hunters track them for research purposes, the traps, the ignorance, the hyperbole, the who malign wolves ignore the natural history rhetoric, and the vitriol that is the product and terrain of bureaucrats, panderthat wapiti owe their power and grace to mil- ing politicians, and, too often in the West, wannabe cowboys. Against that type lennia of wolf predation. of foolishness, even the gods fight in vain.”

In recent years, as scientists predicted, the The conflict revolving around wolves has never been between man and number of wolves inside Yellowstone has de- wolf, Askins says; it has always been, and will continue to be, a war between the clined, achieving a sort of “dynamic equilibri- parts of the human psyche that struggle to recognize and embrace who and 100

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OPPOSITE: A pack of wolves moves along a ridgeline while hunting in Yellowstone National Park.

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what we are as humans. “The wolf, going back as far as the origins of language, has been the creature upon which we project the evil, the darkness, and the wild nature, which we are unable, or unwilling, to accept as our own,” she says. “The story of wolf reintroduction in Greater Yellowstone is an archetypal tale, enacted on the unparalleled, pristine stage of our oldest national park and its surrounding public lands.”

Making good on her promise that the Wolf Fund would end when wolves hit the ground, Askins closed its doors on that day in January twenty years ago and then retreated from public view. She and her husband, the legendary folk singer Tom Rush, had a daughter, and they raised her in New England. But Askins recalls a sabbatical they took back in the West during the winter of 200708. They stayed at a home near the southern border of Grand Teton National Park.

An injured bull elk, left haggard by the elements, lumbered into the yard and died. Eagles, ravens, foxes, and coyotes helped themselves to the carcass.

And then, as Askins recalls, savoring the thought, came an unexpected gift.

“A wolf showed up at about 2 one morning,” she says. “A second about four days later. Nature took its course, and soon there was the genesis of a breeding pair, frolicking, feeding, and chasing ravens and coyotes not fifty feet from the house. A third wolf joined the pair, and my daughter got her first extended course in wolf ethology, watching three uncollared wolves play, mate, chase, and sleep in her front yard, not even needing binoculars or a scope.

They came and went for several months, without incident or another human soul noticing.”

With humans marking the twentieth anniversary of wolves’ return to Yellowstone, what’s the message Jimenez wants to convey? That this time around C. lupus isn’t going away. As contentious as the topic of the animals can be, people have become smarter about coexistence.

Having wolves back is momentous, but it’s not a big deal. We just need to keep being continually reminded. JH

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The Pass

ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

BY ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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DAILY, COMMUTERS STREAM over Teton Pass by the thousands without regard to the historic difficulties this geographic barrier has posed.

They “jump the bump” in a matter of minutes, usually in miles-long threads of cars and trucks weaving through the bends of a modern highway. Tuned into NPR or their favorite Sirius channel, drivers climb and descend more than 2,000 vertical feet each way, covering dozens of miles of rugged timberland with the press of an accelerator pedal.

At 8,431 feet, Teton Pass is a chink in the armor of the forty-five-mile-long Teton Range, whose monarch—the Grand Teton—rises to 13,775 feet.

Indians found it the best crossing between Jackson and Pierre’s holes. While it was the voie normale for tribal members who used a variety of trails on both sides, fur-trade explorer Wilson Price Hunt “discovered” it for whites in 1811.

He jumped the bump as an agent of entrepreneur John Jacob Astor, climbing over the obstacle only after determining he couldn’t negotiate the “mad” Snake River. He and his party of more than sixty men and one woman were on a mission to reach the West Coast.

In the more than two hundred years since, The Pass produced tales of bravery, foolhardiness, errant engineering, and luck, both good and bad. Trails gave way to wagon roads that were replaced by tarmac routes and, ultimately, the two-lane artery that connects Wilson, Wyoming, with Victor, Idaho, today.

LONG AFTER HUNT went by and settlers populated the valley, The Pass served as Jackson Hole’s main link with the outside world—and the end of the rail line in Victor. Regular mail service over it began in 1897 when fourteenyear-old James Riggan stuffed his saddlebags with letters and rode across.

John Bircher, who ran a sawmill and roadhouse on The Pass, secured a contract for delivery in 1900, running the route twice a week.

For most people, Old Pass Road stands out as the landmark historic feature, a crumbling remnant of the first highway. It’s maintained today as part of OPPOSITE: Don Fisher’s plow truck lies partially uncovered after he was dug from the cab following a 1985 avalanche down Glory Slide.

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a hiking and cycling network. Wilson historian and author Doris Platts, who wrote The Pass [“It’s always called The Pass,” she says], notes the road’s opening in July of 1918. That was quickly followed by “a serious runaway accident” at the nearby Elliott Cemetery. A wagon team spooked and bolted four hundred yards downhill. It was, perhaps, a harbinger of the runaway potato truck, the beer truck, the other potato truck, the lumber truck, the rock truck, the otherother potato truck, and the talcum-powder truck, the last of which left a white streak visible for a dozen miles when it crashed above Wilson in August 2012.

In the early days, The Pass would close to normal traffic in the winter, but by 1930, residents were clamoring for better access. They would collect $300$400 to clear the road in the spring, an effort the Jackson’s Hole Courier called “a ‘dual taxation’ sort of expenditure.”

The state took over maintenance and started plowing the highway in the winter of 1938. Until New Year’s Day 1940, that is, when the Highway Department simply quit.

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“Feelings boiled high in the county, road committees met, open meetings were held, and hundreds of pleas were sent to Gov. Nels Smith to intercede on behalf of Teton County,” the paper reported. When the state refused to respond, Jackson residents held an evening meeting that “broke up in a melee.” A march ensued—past several saloons, Platts notes—to the Highway Department garage where the “borrowing delegation” seized plows and put them to work themselves.

Because the route traverses the slopes of Mount Glory, which rises 2,000 feet and more above the road, avalanches plagued highway workers and travelers in the winter. Mail carriers, a woodcutter’s son, and even a passenger in a vehicle were caught, buried, and killed by snowslides. Two deadly ones ran down Glory Slide, the mammoth path below picturesque Glory Bowl facing Wilson.

IN THE 1960s, the Wyoming Highway Department sought to upgrade the road and build Wyoming Highway 22 in a new location. It would climb up some terrain

that was avalanche-free, but traverse Mount Glory higher up than the original road. The goal was to eliminate switchbacks and make the route as safe as possible, even to the extent of bridging the Glory Slide gully. In fact, the alignment exposed the route to new dangers.

In several instances, the highway would cross some of the half-dozen Teton Pass slide scars at an elevation where the avalanches did their most destructive business. “The location of the highway at the mid-path position ... means that vehicles are exposed to direct impact of snow over the road cut,” avalanche consultants Arthur Mears and Rod Newcomb wrote in a 1989 study.

“Vehicles may also be pushed over the lower road embankment and rolled for long distances on the steep, lower slopes.

Therefore, because of the steep terrain, the consequences of an encounter with an avalanche may be more severe on Teton Pass than on other highways with similar avalanche exposure.”

Highway workers laboring to build the new road in the late 1960s didn’t have the benefit of this hindsight when

BRADLY J. BONER

Commuters stream over Teton Pass at the end of a January workday. Thousands from Teton Valley, Idaho, “jump the bump” during their daily commute to jobs in Jackson Hole.

they parked a large, mechanical roadconstruction shovel at a pullout below a looming Mount Glory slope. They found it hundreds of feet below, blown off the hill by an avalanche down a path that became known as Shovel Slide.

The Highway Department continued its close relationship with Glory as it constructed the avalanche bridge, a four-hundred-foot-long roadbed hanging from two-inch-thick wire ropes suspended from steel arches eighty-eight feet above.

None of the Swiss, Austrians, Germans, French, or Italians had built such a solution to an avalanche problem, the Jackson Hole Guide wrote at the time. It was, the paper said, “the only one of its type.”

There might have been a reason for European reluctance. Snow from a major slide can cross Highway 22 at 133 mph and pile 30 feet deep. The destructive front, including an air blast, can be 150 feet high. In January 1970, before workers

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JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

While many might consider a winter drive over Teton Pass to be a daunting experience today, it was a lot more challenging in the 1920s.

could nail down the bridge deck, Glory Bowl let loose. Left behind were seven hundred tons of steel that had to be scrapped at a cost of $756,000. Under Plan B, Glory Slide would run across the road. Only by using avalanche-provoking artillery and other explosives could the frequency of its anger be altered.

In such a game, however, timing is everything, as witnessed by motorists Thomas and Melia Ives. In late 106

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November 1985, the visitors to Jackson Hole drove under the Twin Slide path at the instant an avalanche roared down. It rolled their car two hundred feet, blew out its windows, and crushed it. “It was like a nightmare,” Melia Ives said later.

“We must have rolled two or three times.

The car was full of snow. I was sure I was going to die.”

Once recovered, they took a less-scenic route home.

IN JANUARY 1988, another blizzard hit the Tetons, laying down four feet of snow in as many days, some of it carried

by 115 mph winds. Highway Department plow driver Don Fisher was on his last run of the day, fearing a motorist might be stranded on The Pass’ summit.

Driving up from the Wilson side, he approached Glory Slide and paused.

Creep or bolt, he wondered?

“I pulled in there just a little ways,” he said later. “I saw the first snow and tried to get in reverse. You can’t believe how fast that thing is.”

The avalanche blew out the plow truck’s windows. “I could feel my truck being airborne,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was upside down.”

Snow entombed him with only two inches of space in front of his face. All he could move were the fingers on his right hand, which he clenched repeatedly in his icy tomb.

Only luck and the bravery of coworkers Chuck Kakalecik and Russ Moses saved him. They couldn’t get Fisher on the radio, so they drove up the hill and climbed over debris from another slide path to Glory Slide. There they found part of a fender and wheel sticking out of the debris. The slide tore the blade off the plow and sent it downhill, a several-ton, riderless snowboard that wouldn’t be found until spring.

To extricate Fisher, the men ultimately had to use a coffee can as a scoop in the packed cab of the truck. Fisher remained conscious only until they broke through to his face. They pulled him out of his boots and put him in an ambulance, where EMTs worked on him as his bare, blue feet stuck out into the cold.

The Highway Department recognized Moses and Kakalecik for bravery at a ceremony Fisher attended. He stood almost still as he watched them receive their awards. All he moved were the fingers of one hand clenching and unclenching a fist.

Determined not to let fate endanger its workers again, the Highway Department took action. The day after the slide, it sent a representative from Cheyenne to the Bridger-Teton National Forest’s Avalanche Center at Teton Village. There they investigated an avalanche forecaster’s computerized array of thermometers, humidity gauges, wind speed indicators, snow stakes, and weather forecast networks as they moved into the contemporary era of hazard forecasting (which you can read about on page 40). JH

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Nordic Paradise It’s not all downhill (skiing) here.

IN JACKSON HOLE, while skiing the backcountry or even walking your dog along the Snake River, we are constantly in the humble thrall of a natural majesty that incredibly belongs to all of us. The views, mountains, the snow, and water feed a palpable sense of adventure and reverence for the outdoors that defines valley culture. Jackson has an embarrassing wealth of public (meaning free!)

Nordic trails. Most bike trails you may have enjoyed over the summer are groomed by late December, depending on snow, of course. Crews at BridgerTeton National Forest (BTNF), Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), and our own busy home team at Teton County/ Jackson Parks & Recreation all have their own grooming schedules. The end result is a vast variety of trails for classic and skate skiing, dog-friendly and not, hilly or, well, less hilly.

Some of these public-land favorites are the trails along the Snake River levee, for its awesome views (don’t stop too often for selfies) and the trails along Moose-Wilson Road, so popular and yet always somehow beautifully quiet and peaceful. JHNordic.com is a valuable resource, listing grooming sched108

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

JEFF DIENER

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

ules and details for most of these trails.

Read the reviews for tips like good parking spots and conditions. Teton County/Jackson Parks & Recreation also maintains a reliably up-to-date website, tetonparksandrec.org/parkspathways/winter-trail-grooming.

While the U.S. Forest Service is our most valued partner in making these undeveloped, publicly owned lands accessible to all, Jackson Hole is fortunate to have a wealth of private properties that also see themselves as partners in contributing to the valley’s outdoor recreational character. In typical Jackson fashion, clubs, resorts, and conservation properties have partnered with nonprofits and local government entities, creating a wonderland for Nordic skiers.

“Crust cruising” on Nordic skate skis at Trail Creek Ranch near Wilson

TRAIL CREEK RANCH Trail Creek Ranch is at the foot of Teton Pass, and is the heart of Jackson’s Nordic ski history. Betty Woolsey, captain of the 1936 U.S. Women’s Olympic Alpine Ski Team, bought her first parcel of land in 1942, and by the time of her death in 1997, had amassed 270 acres.

Woolsey placed the entire property under a conservation easement with the Jackson Hole Land Trust, and the ranch now hosts the Nordic Center in partnership with the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club. The ski club grooms nearly sixteen kilometers of skate and

Nordic Freeways

— Erich Wilbrecht’s Nordic Jackson Hole — ERICH WILBRECHT MOVED to Jackson Hole at the age of fifteen, skied with the Jackson Hole Ski Club, and, except for an extraordinary decade spent in part at Dartmouth College (captain of the ski team) and, oh yes, a few years on the U.S. Olympic Biathlon Team (1992 Winter Games), he has called Jackson Hole his home.

Now an associate broker with Sotheby’s International Realty, he lives and works with a true Jackson passion for the outdoors and family life. You can often find Erich, his wife, Chris, and their two sons skiing—much faster than you—throughout the valley. Here are his insider tips for finding your own Nordic paradise: Where would you take kids to teach them how to Nordic ski?

Teton Pines for great tracks and easy terrain Best trail for good skiing and spectacular views?

If it’s clear with just a little wind, BradleyTaggart to Jenny Lake Best spot for a quick, lunch-hour ski near town?

Cache Creek Where do you go to really challenge yourself with advanced trails?

Trail Creek Where do you go for that quiet, undisturbed Zen ski?

Granite Canyon trailhead to Rockefeller Preserve on the Moose-Wilson Road What do you love most about living and skiing in Jackson Hole?

The long winters and months of skiing!

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classic trails, some on a daily basis, for its Nordic team training, but the trails are open to the public with a season pass or day pass purchased from the ski club.

There is some beginner terrain, but keep in mind that this is also a training ground for world-class athletes. The hills range from sweetly rolling nods to a descent called “Suicide Hill,” and serious local skiers tend to protectively police the groomed trails for newbies who walk on them or, worse, bring their dogs. Carrie Boynton, the ski club’s executive director, expresses the collective gratitude all valley Nordic skiers have for Woolsey’s historic contribution: “Having access to this incredible trail system is a gift to the Nordic community thanks to the collaboration of the Seiffert family and the United States Forest Service. Thanks to the generosity and vision of Betty Woolsey, these trails have been available

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WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

to Jackson’s youth for more than fifty years.”

Trail Creek Ranch, at Old Pass Road in Wilson, jhskiclub.org/trail-creek/home TETON PINES Everything about skiing at Teton Pines Country Club’s Cross-Country Ski Center is about making guests and skiers feel comfortable. Conveniently located off Teton Village Road, there is ample parking, a superfriendly staff, and the warm and cozy amenities of a country club. Jack Bellorado, director of skiing for the club, is himself a local institution, and his twinkling eyes and warm smile have welcomed thousands of skiers to “The Pines” for twenty-eight years. Bellorado’s love for Nordic skiing is contagious, and, particularly with beginner skiers, he goes to great lengths to make sure their early experiences are fun and gratifying. His ski shop has a large inventory of rental equipment, including children’s sizes, and is located just a few steps from a beginner trail, so you can get your gear on and be skiing in a flash. The shop also tunes and waxes skis, and offers lessons. Bellorado’s favorite time of the day to take in some trails is mid- to late afternoon when “it warms up a bit and the light is dramatic, just before the sun comes down,” he 110

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says. The trails are groomed as meticulously as you would expect at a country club, and usually daily. Even if there hasn’t been fresh snowfall, Bellorado’s grounds team makes the best of it. “We can groom frozen granular. Makes for a fast ride, and you feel like a hero,” he says.

Trails roll gently over what is the golf course in the summer season, and you’ll spot the occasional moose sauntering around the stately homes that border the course. Among the beginners and more leisurely paced skiers, serious competitive skiers regularly take advantage of the impeccably groomed skate trails. The Pines is an excellent family ski center. I’ll never forget seeing a young family on the trails one sunny Saturday—the parents were both teachers at my children’s school—who in their rosy-cheeked happiness seemed to embody Jackson’s optimistic vigor for life. The parents were both on skate skis, the mom with an infant in a BabyBjörn carrier and the dad hauling a toddler in a bike trailer tricked out with skis instead of wheels.

Whatever your pace, after your ski, enjoy lunch at the club’s restaurant, which is also open to the public. Ask for a table with a view of the track.

Teton Pines Country Club, 3450 Clubhouse Drive in Wilson, tetonpines.com

Teton Pines Country Club’s Cross-Country Ski Center is a great option for beginners, but advanced skiers will enjoy it, too.

TURPIN MEADOW RANCH Tucked between Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, and on the Buffalo Fork River, Turpin Meadow Ranch refers to the two parks and also the half-million acres of national forest bordering them as its “backyard.” The ranch itself was recently restored and reopened in the winter of 2013, a labor of love by Hans and Nancy Johnstone, both former Olympic skiers who also own and operate the charming Alpine House in Jackson. Located north of Moran, ten miles down Buffalo Valley Road, an outing to Turpin Meadow calls for a half-day commitment, which should include a meal at their excellent restaurant. In fact, some people venture to Turpin Meadow in the winter to eat and then justify the drive by skiing.

Justify it however you like—the destination is well worth the investment. The Nordic trails are open to the public even if you are not a guest of the ranch or restaurant. Directly from the main lodge, you access fifteen kilometers of incredibly scenic and serene terrain. Alison Sehnert, marketing and sales manager for the ranch and a former Nordic ski

A Complete Guide to Nordic Skiing in the Tetons

— “WE LIST MORE than one hundred trails that together are over five hundred miles,” says Nancy Leon about the website, JHNordic.com, she founded in late 2013. Leon got the idea for the site when, new to the valley, she couldn’t find advice on where to go cross-country skiing.

“There was no comprehensive guide,” she says.

Leon started exploring on her own, taking GPS tracks of where she went and writing up descriptions. Calling herself “only a recreational Nordic skier,” she also wrangled together an advisory board “with so much more experience in the sport,” she says. Today, that board, the Jackson Hole-Teton Nordic Alliance, includes more than sixty people representing businesses and organizations from Teton County/Jackson Parks & Rec to Skinny Skis, Turpin Meadow Ranch, Grand Targhee, and Grand Teton National Park.

The alliance works to promote and facilitate Nordic skiing in the area. The website, to which users can add photos, descriptions, and tracks, is its main tool. On the site you can search for trails both in Jackson Hole and Teton Valley based on distance, location, and difficulty, and whether they’re dog-friendly, groomed, or suitable for fat biking, among other things. “It’s the comprehensive guide I was looking for,” Leon says. – JH magazine staff

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coach, encourages all types of skiers to make the visit. “We have a mix of everything, classic and skate, at almost every level. We have five kilometers that’s really gentle, good for beginners, then another ten kilometers that’s a bit more rolling.” The ranch does not offer lessons, but even first-timers shuffling in their touring tracks will find the setting spectacular, a truly unique perspective on these national parks that is both public and private.

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OVER THE PASS Visit the website of Teton Valley Trails and Pathways (tvtap.org) for Idahospecific reports on the over fifty kilometers of Nordic trails they groom all winter long, including the private Teton Springs Lodge resort community, which opens its Nordic trails to the public. JH

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Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s backcountry yurt might be the only one in the country to come with a yurtmeister, who is tasked with all of the cooking and cleaning.

Winter Camping, Warm and Easy Ever met a yurtmeister before? A yurt, and its accompanying attendant, at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort redefine winter camping.

BY DINA MISHEV PHOTOGRAPHY BY PRICE CHAMBERS

WE DON’T KNOW it yet, but the snowstorm we’re camping in will dump enough to keep Jackson Hole Mountain Resort from opening many of its major lifts on time the next morning. Overnight, winds gust to eighty miles an hour at the top of the resort’s tram, up at 10,450 feet on the summit of Rendezvous Mountain.

Temperatures aren’t frigid but, in winter in northwest Wyoming, that just means they’re above zero.

Even by winter camping standards, this is miserable weather.

Unless you’re camping in a yurt.

Mother Nature might be having a hissy fit outside, but seven of us are toasty and on the verge of falling into a WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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food coma inside a yurt hidden in a pine forest on the rib between Rock Springs and the South Hoback at JHMR. Best of all? Dinner’s just finished—mixed green salad and pasta with a chunky meat sauce—and none of us have to do dishes. This yurt is the only one I’ve ever been to that comes with a yurtmeister. It’s also the only one in this area that isn’t hidden deep in the backcountry, necessi-

Intermediate and advanced skiers ski down to the yurt from the top of the tram.

bounds. The yurt is about five turns down the ridge, tucked into trees so well that skiers passing by below—the yurt is just above the track back into the resort from Rock Springs Bowl, so hundreds of skiers pass it daily—usually have no idea it’s there.

EVERYONE IN MY group has done yurt trips and winter Even before Laura Berger calls me three days before camping excursions before, my group is going in to go over menu details and from the Bench Hut in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains to the explain what she, as our yurtmeister, will do, Beaver Creek Cabin in “yurtmeister” makes me smile. I imagine how such a Montana’s Gallatin National title would make a résumé stand out.

Forest, the three yurts belonging to Teton Backcountry Guides on the western side of tating hours of slogging on specialized skis or the Tetons, tents up Garnet Canyon in Grand Teton snowshoes to reach. You get to this yurt by skiing National Park, and snow caves on Teton Pass.

I definitely prefer yurts to tents. The former— down. Take the tram up, enjoy Rendezvous Bowl, and continue down Rendezvous Trail until the tra- circular, one-room structures that Central Asian verse to the Hobacks breaks off to the south. Head nomads have been living in for thousands of for the southernmost Hoback. About halfway years—gives me room to spread out, space to dry down, with your yurtmeister holding the resort’s wet clothes and boots, a basic kitchen, bunks, and boundary rope up for you to ski under, head out of most importantly when spending a night in the 116

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

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wild where temperatures routinely dip below zero, a wood-burning stove.

Tents, which I’ve spent more winter nights in than I can count, are just a pain.

Do it to say you’ve done it. Once. And then reserve a yurt, preferably this one since it comes with a yurtmeister and comfortably holds eight. And also because it’s equipped with most everything you need. You’re responsible for a toothbrush, clothing, and alcohol. That’s it. The yurt is stocked with sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and all kitchen utensils. But really, it’s the yurtmeister that makes it.

EVEN BEFORE LAURA Berger calls me three days before my group is going in to go over menu details and explain what she, as our yurtmeister, will do, “yurtmeister” makes me smile. I imagine how such a title would make a résumé stand out.

After learning that Berger will take care of all the hard stuff, from melting water to drink to cooking and cleaning during our stay, I graduate from smiling.

I am in love.

The yurt can hold up to eight people and comes equipped with sleeping pads and bags. Even meals are provided. Those overnighting need only bring their personal gear and alcohol.

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Without a yurtmeister, yurts can be fairly labor-intensive. There is wood to split for the wood-burning stove, a fire to build, snow to melt and strain for water, dinner to cook under beams of light from headlamps, and dishes to wash and rinse in water often flecked with pine needles. With a yurtmeister, these chores, of course, don’t go away but the responsibility for them does.

Groups usually meet their yurtmeister by the staff-only entrance to the tram on the deck of the resort’s Nick Wilson’s Cowboy Cafe at 2 p.m. Since several in our group are Rock Springs Yurt veterans, we split into two parties. One opts for a later start and to skin up themselves, meeting Berger at the yurt rather than requiring her to show the way.

(Note: This is not recommended—or allowed—unless you’ve been to the yurt before; it’s easy to find from above, but can be hidden from below.) The saner section opts to avail themselves of the fact that this is the easiest, and most fun, overnight yurt to get to in the entire Teton Range, and for several hundred miles in all directions. They take the tram up with Berger—her pack much larger than any of theirs and stuffed with enough appetizers, dinner, and breakfast for seven—and enjoy skiing Rendezvous

Bowl and the South Hoback.

While Rendezvous Bowl and the South Hoback are ungroomed black diamond runs, Berger says she has helped intermediate skiers get to the yurt. “We just take our time,” she says. Less-skilled skiers can also talk to the resort about getting to the yurt via a combination of snowmobile and snowshoe. Parents with young kids have sometimes done this.

Advanced skiers looking for adventure can hire a trained JHMR backcountry guide for a half-day of sidecountry skiing that ends at the yurt.

Crazy locals can skin up themselves.

IT DOESN’T SEEM possible we will eat all the appetizers—cheese, fruit, and salami with an array of crackers and spreads—but we do. In about ten minutes nonetheless. We decide to give our stomachs a rest by taking a few minutes to unpack. We throw our backpacks onto bunks, which come with two-inchthick sleeping pads. Some bunks are wide enough for couples to sleep comfortably. Berger stokes the wood-burning stove and then wanders outside to collect snow to melt for water. We get out of our ski clothes. One friend sprawls out on his bunk.

Unpacked, I’m amazed at the breadth

of our makeshift bar. The yurt is BYOB and, even though we are all in our late thirties and early forties and no longer capable of the drinking we once were, we come heavily armed. There’s a flask of Baileys. Also one of Drambuie. And, just in case the card and dice games that make up a yurt’s usual evening entertainment get out of hand, an entire bottle of twelveyear-old Macallan. There’s also beer.

As fellow yurtgoer Rebecca begins mixing up hot chocolate with Baileys, I wander out onto the deck, which almost wraps around the yurt, to admire the storm and scope out the bathroom situation. Just in front of the yurt is the “pee tree.” One hundred feet away is a double outhouse, each stall with a toilet seat frame that accommodates WAG (Waste Alleviation and Gelling) bags. Berger has already promised she’ll teach us how to use these. I hope to ski out and back to the base area early enough the following morning so I don’t have to use one.

Yurtmeisters do many things but will not carry out your WAG bag.

By the time I’m back inside, the yurt is warm and steamy, and dinner is about to be served. Dice and cards have been brought out. Kelly tears herself away from reading in a chair in front of the woodburning stove to join everyone at the dinner table, which is covered in a checkered tablecloth and underneath a span of colorful prayer flags and a skylight.

THE NEXT MORNING, Berger’s alarm should wake us all up—the yurt is twenty feet in diameter, and the alarm is on the table in the middle—but no one (aside from Berger) stirs until the yurt fills with the smells of coffee and toasting bagels.

Outside, the snow is coming down even harder than it was the night before.

We take our time over breakfast, but even yurts have a checkout time. An hour later, we’re packed and stepping into our skis. Twenty minutes later, we’re back at the resort’s base, no cleanup or schlepping of heavy packs required. JH

NUTS & BOLTS RESERVE THE ROCK Springs Yurt through Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s Mountain Sports School. The yurt has enough bunks for eight people to each have their own. $500/night for eight people; additional people are $10 and are responsible for their own sleeping bags. 307/739-2779, jacksonhole.com/yurt.html

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getting out

Cold-Weather Casting Fanatics fish on in winter.

BY KELSEY DAYTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF DIENER

ABOVE: Snow on the ground doesn’t mean you have to put your fly rod away for the season. It just adds another layer to your fishing excursion.

OPPOSITE: “The best thing about fly fishing in this region in the winter is the absolute solitude,” says Scott Smith, owner of Grand Teton Fly Fishing. “It’s very quiet. But you gotta really want it.”

IT’S COLD. REALLY cold. And the fish don’t always bite. When they do, it’s an almost imperceptible tug. The drama of the big fight and the constantly whipping line are gone. They’re replaced by the sound of water rolling over rocks, the quiet whiz of the fishing line through the air, and the occasional crunch of boots or snowshoes on the frozen banks.

“The best thing about fly fishing in this region in the winter is the absolute solitude,” says Scott Smith, owner of Grand Teton Fly Fishing. “It’s very quiet. But you gotta really want it.”

Winter fishing in Jackson Hole is not for those who fear the cold. It’s for the fanatics who can’t bear to go too long without a cast and also, come a certain time in winter, those in the know.

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Those who know know that some of the region’s best fishing of the year happens when it still feels like winter, but the river knows it’s spring.

THERE ARE ONLY a few ardent anglers who brave the valley’s ice-rimmed waters in the middle of Wyoming’s winter.

Those who do usually call Jason Balogh, whose Fish the Fly guide service is one of the few—and maybe the only (but that might soon be changing)—companies to offer guided winter fishing trips. It is rare in the heart of winter—December, January, and February—to have clients, Balogh says, but occasionally a warm spell, where temperatures rise to 20 or 30 degrees, hits and someone calls him for a trip.

“Then it snows, and they cancel to go to the mountain,” Balogh says. But every once in a while, someone is up for braving the elements.

“Winter fishing is certainly a different experience, and it’s for a hardy soul,” Balogh says. “We fisherpeople are pretty fanatical about it—even when it’s cold.”

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This heart-of-winter fishing can happen on nearby rivers like the Henry’s Fork, Madison, and Green, but, when the water is its coldest and darkest, fish like to congregate in the deepest holes.

“And that’s on the Snake,” Balogh says.

“In winter, the river fishes best from Wilson down through the canyon.” A plus for people? This stretch is generally warmer—the air temps, not water temps (those tend to be about the same)—than the stretches of river in the more northern areas of the valley.

Between November and February, the Snake’s boat launches are snowed in.

Also, the river is frozen in parts. So Balogh’s trips are always walk-wade; you’ll snowshoe or cross-country ski your way to the river’s banks, scramble down as close as you can get, settle in, and cast from within the frigid waters, dressed as though you were skiing on the coldest of days and then some.

Not surprisingly, winter fish are more lethargic. So the most productive type of winter fly fishing is nymphing, which means the fly goes below the surface,

Winter fly fishing is a unique experience for the ardent angler.

Balogh says. If fish won’t rise to take bait, fishermen need to send the bait down to them. Weighted flies need to make their way to depths of ten or more feet.

“You basically have to hit the fish in the face,” Balogh says. The strikes are subtle and the takes anticlimactic; suddenly the indicator just stops. But in the winter, that’s enough. “If you get a little tug in the middle of the winter, it can do a brother good,” he says.

Winter trips are in the middle—the warmest—part of the day and are often only a few hours. Because really, that’s about as long as you can stand in moving water that, even in the middle of August, is barely above 50 degrees.

(Winter temps are in the low 30s.) You might catch a few trout or whitefish, or you might not. It doesn’t matter. “Fishing is a spiritual thing, and you can never get enough of that,” Balogh says.

“There are few options for guided winter fishing trips in the valley, and it’s

a novel experience,” says Smith of Grand Teton Fly Fishing. “It’s a really unique experience for the ardent angler.”

Like Balogh, Smith’s trips combine snowshoeing and fishing. “Snowshoes or cross-country ski gear can allow an angler access to areas of the river that, in summer, are accessible by floating,” Smith says. “But in winter we can’t float them because of the deep snow. We can wade them because winter water levels are quite low. In winter, there are many more wading options than there are in the spring, summer, and early fall.”

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“COME MARCH, PEOPLE really start calling,” Smith says. Sometime in March is that “certain time” mentioned at the beginning. The weather begins to turn.

It is still winter, but there are hints of spring. “Fishing can be phenomenal,” Smith says.

The days are longer. Temperatures rise into the 30s, and the river begins to wake up. Fish move from their winter holes, and bugs—midges first, followed by blue-winged olives or mayflies—begin to arrive. The water is still low and clear, and the fish feed like mad. It starts slow, but by mid-March, fishing is usually going well.

“The last week of March is often some of the best fishing of the year,” Balogh says. By early April, midges, a cold-water bug, are in the Snake River by the “gazillions.” It’s still pretty chilly, but, “You can catch really big trout if you know what you’re doing,” Smith says. JH

NUTS & BOLTS IF YOU WANT to fish on your own, the major rivers in the region good for winter fishing include the Snake, the South Fork, and the Henry’s Fork. Each fishery has specific regulations, requirements, licenses, and limits, though. Please check with Wyoming (or Idaho) Game & Fish. In this valley, the Snake is open mostly only for catch-and-release fishing yearround. If you want to keep your winter catch, you can target lake trout, an introduced species of char, on the Snake just below Jackson Lake Dam in Grand Teton National Park.

Grand Teton Fly Fishing: grandtetonflyfishing.com, 307/690-0910, half-day walk-and-wade trips throughout winter and into early spring start at $325 Fish the Fly: fishthefly.com, 307/690-1139, rates start at $295 for half-day trips between December and March WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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getting out

Après with Art Get your culture on at the Third Thursday Art Walks. And then grab dinner in town.

BY CAROLINE MARKOWITZ

The Third Thursday Art Walks are free and set for December 27, February 19, and March 19 this winter.

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I PRACTICALLY DIVE into Altamira Fine Art, less than a block away from downtown Jackson’s Town Square, to escape the bone-chilling cold chasing me from every direction. Big, bold canvases greet me as forcefully as the cold I fled. But this greeting is much more pleasant. In addition to art, it includes a table of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, cheese and crackers, crudités, fruit, and a wine bar.

But it’s John Nieto’s luminous acrylics that hold my attention. Nieto, an American contemporary artist whom Altamira regularly features, was raised in New Mexico near an Apache reservation; the subjects of his work reflect his Hispanic and American Indian ancestry.

It turns out that tonight the gallery isn’t

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just featuring his work, though. It’s a celebration of the opening of an entire exhibit dedicated to Nieto’s paintings.

That it was the opening of Nieto’s exhibit isn’t the sole reason this winter night is different than others. It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means the Third Thursday Art Walk is happening. On the third Thursday of (almost) every month, the Jackson Hole Gallery Association’s member galleries host an art walk from 5 to 8 p.m. It’s free, and you can hit as many or as few galleries as you like. Not every gallery on the art walk has an opening or special exhibit during the event, but, “We definitely think about timing openings and exhibitions with Third Thursdays,” says Kimberly Fletcher, marketing and com-

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munications director at Trailside Galleries, which has been open in downtown Jackson for more than fifty years.

“It doesn’t always work—if we’re doing a group show, corralling artists to be here on one night can be like herding cats— but it’s something we always think of.”

Twenty-six of Jackson Hole’s galleries are members of the Jackson Hole Gallery Association, whose mission is “to support the artistic and cultural heritage of the greater Jackson Hole area.” The goal of the association’s Third Thursday Art Walks is simple: to spread the word about the local art scene by exposing locals and visitors to it, while plying them with wine and yummy snacks. “The Art Walks are a great way for clients and shoppers to see what each gallery here has and how each is unique,” says Amy Morton, the president of the Gallery Association. “Winter Art Walks are especially fun because it’s quieter; you can Up to twenty-six galleries spanning a variety of genres participate in the Third Thursday Art Walks.

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YOU OVERDO, WE UNDO

JACKSON IS STEREOTYPED as an outdoor adventure town, which isn’t exactly inaccurate, but neither is it wholly accurate. Our outdoors are only part of the story. In addition to drawing skiers, climbers, mountain bikers, and fishermen from around the world, Jackson Hole also attracts artists and collectors.

Kate Hunt’s newspaper and steel Davidson Flag was shown at Chicago’s SOFA. Locally, her work can be found at Diehl Gallery.

This valley, which is home to more than thirty galleries, is an internationally recognized art destination. The Jackson Hole Gallery Association says we’re the “art center of the Rockies.” While we started as a center for western and wild-

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life art, today the scene is expanded. You can still find work by the country’s western and wildlife artists, of course, but you can also find Frida Kahlo-influenced portraits by Charlie Emmert and Kira Fercho’s modern impressionistic oil paintings (both at RARE Gallery). At Diehl Gallery, you can find object-oriented pieces by Kate Hunt and mixed media work inspired by planetary science by Monica Petty Aiello.

At Horizon Fine Art Gallery, proprietor Barbara Nowak represents artists creating everything from furnishings to jewelry, paintings, and sculpture. One Horizon sculptor, Pete Zaluzec, makes pieces mixing bronze and river stones. From a

See Pete Zaluzec’s work mixing river stones and bronze at Horizon Fine Art Gallery.

distance, a Zaluzec piece looks like a bronze bugling elk. Once closer, though, you see the elk’s body is four river stones bound together within a framework of bronze—a wild creature made partially from a wild material. “There’s no one else doing what Pete is doing,” Nowak says. Horizon also has paintings by the Spanish impressionist Giner Bueno and by American tonalist Charles Philip Brooks. “Walking around from gallery to gallery

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now, you get to see a much greater variety of work and styles than you could even five years ago,” Nowak says.

WE LOVE THE Art Walks as an après-ski (or après-snowmobiling or après-snowshoeing) and pre-dinner activity. In fact, Diehl Gallery, one of the galleries most responsible for bringing more modern work into the valley’s art scene—representing artists from Hull to Ashley Collins and Gwynn Murrill—had the idea of art for après-ski even before the Art Walks were an official winter event.

For six years, on Friday evenings— not just third Fridays, but every Friday— during the ski season, Diehl has been hosting Après-Ski & Art. “Jackson, nor anywhere in Wyoming, isn’t really easy winter walking. We like to give people a special reason to brave the elements. We decided Fridays are a good opportunity for us to offer a glass of wine and a festive environment for both guests and locals to stop in after a day of work or skiing, or before dinner in town. But we don’t do our Après-Ski & Art nights at the expense of the Third Thursdays. We make those evenings an event, too. We’re excited to get people out as many nights as we can to see the great art we have.” The wine and snacks—and warmth—are never bad, either. JH

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NUTS & BOLTS THIRD THURSDAY ART Walks are December 27, February 19, and March 19 this winter.

Visit the Jackson Hole Gallery Association website, jacksonholegalleries.com, for details. On the same website you can find a map of the valley’s galleries. All downtown galleries participate. The Art Walks are free and from 5 to 8 p.m.

RESTAURANTS WE RECOMMEND TO PAIR WITH YOUR ART WALK: RARE Gallery is only a few feet from the Snake River Grill, whose executive chef, Jeff Drew, was nominated for the James Beard Award “Best Chef: Northwest” in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Trio, which serves elegantly rustic American bistro fare (including a s’more baked in a wood-fired oven) is convenient to both Diehl Gallery and Tayloe Piggott Gallery, which together represent some of the most modern artists in the valley.

Trailside Galleries and Horizon Fine Art Gallery have both been around for some time. A snowball’s throw away, King Sushi opened late last summer in a historic cabin on King Street, almost directly across from Horizon.

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body & soul

Altitude 101 Everything you need to know to get high

BY JEANNETTE BONER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

HIGH ELEVATION. IT’S everywhere in Jackson Hole, even when you’re sitting on the valley floor, which at its lowest point is more than 6,000 feet above sea level. Taking the tram at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort? Just relaxing inside Corbet’s Cabin at the 10,450-foot summit of Rendezvous Mountain with a hot waffle can be a difficult endeavor if you’re not prepared. But, unlike prepping your quads for a ski vacation, vacationing at elevation doesn’t have to be difficult.

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The keys to feeling your best on a high-elevation ski vacation? Hydrate, less alcohol, taking it easy the first day, and sunscreen.

Experience Joy. Live it. Share it.

HYDRATE WATER, WATER, AND more water. The higher you go, the drier the air. According to the Wilderness Medical Society, at high elevations, you lose water through respiration twice as quickly as you do at sea level. Just breathing can dehydrate you at our elevation.

How can you tell if you’re dehydrated? Mild dehydration brings a decrease in energy and a feeling of lethargy. From there, you can get dizzy and then things can really go downhill.

To combat dehydration, drink. The Institute of Medicine determined that an adequate intake for men is roughly about 13 cups (3 liters) of total beverages a day. (Sadly, beverages like PBR and coffee are not ideal.) It is recommended women drink about 9 cups (2.2 liters) of total beverages a day.

These recommendations are for people at sea level. At elevation, according to the Telluride, Colorado-based Institute for Altitude Medicine, plan to drink an extra 1 to 1.5 liters of water daily. You’ll know you’re drinking enough when your urine is clear.

A TOAST TO THE TETONS MY FIRST WEEK at 6,000 feet—I came here straight from Pittsburgh—I headed to a local brewpub with my new coworkers. I ordered a beautiful pint of a house brew and eagerly drank in my new surroundings.

I ordered another pint and halfway through turned to my new friends.

Touching my cheeks, which seemed to have numbed, I said, “I think I’m getting drunk.” They reminded me, “You are at 6,000 feet. Less oxygen means you get drunk. Fast.” While there is research debunking the long-held notion that the lower oxygen levels at high elevations impair a body’s ability to metabolize alcohol, leading to quicker absorption and enhanced intoxication, I, and most locals, still believe it. And I bet you’d rather be safe than sorry.

So I say to you, “pace yourself.” What you can drink in the lowlands does not equate to the highlands. Start with a single rather than double, pale ale rather than stout, and sip, don’t gulp.

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SUNSHINE, GO AWAY When living at sea level, rarely did I worry about sunburn. In the middle of a Pittsburgh winter, I don’t think sunburn ever crossed my mind. Up here, it’s a different story, though. Jackson Hole sun hits your skin harder and faster than it would if you were sipping cocktails on Coco Beach; it’s entirely possible for you to get burnt in as little as an hour! In general, the sun’s intensity increases at a rate of 6 percent per 1,000 feet above sea

cases, eyes can swell shut, and there can be a temporary loss of vision. Snow blindness occurs when your corneas are exposed—either without protection or with inadequate protection—to UV rays.

Of course we don’t recommend staying inside on sunny days. Just make goggles or sunglasses, sunscreen, and, when you’re not on the slopes, a wide-brim hat the rule. As silly as it sounds, on supersunny days you’re out on the snow, put sunscreen under your nose and inside

just have to be patient and let it.

My brother is a strong, (handsome) man—sorry ladies, he’s recently married. When he came to visit several summers ago, he was set on conquering great heights. Literally. We were going to climb the 13,775-foot Grand Teton. But before we did the Grand, we started with Snow King Mountain, 7,808 feet tall. Then we graduated to Taylor Mountain on Teton Pass (10,352 feet). Next was Table Mountain (11,106 feet). Only after Table did we bag the Grand.

It usually takes sea-level bodies a day or two to adjust to an elevation of 6,000-some feet. If you are anxious to get moving as soon as you arrive, you certainly can, just know you might feel sluggish. Avoiding alcohol can help you acclimatize faster (and also decrease the likelihood of my next topic, acute mountain sickness).

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Acute mountain sickness can afflict anyone visiting elevations higher than 6,000 feet. It usually strikes in the first twenty-four hours.

A headache is typically the first symptom.

your nostrils, too. Nose sunburn doesn’t feel awesome.

level for the same latitude. For example, at 5,000 feet the sun is 30 percent stronger than at sea level. At 10,000 feet—the top of the tram—the sun’s intensity is 60 percent greater than sea-level sun.

And that’s not all. UV rays reflected into your eyes by the bright snow can cause snow blindness. This affliction might be overnamed—only in the most extreme cases does it cause blindness— but it is not to be taken lightly. Symptoms include bloodshot eyes, increased tearing or watering of the eyes, eyelid twitching, and eye pain. Have you ever gotten sand or grit in an eye? Snow blindness can feel like that. In the most serious

WHEN FRIENDS COME to visit, I’ve found it typically takes two days for them to get their “mountain legs” under them. Translation: relax and settle in before strapping on your skis, especially cross-country ones. Hitting the groomed Nordic paths on your first day here, trying to maintain a pace that was comfortable back home at 800 feet, is a recipe for disaster. Because of less oxygen available to working muscles, exercise performance is decreased at high elevation. It’s impossible to run a mile at high elevation as fast as at low elevation. Give it time, though, and your body can mostly adjust to the lower oxygen levels. You

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

WORKING OUT

TUCKED INTO THE remote Lost River Range in central Idaho, Borah Peak is Idaho’s highest mountain. It is beautiful, exposed, and straight up—some 12,000 feet straight up with no switchbacks. Having tackled some of the Tetons’ more popular summits, I headed to Borah Peak full of the arrogance that comes from living in the mountains. The night before I ate a salty, high-carb meal of instant mac and cheese. I followed this with a few Miller Lites. The next morning, I started my ascent. I climbed. And climbed. I climbed above the clouds. It was just as I was cresting the summit that I got a pounding headache near my brain stem.

Then came a seasick-like nausea. I signed the summit ledger and quickly began descending. Halfway down the mountain, I started feeling better. Back at the trailhead I was still weak, but the headache was gone. What happened?

AMS is real and can strike even those who climb mountains regularly.

With my body slightly dehydrated from the previous night’s dinner (and beers) and a quick gain in elevation, it struck me. AMS can afflict anyone visiting elevations higher than 6,000 feet. The Institute for Altitude Medicine has conducted significant AMS studies. One study revealed that between 15 and 40 percent of visitors to Colorado ski re-

Rising to the occasion ELEVATION DOESN’T JUST affect our bodies but also our baked goods. My mother was slow-foods before slow-foods were cool. Farm to table? Yeah, that was us, but more like garden to table. Everything came from the dirt in the backyard in the summer, and then from canning jars in the winter. Cooking and baking outside of the box were not only normal, but also a matter of pride. At elevation, however, there is a certain finesse to getting the brownies just right, and unfortunately, there is no magic mix that will convert a recipe from sea level to elevation every time. When baking here, know that “higher means dryer.” For a quick fix, I tend to add just a little more moisture to a mix than the recipe may call for. Also, if a recipe says to bake for 30 minutes, check at 20 minutes.

sorts get AMS. There have not been any AMS studies in Jackson Hole, but it’s not unreasonable to extrapolate our stats would be similar (although slightly less, since the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is 6,000-some feet instead of 8,000-some feet like many Colorado resorts). Most folks visiting Colorado’s resorts and ours travel to them in one day and come from a low elevation. Skiers visiting Colorado lowered their chances of AMS by taking it easy their first day and night.

The most usual first sign of AMS is a headache. This is typically followed by symptoms, such as loss of appetite, sometimes vomiting, weakness, dizziness, fatigue, and difficulty sleeping. In short, AMS feels exactly like a bad hangover. Symptoms can occur as early as two hours after arrival, or be delayed for twenty-four hours or so. If you haven’t developed any symptoms of AMS within twenty-four (or so) hours of arrival, chances are you’re safe.

You can increase your chances of not getting AMS by doing several things: 1) Make your first day a rest day. 2) Stay hydrated. 3) It pains me to advise this, but avoid alcohol, since it suppresses breathing and results in lower blood oxygen. 4) Some studies have shown that Ginkgo biloba was effective in preventing AMS when started five days prior to ascending to elevation, at a dose of 100mg twice a day. This last bit of advice might be too late for your present trip, but keep it in mind for when you come back. JH

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nightlife

Belly Up Jackson’s bars aren’t always just about drinks.

BY MORGAN DINSDALE PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID STUBBS

“Bartending at The Rose allows me to be creative, to use a color wheel that I get to taste,” says Meagan Schmoll. The bar was recently named one of the country’s Top 25 Cocktail Bars by Food & Wine.

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THE ENERGY IS electric.

Standing inside Eleanor’s ... again! Bar & Grill, a dimly lit dive hidden in the back of Plaza Liquors— itself a dive liquor store guarded by a resident parrot and sharing strip-mall real estate with a Chinese restaurant, a drugstore, a ranch clothing store, and a laundromat—hundreds of people eagerly await a chance to roll a barrel of dice.

The line goes from the wood bar out the front door. Literally. The Shake-A-Day pot has reached nearly $13,000. I’m not here for the Shake-A-Day roll—five of a kind and you win the pot—though.

I’m here because sitting across the bar from Jeff “Handi” Hinnenkamp makes me happy. He greets me, by name, as soon as he sees me walk in. Often, before I can even snag a seat, he concocts some new, wild drink for me to try.

A transplant from Minnesota, Hinnenkamp moved to the valley twenty-five years ago to snowboard. “I fell in love with this town, with the mountain more than anything,” he says. “The Hole got its grasp on me and never let go.”

A bartender myself—I’ve worked my way around the globe in numerous pubs, nightclubs, and finedining establishments—there are few other bars I’d rather pull up to at the end of the day than Handi’s.

Having bartended and managed for thirteen years at The Cadillac Grille, a now-shuttered Town Square institution formerly frequented by locals in throngs, Hinnenkamp started at Eleanor’s in 2010. This year, the community voted him “Jackson’s Best Bartender” in JH Weekly’s annual poll of the best of everything local, from bartender to Realtor, masseuse, pizza, and everything in between.

Hinnenkamp’s a laid-back kind of guy, always with a smile and a sense of calm about him. Even on a packed night with the Shake-A-Day crowd lined up out the door, he gets drinks out by the dozens and still manages to chat with those of us seated at the bar about our most recent Jackson adventures. Of course he refills our glasses before we have time to ask. I update him on my plans to climb the Middle Teton while watching him concoct some sort of horror cocktail involving Pop Rocks candy and a glow stick.

Bartenders don’t get much more local than Hinnenkamp. Jackson Hole has some incredible barkeeps—characters who keep us coming back as much to see them as to drink night after night. There are

those like Handi, who make us feel like family, and ones whose cocktails we can’t help but return to for more.

— Eleanor’s ... again! Bar & Grill: 832 W. Broadway, 307/733-7901, eleanorsagain. com, open daily 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., cocktails start at $8 THE ROSE — MEAGAN SCHMOLL, MIXOLOGIST extraordinaire at The Rose, a classically inspired cocktail lounge with a speakeasy feel reminiscent of the Prohibition era, is a bubbly ball of bartending ingenuity. Just try to catch her with anything but a giant smile on her cherubic face.

But don’t think she doesn’t take your drink seriously. While “bartender” is Schmoll’s official title, her drink menu— presented as a leather-bound, hardcover booklet and including about three dozen original drinks—is proof she’s partscientist, part-artist, and part-genius.

“Bartending at The Rose allows me to be creative, to use a color wheel that I get to taste,” she says.

“I organize and motivate everyone to develop cocktails,” she says when asked about her role as head of research and development for The Rose’s cocktail program. “We are constantly tweaking, sort of like a test kitchen, figuring out the most intriguing ways to balance a cocktail’s flavor profiles.” Food & Wine magazine recently rated The Rose, which opened in 2011 and collaborates with New York’s much-lauded East Village cocktail bar Death + Company, one of the country’s Top 25 Cocktail Bars.

On any given night you can enjoy a classic cocktail made modern, such as an Old Fashioned infused with Co2. Or you can enjoy one of the lounge’s original creations, all made with fresh-squeezed juices and house-made syrups. You won’t ever find Pop Rocks or glow sticks in a drink at The Rose, but you will find wonderfully creative names and flavor combinations. “Flames of San Antonio” has sage-infused Tito’s Vodka, Lustau Amontillado Sherry, Cocchi Americano, and sarsaparilla. A “Smoking Donkey Driver” is Kronan Swedish Punsch, dry sherry, Del Maguey Vida Mezcal, and chocolate bitters. The “Mayhem in B Flat” is George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey #12, muddled lime, white crème de cacao, and orgeat syrup. (FYI, orgeat is a

sweet syrup made from almonds, sugar, and rose water or orange flower.) When Leonardo DiCaprio was in town last summer, he had a “Poodle Duty”—Tito’s Vodka, Dry Sack Sherry, strawberry, pineapple, lemon, and Prosecco.

— The Rose: 50 W. Broadway, 307/733-1500, therosejh.com, open daily 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., cocktails start at $10

All the pleasures of home and garden

Schmoll’s “Flames of San Antonio” includes sage-infused Tito’s Vodka, Lustau Amontillado Sherry, Cocchi Americano, and sarsaparilla.

THE BIRD — AT THE SOUTHERN end of town, off Highway 89/191/26 and on a bluff overlooking South Park and the family friendly neighborhoods of Melody Ranch and Rafter J, The Bird is an oldschool kitchen and bar. In summer, it has the best deck in the valley to watch the sun set behind the Tetons. Yearround, it serves some of the most wonderfully greasy burgers in town. From its Family Friday Nights to the controlled chaos of its Superbowl Sunday party to Sunday morning bottomless mimosas, The Bird is as one-off as the Hawaiian shirts its head bartender, Nick Spaulding, sports.

Spaulding—whose collection of colorful shirts began back in college when he, alongside The Bird owner and best friend Will Nowack, started attending music festivals across the coun-

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

try—rules the twenty-four-seat, U-shaped bar here like a master chessman. He has been here for four years and this year took home the Bronze Award for “Best Bartender” in the aforementioned “Best of Jackson Hole” poll.

You’d never guess this was his first-ever bartending gig. Spaulding goes with the flow, works best under pressure, and takes time to get to know most everyone who walks through the front door.

Regulars have taken Spaulding golfing.

A Rafter J family invited him to float the river with them. “You learn someone’s name, you learn what they’re drinking and you give it to them,” Spaulding says. “That’s all it takes to build a relationship with the locals.”

— The Bird: 4125 S. Hwy 89, 307/732-2473, thebirdinjackson.com, open Monday through Saturday 4 p.m. to late, Sundays 10 a.m. to late, cocktails start at $7 THE MILLION DOLLAR COWBOY BAR — WHETHER YOU’RE LOOKING for a place to play a game of pool or a dance floor with a bluegrass band belting it out for a two-step, the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar has it. And more. There are animal mounts on the walls. A Plexiglass box near the pool tables protects an entire (taxidermied) grizzly bear. There’s a full-service shoeshine stand near the front door. After you take in all of this, the fact that bar “stools” are actually western riding saddles isn’t even surprising. What else would they be? And then the entire place is built almost entirely out of knobbled pine, unique wood formations native to western Wyoming.

Almost as unchanging as the decor is bartender Raul Degenova. Fifteen years behind The Cowboy’s bar, inlaid with silver dollars, of course, puts Degenova in an echelon of barkeeps few and far between in this Wyoming town. Degenova has seen it all in his career here—from wedding receptions to barroom brawls to John Popper, harmonica virtuoso and frontman of the rock band Blues Traveler, spontaneously jamming with the house band.

A man of few words, Degenova arrived here with a round-trip ticket. He only used half of it. In his fifteen years at The Cowboy, Degenova has learned

Bartender Nick Spaulding sits on the deck of The Bird with a German doppleboch called Ayinger Celebrator.

more than a few tricks to keep those saddled up at his bar happy, be it with a PBR or a shot of Jameson. On any given night the place is packed, and Degenova has no problem handling the pressure. “It’s wild,” he says of Jackson’s summer sea-

son, where the twenty-eight saddle barstools running the bar’s length are full and the space behind is often three patrons deep. “The excitement of being the busiest bar gets the adrenaline flowing.”

— The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar: 25 N. Cache St., 307/733-2207, milliondollarcowboybar.com, open daily noon to 1 a.m., cocktails start at $6 JH

The region’s premier landscape contractor & garden center.

Serving Jackson & Eastern Idaho for more than 20 years

What to order at their bars?

Million Dollar Cowboy Bar “Currs Light—that’s a Coors Light, for those of you who don’t speak proper cowboy—and a Wyoming Whiskey on the rocks.” – Dusty Stolp

The Rose

The Bird

Eleanor’s ... again!

“Hanky Panky, please!

Tanqueray, Cinzano, and fernet with an orange twist.” – Meagan Schmoll

“A strong, dark beer!”

– Nick Spaulding

“The 1 Point 21 Gigawatt! Hpnotiq liqueur, Malibu pineapple rum, and Liquid Ice (an energy drink) topped with a glow stick and Pop Rocks candy.”

– Jeff “Handi” Hinnenkamp

208.354.8816 2389 S. Hwy 33 • Driggs, ID www.mdlandscapinginc.com

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Best of

JH

dining

The Epic(urean) Quest Stories make food even better.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY ASHLEY WILKERSON

Jimmy and Grace Anderson, owners of Winterset Farms, grow a variety of heirloom tomatoes in four greenhouses on their Hoback Junction farm.

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IF THERE’S ONE trait that all food lovers have in common, it’s their breathless excitement over a good food story. It must go beyond what one ate and where; it’s the why or how, and with whom. The most memorable of meals we share at home are full of personal character, like a delectable pumpkin pie made with grandma’s gingersnap pie crust recipe, and the pumpkin—well, it’s got to have a touch of honey from grandma’s beehives in Montana. For restaurant chefs, their audience changes every night, and the stories behind their ingredients have increasingly taken on a larger role in a diner’s experience: Little gem lettuces

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FLYING-FISH MYTH THE PURSUIT OF top-quality sushi fish has always taken on mythic scale. Does the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole fly in ahi and hamachi every morning for the Ascent Lounge’s signature sushi and sashimi preparations? No. But executive chef Michael Goralski, whose impressive career included an early internship at the august Commander’s Palace in New Orleans as well as two of the four Hawaii Four Seasons properties, demands the freshest fish for his tataki-loving guests.

Goralski ships in his sushi-grade seafood from two different purveyors in Los Angeles to ensure a steady supply of pristine fish, adding, “We never go longer than two days. Freshness is key. There is a certain five-star standard we abide by, and we work only with purveyors who will help us provide that.”

FLOUR, BUTTER, CHOCOLATE THAT FIRST CRISP-then-airy bite of a Persephone Bakery baguette can be a Proustian moment for those who’ve

At the Ascent Lounge, chef Michael Goralski ships in his sushi-grade seafood from two different purveyors in Los Angeles to ensure a steady supply of pristine fish.

swooned over freshly baked baguettes in France. I was convinced for a while, until researching this article in fact, that owner-baker Kevin Cohane must have been sourcing his wheat, sea salt, or maybe even his water from France since the flavor was so enigmatically reminiscent of the many excellent boulangeries we visited in Paris. Persephone’s wheat is, in fact, domestic but certainly not ordinary. Cohane sources it when he can from historic Central Milling, Utah’s oldest continuously operating wheat mill (since 1867), and he “grows” his own yeast, which gives the leavened breads their own distinctive mountain terroir. Cohane does insist on using 100 percent European butter for the brioche and pastries, which results in a distinctively creamy but clean flavor. Try one of Persephone’s signature sugared cinnamon rolls to taste the rich, but not heavy, difference. Being a Bay Area transplant, I was surprised to see TCHO chocolates so prominently in use and on display at Persephone. TCHO is as hip as a chocolate company could possibly be. They release “beta” versions of new flavors—their mission being to marry a “relentless pursuit of innovation to the obsession with flavor and quality”—at their bittersweet empire founded by the San Francisco Bay. It is also one of the most expensive chocolates in the retail market and still a relatively obscure highbrow choice, especially in homegrown Jackson Hole. Cohane’s wife and

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D

BLUE COLLAR

ROASTING

D

are from Cosmic Greens in Victor, the trout is from a sustainable farm in Idaho, my mom churned that butter this morning. In Jackson Hole, short of growing season and far from major supplier hubs, chefs must often go to extreme and creative means for their kitchens.

In this age of insatiable story sharing, nothing adds more flavor and emotional gratification to a skillfully crafted menu than these personal quests for the finest ingredients.

CO.

J AC K S O N H O L E , W Y

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partner, Ali, explains: “We really wanted to get an American-made product, and until recently, there were not many of these—although it seems to be quite a big thing now! TCHO focused on making great dark chocolate with unique profiles that focused on the nuances of the various beans they used for their chocolate. It was wonderful that they treated the experience of eating their chocolate the same way people who are into wine drink wine—isolating unique tasting profiles and really exploring the way the various beans and percentages of chocolate created completely different-tasting bars.”

TREASURES IN THE TETONS OF COURSE IT’S not the physical distance required that makes for a truly exceptional source. Some of the most rarified ingredients in Jackson Hole kitch140

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Michael Goralski, executive chef at Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole

ens are grown within the view of the Tetons. For the lucky few diners who happen to be at the Snake River Grill in late August, executive chef Jeff Drew offers for just one night a Sour Cherry Pie, a tart-sweet swan song for the valley summer. Why just one night? Those cherries are from Grace Anderson’s Winterset Farms in Hoback. “She is a sweetheart,” Drew says warmly. “One day in August, when the cherries are perfectly ripe, she calls me and says, ‘You better get down here before the birds do.’ ” Anderson’s three cherry trees supply just enough fruit for one showstopper night’s worth of pies at the Snake River Grill. Winterset is also the exclusive grower of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes for the Grill, a partnership based on respect between farmer and chef, and

THE WYOMING TRADITION

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OF VAST RANCHES AND FARMS INSPIRES OUR CULINARY TEAM TO SHARE AN UNPRETENTIOUS JOURNEY OF ADVENTURES FILLED WITH INDIGENOUS FLAVORS AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

SLOPE-SIDE SUSHI MOUNTAIN STEAKHOUSE ( 307) 732 5175 @FSJacksonhole

featuring local meats, house made charcuterie, artisanal cheeses, seasonal sides and extensive wine list.

Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complimentary Valet.

Ascent Lounge captures our mountain spirit with a creative menu of East meets West offerings, cozy outdoor fire tables and slope side location. Open daily 11am - 11pm.

THE RESTAURANT AT THE CAKEBREAD RANCH Fine dining, with beautiful views of Star Valley and the Salt River

CALL US AT 307.883.2247 OR VISIT OPEN TABLE FOR A RESERVATION. For further information visit our website at

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Bozeman, Salt Lake City), I find a farmers market or a co-op. I’m not there to buy really, I’m there to meet people or get information about a producer. It is more about finding the farmer than finding the ingredient.”

Chef Drew of the Snake River Grill is of a similar mindset in taking care of his relationships first and then making the most creative use of those precious ingredients that are supplied. The duck eggs that occasionally appear on the SRG menu are from a small farm in Victor, usually a purveyor of lettuces and greens, and arrive once a week. He never knows how many he’ll have to work with until the basket arrives. “It really depends on the ducks. Sometimes the ducks are just done laying eggs, and I have to rethink a dish,” Drew says.

MOREL OF THE STORY

The Winterset Farms Heirloom Tomato Salad at the Snake River Grill features produce grown near Hoback Junction.

a shared love and discipline for the most personally tended of produce.

AS WITH MOST aspects of the restaurant business, it all boils down to personal relationships. Chefs who take the time and care to personally source their ingredients tend to carry those connections much longer than any one season or even restaurant. Chef Drew still counts among his favorite suppliers a wild game purveyor he met in Santa Fe while chef de cuisine at the famed Coyote Cafe. Wes Hamilton, executive chef for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, has been a devoted locavore since his early days in the kitchen of Jenny Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.

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over twenty years, all the better to secure peerless produce for his customers.

Hamilton always has a name and a relationship to go with every ingredient he purchases. “Once I find the person, I find the ingredient,” he says.

Hamilton frames his pursuit of great food in the most humble yet passionate of ways: “I’m not scaling tall buildings or rooting around on the forest floor for ingredients. I think it’s more akin to detective work—you hear about a guy growing this, or you go all the way to the Idaho Falls farmers market to meet a guy growing bell peppers in his hoop house. I really search out relationships first, then adapt what they grow into our program. I use the Internet, any sites regarding local food. Whenever I travel in the region (Boise, Missoula,

PERHAPS NO “HUNT” for fine ingredients is more fabled than seasonal mushroom foraging. This is not a hobby to pick up after watching a few YouTube videos. Morel mushrooms, prized for their intense, woodsy flavor, can be easily confused for a deadly doppelgänger commonly referred to as “false morels.”

Late in the spring, and early into the summer, morel foragers quietly walk the banks of valley rivers, creeks, and recently burned areas in search of morels, which can fetch as much as fifty dollars a pound in the wholesale market (compared to shiitakes, which wholesale for around five dollars a pound).

Every chef worth his toque has a trusted mushroom forager, with a fine eye for fungi and tight-lipped territoriality about his foraging grounds. Chef Drew offers no names, but describes his forager as “a ski bum in winter and a chanterelle and morel forager in the summer. He goes out on multiday foraging camps, and I am happy to pay top dollar for his mushrooms. I trust him, and the mushrooms are beautiful.”

Jeffrey Hileman, executive chef at The Handle Bar in the Four Seasons, relishes the ephemeral morel season and often forages on his own: “The morel foraging in this valley is amazing mostly because these mushrooms thrive off freshwater sources and burnt areas, of which we have plenty. I do have my favorite spot for foraging ... though I would never reveal my source.” JH

Best of

JH

dining out

RESTAURANT

LOCATION

PHONE

BREAKFAST

LUNCH

DINNER

Blue Collar Group Bubba’s

Jackson

307-733-2288 $ $ $

Liberty Burger

Jackson

307-200-6071

$

$

Merry Piglets

Jackson

307-733-2966

$$

$$

Noodle Kitchen

Jackson

307-734-1997 $$

Pizza Artisan

Jackson

307-734-1970 $ $

Sidewinders Tavern

Jackson

307-734-5766 $$ $$

The Blue Lion

Jackson

307-733-3912

The Bunnery Bakery & Restaurant

Jackson

307-733-5474

$

$

$

Bin22

Jackson

307-739-9463

$/$$

$/$$

The Kitchen

Jackson

307-734-1633 $$$

Il Villaggio Osteria

Teton Village

307-739-4100

Q Roadhouse and Brewing Co.

Teton Village Road

307-739-0700

Rendezvous Bistro

Jackson

307-739-1100

$/$$$

Ascent Lounge

Teton Village

307-732-5613

$$

The Handle Bar

Teton Village

307-732-5156

$$

$$

Westbank Grill

Teton Village

307-732-5620

$

$$

$$$

$

$

$$$

Fine Dining Restaurant Group

$/$$

$$

$/$$$ $/$$

Four Seasons Resort

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

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Teton Village

Corbet’s Cabin

Aerial Tram Summit

307-739-2688

Couloir

Bridger Gondola Summit

307-739-2675

$$$

Nick Wilson’s

Next to the Aerial Tram

307-739-2738

$

Lotus Cafe Organic Bakery, Bistro & Lounge

Jackson

307-734-0882 $ $$ $$

Million Dollar Cowboy Steakhouse

Jackson

307-733-4790 $$/$$$

Nani’s

Jackson

307-733-3888 $$$

Nikai

Jackson

307-734-6490 $$$

The Rose

Jackson

307-733-1500 $$

The Silver Dollar Bar and Grill

Jackson

307-732-3939

Snake River Brewing Company

Jackson

307-739-2337

Snake River Grill

Jackson

307-733-0557 $$$

Spur Restaurant & Bar

Teton Village

307-732-6932

$

$$

Terra Café

Teton Village

307-739-4025

$

$

Teton Pines Restaurant

Teton Village Road

307-733-1005 $ $$$

Teton Thai

Teton Village

307-733-0022 $$ $$

The Restaurant at The Cakebread Ranch

Thayne, Wyoming

308-883-2247

The White Buffalo Club

Jackson

888-256-8182 $$$

Warbirds Cafe

Driggs, Idaho

208-354-2550

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

$

$$

$

$

$$$

$/$$

$/$$

$

$$/$$$

$$$ $$$

LIQUOR

KIDS’ MENU

TAKEOUT

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Barbecue, a locals’ favorite for years

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Fresh, house-made Tex-Mex food for 45 years

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Neapolitan pizza and classic pasta dishes

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Fine dining in refurbished historic home

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The bakery that’s a restaurant

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Wine, tapas bar, specialty grocer, and bottle shop

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Modern American cuisine in the heart of Jackson

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Wood-oven-fired pizzas, house-made pasta

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Eclectic roadhouse fare, craft beer, and brewery

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Locals’ favorite, French American bistro fare, raw bar

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Sushi and East meets West cuisine

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J An American pub with a modern twist

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DESCRIPTION

Serving 11 different types of burgers Asian inspired noodle house American grill

Mountain steakhouse with signature side dishes

s s

J Top-of-the-world waffles J Contemporary fine dining at 9,095 feet

s s

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Great for post-adventure lunch, early dinner or drinks

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Elegant dining with a Western flair

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Handmade fine Italian cuisine, full bar, happy hour

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Jackson’s favorite sushi bar

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Classically inspired cocktail lounge and restaurant

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Award-winning brews and incredible food

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Locals’ choice for rustic elegance

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Organic ingredients and healthy alternatives

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Spectacular setting and creative cuisine

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Outdoor patio and amazing views

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A pristine fine dining restaurant

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Modern American steakhouse cuisine

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Delicious food with spectacular views of the Tetons

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Organic, fresh, global cuisine, meats, vegan, gluten-free

Regional cuisine, live music, happy hour

Serving elevated mountain cuisine

Average entree; $= under $15, $$= $16-20, $$$= $21+ WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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where the

locals love to dine

– Serving Jackson’s discerning diners for over 36 years. –

Double R Ranch and Dry Aged Steaks, Rocky Mountain Game, Fresh Alaskan and Hawaiian Seafood. Local Brews and Top Shelf Libations.

307.733.3912 Open Nightly at 5:30pm 160 N. Millward Reservations Suggested

Handcrafted, award-winning fine wine made locally in Jackson, Wyoming.

Enjoy our mouth watering bar and children’s menus!

25 North Cache • 307-733-4790 Dinner Only • Open at 5:00 nightly Reservations can be made online at www.cowboysteakhouse.net.

Global cuisine with fresh, organic meats, vegan & gluten-free options.

Bakery | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner Fresh extracted juices | Smoothies | Full bar

307-201-1057 • www.jacksonholewinery.com facebook.com/jacksonholewinery 146

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

www.tetonlotuscafe.com 145 N. Glenwood St. Jackson, WY | 734-0882

242 N. Glenwood (307) 733-3888 current menu at nanis.com

Your Pub, Our Passion 2x Small Brewery of the Year Winner

nikai asian grill & sushi bar

225 north cache • 2 blocks north of town square 307.734.6490 • www.nikaisushi.com reservations suggested jackson’s favorite sushi bar

8$ Lunch Menu Daily Specials Happy Hour 4pm 265 S. Millward | (307) 739-BEER (2337)

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WHERE THE LOCALS GO

BREAKFAST, LUNCH & DINNER LIVE MUSIC & HAPPY HOUR IN THE BAR STEPS FROM THE TOWN SQUARE

spacious patio seating with heat lamps, a fire place and expansive views 7342 Granite Loop Road Teton Village 307-734-0022 • www.tetonthai.com Driggs, Idaho Location 208-787-8424

INSIDE THE HISTORIC WORT HOTEL BROADWAY@GLENWOOD • 307-732-3939 • WORTHOTEL.COM

Dinner Plans?

Browse through a selection of Jackson Hole’s finer fare Visit your hotel’s concierge or front desk and ask to see the Finer Restaurants of Jackson Hole, a leather bound collection of menus and photos to direct your dinner reservation.

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The Flying Saddle Resort 87 7-7 72-442 2 alp i n e w y o mi n g

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Best of

JH

art scene

Pretty as a Picture In Jackson Hole galleries, photography is fine art. And we don’t mean just wildlife and landscape shots (but those are gorgeous).

BY KATE HULL

WHETHER SEEN IN a postcard, a painting, or in person, Mormon Row’s historic Moulton Barn and the dramatic rise of the Tetons behind its gabled roof are familiar to valley residents and visitors alike. For as oft-photographed as the century-old barn is today, though, that wasn’t always the case.

Vancouver-based photographer Danny Singer In the 1960s, local photographer Abi is best known for his Main Street series, which Garaman was one of the first artists includes photographs of small-town main streets from Buchanan, Saskatchewan, to Hartney, to sell images of the Moulton Barn.

Manitoba; Wing, North Dakota; and Paducah, Two photographs of the barn, The Texas. “His work resonates with clientele whose Glowing Past and Once Upon A Time, collections already include [Tom] Mangelsen’s in particular launched Garaman’s wildlife photographs or work by Jeff Koons,” says Shari Brownfield, the director of Heather James career. The images were included in Fine Art, which represents Singer in Jackson Hole. the collection of the Professional Photographers of America. That group went on to honor Garaman with the title Master Photographer.

As much as the barn helped Garaman, he too helped the barn. “My early photographs of the Moulton Barn really

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David Brookover’s work is of classic landscape subjects but updated with a variety of printing styles, including platinum palladium on gampi and kozo papers, black-and-white silver gelatin, photogravure, and bromoil.

BRADLY J. BONER

valley’s fine art photography scene started, today Heather James Fine Art is one of the galleries pushing the genre. “Fine art photography in Jackson has really evolved over the last ten years,” says Shari Brownfield, director of the gallery, which hangs photography alongside Impressionist painters like Monet and van Gogh; American artists including Bierstadt, Rockwell, and Grandma Moses; Modern/Post-War notables Calder and Warhol; and contemporary artists Hirst and Koons. “Jackson, overall, has seen a shift in solely being known for incredible wildlife artists,” Brownfield says. “Our appreciation for wildlife photography here is enormous, but with more contemporary galleries involved in the art scene, Jackson now shows a larger variety of work, including artists using the medium in more unusual ways—from incorporating photographs into their painted work, like Rocky Hawkins, or using

put the barn on the map,” says Garaman, who, now eightyfive, still takes photographs and owns a gallery, Under the Willow Photo Gallery, that sells his images. “To this day, it still represents a lasting legacy of photography in the region and where it started.”

IF GARAMAN AND Under the Willow Gallery is where the

Extraordinary Art and Exceptional Couture Clothing From the Heart of the Tetons to the Soul of Couture Clothing created in the mediums of denim and leather - art commissions welcome

“Reverence” 60” x 48” Oil on Canvas

“Into the Mystic” 60” x 48” Oil on Canvas

MICHELLE JULENE COUTURE

BY JACKSON HOLE AWARD WINNING ARTIST AND DESIGNER MICHELLE JULENE Gallery & Studio 50 King Street Jackson Hole, Wyoming 307.277.4527 michellejulenecouture.com

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large-format photography and printing techniques like Danny Singer.”

Vancouver-based photographer Singer is best known for his Main Street photographs. For the project, started in 1999, Singer travels the Great Plains of both Canada and the United States.

Along the way, he captures images of the main streets of small towns from Buchanan, Saskatchewan, to Hartney, Manitoba; Wing, North Dakota; and Paducah, Texas. “A lot of people have an association with a small town like Singer showcases,” Brownfield says. “His images are a reminder; it is nostalgic. It resonates with people.”

Brownfield has seen images like Singer’s resonate with clientele that range from local collectors of Thomas D. Mangelsen’s wildlife imagery to visitors from New York and Chicago. One Heather James client with a notable Jeff Koons collection is drawn to Singer’s work.

“I think people are slowly being introduced to photography as a medium that is acceptable in the art world. Just like fine art prints, etching, lithographs, and silk screens all had to find their place in the fine art world, photography has found its way.” But, in finding its way forward here in Jackson Hole, it hasn’t forgotten its roots.

ONE BLOCK FROM Heather James and three hundred feet from each other on Cache Street, both Brookover Gallery and Mangelsen–Images of Nature Gallery showcase landscape and wildlife photography. Photographer David Brookover opened his two-story gallery thirteen years ago. His work is of classic landscape subjects but printed in a variety of different styles, including platinum palladium on gampi and kozo papers, black-and-white silver gelatin, photogravure, and bromoil. Brookover says the latter, a cross between painting and photography, is the most labor-intensive. Each bromoil print can take nearly two months to produce.

“When we hung our first traditional silver-gelatin print in 2002, a slow shift began to take place,” Brookover says.

“In 2007, we produced very large platinum palladium prints on exotic Japanese papers and that definitely signaled a change of direction in the photography art-collector world. Collectors took note, and we have not looked back.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

- Maya Angelou

Let Jackson Hole Luxury Properties help in your search.

Are you having your Jackson Hole ah-ha moment? Have you fallen in love with Jackson Hole and it’s lifestyle? Are you considering staying?

Wondering where to start looking for that new perfect home?

Jane Carhart, Associate Broker (307) 413-8961 • jane.carhart@jhsir.com

JacksonHoleLuxuryProperties.com

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Gifts — Fine Art — Home Furnishings

“SHADY” — Vintage Trucks

by NEW artist Weezy Forman

265 W Pearl Ave Jackson, WY 307-733-4619 – www.wildhands.com

WILDLIFE EXPEDITIONS OF TETON SCIENCE SCHOOLS

Jackson Hole’s premier wildlife tour provider in Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

(307) 733-2623 www.wildlifeexpeditions.org Nonprofit Organization · Professional Biologists Custom Vehicles · Exceptional Customer Service 154

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Since then, we have introduced bromoil and photogravure prints, too. The majority of our sales are purchased by astute collectors wishing to acquire very low edition runs.” Brookover says most collectors are purchasing prints ranging in price from $5,000 to $35,000. “When I moved here in 2001 there was only one contemporary gallery, which was on Center Street. Times have changed indeed. A lot of the newer gallery owners, along with interior design stores, have definitely brought and welcomed fresh ideas and good energy to the downtown,” he says.

Because Brookover’s printing processes are as impressive as the breadth of his work—he shoots Japanese landscapes, local aspens and wildlife, and many things in between—the photographer is often at the gallery. With his

Bringing art home

— A design studio shows how fine art photography can look in your home.

— WRJ DESIGN ASSOCIATES cofounders Rush Jenkins and Klaus Baer are always on the lookout for great design, and their idea of design is holistic. They’ll find everything from the perfect Arpin fabric for your windows to an attention-grabbing Ralph Lauren Home dining room table. The design duo have also included fine art among their offerings since they opened in spring 2012.

WRJ’s artists range from fine art photographers to mixed media artists and painters. “Since opening our showroom, we have always had fine art to help complement the room vignettes we present through our collaboration with other local art galleries,” says Baer. “We feel that this helps the visitor or client better visualize how a room might actually feel and look, with artwork and furniture composed together.”

Fine art photographers represented by WRJ include Taylor Glenn and Edward Riddell. Glenn’s photography captures the beauty of the wildlife and landscapes throughout the region and his travels, while Riddell’s photography captures a simple, “quiet beauty,” as he describes it.

“Though we’ve only had our Jackson showroom open a few years, in that time frame we have seen a subtle change in the type of art people are responding to,” Baer says. “We currently have a terrific mix of various mediums and types of art, with the current focus being on fine art photography. Both Ed Riddell and Taylor Glenn have put forth a beautiful effort with their subject matter, and we have been getting wonderful reviews and feedback of their work.”

While Tom Mangelsen has taken pictures of nature and wildlife all over the world, he is best known locally for his images of Jackson Hole landscapes and animals, particularly Grand Teton National Park’s famous grizzly bear families.

BRADLY J. BONER

dog, Mocha, at his side, Brookover takes the time to describe his work to visitors. On the gallery’s first floor, there’s an explanatory DVD almost always playing.

If you want to chat with Mangelsen, you would have better luck looking up at Oxbow Bend, in Alaska, or in the Serengeti than in his gallery on Cache Street. “Tom has traveled to all seven continents capturing vast panoramas and rare and intimate moments with wildlife in our natural world,” says gallery director Dana Turner. “With the advances photography has made over the years, some things never change: Capturing wild moments in nature takes patience, light, and the ability to visualize and compose an amazing image.”

Although Mangelsen has been taking, printing, and selling photographs for forty years, modern printing processes and materials have improved their collectivity. “Work printed today has longevity,” Turner says. Just what any collector of most anything wants to hear. JH

Experience the wonder of nature through the lens of Thomas D. Mangelsen.

170 North Cache | Jackson, WY ½ block north of the town square

| |

307-733-9752 888-238-0177

FIN E A R T PHOTOGR A PH Y | A R TIS T PROOF PR IN T S | BOOK S | C A LEN DA R S

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ALTAMIRA FINE ART

Best of

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galleries

WHETHER YOU’RE PASSIONATE

about plein-air, a serious collector of

western paintings by contemporary or deceased masters, or a casual art fan

Altamira Fine Art focuses on exceptional, Western Contemporary artwork, photography, and sculpture in wood, bronze, and stainless steel.

Altamira is one of the “must see” galleries in the exhilarating Jackson Hole art district.

searching for a keepsake to remind you of your time spent here, in Jackson Hole you have the opportunity to enjoy art in its multitude of forms. Over the past two decades, Jackson Hole has grown to become one of the most heralded art centers of the West, popping off the tongues of aficionados alongside the likes of Santa Fe, Palo Alto, and Scottsdale. Begin by visiting some of the galleries highlighted here, where you can pick up a copy of our summer/fall arts magazine, Images West. In it you will learn more about the valley’s artists, galleries, and artsrelated classes and events.

MANGELSEN - IMAGES OF NATURE GALLERY

Legendary nature photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen is celebrating 40 years of traveling throughout the natural world observing and photographing the Earth’s last great wild places.

Mangelsen has captured wild moments and vast panoramas from all seven continents. We invite you to visit the Mangelsen—Images of Nature Gallery located one block north of the historic town square. The gallery features over 200 limited edition and artist proof prints in a variety of display options.

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MICHELLE JULENE COUTURE

Michelle Julene is a well-known Jackson Hole artist and designer. Her studio and gallery include paintings such as, “Into the Mystic” pictured above, and her award-winning couture clothing.

Michelle Julene’s clothing has been featured in many national magazines including Palm Beach Illustrated and Aspenpeak. Art commissions and custom clothing available.

50 King Street (307) 277-4427 michellejulenecouture.com

172 Center Street (307) 739-4700 altamiraart.com

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART

The National Museum of Wildlife Art chronicles much of the history of wildlife in art, from 2500 B.C. to the present. Overlooking the National Elk Refuge, the museum received the designation “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States” by order of Congress in 2008. Boasting interesting and compelling changing exhibitions, a museum shop with wildlife inspired gifts, delicious food at the Rising Sage Café and an outdoor sculpture trail with breathtaking views, the museum is known as one of the best destinations in Jackson Hole.

2820 Rungius Road (307) 733-5771 wildlifeart.org

BROOKOVER GALLERY

JACKSON HOLE ART AUCTION

THE LEGACY GALLERY

The Brookover Gallery has one of the largest hanging collections of platinum/palladium, photogravure and silver gelatin work in the United States. As we are a collector driven gallery, our edition numbers are extremely low. Employing handmade Japanese Gampi, Kozo and Mitsumata papers produced in accordance with 1st and 6th century formulas, we offer the finest and most unique photographic materials available. If you seek proven printing processes, rich in history, impeccably framed, this is the gallery for you.

Since 2007, the Jackson Hole Art Auction has been recognized as one of the premier art events in the country, defined by the high standard of works offered in a variety of genres including wildlife, sporting, figurative, landscape and Western art by both renowned past masters and contemporary artists. The JHAA is a signature event of Jackson Hole’s annual Fall Arts Festival and attracts collectors from across the country as well as abroad. With locations in Scottsdale, AZ, Jackson Hole, WY, Santa Fe, NM and New York, the auction principals, Trailside Galleries and Gerald Peters Gallery, bring over 100 years of combined experience and expertise to the event.

The Legacy Gallery features a large selection of representational art with an emphasis on western, landscape, figurative and wildlife paintings and bronze sculptures. This 7,000 square foot gallery is located on the northwest corner of the square and caters to the beginning collector and to the art connoisseur. Legacy Gallery is proud to be celebrating is 26th Anniversary and has two other locations in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bozeman, Montana.

125 North Cache (307) 732-3988 brookovergallery.com

130 East Broadway (866) 549-9178 jacksonholeartauction.com

75 North Cache (307) 733-2353 legacygallery.com

RARE GALLERY OF JACKSON HOLE

RARE Gallery ... a Collectors Destination! This 6,000 square foot Rick Armstrong signature gallery continues to debut “Art for the New West” in Jackson Hole! Our collections include blue chip works, masters’ collections, museum quality designer jewelry and art from the most acclaimed emerging artists of today. Featuring paintings, sculptures, photographs, glass, 3 dimensional art, and designer jewelry. Specializing in art consultation and collection management.

60 East Broadway (307) 733-8726 raregalleryjacksonhole.com

WEST LIVES ON TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES

WILD HANDS - ART FOR LIVING

Both galleries have an impressive collection of fine art reflecting the rich heritage of the American West. Featuring Western, wildlife and landscape art in original oils, acrylics, watercolors and bronze. We represent over 100 regional and local artists. Our knowledgeable staff will work with you to locate that special piece for your home or office.

Predominantly an American handcrafted gallery, we feature Folk Art from the wild and crazy to the simple and modest in such mediums as hand painted furniture, art glass, fine art, pottery, clocks, lamps, and mirrors. You’ll find work from local and regional artists. Known as the “Cool Stuff” gallery; a place to find all your gift and home furnishing needs. Custom orders and personalized service.

55 & 75 North Glenwood (307) 734-2888 westliveson.com

265 West Pearl Avenue (307) 733-4619 wildhands.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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as the hole deepens

Jackson Hole Was Nicer Before You Came Here

BY TIM SANDLIN ILLUSTRATIONS BY BIRGITTA SIF

HERE IS WHAT kept me from sleeping last night: Bullwhip is a noun, and horsewhip is a verb. Why is that?

The whip question came about because I dropped in on Clyde Walsowski-Smith’s house and found Clyde’s father, Wally, in the kitchen where Clyde was pouring hydrogen peroxide into his dad’s ear. Wally’s nose was bleeding. He had a scrape over one eye, and, like everyone else who’s been beaten up in Jackson Hole, he was writing a letter to the editor.

“They say I should have been here before it Wally wanted my help. “Is stump sucker got ruined by folks like me.” one word or two?”

Clyde said, “I had a stump-sucking lla– James McMurtry ma once. Could clean a fence post down to the barbed wire in a hour flat.”

I poured myself coffee. Clyde drinks what in this area is called Mormon coffee. The stuff is so weak you can drop in a dime and tell whether it’s heads or tails there sitting on the bottom of the cup.

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“Who’s a stump sucker?”

Wally licked the lead on his pencil. “Red Doppleganger. He says Mr. R’s Cafeteria was in what’s now the Gart Sports parking lot. Anybody with a brain knows it was in the old Bubba’s building. When I corrected Red he tried to bite my ear off, like the stump sucker he is.”

Clyde said, “Gart turned into Sports Authority ten years ago, dad.”

“I got enough trouble keeping up with the old times. I can’t be expected to follow what happened yesterday.”

The fight took place at a meeting of TOTS—the True OldTimers Syndicate. TOTS meets in the sub-sub-basement of the Wort Hotel, so far down the current owners don’t even know the room exists. Wally and his cronies come together to argue about what used to be where and who used to be whom.

As in every tourist town in the world—from Paris, France, to Wall, South Dakota—the definition of what makes a person local is hotly debated by those who are and those who would like to be. It comes down to this: I am a local, and anyone who arrived after me is a newbie. Seasonals don’t count. People rich enough to hire out the shoveling of their driveways don’t count. In certain parts of the county— Hoback Junction and Buffalo Valley—Democrats don’t count.

After weeding out everyone who came late or doesn’t count, there aren’t that many left.

TOTS has a strict definition of old-timers.

An old-timer has to have lived through a winter in Jackson Hole before the ski area opened—1966, although the date is another point of bitter conflict.

“How many old-timers are there?” I asked.

Wally said, “Six. Seven, if you count Modell Burbank out in Kelly, but we don’t count her. Modell borrowed a pickaxe off Henry Widowmeyer in 1961 and didn’t return it. The true locals have shunned her ever since.”

“Long time to ostracize someone over a pickaxe.”

“Modell claims she brought the pick back the day she used it to bury her pet goat, Emory. Ever’one knows she ate that goat and never buried her at all.”

The first wave of settlers who descended on the valley in the 1880s were basically hippies and survivalists here because there was no law north of Salt Lake. They couldn’t stand the second wave who pulled in in the 1920s and built schools and churches and, in the opinion of the way-back old-timers, screwed up everything. The end of World War II brought a bunch looking for cheap land, and, at almost the same moment, the opening of Grand Teton Monument chased out as many as it brought in, at first anyway.

The so-called Fourth Epoch of Jackson Hole came when the

ski area gave us something to do year-round. Men and women from the other epochs feel vastly superior to the ski bums.

The author Donald Hough was the first to talk about the Cocktail Hour in Jackson Hole. Back in his time, from Labor Day in September to Memorial Day at the end of May there was nothing to do here but drink. That’s how the old-timers liked it.

“That ski area brought movies and cable TV, and now they’ve built a Center for the Arts to go with their monster of a parking garage.” Wally spit on Clyde’s kitchen floor. “What do we need all these winter distractions for? I’ve seen a heap of changes in this valley the last sixty years, and I’ve fought every one of them.”

Wally took Clyde and me over to a meeting in the sub-subbasement. “Normally, you wouldn’t be allowed in, but Red is afraid we’ll all die in an earthquake down here, and there won’t be anyone to record how it used to be.”

He gave the secret knock— quick, quick, slow, slow, the two-steppers’ mantra—and we were let into a room furnished exactly like the old Happy Hound. Pine tables swathed in soft lacquer, chairs you stuck to if you sat in them wearing shorts.

They had weak coffee and creamers shaped like cows with the artificial whitener dribbling from their open mouths.

The sugar envelopes were white. No pink, yellow, or blue packets allowed.

The assembled TOTS were fighting over the difference between a local, an old-timer, and a native.

“To be a local you had to have eaten in the Elk Horn between midnight and dawn,” Red said. “And survived.”

Wally stayed away from Red. His ear was still bleeding.

I asked, “What makes a native?”

“Born here over fifty years ago. I’ve heard high school kids calling themselves natives and whining about how downtown has lost its character. Hasn’t been any character on the square since Clover the Killer’s last shoot-out.”

“Have you run into Hank Elkrunner lately?” Wally asked.

Hank is our token Shoshone. His family has been in and out of the valley for three hundred years. “He’s been going around with a can of black spray paint, blocking out all the Wyoming native bumper stickers.”

“Why would Hank do such a thing?” I asked.

“The man is a snob. Thinks because his people got here first they’re better than the rest of us.”

“I can’t stand snobs,” Red said. “I haven’t liked elitists since the park closed the Jenny Lake store in 1962.”

“Sixty-four,” Wally said.

“Sixty-two.”

That’s when Red offered to bullwhip Wally with a horsewhip, and I scurried off in search of a dictionary. JH WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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mercantile

Lodging HOTELS Hotel Terra Jackson Hole 3335 West Village Drive, Teton Village (844) 456-4224 reservations.htj@tetonresorts.com hotelterrajacksonhole.com Rustic Inn at Jackson Hole 475 North Cache (307) 733-2357 rusticinn@wyom.net rusticinnatjh.com Spa Suites at the Rustic Inn 475 North Cache (307) 733-2357 rusticinn@wyom.net rusticspasuites.com

Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa 3385 Cody Lane, Teton Village (844) 456-4223 reservations.tml@tetonresorts.com tetonlodge.com White Buffalo Club 160 West Gill Avenue (307) 734-4900 info@whitebuffaloclub.com WhiteBuffaloClub.com

RESORTS The Flying Saddle Resort 118878 Highway 89 & 26, Alpine (877) 772-7722 reservations@flyingsaddleresort.com flyingsaddleresort.com Four Seasons Resort And Residences (307) 732-5000 Fourseasons.com/JacksonHole @FSJacksonHole

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VACATION RENTALS

WILDLIFE VIEWING

Cabin & Company 98 Center Street, Suite D (307) 201-1861 kelly@cabinandcompany.com cabinandcompany.com

Wildlife Expeditions of Teton Science Schools

Rendezvous Mountain Rentals & Management 3610 Moose Wilson Road, Wilson (307) 739-9050 lodging@rmrentals.com rmrentals.com The Clear Creek Group 120 West Pearl Avenue (307) 732-3400 info@tccgjh.com tccgjh.com

Activities Jackson Hole Shooting Experience (307) 690-7921 info@shootinjh.com shootinjh.com Jackson Hole Wine Auction, benefiting Grand Teton Music Festival June 25 – 27, 2015 4015 North Lake Creek Drive #100, Wilson (307) 732-9965 jhwa@gtmf.org jhwineauction.org Pioneer Country Travel Council Lava Hot Springs, Idaho (888) 201-1063 info@seidaho.org seidaho.org

(307) 733-2623 info@wildlifeexpeditions.org wildlifeexpeditions.org EcoTour Adventures (307) 690-9533 info@jhecotouradventures.com jhecotouradventures.com Jackson Hole Wildlife Safaris 650 West Broadway (307) 690-6402 JacksonHoleSafaris@gmail.com jacksonholewildlifesafaris.com Scenic Safaris (307) 734-8898 reservations@scenic-safaris.com scenic-safaris.com

GOLF AND TENNIS 3 Creek Ranch Golf Club (307) 732-8920 membership@3creekranch.org 3creekranchgolfclub.org Teton Pines Country Club & Resort 3450 North Clubhouse Drive, Wilson (307) 733-1005 tetonpines.com

MUSEUMS National Museum of Wildlife Art 2820 Rungius Road

(307) 733-5771

SKI RESORTS

wildlifeart.org

Big Sky Resort (800) 548-4486 bigskyresort.com/winter

SPAS

The Cakebread Ranch 640 Clearwater Lane, Thayne (307) 883-3474 info@thecakebreadranch.com thecakebreadranch.com

Grand Targhee Resort 800-TARGHEE info@grandtarghee.com grandtarghee.com

Turpin Meadow Ranch 24505 Buffalo Valley Road (307) 543-2000 info@turpinmeadowranch.com turpinmeadowranch.com

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 733-2292 info@jacksonhole.com jacksonhole.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

700 Coyote Canyon Road

Body Sage Spa at the Rusty Parrot Lodge 175 North Jackson Street (307) 733-4455 relax@bodysage.com rustyparrot.com/spa Chill Spa Hotel Terra, Teton Village (307) 739-4055 spa.htj@tetonresorts.com hotelterrajacksonhole.com/spa/

Solitude Spa Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa, Teton Village (307) 732-6865 spa.tml@tetonresorts.com tetonlodge.com/spa/

YOGA STUDIOS Inversion Yoga 290 North Millward Street (307) 733-3038 info@inversionyoga.com inversionyoga.com Teton Yoga Shala 3510 North Lake Creek Drive, Wilson (307) 690-4201 info@tetonyoga.com tetonyoga.com

ARTISTS Daylite Stained Glass Studio 260 East Howard Avenue, Driggs, Idaho (208) 313-5426 daigh12@msn.com daylitestainedglass.com

PHOTOGRAPHERS Florence McCall Photography 1705 High School Road #170 (307) 733-0746 flo@flomccall.com flomccall.com

ART AUCTIONS Jackson Hole Art Auction 130 East Broadway (866) 549-9278 jacksonholeartauction.com coordinator@jacksonholeartauction.com The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction (208) 772-9009 cdaartauction.com

Shopping GALLERIES Altamira Fine Art 172 Center Street (307) 739-4700 connect@altamiraart.com altamiraart.com Brookover Gallery 125 North Cache Street (307) 732-3988 david@brookovergallery.com brookovergallery.com Cool Stuff Inc. DBA Wild Hands 265 West Pearl Avenue (307) 733-4619 wildhands@wyom.net wildhands.com

Legacy Gallery 75 North Cache Street (307) 733-2353 info@legacygallery.com legacygallery.com

Kismet Rug Gallery 150 East Broadway (307) 739-8984 info@kismetrugs.com kismetrugs.com

MANGELSEN- Images of Nature Gallery 170 North Cache Street (888) 238-0177 mangelsen.com

Linen Alley 185 South Scott Lane (307) 734-7424 linenalleyjh@gmail.com linenalley.com

Michelle Julene Couture 50 King Street (307) 277-4427 mysticcowgirl@gmail.com RARE Gallery of Fine Art 60 East Broadway, 2nd Floor (307) 733-8726 hollee@rarejh.com raregalleryjacksonhole.com Trailside Gallery 130 East Broadway (307) 733-3186 trailsidegalleries.com West Lives On Gallery 55 & 75 North Glenwood (307) 734-2888 fineart@westliveson.com westliveson.com

MD Nursery - Gift Shop, Greenhouse & Marigold Café 2389 South Highway 33, Driggs, Idaho (208) 354-8816 mdlandscapinginc.com Mountain Man Toy Shop 98 North Center Street (307) 733-4193 info@newwestknifeworks.com mtnmengifts.com New West Knifeworks 98 North Center Street (307) 733-4193 info@newwestknifeworks.com newwestknifeworks.com Pepi’s at the Alpenhof 3255 West Village Drive, Teton Village (307) 733-6838 pepistieglers.com

RETAIL AION 960 Alpine Lane #4 (307) 734-7900 info@aionheadwear.com AIONmfg.com

Pepi Stiegler Sports Olympic Sports Plaza 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 733-4505 pepistieglers.com

Boot Barn 840 West Broadway (307) 733-0247 bootbarn.com

Scandia Down 165 North Center Street (307)733-1038 or (800)733-1038 scandiajh@wyoming.com scandiadownjh.com

Fjäll Räven 155 Center Street, Suite B (307) 200-0367 kristen.shepulski@fjallraven.us fjallraven.us

Stio Mountain Studio 10 East Broadway (Cache Street entrance) (307) 201-1890 stio.com

Jackson Hole Sports Bridger Center, 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 739-2687 jacksonhole.com

Terra, Terra Tots, The Chemist Shop at Terra 105 East Broadway (307) 734-0067 terrajh.com

JD High Country Outfitters 50 East Broadway (307) 733-3270 jdhcoutfitters.com

Teton Village Sports 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 733-2181 tetonvillagesports.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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The General Store 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 732-4090 jacksonhole.com

Million Dollar Cowboy Steakhouse 25 North Cache Street (307) 733-4790 cowboysteakhouse.net

The Handle Bar (307) 732-5156 fourseasons.com/jacksonhole/dining/restaurants/ the_handle_bar

Twenty Two Home 45 East Deloney Avenue (307) 733-9922 info@twentytwohome.com twentytwohome.com

Nani’s 242 North Glenwood (307) 733-3888 nanis.com

The Kitchen 155 North Glenwood Street (307) 734-1633 thekitchenjacksonhole.com

Wool & Whiskey 3395 Cody Lane, Teton Village (307) 732-4080 jacksonhole.com

Dining RESTAURANTS

Noodle Kitchen 945 West Broadway (307) 734-1997 noodlekitchenjh.com

Ascent Lounge (307) 732-5613 fourseasons.com/jacksonhole/dining/lounges/ascent_ lounge

Pizza Antica 690 South Highway 89 (307) 734-1970 pizzaanticajh.com

Bin22 200 West Broadway (307) 739-9463 bin22jacksonhole.com

Q Roadhouse & Brewing Co. 2550 Moose Wilson Road (307) 739-0700 qjacksonhole.com

Bubba’s 100 Flat Creek Drive (307) 733-2288 bubbasjh.com

Rendezvous Bistro 380 South Highway 89 (307) 739-1100 rendezvousbistro.net

Couloir Restaurant Top of Bridger Gondola, Teton Village (307) 739-2675 info@jacksonhole.com couloirrestaurant.com

Sidewinders 945 West Broadway (307) 734-5766 sidewinderstavern.com

Il Villaggio Osteria Teton Village - Inside Hotel Terra (307) 739-4100 jhosteria.com Liberty Burger 160 North Cache Street (307) 200-6071 givemelibertyburger.com

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Nikai Sushi 225 North Cache Street (307) 734-6490 nikaisushi.com

Silver Dollar Bar & Grill Inside the Historic Wort Hotel Corner of Broadway and Glenwood (307) 732-3939 worthotel.com Snake River Brewing 265 South Millward Street (307) 739-BEER (2337) beer@snakeriverbrewing.com snakeriverbrewing.com

The Rose 50 West Broadway (307) 733-1500 therosejh.com Teton Thai 7342 Granite Loop Road, Teton Village (307) 733-0022 tetonthai.com The Bunnery Bakery & Restaurant 130 North Cache Street (307) 733-5474 bunnery.com Warbirds Cafe Teton Aviation Center, Driggs, Idaho (208) 354-2550 tetonaviation.com/warbirds-cafe Westbank Grill (307) 732-5620 fourseasons.com/jacksonhole/dining/restaurants/ westbank_grill

CATERING Bistro Catering (307) 739-4682 erin@jhfinedining.com bistrocatering.net

WINE & SPIRITS Grand Teton Distillery 1755 North Highway 33, Driggs, Idaho (208) 35-GRAND (354-7263) info@tetonvodka.com tetonvodka.com tetondistillery.com Jackson Hole Winery 28001/2 Boyles Hill Road (307) 201-1057 jacksonholewinery@gmail.com jacksonholewinery.com

Lotus Cafe, Organic Bakery, Bistro & Lounge 145 North Glenwood Street (307) 734-0882 hello@tetonlotuscafe.com tetonlotuscafe.com

Snake River Grill On the Town Square (307) 733-0557 snakerivergrill.com

Westside Wine & Spirits The Aspens, Wilson (307) 733-5038 westside@wyoming.com

Merry Piglets 610 North Cache Street (307) 733-2966 merrypiglets.com

The Blue Lion 160 North Milward Street (307) 733-3912 bluelionrestaurant.com

Wyoming Whiskey 100 South Nelson, Kirby (307) 864-2116 wyomingwhiskey.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

Transportation Fly Jackson Hole 1750 East Jackson Hole Airport Road (307) 690-3294 pete@flyjacksonhole.com flyjacksonhole.com Precision Aviation, Inc. Twin Falls, Idaho (208) 308-1852 charter@paviation.com paviation.com Teton Aviation Center 253 Warbird Lane, Driggs, Idaho (800) 472-6382 or (208) 354-3100 info@tetonaviation.com tetonaviation.com

Real Estate Brokers of Jackson Hole, LLC 140 North Cache Street (307) 733-4339 brokersofjacksonhole.com Courtney Campbell, Responsible Broker/Owner (307) 690-5127, ccampbell@jhrealestate.com Nicole Gaitan, Sales Associate (307) 732-6791, ngaitan@jhrealestate.com Penny Gaitan, Associate Broker/Owner (307) 690-9133, pengaitan@aol.com Kurt Harland, Associate Broker/ Owner (307) 413-6887, kharland@jhrealestate.com Doug Herrick, Associate Broker/Owner (307) 413-8899, dherrick@jhrealestate.com Timothy C. Mayo, Associate Broker/Owner (307) 690-4339, tcmayo@aol.com Samuel Reece, Sales Associate (307) 203-9152, sreece@jhrealestate.com Jennifer Reichert, Associate Broker/Owner (307) 699-0016, jreichert@wyom.net Karin Sieber, Associate Broker (307) 413-4674, ksieber@jhrealestate.com DeeAnn Sloan, Sales Associate (307) 413-1213, dsloan@jhrealestate.com John Sloan, Associate Broker (307) 413-1574, jsloan@jhrealestate.com Zach Smith, Associate Broker/ Owner (307) 690-3674, zsmith@jhrealestate.com Jack Stout, Associate Broker/Owner (307) 413-7118, jstout@jhrealestate.com Budge Realty Group Chad Budge, Associate Broker (307) 413-1364 chadbudge@jhrea.com Dianne Budge, Associate Broker (307) 413-1362, diannebudge@jhrea.com Rebekkah Kelley, Associate Broker (307) 413-5294, rebekkahkelley@jhrea.com

Fay Ranches, Inc. 395 Gallatin Park Drive, Bozeman, Montana (406) 586-4001 info@fayranches.com fayranches.com

John Resor, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 739-1908, jresor@shootingstarjh.com shootingstarjh.com Jill Sassi-Neison

Huntsman Springs Real Estate 501 Huntsman Springs Drive, Driggs, Idaho (208) 354-1888 huntsmansprings.com

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 690-4529, jill.sassi@jhsir.com tetonpartnersjacksonhole.com Brandon Spackman, Associate Broker

Julie F. Bryan, Broker Huntsman Springs Real Estate (307) 699-0205, jbryan@huntsmansprings.com Carl Struttmann, Sales Associate (208) 419-6112, cstruttmann@huntsmansprings.com Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Exclusive Affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate (888) 733-6060 jhrea.com LintonBingle Associate Brokers Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Carol Linton (307) 732-7518, lintonbingle@jhrea.com Betsy Bingle (307) 413-8090 Nancy Martino, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates (307) 690-1022, nancymartino@jhrea.com John Scott, Associate Broker (307) 690-1009, johnscott@jhrea.com Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty 185 West Broadway (307) 733-9009 or (888) 733-9009 jhsir.com Barbara Allen, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 413-3510, barbara.allen@jhsir.com jacksonholerealestateinfo.com Jane Carhart, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 413-8961, jane.carhart@jhsir.com jacksonholeluxuryproperties.com Tom Evans, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 739-8149, tomevansre@jhsir.com TomEvansRealEstate.com

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 739-8156, brandon.spackman@jhsir.com SpackmansInJH.com Dave Spackman, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 739-8132, dave.spackman@jhsir.com SpackmansInJH.com Collin Vaughn, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 413-1492, collin.vaughn@jhsir.com tetonpartnersjacksonhole.com Bill VanGelder, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 690-0178, bill.vangelder@jhsir.com jacksonholerealestateinfo.com Audrey Williams, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 690-3044, audrey.williams@jhsir.com AudreyWilliamsRealEstate.com Jackson Wyoming Real Estate Teri McCarthy, Broker/Owner 690 South Highway 89, Suite 200 (307) 690-6906, wyoteri@gmail.com JacksonWyomingRealEstate.com Prugh Real Estate 1110 Maple Way C (307) 733-9888 info@prughrealestate.com prughrealestate.com Greg Prugh, Broker (307) 413-2468, g@prugh.com Dan Visosky, Associate Broker (307) 690-6979, d@prugh.com

RARE Properties of Jackson Hole 60 East Broadway, 2nd Floor (307) 733-8726 rarejh.com

Mercedes Huff, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty (307) 690-9000, mercedes.huff@jhsir.com mercedeshuff.com

Rick Armstrong, Owner-Broker-Curator (307) 413-4359, rick@rarejh.com Hollee Armstrong, Owner-Associate Broker-Director (307) 413-4772, hollee@rarejh.com WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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RE/MAX Obsidian Real Estate 110 East Broadway (307) 739-1234 JHObsidian.com Clitus H. “Chip” Marvin, Associate Broker (307) 690-2657, ChipMarvin@gmail.com Fred Harness, Sales Associate (307) 690-0417, Fred.Harness@gmail.com The Clear Creek Group 120 West Pearl Avenue (307) 732-3400 info@tccgrealestate.com tccgrealestate.com Janet Helm, Brokerage Assistant (307) 699-7708, janeth@tccgjh.com Reynolds Pomeroy, Sales Associate (307) 413-2429, reynoldsp@tccgjh.com Phil Stevenson, Responsible Broker (307) 690-3503, phils@tccgjh.com

Shannon White Design (307) 690-1594 info@shannonwhitedesign.com shannonwhitedesign.com Snake River Interiors 164 East Deloney Avenue (307) 733-3005 showroom@snakeriverinteriors.com snakeriverinteriors.com Stockton and Shirk Interior Designs 745 West Broadway (307) 733-0274 design@stocktonandshirk.com stocktonandshirk.com WRJ Home - Design Studio & Interiors 30 South King Street (307) 200-4881 info@wrjdesign.com

Home

wrjdesign.com

ARCHITECTS

LANDSCAPING

Carney Logan Burke Architects 215 South King Street (307) 733-4000 design@clbarchitects.com clbarchitects.com Plan One/Architects 189 North Main, Suite 112, Driggs, Idaho (208) 354-8036 hrheneage@planone.com planone.com

BUILDERS Snake River Builders, Inc. Victor, Idaho (208) 787-9836 john@snakeriverbuilders.com snakeriverbuilders.com

CUSTOM COUNTERTOPS AND TILES Stoneworks of Jackson Hole 1230 Ida Drive #3, Wilson (307) 734-8744 stoneworksofjacksonhole.com

INTERIOR DESIGN Forsyth & Brown 1160 Alpine Lane, 2C (307) 200-6608 info@forsythandbrown.com forsythandbrown.com Jacque Jenkins Stireman 1715 High School Road, Suite 210 (307) 739-3008 jacque@jjstiremandesign.com jjstiremandesign.com 164

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

MD Nursery & Landscaping, Inc. 2389 South Highway 33, Driggs, Idaho (208) 354-8816 mdlandscapinginc.com

RUG CLEANING Revive-A-Rug Cleansing and Repair (307) 774-RUGS (7847) reviveyourrug@gmail.com

Health & Emergency MEDICAL CENTERS St. John’s Joint Replacement Center at St. John’s Medical Center 625 East Broadway (307) 739-7501 or (888) 739-7499 tetonhospital.org/coe

ACUPUNCTURE, CHINESE MEDICINE & YOGA THERAPY Angela Tong 3510 North Lake Creek Drive, Wilson tetonyoga.com angela@tetonyoga.com

PERSONAL & FAMILY PROTECTION DOGS Svalinn (formerly Snake River K9) (307) 200-1223 info@svalinn.com svalinn.com

PET CARE SERVICES xcDogs: The Pet Sitting People Nationwide Services (307) 413-6824 woof@xcdogs.com xcdogs.com

BROADBAND, COMMUNICATIONS, & WIRELESS Silver Star Communications (307) 734-9040 business@silverstar.com silverstar.com

reviveyourrug.com

MEDIA AND DESIGN FIRMS TECHNOLOGY SERVICES Xssentials 160 West Deloney Avenue, Suite B (307) 201-7040 info@xssentials.com xssentials.com

Banks First Interstate Bank 842 West Broadway (307) 734-7373 firstinterstatebank.com

Car Dealerships Teton Motors 1020 West Broadway (307) 733-6600 sales@tetonmotors.com tetonmotors.com

Forrest Design Group 150 South Arthur Avenue, Suite 313, Pocatello, Idaho (208) 478-4348 info@forrestdesigngroup.com forrestdesigngroup.com

SEARCH AND RESCUE Teton County Search and Rescue Foundation (307) 413-0604 tetoncountysar.org

search YOUR REAL ESTATE

STARTS HERE.

Jackson Hole’s most complete forum for independent real estate news, neighborhood profiles and current property listings.

More than 1,700 properties, 4 counties, One Site.

JUST A FEW THINGS TO DO IN

JACKSON HOLE If you love this map as much as we do, you can buy prints online at jhmarketplace.com (it’s under the “arts” tab).

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JACKSON

expanded snowmaking (p. 76).

n Sit on a saddle at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar (p. 134).

n Go to a Jackson Moose Hockey game.

n Wander into Images of Nature Gallery (p. 150).

n Appreciate the buttery goodness of Persephone’s pastries (p. 138).

n Sip a cocktail at The Rose (p. 134).

TETON VILLAGE

n Relax with a sauna (p. 24).

n Take a sleigh ride on the National Elk Refuge.

n Hit a Third Thursday Art Walk (p. 124).

n Check out Snow King’s

n Look for septuagenarian skiers ripping Alta 1 Chute (p. 64).

n Spend the night in a yurt (p. 115).

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK

n Cross-country ski at Teton Pines (p. 108).

n Snowshoe or cross-country ski the Inner Park Loop Rd. (p. 108).

n Taste the freshness at Couloir (p. 138). n Order sushi at Ascent Lounge (p. 138).

n Look for wolves around the Moose-Wilson Road (p. 92).

WILSON n Drive Teton Pass (p. 102). n Snowshoe or cross-country ski up Old Pass Road. n Grab a bagel sammie at Pearl Street Bagels.

n Shop at the new(ish) Teton Gravity Research store (p. 30).

n Try your hand at winter fly fishing (p. 120). n Nordic ski at Trail Creek Ranch (p. 108). n See the latest backcountry gear at Wilson Backcountry Sports (p. 44).

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Best of

calendar of events

BRADLY J. BONER

JH

Winter 2014 - 15 ONGOING JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT in Teton Village is open for skiing and snowboarding from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through April 5. Aerial tram, gondola, and ten other lifts access 4,139 vertical feet and 2,500 acres of inbounds terrain. Mountain Sports School offers ski, snowboard, telemark, and adaptive lessons for all ages and abilities. 888/DEEP-SNO (307/733-2291), jacksonhole.com 168

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

SNOW KING MOUNTAIN, in east Jackson on Snow King Ave., is open for skiing and snowboarding from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Tuesday through Sunday, with night skiing from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Closed Mondays, except holidays. The mountain is open through March 29. The ski school offers ski and snowboard lessons for all ages and abilities. 307/734-3194, snowkingmountain.com GRAND TARGHEE RESORT, located in Alta,

The 44th annual Jackson Hole Shriners Club Cutter Races speed through Melody Ranch on February 14-15. Proceeds benefit the Salt Lake City Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Wyoming, is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through late April. Take advantage of short lift lines on all five lifts, 2,602 acres of powder, and a 2,270-foot vertical drop.

800/TAR-GHEE, grandtarghee.com FIRST SUNDAY CELEBRATIONS AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the first Sunday of every month. Free admission for locals.

307/733-5771, wildlifeart.org HOOTENANNY is a free evening of live local music every Monday from 6 to 9 p.m. at Dornan’s Pizza & Pasta Co. in Moose. You’ll get everything from western to bluegrass,

country, folk, and blues. Dornan’s food is pretty tasty, too. 307/733-2415, dornans.com JACKSON HOLE MOOSE HOCKEY team plays against other clubs across the country.

Home games start at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Snow King Center, moose. pucksystems2.com

Precision Aviation, Inc. excellence in aviation since 2002

PICA’S MARGARITA CUP is Jackson’s adult skiracing league. Teams consist of up to six people, with four scoring points each race.

Races begin mid-January and run through early March. 307/733-6433, jhskiclub.org THIRD THURSDAY ART WALKS are presented by the Jackson Hole Gallery Association.

Visit Jackson’s galleries while enjoying wine and appetizers. Winter walks take place December 27, February 19, and March 19 from 5 to 8 p.m. jacksonholegalleries.com WAPITI WATCH SLEIGH RIDES onto the National Elk Refuge—and into the middle of the elk herd—depart the Jackson Hole & Greater Yellowstone Visitor Center (532 North Cache) daily from December 15 through April 4 (except Christmas) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Reservations for groups of twenty or more are required; reservations for smaller groups are not necessary but can be made by calling 307/733-0277. fws.gov/ nationalelkrefuge MUSIC UNDER THE TRAM Local bands play live music under the tram dock at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Saturdays at 3 p.m. in March and early April. jacksonhole.com APRÈS-SKI & ART is every Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. between January 2 and March 27. Stop

by Diehl Gallery for a free glass of wine and some of the finest contemporary art in the West. 155 W. Broadway, 307/733-0905, diehlgallery.com

CHARTERED FLIGHTS • AIRCRAFT MANAGEMENT BASED AT THE DRIGGS-REED MEMORIAL AIRPORT 208.308.1852 • WWW.PAVIATION.COM

YOUR GUIDE TO

THE ARTS

DECEMBER 6: THE LION IN WINTER is a staged reading featuring musical guests followed

MOUNTAIN RENTALS & MANAGEMENT

IN JACKSON HOLE ART | MUSIC | DANCE | THEATER GALLERIES | EVENTS

2014 EDITION

images west THE GUIDE TO THE ARTS IN JACKSON HOLE

DECEMBER DECEMBER 5-7: THE NUTCRACKER is a mustsee winter classic. Watch the Eugene Ballet Company alongside Dancers’ Workshop students. 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1:30 p.m.

Saturday, 1:30 and 4 p.m. Sunday. Center for the Arts Center Theater, tickets start at $30 for adults and $10 for students, 307/733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

RENDEZVOUS

www.rmrentals.com

Jackson Hole’s Finest selection of Homes, Cabins and Condominiums in Teton Village and the Aspens.

More room, more privacy and less money than most hotels.

WORKS | MUSIC | DANCE | THEATER | CALENDAR OF EVENTS | GALLERY & ARTIST DIRECTORIES

AVAILABLE AT GALLERIES AND OTHER FINE ESTABLISHMENTS.

With over 40 years of combined lodging expertise, Rendezvous Mountain Rentals is the ideal partner for your next Jackson Hole vacation.

Toll Free 888.739.2565 | Phone 307.739.9050

WINTER 2015 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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SNOWBOARD CLUB’S 23RD ANNUAL MOOSE CHASE NORDIC SKI RACE. Includes a 30k, 15k, 5k, 3k, and a kids’ 1k. Athletes may skate or classic ski the course. Trail Creek Nordic Center, 307/733-6433, jhskiclub.org FEBRUARY 14-15: JACKSON HOLE SHRINERS CLUB 44TH ANNUAL CUTTER RACES. Proceeds benefit the Salt Lake City Shriners Hospitals for Children. 12:30 p.m., Melody Ranch, south of Jackson, 307/413-1034, jhshriners.org FEBRUARY 21-22: 3RD ANNUAL JACKSON HOLE SKIJORING has horses pulling skiers on ropes behind them. Gates open at 11 a.m., and the competition begins at 12:30 p.m. Melody Ranch, south of Jackson, $10, kids under 12 are free, 307/413-1034, jhshriners.org

PRICE CHAMBERS

MARCH

The 40th World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb roars up Snow King Mountain from March 26-29.

by a reception in the lobby. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $12, 307/7334900, jhcenterforthearts.org DECEMBER 14-24: SANTA ON THE SQUARE lives in the Stage Stop building on the southwest corner and is accompanied by thousands of lights. 5 to 7 nightly, Town Square, free, 307/733-3316 DECEMBER 18: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO – The Met: Live in HD is copresented by Grand Teton Music Festival and Center for the Arts. 7 to 11 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $20, 307/733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

JANUARY JANUARY 14-17: GOPRO ANDREW WHITEFORD STEEP & DEEP CAMP is part of the Mountain Sports School camp lineup. This camp, led by GoPro and JHMR athlete Andrew Whiteford, is for expert adult skiers. Evening sessions teach campers to review and edit their GoPro footage. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, $1,645 with lift tickets, $1,405 without, 307/739-2686, jacksonhole.com 170

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015

JANUARY 15: DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG – The Met: Live in HD. 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $20, 307/733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org JANUARY 29: THE MERRY WIDOW – The Met: Live in HD. 7 to 10:30 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $20, 307/733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

FEBRUARY FEBRUARY 12: LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN – The Met: Live in HD. 7 to 10:30 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $20, 307/7334900, jhcenterforthearts.org FEBRUARY 13-22: 5TH ANNUAL JACKSON HOLE WINTERFEST is presented by the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce and celebrates Jackson’s beautiful winter season. Events include ice skating on the Town Square, the Shriners Club Calcutta, Moose Chase, Wild West Classic, gallery walks, and more.

307/733-3316, jacksonholechamber.com FEBRUARY 14: THE JACKSON HOLE SKI &

MARCH 14-15: MINI HAHNENKAMM TOWN DOWNHILL is a Jackson community favorite with divisions for Pro, Recreation, Telemark, Junior, Fat and Baggy, and Snowboard.

Snow King Mountain, 307/733-6433, jhskiclub.org MARCH 26: LA DONNA DEL LAGO – The Met: Live in HD. 7 to 10:30 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $20, 307/733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org MARCH 26-29: 40TH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SNOWMOBILE HILL CLIMB. Snow King Mountain, 307/734-3194, snowkingmountain.com MARCH 28: 40TH ANNUAL POLE PEDAL PADDLE is a four-event race consisting of alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, road biking, and river boating. Contestants compete individually or on a team. 307/733-6433, jhskiclub.org MARCH 29: SNOW KING MOUNTAIN CLOSING DAY. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Snow King Mountain, 307/734-3194, snowkingmountain.com

APRIL APRIL 5: JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT CLOSING DAY. Celebrate an awesome winter season dressed in your best (or goofiest) ski and snowboard gear. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, 307/7392686, jacksonhole.com JH

(307) 733-9009 www.JHSIR.com

WE ARE HERE TO HELP Main Office - 185 W. Broadway • Jackson Hole Racquet Club Teton Pines Resort • Four Seasons Resort • Teton Mountain Lodge Snake River Lodge & Spa • Hotel Terra • Village Market One S. Main St., Driggs, Idaho

Visit one of our 9 area offices today. www .JHSIR. com

• (307) 733-9009 • MAKING STATEMENTS GLOBALLY

STOP IN ONE OF OUR OFFICE LOCATIONS TO SPEAK WITH ONE OF OUR EXPERTS. OUR OFFICES ARE OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK. ®,™ and SM are licensed trademarks to Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty is Independently Owned and Operated.

“Winter is the time for comfort… it is the time for home.” –Edith Sitwel

Immerse yourself in the sanctuary of Jackson Hole.

Laurie Huff, Mercedes Huff, Mindy White and Molly Hawks deliver unparalleled service with an easy going approach.

Let them find your perfect Jackson Hole location.

MERCEDES HUFF Associate Broker mercedeshuff.com phone 307.690.9000

Wyoming is the #1 tax-friendly state.

Call for more information.