Jackson Hole magazine // Winter 2018

WINTER 2018

Over the Mountains and through the Woods Teton Pass might be the most unique commute in the country.

ART SCENE

VibrART

BODY & SOUL

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ON THE JOB

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LOOKING BACK

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THESE MATERIALS AND THE FEATURES AND AMENITIES DESCRIBED AND DEPICTED HEREIN ARE BASED UPON CURRENT DEVELOPMENT PLANS, WHICH ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY THE DEVELOPER AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE. NO GUARANTEE IS MADE THAT ALL OF THE FEATURES, AMENITIES, AND FACILITIES DEPICTED BY ARTISTS’ RENDERINGS OR OTHERWISE DESCRIBED HEREIN WILL BE PROVIDED, OR, IF PROVIDED, WILL BE OF THE SAME TYPE, NUMBER, SIZE, OR NATURE AS DEPICTED OR DESCRIBED. REFER TO PLAT MAPS, LEGAL DESCRIPTIONS, AND CCRs FOR ACTUAL LOT SIZES AND RESTRICTIONS. ACCESS TO AND RIGHTS TO USE RECREATIONAL AMENITIES WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT MAY BE SUBJECT TO PAYMENT OF USE FEES, MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS, OR OTHER LIMITATIONS.

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Jackson Hole

Winter 2018

Features

Page

62 BRADLY J. BONER

62 Over the Mountains

72 Public Lands in Public Hands

86 We are Jackson Hole

Teton Pass might be the most unique commute in the country.

The Wyoming Public Lands Initiative charges communities to come up with recommendations for managing local parcels of federal land long stuck in limbo. Is there a chance it will work? Do we want it to?

Individuals make this valley the inspiring, engaged, dedicated, interesting, and intelligent community it is. Meet some of us.

BY MOLLY ABSOLON

BY DINA MISHEV

BY MOLLY LOOMIS

PHOTO GALLERY

80 Partners in the Snow

Some of the valley’s most popular ski partners are dogs.

BY TED KERASOTE • PHOTOGRAPHY BY JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

ON THE COVER: Jackson Hole magazine photo editor Ryan Dorgan took this shot of Ben Graham (in orange) and Mike Koshmrl (in blue) and their dogs, Leroy Brown and Sota, while the three walked to the top of Teton Pass to take a morning ski run. A steady stream of commuters who live in Teton Valley and work in Jackson drove past the trio. During their descent, Dorgan says, “We heard a lot of hooting and hollering, but it was snowing too hard to really see anyone else.” The hoots and hollers weren’t false advertising: The run the three did was good enough to inspire Dorgan to go back up that afternoon and ski a run on Glory Bowl.

8

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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Jackson Hole

Winter 2018

Best of JH GETTING OUT

TETONSCAPES

18

Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club, Where in the World?, Winter Greens

PIQUED

24

Some of our favorite winter stuff

Q&A

30 Meet the Locals Page

Breezy Johnson, Jim Kercher, Buck Milligan

48

ON THE JOB

38 Feeding Frenzy

Amanda Soliday is one of a handful of people responsible for getting the Jackson Elk Herd through our harsh winters alive.

With a permit, you can snowmobile into Yellowstone without a guide.

BY MIKE KOSHMRL

106 Take a Walk on the

Wild Side

No experience is necessary to go snowshoeing, and there are free ranger-guided snowshoe treks in Grand Teton National Park.

BY MAGGIE DOMOWITZ

BODY & SOUL

110 Cozy Contentment

The Danish concept of hygge is perfectly at home in Jackson Hole.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

NIGHTLIFE

113 Under the Lights

BY MARK HUFFMAN

Who says après-ski can’t include more skiing?

BY DINA MISHEV

BUSINESS

42 Wearing Jackson Hole Local company Stio seeks to design outerwear inspired by the valley’s unique lifestyle. The result? Technical clothing that looks as good as it performs.

DINING

116 New Kids on the Block Our take on the valley’s newest restaurants.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

BY JOHN SPINA

Page

101

DESIGN

48 Welcome to the Afterlife Ski equipment—from poles to lift chairs—can live on after it retires from the slopes.

BY DINA MISHEV

LOOKING BACK

94 The Wasting Sickness of

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

127 VibrART

Explore one of the country’s most vibrant art communities.

BY LILA EDYTHE

AS THE HOLE DEEPENS

134 World Peace Through Totality

BY TIM SANDLIN

Jackson Funk

136 JACKSON HOLE MAPPED

BY RICHARD ANDERSON

138 CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Botox is erasing town’s laugh lines.

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ART SCENE

RYAN DORGAN AND RYAN JONES

JH Living

101 DIY Yellowstone

Award Winning Golf Course

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Greetings from the Editor I’M WRITING THIS on a late September day. Sitting on a stool facing out the front window at Picnic, the closest cafe to Teton Media Works’ office, I’m nursing an Americano and watching something between rain and snow falling outside. Earlier this morning, leaving my home to go to a predawn spin class, I cleaned snow off my car for the first time this season. Over the past two weeks, the higher elevations of the mountains ringing the valley have gotten more than a foot of snow. One week ago, on the last official day of summer, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort posted a video on Instagram showing employees at the top of the tram using a snow blower to clear off the tram dock. To quote an HBO series I’m obsessed with, as is the rest of the country: “Winter is coming.”

In this show (Game of Thrones, if you’ve been living under a rock), winter is a bad thing involving a zombie army attacking the living. But in Jackson, every year we eagerly await and then welcome winter’s arrival. It was early this July that my boyfriend first began talking about how excited he was for the upcoming ski season. It took my ski stoke a month or so longer to arrive, but we were still smack in the middle of summer when it did.

As usual, this issue includes several ski stories. On page 18, Leslie Hittmeier writes about the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard

Club (JHSC), the oldest nonprofit in the valley and the valley’s only nonprofit to send some of its participants on to the Olympics. On page 30, we chat with Breezy Johnson, a former JHSC athlete who might be competing in this winter’s Olympics in Seoul. Read this issue’s Nightlife department (p. 113) to learn where/how you can ski alongside JHSC athletes and potential future Olympians.

Jackson Hole in winter is so much more than skiing, though.

Neither of the two adventures included in our Getting Out section involves skis. In “DIY Yellowstone” (p. 101), Mike Koshmrl writes about his experience snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park without a guide. “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” (p. 106) reveals that if you go on one of Grand Teton National Park’s three weekly ranger-guided snowshoeing adventures, the actual snowshoeing is only half of the awesomeness: The park has antique snowshoes dating from World War II that you can use.

Because you might need some time to rest and recover in between adventures, Joohee Muromcew writes about the valley’s best new places to eat (“New Kids on the Block,” p. 116) and also about hygge, a Danish concept of coziness that is perfectly at home here in Jackson Hole (“Cozy Contentment,” p. 110).

As always, I hope you enjoy this issue of the magazine as much as I’ve enjoyed editing it. Even better, I hope reading it is part of your hygge afternoon: Go ahead and curl up with this issue and a hot cup of tea in a comfy chair in front of a fireplace. @DINAMISHEV

@JHMAGAZINE

YOUR ADVENTURE STARTS WHERE YOU PARK

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magazine

Jackson Hole

It’s about

Winter 2018 // jacksonholemagazine.com

What’s one thing you always do with guests who are visiting in the winter?

connections...

PUBLISHER

Head up to Turpin Meadow Ranch for lunch and a couple of hours of cross-country skiing.

Kevin Olson ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Adam Meyer EDITOR

Dina Mishev ART DIRECTOR

Colleen Valenstein LAYOUT ARTIST

Kathryn Holloway PHOTO EDITOR

Ryan Dorgan

Ski or snowshoe up Teton Canyon for a stunning view of the Grand from the western

side of the range.

Take a walk across the Snake River on the pedestrian bridge. Most

breathtaking scene and so, so very cool to walk over

the river in winter.

I always take friends out to Cody Bowl to ski Pucker Face, the Power 8 Bowl, and Four Pines—a few of my favorite runs in the country.

COPY EDITOR

Pamela Periconi

Take them out to help hunt for the perfect Christmas tree.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Molly Absolon Richard Anderson Maggie Domowitz Lila Edythe Leslie Hittmeier Mark Huffman Ted Kerasote Mike Koshmrl Molly Loomis Dina Mishev Joohee Muromcew Tim Sandlin John Spina Maggie Theodora Rachel Walker CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Sean Beckett Cole Buckhart Ashley Cooper Ryan Jones Brian Schilling Angus Thuermer

I would take them to Pearl Street Bagels and then Valley Bookstore and maybe finish up at Picnic.

Grab a glass of wine and watch the elk on the elk

Bradly J. Boner refuge (hope for wolves!) from Price Chambers the comfort of the National Ryan Dorgan Rugile Kaladyte Museum of Wildlife Art. Jonathan Selkowitz Brandon Ulp

ADVERTISING SALES

Deidre Norman ADVERTISING ACCOUNT COORDINATOR

Visit the bighorn sheep on the Elk Refuge Road.

Maggie Gabruk AD DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Lydia Redzich Sarah Wilson Ben Shafer

Private Instruction Community Workshops Entertainment Shooting Families & Corporate Groups

DISTRIBUTION

Kyra Griffin Kal Stromberg

Hank Smith Jeff Young

OFFICE MANAGER

Kathleen Godines

© 2018 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.

307-690-7921 ShootInJH.com Info@ShootInJH.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

15

KT MILLER

Contributors

Leslie Hittmeier (“Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club,” p. 18) is a freelance writer and photographer who has worked as the online editor at Skiing Magazine and managing editor at Teton Gravity Research before recently joining Never Not Collective. This is her first story for Jackson Hole magazine.

Journalist Molly Loomis (“Public Lands in Public Hands,” p. 72) has spent nearly twenty years living in the Tetons. Her work as an outdoor educator, mountain guide, and ranger has taken her through many of the region’s lesser-known nooks and crannies. Visit mollyloomis.com for more stories about conservation, adventure, and travel in the world’s wild places. Follow her at @LoomisInk.

Rachel Walker’s (“Locals: Jim Kercher,” p. 32) first reporting job was the environmental beat at the Jackson Hole News. Now based in Boulder, Colorado, her articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Backpacker, Skiing, babble.com, grist.org, and others.

16

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club

BY LESLIE HITTMEIER IN 1938, NINE years after Grand Teton National Park was established and twenty years before Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opened, a group of skiers raced down the steep north-facing hill that looms over downtown Jackson. (The following year, this “hill” opened as Snow King Resort.) That race marked the beginning of the Jackson Hole Ski Club. Today, the club is known as the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club (JHSC) and is the oldest nonprofit in the valley. It’s thriving— about 500 young athletes participate in a variety of programs in alpine and Nordic skiing and freeriding—and the JHSC recently announced a lofty goal: to become one of the best ski/snowboard clubs in the nation.

18

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

The JHSC already counts World Cup racers and Olympians as alumni: Alpine racer Resi Stiegler has seventeen World Cup topten finishes and competed in the 2006 and 2014 Olympics; snowboarding pioneer Travis Rice is a three-time X Games gold medalist who has won every major snowboard contest in the world to date (no exaggeration); Zach Schwartz raced nationally and internationally (and then returned to the JHSC to coach); Breezy Johnson, a twenty-two-year-old downhiller, might compete in this year’s Olympics (read an interview with her on p. 30); and Seppi Stiegler, Resi’s younger brother, made it to the U.S. Ski Team, won the NCAA GS championship, and was the 2011 World

RYAN DORGAN

Teton

University Games slalom champion (and, like Schwartz, is also now a JHSC coach).

These success stories thrill Brian Krill, the JHSC’s newish executive director (he started in late summer 2016). But, “While our core mission is competitive skiing and snowboarding, that is also a vehicle for teaching life skills,” Krill says. He wants athletes to achieve their highest potential in both sports and life. “Realistically, only a few will reach the highest levels of the sport,” he says, “but all athletes in our programs are involved with a value-based education centered on our six core values: fun, fitness, commitment, sportsmanship, teamwork, and competition.”

KRILL HAS AN extensive background in nonprofits, education, and athletics. Before moving to the valley, he was the director of sports education at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA). There, he developed resources and scholarships for junior-level ski clubs across the U.S. Krill wants to grow the JHSC to the point that it can compete for these national-level opportunities. “This place has unlimited potential,” he says. There’s “the venues, the community, the access—it’s endless.”

The first step is to get the JHSC USSA gold-level certified, which recognizes the country’s best ski clubs. Krill is also developing strategies to enhance the JHSC’s life skills education program and hopes to establish a ski mountaineering, or “skimo,” track. (There is a robust skimo World Cup scene in Europe, and it’s growing in this country.) For athletes looking to commit less time and/or money, Krill wants to add a backcountry skiing program, which doesn’t require the same rigorous training as the race programs. “I see things like three-day hut trips for an affordable fee that will serve a lot more kids in this community in our future,” he says. “We work harder than any other club in the country to make [skiing and racing] accessible and affordable.”

An example: JHSC’s partnership with the Doug Coombs Foundation, which provides equipment, lessons, and lift tickets to lowerincome local kids. Last year, the foundation had eleven athletes that wanted to race but couldn’t afford it. “We found the funding, and some of those kids won races last year,” Krill says.

To be both inclusive and world-class is a challenging task that requires a generous and engaged community like Jackson Hole.

“In my mind the sky is the limit, but this is the community’s organization, not mine,” Krill says. jhskiclub.org JH

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HARKNESS, WHO HAS been with TCJPR for thirty-one years, says the idea for the Armchair Adventure Series came from a similar event held by the outdoor recreation program at Mankato State University (now the University of Minnesota Mankato), where she went to college. Harkness has been in charge of the TCJPR program for “between twelve and fifteen years,” and, “honestly, [I] don’t know how many years total we’ve been doing it. It’s one of those things that feels like it’s been part of the community forever.”

The program has stayed mostly the same over the years, but, “It has gotten easier to find presenters,” Harkness says. During her early years planning the series, presenters were often people she knew (or had heard of) that had traveled to an interesting place.

Today, she says, “It seems more that I’ll have people tell me about a trip they did and say they’d be willing to share their photos and story.” Presenters are volunteers.

Where in the World?

Local travelers share photos and stories of their adventures at an annual winter speaking series.

BY MAGGIE THEODORA OUTSIDE, THE WIND howls, it’s dark, and temperatures have fallen to well below zero.

Inside the Teton County/Jackson Recreation Center, though, about forty people are hiking, via a narrated slideshow, across a hillside covered in edelweiss under a lapiscolored, cloudless sky in the snaggly Italian Dolomites. Welcome to Teton County/Jackson Parks and Recreation’s (TCJPR) weekly Armchair Adventure Series. Held Thursday evenings from mid-January to mid-March, the programs take advantage of the valley’s abundance of world and adventure travelers.

“Why not travel to somewhere else on our long, dark, cold evenings?” asks TCJPR recreation programmer Jill Harkness. Since its founding more than fifteen years ago, the Armchair Adventure Series has taken crowds to Bhutan, the Galapagos Islands, biking through the United Kingdom’s Cornwall, Iceland, South Korea, Peru, Tajikistan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Nepal’s 20

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Upper Mustang Valley, and, closer to home, backpacking in Yellowstone’s Bechler region.

Programs sometimes also cover astronomy and local geology. Presentations, which are narrated digital slide shows of between seventy and one hundred images, are about one hour long. At the end, the audience can ask questions. The Dolomite crowd is interested in everything from logistics— how to get there, the particulars of staying overnight in a mountain refuge—to food and culture.

“It’s a great resource,” says Cathy Shill, the founder of The Hole Hiking Experience, a presenter of several Armchair Adventures, and sometimes also an attendee. “What we’re going to do in the off-season here is something we’re always thinking about,” she says. “Armchair Adventures give you some great ideas of where you might want to travel.

Or you can just experience a different place and culture for an hour.”

LAST WINTER, ABOUT thirty people came to each of the series’ seven presentations.

The most popular one was “Biking in the Netherlands,” which was presented by Town of Jackson/Teton County Pathways Coordinator Brian Schilling. “He not only brought the perspective of biking in that country, but also the knowledge of someone who works in that realm,” Harkness says.

“I think people were really drawn to the educational component. It wasn’t just a tour. But any ones about biking seem to be popular.” Franz and Carol Kessler’s “Hiking the Dolomites: A Bucket List Destination” was also popular. “I think that one inspired a lot of people,” Harkness says. Al Young presented his solo, self-supported bike ride across the country. Stan Steiner shared his trip to South Korea.

“There’s no one thing that makes for a good Armchair Adventure,” Harkness says.

Even if two programs are about the same place, “People have come to expect that every program is different. One person will offer one perspective and another traveler offers a different one. Having repeat countries isn’t a bad thing—it showcases the diversity of stories that are out there.”

The specifics of this winter’s schedule weren’t available at the time this issue went to press, but the series starts January 11. Held in the Recreation Center’s meeting room, the program runs every Thursday evening from 6:30 to 8 p.m. until March 8. Refreshments are provided, and each presentation is $5.

307/739-9025, tetonparksandrec.org JH

DISCOVER YOUR NATIONAL PARK

Teton scapes

community

Winter Greens Find everything from microgreens to sauerkraut at Jackson’s new winter farmers-food market.

RYAN DORGAN

BY JOHN SPINA

the public that we wanted to try and offer it in the winter,” Steen says. The first Winter People’s Market was held the next month.

“The goal was to make the winter market as festive as possible, and for people to enjoy the music and wine, but we weren’t sure what kind of showing we’d get,” Steen says.

Because of the success of the Summer People’s Market, it wasn’t vendors that were the question mark—many were happy for an extended selling season, and there ended up being about twenty-five of them— but shoppers.

Organizers’ hopes were for the winter market to have the same vibe as the summer market. Last year that wasn’t the case, but Steen says it wasn’t in a bad way. While summer shoppers come for music and to see friends, “Folks were [at the winter market] mostly to find food,” he says. Each of the monthly markets drew about one hundred shoppers. Poa Van Sickle, owner of the vendor Daily Roots, says, “The winter market wasn’t as social as the summer, but I liked it. It felt like people were coming and seeking you out in search of local food rather than just randomly checking it out as they walk by during the summer. It definitely boosted my exposure. I think we all did pretty well.”

And it’s not like the market was antisocial. “At the market, people really want to talk with the guy who’s growing their food and feel connected with it,” says Curtis Haderlie of Haderlie Farms. “I’m really hesitant to give up that oneto-one relationship I have with the people. There’s a real sense of community.”

Other vendors last winter included Vertical Harvest, Maya Organics, Nomadic Bean, Blacker Arrow, Jackson Hole Winery, Lockhart Cattle Company, and Glory Bowl Soup Company. Haderlie Farms sold off the last of the season’s carrots and spinach.

Vertical Harvest sold fresh veggies grown in its greenhouse. Daily Roots sold fermented vegetables and shelf-stable foods, like kimchi and sauerkraut. Lockhart Cattle Company sold fresh meat and milk. “It’s fun to see what you can get fresh here when there’s feet of snow outside,” Steen says.

The Winter People’s Market is held from 2 to 6 p.m. every other Saturday from December through April at the Teton County Fair Building at 350 W. Snow King Ave. tetonslowfood.org JH

THE WINTER PEOPLE’S Market is an oasis in a frozen desert. Open the doors of the Teton County Fair building, walk inside, and the cold, gray Wyoming winter transforms into a vibrant market full of light, music, laughter, and, most improbably, fresh locally grown and produced food. An extension of the Jackson Hole People’s Market, a weekly farmers market that runs from mid-June to mid-September at the base of Snow King, the Winter People’s Market was first held in December 2016. Organizers—the nonprofit group Slow Food in the Tetons—had no idea how it’d go. “It was an experiment,” says Scott Steen, the group’s executive director.

Kind of like the Summer People’s Market.

Today, the summer market is wildly popular, with as many as fifty vendors and 600 shoppers, as well as live music each 22

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

week, but when it began in 2010 that wasn’t the case. The market “scraped together a few vendors each week for the first few years,” Steen says. It lived in the tiny parking lot of the Redeemer Lutheran Church by the Teton County/Jackson Recreation Center until 2013. But today, “The summer market is a community celebration,” Steen says.

“Everyone comes together, you bring your family, you climb on the bouldering wall, you have a beer, you go to Cosmic Apple and buy some veggies, you go and fill up your beer again, you listen to the music.”

IN NOVEMBER 2016, Slow Food in the Tetons began to wonder if it could extend this community celebration into and through the winter. “The Summer People’s Market was so popular among vendors and

THAN YOUR IMAGINATION

JH Living

1/ WE LOVE DOUCHEBAGS

piqued 1

It took a lifetime of searching (full disclosure: We didn’t actually know we were looking), but we finally found a douchebag we love. Meet The Douchebag, a two-wheeled ski bag fully five pounds lighter than any comparable bags.

Made by the Norwegian company Douchebag, this item has some serious R&D behind it. The result is an 8.3-pound marvel that holds two pairs of skis between 24 to 205 cms in length and protects them not with bulky padding, but with a patent-pending, collapsible ABS “ribcage.” When not in use, The Douchebag rolls up for easy storage. In use, it has straps so you can carry it without using your hands.

From $295; available at Mudroom, 3275 W. Village Dr.; douchebags.com

2/ SMARTWOOL We didn’t think it possible, but Smartwool’s bestselling base layer has gotten better. You might ask how the company’s Merino 250 Base Layer Pattern 1/4 Zip top, which in cool weather we wear as a single layer and on colder days we use as a base layer, could outdo itself? How about with chafe-free seam construction, a shoulder panel that eliminates seams in that area entirely, and a wrap-around torso seam that makes the top fit even better? $110; available in men’s and women’s at Teton Mountaineering and Skinny Skis; smartwool.com

3

3/ NO BOOT LEFT BEHIND It’s a ski lesson you only want to learn once: Never, ever check your ski boots when flying. Depending on how persnickety your foot is, comfortable ski boots can be as rare as unicorns. So if you check your boots and that bag doesn’t arrive with you, well, the cocktails at the Ascent Lounge in the Four Seasons are great. They start serving at 11 a.m. With the 40-liter Salomon Extend Max Gearbag, you’ll always have room to bring your boots on board, and also your helmet, goggles, and a few extra layers. $65; salomon.com

4/ THE SMARTEST DOWN JACKET? Arc’teryx’s Cerium LT down hoody is a mix of premium 850-fill down and Coreloft synthetic insulation. The latter is cleverly placed in moisture-prone areas, like the shoulders and cuffs. The former is everywhere else. And the sum of both is greater than the individual parts. Wherever we’re headed in the valley (or the world, for that matter), the Cerium LT is one of the first things we pack because it’s the perfect balance of warmth and weight and takes up so little space. $379; available in men’s and women’s at Teton Mountaineering; arcteryx.com

2 4

5/ SEE BETTER

5

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

There are a couple of brands that make goggles with proprietary prescription inserts. If you, like us, appreciate the ability to choose, SportRx makes prescription inserts that can fit into most any snow goggle. Its website sells snow goggles made by Smith, Anon Optics, Oakley, Spy, Zoom, Zeal Optics, and Dragon. Pick the model, attach your script to your order and, in less than a week, you’ll have the exact goggles you want, complete with an insert that has you seeing your best. Prescription goggles from $150; sportrx.com

JH Living

piqued 6 6/ TOO SEXY FOR YOUR CAR? We swear we’re not saying Thule’s Motion XT XL roof box is the best-ever roof box because it’s the only roof box we’ve ever seen that comes in a supersexy high-gloss finish. This new model holds 165 pounds of gear, or up to seven pairs of skis. Also, its large SlideLock handle can be opened with one hand and shows a red strip when it’s not properly latched. From $699.95; available to order from Teton Mountaineering, Skinny Skis, and Hoback Sports; thule.com

7/ WE LOVE LYNSEY Go ahead, sing along: Eddie and Lynsey sitting in a tree, s-k-i-i-n-g. Eddie Bauer has been upping its techy outerwear chops for several years now and totally nailed it with its collab with local superstar shredder Lynsey Dyer. Dyer—who has had segments in Teton Gravity Research and Warren Miller movies, skied on six continents, and been named Powder magazine’s Female Skier of the Year—worked with fellow rad skier Lexi Dupont and EB for two seasons on the BC Fineline Jacket and Bibs. The result is the most thoughtfully designed, rugged, and goodlooking jacket/bib combo we’ve ever skied in. Jacket $449, bib, $399; available at Eddie Bauer, 55 S. Cache; eddiebauer.com

7

8/ THE JACKET YOU’LL NEVER TAKE OFF Stio says its Kita Fleece Hooded Jacket is like many Jackson locals—“down for anything, and good at everything.” We couldn’t agree more. Available for men and women, the stretchy, lightweight, and breathable Kita has fast become our new favorite active midlayer (on those really cold days) and outer layer (when it’s just normal Jackson cold, i.e., 10 degrees or above). Made from Karushi HD fleece, the Kita’s smooth outside offers protection from the wind and from snags. Its high-pile, brushed interior is as soft and cozy as a baby panda bear. $229; 10 E. Broadway; stio.com

8

9/ GO BLUE!

9

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

For years, the conventional wisdom when outside was that blue light equals bad light. So lenses for ski goggles were designed to eliminate blue light. But Giro (goggles) and Zeiss (lenses) started wondering if this was really the case. The two companies teamed up to research—no preconceived ideas allowed—what made the best lenses. Giro’s Ella (women’s) and Axis (men’s) goggles with Zeiss’ VIVID lenses show that blue isn’t bad, at least if done correctly. $180; available at JH Sports; giro.com

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JH Living

locals

JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

Breezy Johnson “HER STRONG SUIT is that she always charges, she never holds back. She always skis with aggression.” This is what Lindsey Vonn, the winningest American ski racer in history, says about twenty-two-year-old Breezy Johnson, who grew up in Teton Valley, Idaho, raced for the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club (JHSC), and might be competing in her first Olympics in February. Johnson says that during her JHSC days, “I was good at supersteep slaloms. I was best when it was really steep.” Today, she competes in the sport’s speed events, downhill and super-G. Last season was a breakthrough for her: Johnson finished in the top thirty of every World Cup race she started (finishing as high as tenth), and was the youngest U.S. racer selected by coaches to compete at the world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Her season ended in March at the World Cup Finals downhill in Aspen, Colorado. “I crashed, doing the splits and somersaulting,” Johnson says. Clips of it are all over the web. (Watch the crash and try not to cringe.) Suffering “only” a tibial plateau fracture, Johnson was back training early last summer and looking forward to this season.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Q: How does March’s tibial plateau fracture stack up against your other injuries?

A: I’ve had some little tweaks and stuff, but this was my worst.

Q: What’s the fastest you’ve ever skied?

A: Eighty to eighty-five miles an hour.

On average, on a course we go over sixty miles per hour for those 1.5 to 2 minutes.

Q: During a race do you think about the consequences of falling?

A: You do sometimes have that voice— “Holy sh-t, I’m going fast.” I intellectualize it. You know from practice how good you are at skiing and that you’ll be fine. I equate it with jumping off a cliff into a lake: You know you’ll be fine, but your

body is screaming, “No.” You have to turn that off.

BEST OF JACKSON HOLE

Q: Is ski racing more difficult physically or mentally?

A: It’s both your intellect and your body.

You’re really working for those two minutes, but you’re using your mind, too. For two minutes there’s nothing in the world besides the course. To have both your body and mind firing at 100 percent is really cool.

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A: They’re decent-sized, but they’re not as big as some. This past summer we trained with the U.S. Speedskating Team.

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Q: What do you do when not training and racing?

A: I go to Western Washington University for one quarter—ten weeks—a year. I’ve just started my sophomore year.

Q: Why not just take a vacation?

A: I’ve always been somewhat academic, and it is good to have backup plans. I am a little bit superstitious: “If you don’t go to school, what is the universe going to do?” It’s also really hard to just focus on skiing and be like, “I’m totally going to make it,” when the reality is that lots of people don’t make it. And even if you do make it, do you want to be retired at thirty-three and only have a high school diploma and not know what you want to do with the rest of your life?

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Q: Has anyone ever told you that you’re wise beyond your years?

A: Some people tell me that. I guess I’m very introspective.

Q: What are you introspecting for this season?

A: I want a lot from myself, but I’m also trying to keep from getting too far ahead of myself. You have to accept with sports that you can try your hardest and it will still chew you up and spit you out. I always try to put in 100 percent effort anyway. I am proud because it is so emotionally risky. Only one person in the world can be the best.

Q: This is an Olympic year.

A: I’m trying to not let the big O word get too much in my head.

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INTERVIEW BY DINA MISHEV

WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JH Living

locals

RYAN DORGAN

Jim Kercher AS A YOUNG boy, Jim Kercher had two ongoing experiences that shaped the man he became: skiing and international living. A Northern Californian by birth, the nowdirector of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s (JHMR) Mountain Sports School (MSS) learned to ski in Tahoe in the 1960s. His family also lived in Japan and Turkey for his father’s Army job, which imprinted Kercher with a deep respect for other cultures. In 1994, after stints at ski schools in Mammoth, California, and Breckenridge, Colorado, he took the helm of the MSS—without ever having skied at JHMR. “A friend called me raving about how spectacular the place was, about how much opportunity was here,” Kercher says. He and wife Kathleen Hesler moved to the valley and discovered the skiing was as exciting as promised. But they couldn’t stay. Hesler’s job required significant travel, and the Jackson Hole Airport wasn’t as connected then as it is now.

So four years later, they moved closer to a major airport, settling in Beaver Creek, Colorado. But in 2015 the couple returned, and Kercher was back at MSS. This time, he has no plans to leave.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Q: How did living abroad as a child influence you?

A: We moved to Japan when I was about six years old, a real impressionable age.

We lived in a Japanese neighborhood, and my father spoke the language. Living in different cultures puts you into a frame of mind where every thing and every place has its offerings.

Q: When did you first fall in love with skiing?

A: We lived in California when I was a teen, and I spent every spare moment at Tahoe on the weekends. I was one of the high school lift operators, I taught skiing.

I did anything I could to be on the slopes.

Continued on page 35

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Continued from page 32 Q: So a career in the industry was a given?

A: [Laughs]. I was pre-med in college— my degree is in biology with a minor in chemistry—and got drafted for Vietnam right after my senior year. After working as a medic in the service, I decided I wanted to be an orthodontist, but I didn’t get into dental school. I moved to Tahoe and got interested in construction and building. I got my own license in California and built in the off-season and taught skiing in the winter.

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Q: Describe the ski scene in the 1970s.

A: The industry was starting to grow exponentially. The focus was on visitation and increasing skier visits. Ski school was where you developed dedicated return visitors and relationships.

Q: What do you think makes an excellent instructor?

A: Knowing how to communicate is the most important thing. Individuals will always put off signals telling you they’re not “getting it” when you’re teaching, typically expressions of boredom or fear. And the best instructors can read those signals and move the lesson in a different direction.

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Q: What were your initial impressions of JHMR in 1994?

A: Early in our first season, my wife and I were on the tram and she looks out of the window and says, “We’re not in Breckenridge anymore.”

Q: How many days a year do you ski?

A: As many as I can.

Q: What’s your perfect ski day?

A: When the snow is good, there is nothing better than taking the tram to Rendezvous Bowl to the Hobacks.

Q: Memorable moments of your early skiing in Jackson?

A: I was good friends with [World Extreme Skiing champion] Doug Coombs, and one day he took me and longtime instructor Jamie Mackintosh up toward Pucker Ridge. I’m thinking it’s a bit sketchy, and at the top I said, “That was a little rugged.” [Jamie] looked at me and said, “You’ll get used to it.”

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Q: And have you?

A: I like to think so.

INTERVIEW BY RACHEL WALKER

WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

35

JH Living

locals

RYAN DORGAN

Buck Milligan BUCK MILLIGAN EATS a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch most days at school. “And maybe some carrots,” says the twelve-year-old. “Pretty typical.” Less typical is an appetizer he once made: a camel meatball over sauteed kale and topped with an earthworm marinara. Also unusual was the time Buck had thirty minutes to turn a whole goat leg, succotash, cream puffs, and sweet cherry ketchup into an entree (after he butchered the goat leg). The result was cherry-glazed goat leg with a cream puff slaw and wasabi mashed potatoes. In November 2016, Buck, the middle child in the Milligan family, won an episode of the Food Network reality show Chopped Junior, which qualified him for the series’ championships in June. There he beat fourteen other junior chefs to be crowned the first-ever Chopped Junior Grand Champion. Gavin Fine, the co-founder of Fine Dining Restaurant Group, which owns several valley restaurants, including one that Buck practiced at, says, “He’s confident. He’s got skills.” Fine would give Buck a job if he weren’t in seventh grade.

“He’s the second-best line cook at the [Rendezvous] Bistro,” Fine says.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Q: How’d you get into cooking?

A: When I was probably six or so, I would just be in the kitchen when my dad was cooking, and I would watch him.

Q: Have you become your family’s main cook now?

A: We have this schedule where sometimes you cook and sometimes you do the dishes—our kitchen jobs are all over the map, but I’m on the schedule to do some cooking now. We do a head cook and someone helping them, so sometimes my siblings help my dad and I, or my mom cooks something. Everyone

learns all of the skills, from cooking to washing and drying.

Q: What’s your favorite thing to make?

A: I really like homemade pasta. It’s interesting. Sometimes I make it in the winter, but when I make it in the summer with fresh chicken eggs, it is amazing the difference you can see in the color. And [with] the flavor of the fresh eggs, it is like a whole different product.

Q: The show came with a nice prize egg—$25,000. You’ve said you’re saving it for college. Did you splurge with even a little of it?

A: Not really. I put it in this Roth IRA thing, and I put a little bit into this retirement IRA. Q: Since you’re already saving for college, have you thought about what you want to study? Cooking?

A: I don’t know if a chef is the career for me. It’s pretty stressful. Actually, I think being a doctor would be cool.

Q: Judges at the final thought your use of earthworm jerky in a marinara sauce was genius. Where’d that idea come from?

A: I have seen different varieties of marinara sauce, with seasonings and stuff, and I thought the earthworm jerky would be a good seasoning.

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Q: What were your first thoughts when you heard earthworm jerky was one of your ingredients?

A: I never would have expected that to be one of my ingredients, but I feel like they gave us a lot of surprises. It was interesting to think about how did they actually make an earthworm jerky? I thought the jerky was easier than the ground camel.

Q: Ground camel?

A: Another ingredient. I used it to make meatballs.

Q: What do you do when you’re not in the kitchen?

A: I do Nordic skiing, downhill skiing, kayaking, and soccer.

Q: What do your friends make of your celebrity chef status?

A: They think it’s pretty cool, but it’s not like anything has really changed.

INTERVIEW BY MAGGIE THEODORA

WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

37

JH Living

on the job

Feeding Frenzy Amanda Soliday is one of a handful of people responsible for getting the Jackson Elk Herd through our harsh winters alive.

BY MARK HUFFMAN • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN DORGAN

DAY IS STILL just a gray hint above the Gros Ventre Mountains to the east when Amanda Soliday arrives at work, suits up in thick Carhartt overalls, and fires up her Caterpillar Challenger 65, a 270-horsepower tracked monster that is ten feet wide and almost eleven feet tall 38

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

to the top of its enclosed cab. Despite the early hour and freezing temperatures, a crowd awaits. The Caterpillar rumbles to life, and, as Soliday guides it out onto the wide-open National Elk Refuge, thousands of eyes turn in her direction. To about 4,000 elk the diesel growl of

The National Elk Refuge’s eight feeders spread alfalfa pellets for about 9,000 elk every winter. Each elk will eat up to eight pounds of feed per day.

Soliday’s machine means, “Come and get it,” she says. “They know the sound of the rigs. They come to the sound of the wagon.” Soliday is the maintenance supervisor for the refuge, run by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Between midwinter and early spring, one of her main job responsibilities is to feed a portion of the elk that winters on the 24,700-acre refuge.

Soliday spends most of her time through the year painting, fixing broken windows, making signs, and doing the other jobs that keep the refuge’s old buildings in order. “It’s hard to keep the

place in shape; these buildings are old, historic,” she says. But it was the elk-feeding part of the job that was the biggest draw a dozen years ago when Soliday came over from Grand Teton National Park. “I knew I wanted to feed the elk,” she says. “That was the attraction. It’s my favorite part of the job. I’m probably somewhat of a tree hugger.

I care about the land, about the animals. To me that’s what’s important.” Last winter, Soliday was one of about eight elk refuge employees and volunteers who started before dawn each day and worked until about midday to feed the elk wintering on the refuge.

HISTORICALLY, MOST OF the floor of Jackson Hole, much of it now filled with the town and its suburbs, was a wintering ground for elk.

They’d come down from the surrounding mountains to escape deep snow and find forage during the cold months. But as more and more homesteaders divided up the valley, grass was replaced by hay that homesteaders planted for their cattle.

Elk began to starve.

Upset by seeing dying elk, a group of kind people began feeding them as early as 1910.

When the National Elk Refuge was created in 1912, feeding Amanda Soliday fed elk on the National Elk Refuge for twelve years before retiring in December. became official. Until the 1970s, it was hay that refuge workers served up, forking it from pellets. She guides the driver as he backs toward her elk. She has her lunch with horse-drawn wagons that wandered into one of the refuge’s metal storage her because the work often goes that around the refuge with the hungry ani- sheds. He dumps his load, about thirty long. Soliday can hit a switch and a small mals in tow. It was hot work even on the tons, and the pellets fill the icy air with door on the wagon opens, spreading a coldest days. In 1975, after several years alfalfa dust that smells like fresh-cut path of pellets about a foot wide. The of experimenting, the refuge switched to grass. elk, shy of the big machine, rush toward alfalfa pellets, which are easier to store These days, spreading pellets is a lot the meal, jostle each other, and settle and distribute, and are more nutritional. less physical. Soliday sits in a warm cab- into a line to eat. She watches for the elk in—fairly warm—and listens to Wyo- ahead and steers toward them, not much AS SOLIDAY IS about to begin work, a ming Public Radio as she slowly drives faster than 5 mph. semi from Idaho arrives with a load of the Caterpillar, towing a huge wagon, Elk that winter on the refuge return WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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to one of several areas each year­—flat expans- Soliday loads her feeder trailer treads can crush the ground and the vehicle es named after nineteenth-century home- with alfalfa pellets. The refuge can get stuck. She gingerly maneuvers around spreads between thirty-two and steaders: Nowlin, Chambers, Peterson, and forty-five tons of feed each day. such spots—turning, stopping, going back to McBride. The Poverty Flats feed area recalls harder ground when she feels a slight sinking. what life was like when the settlers filed their In the middle of this Soliday gets a radio mesclaims. Soliday works in the most southern area, Nowlin. sage from a driver farther north: His machine is bogged down This morning, Soliday’s elk crowd is nearly twice what it in a soft spot. He’ll have to be hauled out later. Someone, likely was the day before. A radio exchange with another feeder in- Soliday, will go up there, trace the stuck driver’s path as close as forms her that’s because, overnight, the subherd that usually possible to his machine, string a cable, and back him out. hangs out to the north has moved south, into Nowlin. She None of the refuge employees who feed elk have that as says the elk sometimes just decide to go visiting; other times their only job. Eric Cole feeds elk and is also the refuge biolothey might be spooked to move by wolves. Soliday spreads gist. Cris Dippel feeds elk and is deputy manager of the refuge. pellets until she sees that every interested elk has had a chance Feeder Tim Pratt is Cole’s biology assistant. Fernando Escobedo to eat, and that often means heading back to the shed for a is a mechanic when not feeding elk. Because of tight budgetsecond load. ing, there’s a handful of volunteer feeders, too. This past winter, the refuge had only eight full-time employees; with a fedTHE FEEDING ISN’T random. The feeders go first to where eral hiring freeze in place, that’s unlikely to change. A study a the elk are, but if they decide that spot is suffering from too few years ago said a staff of eighteen was justified, so, “We’re many elk for too long, they lead them to a new spot, luring running at roughly 50 percent,” Soliday says. with the alfalfa. The goal is for the elk not to eat at the same place day after day, which would pulverize the ground and veg- ELK ARRIVE ON the refuge in November and December and etation. Also, “Once it gets poopy you don’t want to feed them eat natural forage until biologist Cole sees that it’s gone or there,” Soliday says. “We try to keep them spread out so they buried in hard snow. Last winter, feeding began in mid-Janudon’t crush the ground and bury it in elk crap. We want to keep ary and continued until March. On a typical day, feeders them out of the mud and slush. You lead them around, ma- spread a total of about thirty-two tons of alfalfa pellets; on a nipulate where you want them to feed. We go out and do circles hungry day, it’s forty-five tons. The pellets are tube-shaped, and figure 8s and draw them off—it’s like a dance every day.” about a half-inch thick and a couple of inches long, designed Some mornings, Soliday has to dance lightly. Her Caterpillar to appeal to elk, and to not easily soak up moisture from the weighs more than 33,000 pounds. With spring’s alternate ground. If the feeders spread the alfalfa right and each elk gets warming and freezing, there are spots where the Caterpillar enough, it’s a minimum of about eight pounds for each ani40

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

mal. Some mornings, Soliday sees few pellets left from the day before: “They were obviously hungry yesterday,” she says. Feeders can estimate their daily load with a rough count of elk multiplied by how much they’re known to eat, on average. After feeders spread their pellets, Soliday watches the elk “to see if they’ve had enough, and make sure the young ones get on feed. You have to keep your eyes open all the time” to see that everyone gets some. “The babies won’t eat right off,” she says.

Feeders keep track of what they put out and also estimate the number of elk.

Records are kept. This past March, there were just under 9,000 elk on the refuge, a number that is far more than what biologists think is optimal, and the most elk on the refuge since 1997.

“WE WANT TO KEEP THEM OUT OF THE MUD AND SLUSH. YOU LEAD THEM AROUND, MANIPULATE WHERE YOU WANT THEM TO FEED. WE GO OUT AND DO CIRCLES AND FIGURE 8S AND DRAW THEM OFF—IT’S LIKE A DANCE EVERY DAY.” – AMANDA SOLIDAY, NATIONAL ELK REFUGE

There are also about 600 bison on the refuge, and they know about the elk feeding. They invite themselves to these meals, going first if they want: “The bison definitely win on the feed line,” Soliday says. Bison will eat about twenty pounds of pellets each day if they can get it.

Feeding continues until the hills around the refuge start to green, which will lure the elk back to their summer homes. “They’ll stay until the hills are clear of snow,” Soliday says. “They have nowhere else to go until then.”

This winter, the elk won’t find Soliday at work. She retired in December. But she’ll stay in Jackson and talks about joining the volunteer feed staff. What drew her to the job in the first place is still strong. “I love it here, out away from town,” Soliday says. “You can imagine the way the whole valley used to be.”

And, she says, there’s the elk: “You have no idea how much I care for these animals.” JH

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41

JH Living

business

Wearing Jackson Hole Stio seeks to design outerwear inspired by the valley’s unique lifestyle. The result? Technical clothing that looks as good as it performs.

BY JOHN SPINA 42

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2016, was a twenty-inch powder day that capped off an epic weeklong storm. That morning, employees of Stio, a Jackson-based outdoor apparel company, woke up to an email from their boss, Steve Sullivan.

It was short and sweet: “If you’re not out skiing today I personally consider you lame.”

For Stio employees this email was nothing out of the ordinary. Sullivan— “Sulli”—built the company, which was

founded in 2011 and remains headquartered here, around the concept of bottling or, rather, sewing up the valley’s lifestyle and sharing it with the world one piece of clothing at a time. “It’s an inherently authentic brand,” Sulli says. “From top to bottom, concept to finished product, the entire company is fueled by a desire to remain authentic to the Jackson Hole lifestyle—an existence epitomized by adventure, conservation, and, of course, fun.” Split between the wilderness and the workplace, the Jackson lifestyle requires clothing that is rugged, functional, and stylish. “We build apparel for the life we live here,” Sulli says.

“Everybody in the office is an active end user of the product.”

Longtime local Steve Sullivan, known as “Sulli,” founded the clothing brand Stio in 2011. The Jacksonbased company sells direct to consumer and has a brick-and-mortar store downtown.

STIO IS SULLI’S second venture in the world of outdoor apparel. His first was Cloudveil, which he founded in 1997 with friend Brian Cousins. That brand, named after a littleknown peak to the south of the Grand Teton, was the first to successfully use modern-day soft-shell material in performance outerwear.

(Cloudveil’s signature soft-shell piece, the Serendipity jacket, can still sometimes be spotted around the valley.) The company grew to sell to 600 retailers worldwide and had annual revenues of $25 million. While evolving into an international brand, Cloudveil took on investments from venture capitalists. In 2005, Sport Brands International (SBI) bought it; in 2008, Spyder bought it from SBI. As the company got further and further away from its Jackson Hole roots, Sulli tried to buy it back, but eventually Apex Partners, which owned Spyder, sold it to Windsong Brands. That was the end of it for Sulli. “It was beyond sad,” he says. “I was incredibly upset; Cloudveil was a lifelong dream, but sometimes outside factors are beALL STIO PRODUCTS unobtrusively bear the image of a whitebark pine cone. Sometimes it’s yond your control.” (Today, after several printed; sometimes it’s embroidered. Whitebarks only grow in the West, in the harshest envimore owners, Cloudveil is Cloudveil ronments, and at the highest altitudes. Often gnarled and rarely taller than thirty Mountain Works and continues to produce feet, a whitebark’s beauty is one of function. Whitebarks eke out their existence outdoor gear. It hasn’t returned to the level of at the uppermost reaches of the tree line; nothing about or on a whitebark is innovation and recognition that it had under superfluous. “Like the whitebark pine, a lot of the design and aesthetic of Sulli and Cousins’ leadership, though.) our clothes is pretty simple,” says Brendan Levine, Stio’s senior graphic

BRADLY J. BONER

CREATING THE RIGHT LOGO

designer. “There are no bells and whistles you don’t need.”

While ruggedly unassuming, whitebark pines serve a critical function IT WAS A tough pill for Sulli to swallow, but in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Its cones are a key source of food for the loss of Cloudveil gave shape to Stio. animals, from squirrels to grizzly bears. “The whitebark pine plays a really “[Cloudveil] was a million-dollar MBA,” Sulli important role in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” says Noah Waterhouse, says. One lesson: “I learned a lot about who I Stio’s chief marketing officer. “Maybe [Stio] is not a huge part in the Jackson ecosystem, but wanted to work with and who I didn’t.” Stio’s we’re a cog.” investors “do more than write a check. I get real value out of our team.” Best of all, Sulli says, “They’re not just financial partners— they’ve become friends and collaborators.”

Another example of a lesson learned is Stio’s direct-to-consumer business model. Though this model is considered somewhat risky—it eliminates the possibility of customers discovering Stio’s products on the racks at Teton Mountaineering or Skinny Skis or, farther afield, at an REI—it drastically shortens the feedback loop. This allows the WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

43

COURTESY PHOTO

company to more efficiently respond Stio’s first brick-and-mortar store, Stio Mountain factory partnerships, we can build to the market and to take greater Studio, just off the Town Square, remains the brand’s stuff in small runs for a test and see flagship location, but last winter the company risks with designs. what happens. We put products out expanded its retail presence to include a shop in For example: A typical product Teton Village. Sullivan says Stio will always have a and then we listen to consumers requires twelve to eighteen months to limited brick-and-mortar presence, but he does hope speak.” Although sometimes condesign and manufacture. After that, at to expand to other mountain towns. sumer feedback is garbled.

Cloudveil, or any other company that People loved Stio’s Harkin snap sells through retailers, the product is then shared with reps and shirt, a traditional men’s button-down with bold prints remidistributors, who spend several more months vetting it before niscent of old, flannel ski shirts from the 1960s and ’70s. Seeing presenting it to retailers. So if all goes well a product hits stores how popular the Harkin shirt was, Stio quickly got going on a about six months after its production. And then it’s yet another reversible down jacket in the same line. As successful as the six(ish) months to find out if consumers actually like it. “The shirt was, though, the Harkin reversible down jacket was unreality of that cycle is that it was so lengthy, you could be devel- loved. “It just didn’t resonate where the shirt did,” Sulli says. oping styles or textiles only to find out the consumer didn’t like But Stio was able to quickly pivot from the jacket: “It’s out of them,” Sulli says. the line now,” Sulli says. “We were quickly on to the next prodStio has the same lead time to develop and produce a prod- uct, and we’re expanding on that shirt collection.” uct—about twelve months—but then it goes to consumers in Sulli says having the ability to promptly test the market is that thirteenth month. “We know if it’s a winner or a loser in key, giving Stio the opportunity to push the boundaries of forty-five days,” Sulli says. outdoor apparel and swing Stio doesn’t just use the for the fences. If Stio strikes faster consumer feedback to out every once in a while, help manage production it’s okay. “You know that and inventory, but also to Ted Williams quote about beta test more creative, baseball being the only WHILE STIO DOESN’T sell to retailers, it opened the first Stio Mountain eclectic outerwear. “We’re sport where you can be sucStudio in 2012, just off Jackson’s Town Square. It opened a second studio not as afraid as, for example, cessful 30 percent of the in Teton Village and is looking to open additional shops in towns like a big wholesale company time and be an All-Star?”

Boulder, Colorado; Bozeman, Montana; Park City, Utah; and Lake Tahoe, about releasing or testing Sulli asks. “It’s like that with California. Sulli and his team have also played with the idea of setting up new products,” Sulli says.

Stio; it’s just more like 50 shop in a major metropolitan area like Chicago or New York. “Brick and “Because we’ve got great percent.” JH mortar is a big part of our long-term growth strategy,” Sulli says.

STIO MOUNTAIN STUDIO

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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JH Living

design

Welcome to the Afterlife Ski equipment—from poles to lift chairs— can live on after it retires from the slopes.

BY DINA MISHEV • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN DORGAN

A DOUBLE-SIDED swinging bench hanging outside my house is the first thing most every visitor mentions, even before they say a word about the climbing wall I personally thought was my 48

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

greatest stroke of genius. This climbing wall, and the rest of the house, was carefully planned, thought out, and sought out. But the attention-stealing bench was born out of necessity: A pile of old

A chair from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s retired Eagle’s Rest chairlift found a forever home with John Hoover and his young daughter, Langley, at the Hoovers’ East Jackson home.

skis had taken over a corner of my garage. What could I do with them?

Ask my boyfriend and he’ll tell you that I’m merciless about throwing things away. When I read Marie Kondo’s New York Times bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I was like, “Seriously? This is all you’ve got? Tell me something I don’t know.” But with my old skis, every time I tried to discard them, I couldn’t. Even if Kondo herself were there in the garage with me, she

PHOTO: TIM BROWN

www.mi l l e r- rood e l l . com 406. 551. 6950

couldn’t have gotten me to toss them.

That’s because, according to her KonMari Method (that’s what she calls her method of tidying), I shouldn’t get rid of them because they still elicit joy.

Kondo instructs tidiers to physically handle every object they own and, while holding an item, ask themselves whether it brings them joy. When I picked up each of the seven pairs of old skis, I was filled with joy. They weren’t joyful on the slopes anymore, but the memories that flooded me when I held each pair were. And I couldn’t just throw all that happiness away.

But the ruthless purger in me hated that this joy came with no practical use.

Plus I really needed the space in that corner of the garage.

The problem was solved a couple of months later while shopping for a swinging bench to hang beneath my home’s front deck. People make chairs out of skis, so why couldn’t I make a swing? A ski swing would be both joyful and useful. Ten minutes after the idea first hit me, I had a design sketched out.

Ten minutes after that, when I realized my original design didn’t use enough skis, I had a new design: The swing would be double-sided. Each seat and back would be made of seven skis.

Of course, I didn’t have the skills or tools to tackle the project myself, so I shared my idea and design with local handyman Jon Wiedie. “Is this something that can be done?” I texted with a photo of my pile of skis. Having never said no to any of my prior odd projects, Wiedie again didn’t disappoint. “Looks fun,” he replied.

A couple of months after disappearing with my skis, Wiedie returned with what I think is the coolest swing ever, made entirely of my old equipment. “I’d say it was probably one of the more interesting projects I’ve done,” he says. Although he did have to work with a welder on the swing’s steel brackets, Wiedie says the hardest part of the project was the transport and hanging. “I wasn’t quite sure how to go about assembling and hanging it in the beginning,” Top: Clay and Lisa Hoyt’s Fall Creek carport, where retired skis have found a home for the afterlife.

Bottom: Salvaged skis and barnwood line the walls at Moe’s Original Bar B Que on North Cache Street.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

P ho t og r a ph er : Ma t t h ew M i ll ma n

I nspir e d b y Pl a c e

jackson,wy

bozeman,mt

clbarchitects.com

Skis and snowboards are repurposed as furniture and tucked into corners all around town, like this bench outside AION Board Shop on South Glenwood Street.

he says. “Definitely was holding my breath a bit on the hanging part!” Wiedie estimates the swing weighs about 200 pounds. It was his first such project, but

he’s not averse to doing more.

THERE’S NO OFFICIAL history or timeline on the upcycling of ski gear. It’s

highly probable that, in the early days of making things from skis, this was not called “upcycling” but merely “practical.”

Ski furniture likely started with ski bums using whatever material they had lying around—busted skis, bent poles—to create nonski stuff that made life a little nicer: a place to sit, a table to eat off, somewhere to hang coats, and a fence to keep the dog from pooping in the neighbor’s yard. Skis are a versatile construction material because of their length and flatness.

Plus they’re colorful, and, if you upcycle your own skis, full of memories as well.

Today on Etsy you can buy skis repurposed as chandeliers, coat racks, photo frames, chairs, benches, headboards, bar stools, wine racks, bookshelves, tables, and business card holders. You can turn old ski poles into wind chimes in less than an afternoon (or also buy them on Etsy). While neither of the two local stores John Frechette co-owns, MADE and Mountain Dandy, sell ski furniture, “It’s fun to see skis repurposed

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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and pop up in interior design,” he says.

“It seems natural in a ski town.”

You don’t need to stop at repurposing ski equipment only. Interior designer Kristin Fay, a partner at Trauner Fay Designs, did two projects last fall for clients who wanted ski lift chairs installed on their decks. Fay designed and had a base manufactured for one of the lift chairs so that it sits on the ground. The other lift chair hangs from overhead.

“We had to reinforce the area before it was hung,” she says. Both of the lift chairs were from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Fay had them refinished. “It was fun to add this quirky element to two big, beautiful homes,” she says. She made one of the lift chairs more comfortable by having a custom cushion created for it. “The owners wanted it to be the same red that Jackson Hole [Mountain Resort] uses,” Fay says.

“WE’VE HAD A FEW PEOPLE PULL TOM [FAY, HER HUSBAND AND OWNER OF MOE’S] ASIDE AND POINT OUT THEIR SKIS THAT WE USED. THEY’RE REALLY HAPPY TO SEE THEM LIVING ON.” – KRISTIN FAY, TRAUNER FAY DESIGNS

Earlier in the year, Fay had a project where she did use skis: the inside of Moe’s Original Bar B Que. “There was a space where we wanted something linear with color and texture rather than doing all barnwood,” she says. “And we wanted to incorporate some of the fun, quirky elements of Jackson.” Skis were a natural choice. Fay put out a call for old skis on Facebook and “probably had no less than thirty people drop off skis at our house over a couple of months,” she says.

“It was amazing how many people hold on to old skis. I had no idea.”

Fay kept the bindings on some of the skis, and one cross-country ski on the wall in the bathroom hallway still has a boot attached to its binding. “When it was dropped off, the owner was like, ‘I tried and tried to get it off. Good luck,’ ” Fay says. “And I knew there was no way I was taking it off. It was perfect like it was.” She mixed the skis in with barnwood, placing them horizontally rather than vertically. “That adds even more vi-

307.739.3008 1715 High School Road, Jackson, WY 83001 jjstiremandesign.com | studio@jjstiremandesign.com

WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

53

sual interest,” Fay says.

Aside from their role in the space’s design, the skis have proven to be great conversation starters, and also create a feeling of nostalgia in diners. “We’ve had a few people pull Tom [Fay, her husband and owner of Moe’s] aside and point out their skis that we used. They’re really happy to see them living on,” she says.

And if people don’t see the skis they dropped off at the Fays, “They’ll see skis that they had when they were younger or that they learned to ski on. I knew skis would be fun for their visual interest, but I had no idea they would create such a connection with people.” I could have told Fay that after my first swing on my new bench. Physically I was in my front yard, but mentally I was in the mountains with friends, reliving all the turns I had made on the skis I was then swinging on. It was doubly joyful.

A custom double-sided ski swing by Jon Wiedie starts at $1,000. Single-sided swings are less expensive. 307/413-4356 JH The author’s double-sided ski swing—made from seven pairs of skis no longer of use in the mountains but full of memories—is shown.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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Special Interest Feature

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.

RARE 3 CREEK RANCH 50+ ACRE HOMESITE

51.97 acres

—

bedrooms

—

This spectacular tract is the last opportunity to own one of the largest acreages in 3 Creek Ranch. Combining the best of 3CR, Tract 1 boasts a beautiful mosaic of wetlands with Cody Creek running through the homesite, and massive Teton views. Lying between protected lands to the north and west, this property encompasses a portion of the trumpeter swan habitat—an area rich in both wildlife and waterfowl.

dollars

—

56

6,917

square feet

5

bedrooms

8.5 baths

baths

8,100,000

AMERICAN SPIRIT CABIN 876 AT YELLOWSTONE CLUB BIG SKY, MONTANA

3 Creek Ranch Real Estate Services LLC Todd Domenico - (307) 739-9292 3CreekRanch-JH.com TDomenico@3CreekRanch-JH.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

13,950,000 dollars

— MLS#

American Spirit 876 is part of Yellowstone Club’s private ski and golf community located in Big Sky, Montana.

American Spirit Phase III includes close proximity to Rainbow Lodge and its amenities, and breathtaking, expansive views extending from Pioneer Mountain to Lone Peak and the Spanish Peaks range. American Spirit 876 is one of six single-family residences that comprise this release, and these prime-location mountain modern homes will provide ski access to YC’s 2700 private skiable acres.

YC Realty Bill Collins - (406) 995-4900 YCSales@yellowstoneclub.com yellowstoneclub.com/properties/876-american-spirit/

CONTEMPORARY MOUNTAIN HOME IN SHOOTING STAR

6,892

square feet

7

bedrooms

7.5 baths

Located in Shooting Star this gorgeous home features floor to ceiling windows throughout highlighting the spectacular mountain and aerial tram views. Rooms are spacious with an ideal floor plan for gathering and entertaining. The master wing bedroom provides fireside comfort, a spa-sized bath, a huge boutique closet and his/hers luxury accommodations. A well-appointed guest house accompanies the main property with its own bed, bath and fireplace. Completion scheduled for June 2018.

11,100,000

TCCG Real Estate John L. Resor - (307) 732.3400 JResor@ShootingStarJH.com ShootingStarJH.com

dollars

— MLS#

GRAND & GLORY

10,159 square feet

7

bedrooms

Inspired by the property’s agricultural heritage and its spectacular panoramic views, “Grand & Glory” is a contemporary interpretation of the classic American farmhouse estate. Re-imagined iconic structures - a pristine farmhouse, a Cabot-red barn, and a stone ice house - with masterful design that speaks to the 15 acre estate’s place in the heart of the Valley.

9

—

17-2812 MLS#

3,803

square feet

4

bedrooms

3

baths

5,975,000 dollars

17-2003 MLS#

3.55 acres

4

bedrooms

baths

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Chris Wilbrecht - (307) 413-3947 chris.wilbrecht@jhsir.com grandandglory.com

Exceptional home ideally situated on 5.14 acres in Nowlin Mountain Meadows an inholding inside the Nat’l Elk Refuge with sweeping views of the Tetons and Sleeping Indian. Attention to detail and a thoughtful floor plan, make this 4-bed home an ideal residence for indoor & outdoor entertaining in an extremely special setting. The great space & kitchen- accessed through patio doors on each side – feature a Montana Granite pass-through fireplace, poured concrete floors with in-floor heat, and weeny edge cedar & recycled timber throughout. The Teton views from almost every window are impossible to ignore!

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Nancy Martino - (307) 690-1022 nancymartino@jhrea.com

MOUNTAIN MODERN

4.5

baths

dollars

NOWLIN MOUNTAIN MEADOWS

5,450,000 dollars

17-1439

This mountain modern designed home offers 6740 square feet of living space on 3.55 acres. Its private setting with year-round stream and pond, filtered Teton views, deeded Snake River access and ideal location make it the perfect Westbank residence. Enjoy everything from the gracious entry, beautiful living and entertainment spaces with multiple fireplaces to the expansive patio and manicured grounds and beautiful plantings. The guest (or caretaker) apartment offers space and flexibility.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Ed Liebzeit - (307) 413-1618 ed.liebzeit@jhsir.com edinjackson.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

57

GRAND & GLORY IN DAIRY RANCH

10,159 square feet

7

bedrooms

7FULL 2 HALF baths

UPON REQUEST dollars

17-2812 MLS#

Inspired by the property’s agricultural heritage and its spectacular iconic Jackson Hole views is a stunning contemporary interpretation of the classic American farmhouse estate. Majestic, unobstructed views abound from nearly every room: the Grand Teton, Teton Range, Glory Bowl, Munger Mountain, conservation property. Minutes from town in coveted Dairy Ranch, but quiet and private, this is a house to ‘’come home to’’ with abundant space for casual and formal living in its 10,000 square feet.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Chris & Erich Wilbrecht - (307) 690-2468 erich.wilbrecht@jhsir.com jhsir.com

KNOCK YOU OVER ... TETON VIEWS

2,996

square feet

4

bedrooms

Stare at the Tetons as you watch the migratory birds fly by this immaculate, Broker owned, Melody Ranch home. Surrounded by open space on a half acre lot with a seasonal stream running through the beautifully landscaped yard. High-end finishes throughout.

— MLS#

58

6,583

square feet

6

bedrooms

8

baths

9,950,000 dollars

— MLS#

Alpine Greens 733, is located in Big Sky, Montana, inside the heart of the private ski and golf community Yellowstone Club. An open floor plan, high ceilings, and a sleek kitchen flow naturally into the adjacent dining and living areas, which lead to a beautiful outdoor deck replete with additional dining space, an open fire pit and endless Rocky Mountain views. This home has it all with YC’s beautiful Clubhouse and base area amenities within easy reach.

YC Realty Bill Collins - (406) 995-4900 ycsales@yellowstoneclub.com yellowstoneclub.com/properties/733-alpine-greens/

TIMELESS WESTERN MASTERPIECE

7,450

square feet

6

bedrooms

7

3

baths

UPON REQUEST dollars

ALPINE GREENS RESIDENCE 733 AT YELLOWSTONE CLUB BIG SKY, MONTANA

baths

This impressive home, painstakingly built by craftsmen, uses a combination of 100-plus-year-old hand hewned recycled Amish beams, 100-plus-year-old chestnut flooring, 10” fumed French white oak in a western oak stain and elegant Montana moss rock, to create the ultimate in Western ambience. Rooms are designed with soaring windows to capture the dramatic views of the ski area, tram and surrounding mountains, and yet exude warmth, comfort, and a Western coziness.

12,750,000

RARE Properties of Jackson Hole LLC Richard Armstrong - (307) 413-4359 rick@rarejh.com - rarejh.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

dollars

17-1479 MLS#

TCCG Real Estate John L. Resor - (307) 739-1908 ShootingStarJH.com

GOLF AND TENNIS LOT

1.02 acres

—

bedrooms

Located in the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis, this 1-acre parcel is located on Hole #2 known as “Teewinot” with golf course and huge protected views. Lot 27 of the fourth filing is one of the finest building sites in the resort. The parcel borders the 2nd Fairway to the West with sweeping views of the Grand Teton all the way south to the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

dollars

16-3030

4,492

square feet

4

bedrooms

baths

TCCG Real Estate David & Devon Viehman - (307) 690-4004 david@jacksonholereport.com

3,925,000 dollars

17-1897 MLS#

SADDLE BUTTE HEIGHTS

48.24 acres

—

bedrooms

—

baths

3,995,000 dollars

17-1162

This turn-key cabin is located in 3 Creek Ranch, Jackson Hole’s premier golf club, which provides privacy and close proximity to town. Views of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort can be enjoyed from the thoughtfully designed home, and the clubhouse is just a short walk away. Owners have access to private trout streams, the nature center, and more.

4.5

—

baths

795,000

3 CREEK CABIN WITH MOUNTAIN VIEWS

Purchase the 2 premier lots in Saddle Butte Heights together for the ultimate private compound to build your dream Jackson Hole retreat. With 48 acres of combined space and bordered by Wyoming State Land, this property offers complete privacy without sacrificing views. Enjoy full unobstructed views of the entire Teton Mountain Range and the valley below. The paved road to the site is well maintained and accessible year-round. Downtown Jackson Hole is a 10-minute drive.

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Budge Realty Group - (307) 413-1364 budgerealtygroup@jhrea.com budgerealestate.com

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Audrey L. Williams - (307) 690-3044 Audrey.Williams@JHSIR.com AudreyWilliamsRealEstate.com

SUNRISE MOUNTAIN ESTATES, STAR VALLEY RANCH, WY

31.76 acres

—

bedrooms

—

Subdivision with road, electric and town water all in place. Buy individual lots or the whole subdivision and start building in the spring. Adjacent to the Cedar Creek Golf Course in the town of Star Valley Ranch, bordering National Forest, at the mouth of Cedar Creek Canyon Trail.

Aspen, pine, steep, flat, rock face, creek bed, views and easy access. Seven lots ranging from 2.4 acres to 7.03 acres starting at $35,000 per acre.

baths

35,000 per acre

—

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Christie’s International Real Estate Victoria Alonso and Jerry Hodson - (307) 629-6163 victoriaalonso@jhrea.com - instarvalley.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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TETON SPRINGS LUXURY LOG HOME

4,229

square feet

5

bedrooms

5.5

12 Bannock Circle is one of two custom designed Cabins developed by the Eden Group. Designed by Ellis Nunn, built with post and beam structural design, constructed using only hydrometer checked logs and sold fully furnished with a Laurie Waterhouse furniture package, this cabin stands sentinel to all other cabins at Teton Springs. Located above the 11th hole and overlooking stocked fishing ponds.

Excellent rental revenue producing property.

baths

17-217 MLS#

square feet

5

bedrooms

8

baths

­—

dollars

— MLS#

60

square feet

4

bedrooms

“Aspensong” - Jackson Hole’s most distinctive contemporary residence on 35 private acres in Crescent H Ranch. Designed to bring the outdoors in, every room is situated to best access the awe-inspiring views. Attention to detail and craftsmanship is well presented throughout.

Blue-Ribbon fishing, hiking, horse & x-country ski trails, and forest access included.

6

16,950,000

Cabin & Company Tom Hedges - (307) 690-2495 tom@cabinandcompany.com - cabinandcompany.com

UNRIVALED QUALITY IN 3 CREEK RANCH

14,421

7,302

baths

1,295,000 dollars

“ASPENSONG”

Created with the Jackson Hole lifestyle in mind and taking advantage of the breathtaking natural surroundings, this incredible masterpiece sits perched on two premiere lots in the hightly sought after 3 Creek Ranch. A blend of South American stone & tile, as well as hand crafted metal and exotic wood have been masterfully executed to create a modern take on a lodge style home. An open, flowing floor plan and cascading views to the Grand Teton complete this impeccable offering.

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Huff | Vaughn | Sassi - (307) 203-3000 theteam@jhsir.com mercedeshuff.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

dollars

16-2341 MLS#

The NeVille Group David NeVille - (307) 690-3209 tng@jhrea.com JHREA.com

TETON PINES SHOWPIECE

6,021

square feet

4

bedrooms

6

baths

5,995,000 dollars

17-449 MLS#

An innovative modern residence built to exacting standards just completed in Teton Pines. Curved rooflines and floor-to-ceiling windows accent the beauty of the surroundings. Located on the Arnold Palmer designed golf course and overlooking a large pond, this home has breathtaking views. The luxuriousness of this residence is found in every detail, from the elevator to the heated floors, from the full-size dual wine coolers to the home automation system; the unique features abound.

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates John Farrell & Budge Realty Group - (917) 612-2185 johnfarrell@jhrea.com budgerealestate.com

W

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Teton Pass might be the most unique commute in the country.

ANGUS THUERMER / JACKSON HOLE SKI ATLAS

BY MOLLY ABSOLON

IND WHIPS ACROSS the road, swirling the snow and whiting out everything. It looks like the inside of a ping-pong ball, and, without the glint of a taillight ahead, it’s impossible to tell what’s up or down, or even where the road is. Still, a line of traffic creeps its way forward, headlights closely following taillights. Welcome to rush hour on Teton Pass.

Most people driving the Pass—always a capital P—are traveling between their homes in Teton Valley, Idaho, and their jobs in Jackson.

(People choose to live in Teton Valley because it has a very different community feel from Jackson Hole, and also because real estate is more affordable than it is in Jackson.) These workers have either one of the most beautiful, exciting commutes in the country, or one of the most stressful and potentially dangerous. Sometimes, espeHighway 22 skirts Mount cially in winter, it’s both of these simultaneously.

Glory, passing through multiple While it’s twenty-four miles on Highway 22 beavalanche paths, including, from tween the Town Square and Victor, Idaho, it’s the elevright, Surprise Slide, Glory Slide, en-mile stretch between Wilson, Wyoming, and the Shovel Slide, and Twin Slides, before topping out at Teton Pass.

Idaho state line that is this commute’s heart and biggest challenge: Teton Pass. The Pass, which is one lane in each direction, switchbacks up and down 2,200 feet at grades of up to 10 percent. Along the way it runs beneath sixteen avalanche paths. Slides ripping down these paths have traveled up to 130 mph and piled snow as much as thirty feet deep on the road.

“Red Mountain Pass in Colorado is probably the most dangerous road in the country,” says Jamie Yount, who, from 2002 until this past summer, was an avalanche technician with the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT), which is responsible for maintaining the Pass. “But [Red Mountain] sees only fifty to one hundred cars a day. We average 5,000.”

HIGHWAY 22 IS not the only route between Teton Valley and Jackson Hole, but it is the shortest. On a good day, this drive takes about thirtyWINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

63

BRADLY J. BONER

five minutes; on a bad day, it can take over Last February, storms and dangerous against Mother Nature. Last February, an hour. On a really bad day, the drive is conditions closed Teton Pass for five weather and avalanches closed the Pass for days. Here cars pass through where one literally impossible: WYDOT closes the of the slides came down and hit the five days in a row. Over these five days, forty road based on weather conditions and/or road. Notice the debris pile, which is inches of heavy, wet snow fell while winds to do avalanche mitigation. When this more than fifteen feet high. gusted up to 80 mph. Thirteen avalanches happens, commuters’ only option is to reached the Pass. The debris from these drive south through the Snake River slides was up to thirty feet deep and covered Canyon to Alpine and then up Swan Valley, and then up and as much as 200 feet of road. Five of these thirteen slides were in over Pine Creek Pass, a much smaller and shorter pass than places that were never known to have slid before.

Teton Pass. The route is eighty-seven miles but, in the type of And that wasn’t the only time the Pass closed last winter. weather conditions that would close Teton Pass, takes between Over the entire season, weather and avalanches shut down the two and three hours. This drive has its own dangers—the road on twenty different occasions. Most closures lasted a couSnake River Canyon actually has more avalanche paths than ple of hours. The five-day February closure was the longest the Pass and is also sometimes closed by WYDOT for safety stretch the road was closed in recent memory. reasons.

There is middle ground between the Pass being closed and The time and cost of keeping Teton Pass open in the winter it being an easy drive: the chain law. WYDOT puts this have risen steadily in the past law, which requires two-wheelfive years. In 2013, the effort redrive cars to use chains or get a quired 4,913 man-hours and ticket, temporarily into effect $421,950; in 2016, those numwhen snow, ice, or other hazbers increased to 6,068 manardous winter conditions can hours and $782,035. Despite cause skidding or sliding. There TETON PASS HAS been an important travel corridor for humans for at the big winter of 2017, costs is a chain law on the Pass about least 10,000 years. Mountain men began using pre-existing Native were slightly down—5,206 eighty times every winter.

American trails following this weakness in the Teton Range in the man-hours and $588,256. Still, early 1800s. In 1886, the first horse-drawn wagon made it over the overall the trend continues to KEEPING THE PASS open isn’t Pass. Settlers seeking to homestead in Jackson’s Hole soon followed be upward. important merely for convewith more wagons. For a family traveling with livestock, furniture, Yet even these amounts of nience. Only three of the twentyand supplies, the trip took up to two weeks. In 1913, the Old Pass money, expertise, and effort three deputies at the Teton Highway was built. The current road opened in 1969. (The original don’t guarantee WYDOT wins County Sheriff’s Office live in road is still in use, as a pathway for nonmotorized vehicles.)

Pass History

64

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

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Though not as steep as Teton Pass, travel through the Snake River Canyon—which boasts more avalanche paths than the Pass— presents its own hazards.

Jackson. The rest commute, with about half of them driving over the Pass.

Nineteen of the Jackson Police Department’s thirty-one sworn officers drive from Idaho (the Pass) or Lincoln and Sublette Counties (the Snake River Canyon). About one-third of St. John’s Medical Center’s employees commute over the Pass. During the five-day February Pass closure (the Snake River Canyon was also closed), hospital staff on this side of the Pass pulled extra shifts.

Overall, 47 percent of Jackson Hole’s critical employees, including teachers, first responders, firefighters, and medical staff, live outside this valley. When the Pass is closed, it costs Jackson Hole’s economy.

The exact numbers for the February storm are not clear. Yount has said that closing the Pass for one hour results in $8,000 to $10,000 of lost economic revenue; a five-day closure would then cost

at least $500,000.

Learning the lengths WYDOT goes to mitigating avalanches and the economic importance of keeping the road open, you’d be correct in wondering if there is a better way. “We’ve looked at a few things over the years,” says Keith Compton, the District 3 engineer for WYDOT. “A number of years back— thirty, maybe more—we had a contract to build a bridge across Glory Bowl so avalanches would flow underneath the road.” Construction of this bridge was almost complete when Glory Bowl slid naturally. The bridge was destroyed like it was nothing more than Legos.

WYDOT didn’t bother to rebuild.

The idea of tunnels and snow sheds has been tossed around for years and was again a hot topic of conversation last winter. These would protect the road from avalanches and keep traffic flowing

during winter storm cycles. But the most recent figures for the cost of a tunnel exceed WYDOT’s entire annual budget. (A 1.4-mile tunnel beneath the Glory and Twin Slides paths, the two most active on the road, would cost about $265 million to build and $500,000 annually to maintain.) Given the current state of Wyoming’s economy, and the lack of public support for raising taxes, even if earmarked for infrastructure projects, it’s unlikely this will happen in the near future. Snow sheds are substantially less expensive—the latest estimate is between $20 million to $25 million for sheds protecting the road from Glory and Twin Slides—but that’s still a lot of money WYDOT doesn’t have. Furthermore, Compton says snow sheds have a tendency to ice up and become hazardous, and he doesn’t think they are part of the solution here.

Avalanche Control on Teton Pass WYDOT’S WEAPON OF choice for controlling avalanches on Teton Pass is a Swiss-made and -designed Gazex Remote Avalanche Control System.

This system explodes an oxygen/propane gas mixture out of tubes at the top end of avalanche zones.

There are four Gazex exploder tubes near the top of Glory Bowl and two near the head of Twin Slides.

The force of the explosion is directed toward the snow, sending pressure and a shock wave deep into the snowpack. If it is unstable—i.e., likely to 66

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

slide—this explosion will trigger an avalanche.

The concept behind purposefully triggering an avalanche is similar to that of a controlled burn: trigger a slide artificially at a time of WYDOT’s choosing (say, when they have a chance to close the Pass) to prevent a natural slide from randomly occurring—perhaps when commuters and skiers are in the area. Before a Gazex is detonated, WYDOT’s avalanche control technicians spend hours at their computers analyzing weather data for the area and

also climb up to snow-study plots on the Pass to check conditions. Once they decide control work is necessary, a press release goes out warning of a pending closure. To minimize the inconvenience to commuters, most control work is done in the early morning. If WYDOT detonates a Gazex at 3 a.m. that usually gives them enough time to clear the debris off the road from any resulting slides. And if the Gazex explosion doesn’t trigger a slide? WYDOT knows the snow is safe and no slides are imminent.

WILDLIFE TOURS

(307) 413-9300 R E S E R V E O N L I N E backcountrysafarisjh.com SUNRISE & SUNSET TOURS | PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS | WINTER WILDLIFE IN THE TETONS

IT’S NOT ONLY commuters who rely on WYDOT maintaining the road. From the top of Teton Pass, skiers can easily access some of the country’s best backcountry skiing. (Backcountry skiing differs from resort skiing because skiers and snowboarders first climb to the top of what they ski.)

Mail carriers in the first decades of the twentieth century were the first people to ski the Pass. It was in the early 1940s, when Neil Rafferty installed a rope tow in Telemark Bowl just south of today’s top parking lot, that people began skiing the Pass for fun. It didn’t take long for Pass skiers to begin exploring areas beyond Rafferty’s rope tow and start backcountry skiing. The number of skiers on the Pass remained relatively low until the late 1990s. It was 68

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

then that backcountry skiing equipment significantly improved—bindings got better and skis got lighter. In 2017, an estimated 70,000 backcountry runs were made from the top of Mt. Glory.

When other areas of the Pass are considered—there is skiing to the south of the top parking lot and also from areas below the top on both the east and west sides—the number of ski runs is likely close to 100,000.

“Teton Pass is superunique,” says Yount, himself an avid backcountry skier. “You can drive to 12,000 feet on Loveland Pass [in Colorado], but there’s no bootpack there and the skiing is crap.

You can drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon [in Utah] and get to good skiing, but the approach takes at least three hours.” Depending on your speed, the

1,800-foot bootpack to the top of Mt. Glory from the parking lot takes between thirty and ninety minutes. Once at the top of Glory, “There’s excellent skiing up there,” Yount says.

Some commuters, since they have to drive to the top of Teton Pass anyway, leave home early so they can park at the top, hike up Glory, and get in a ski before work. The local term for this is “dawn patrol.” “It is awesome being up [on Glory] before the sun comes up,” says Trevor Deighton, a science teacher at Jackson Hole Middle School who commutes daily over the Pass. “It’s a great way to start the day and show up energized for a day of teaching. There is a pretty regular crowd up there. The teacher crew is definitely the earliest, but on busy days there can be people waiting

TETON PINES

SHOWPIECE

An innovative mountain modern residence recently completed in Teton Pines. Curved rooflines and floor-to-ceiling

BRADLY J. BONER

windows accent the beauty of the surroundings. Located on the 18th hole of the Arnold Palmer designed golf course and overlooking a large pond, this home has breathtaking views. The 6,021 sq.ft. home features 4 bedrooms, each with an en-suite bathroom. Additionally, there is a bonus room, office, loft, 2 half bathrooms, an elevator, and a 3-car garage. The luxuriousness of this residence is found in every detail, from the hospital quality clean air to the heated floors, from the full-size dual wine coolers to the complete home automation system; the unique features abound.

Contact us for a full outline of this new property’s exceptional qualities. $5,995,000 / 17-449

An average of 5,000 vehicles—many commuters from Teton Valley, Idaho—climb and descend Teton Pass every day.

for your parking space at 7 a.m.!”

Deighton says he averages three dawn patrols a week, but, when conditions have been good, has dawn-patrolled twelve days in a row.

Even though the top parking lot’s fifty-five parking spaces are sometimes full during dawn patrol, it’s even busier later. Head up around 10 a.m. on a powder day, and you might have to wait an hour to get a parking space.

THIS ASPECT OF commuting over Teton Pass can be as problematic as it is unique, though. In December 2016, an avalanche at the beginning of an evening

B U D G E R E A L E S TAT E . C O M 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 John Farrell, Sales Associate 917.612.2185 johnfarrell@jhrea.com 80 West Broadway, Jackson, WY 83001

WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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IN 2006, A partnership between WYDOT, the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF), and Friends of Pathways created the position of Teton Pass Ambassador to help ease some of the 70

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

BRADLY J. BONER

rush hour caught a Jeep and pushed it off the road, trapping the driver and shutting the road overnight. Hundreds of commuters were stranded. The driver was uninjured, but avalanche debris packed the vehicle’s interior, and, when he was rescued, an imprint of his body was visible in the snow. (The Jeep was destroyed.) According to WYDOT, it appeared a skier triggered this avalanche, though no one ever came forward to claim responsibility. The incident launched a community-wide outcry from commuters who claimed thoughtless skiers jeopardized their lives. It was only because of luck that the Jeep driver was OK. Even though the backcountry skiing from Teton Pass is among the best in the country, the road’s purpose is not to provide access to recreation. Yount says, “[WYDOT’s] responsibility is to keep the highway safe. That’s our job, and we’re good at it. We take it seriously, and when people make our job harder, it can be frustrating.”

The day the Jeep was buried, the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center (BTAC), a nonprofit that issues daily avalanche reports for areas in and around the Tetons including the Pass, rated the avalanche hazard as “high” based on the amount of new snow, temperatures, and wind, among other factors. (From least to most likely, the North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale ratings range from “low” to “extreme.” “High” is one rating below “extreme” and, according to the BTAC website jhavalanche.org, means “natural avalanches likely; human-triggered avalanches very likely.”)

Yount says no one should have been skiing the steep terrain above the highway in such conditions. He thinks such behavior is, at the least, ignorant. At worst it is dangerous, both for the skier and for commuters on the road below. While building tunnels and snow sheds would cost tens of millions of dollars, limiting, or even prohibiting, skiing on the Pass wouldn’t cost WYDOT a thing. (In fact, it’d save them money since they’d no longer have to plow a parking lot at the top.)

A snowboarder ascends Mount Glory from the summit of Teton Pass.

frustration and stress skiers can add. Jay Pistono, who began skiing the Pass in 1978, has been the ambassador since the position’s inception. Skiing the Pass is a privilege Pistono wants to preserve, but he does worry that too many users with a sense of entitlement could jeopardize its future.

“Some skiers want it both ways,” Pistono says. “They don’t want any regulations. They don’t want to be told what to do and where they can go, but then they want the parking areas plowed, Glory Bowl controlled, the road maintained. You can’t have it both ways.

People think the Pass can’t be shut down [to skiing], but WYDOT can decide not to plow the parking areas and that effectively ends skiing up here.”

I joined Pistono for a few hours one afternoon last winter. He was working

the parking lot at the top. It was the first sunny day in weeks, and the place was hopping. Cars waited in line for parking spots, and skiers who already had a spot readied their packs before darting across the road and starting the hike up Glory.

It wasn’t yet rush hour, but a steady stream of traffic drove past. From the west side of the summit, skiers and boarders who had just finished a run on First or Second Turn walked up the side of the road. Cars that had picked up hitchhiking skiers at the bottom pulled into the parking lot to disgorge their passengers. I had difficulty keeping track of all that was going on. That no one was hit or fenders bumped seemed to me a matter of luck more than anything else.

“It’s just another day on Teton Pass,” Pistono says. JH

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Public Lands in

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Public Hands The Wyoming Public Lands Initiative charges communities to come up with recommendations for managing local parcels of federal land long stuck in limbo. Is there a chance it will work? Do we want it to?

BY MOLLY LOOMIS

BRADLY J. BONER

The Snake River Range’s Palisades Wilderness Study Area, currently being reviewed by the Teton County Wyoming Public Lands Initiative Committee, is split between Teton and Lincoln Counties.

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pine fir and Engelmann spruce, aspen glades, and windswept ridges. Skiing or hiking in the Palisades you might see tracks of wolves, moose, black bears, mountain lions, and, on occasion, maybe even those of a wolverine. In summer, serviceberry, chokecherry, and the evergreen mountain mahogany provide valuable shelter and homes for songbirds, like the green-tailed towhee, white-crowned sparrow, and MacGillivray’s warbler. In the range’s western reaches along Wolf Creek, a congressionally designated Wild and Scenic River, are rare breeding pairs of Harlequin ducks. Last winter, there were rumors of a grizzly den in the range.

Less than thirty miles away from the Palisades, twenty people charged with collaborating to determine its future sit in straight-backed office chairs in the Teton County Commissioners Chambers. They study maps of the region while a projector hums at the ready for a PowerPoint presentation. This crew of mustaches, cowboy hats, Danskos, tattoos, and button-down shirts makes up Teton County’s Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (WPLI, the acronym is pronounced “whip-lee”) Committee, one of eight such committees throughout the state that the Wyoming County Commissioners Association (WCCA) created in 2015. Their task is to provide the

BRADLY J. BONER

ACKING THE IN-your-face gnarl of the Tetons, the Snake River Range holds its own appeal. Much of the range is part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) and nearly 80,000 acres inside this forest are further protected as the Palisades Wilderness Study Area (WSA). The Snake River Range is where High Mountain HOW PALISADES AND SHOAL CREEK Heli-Skiing operates— in winter, open slopes WILDERNESS STUDY AREAS SHOULD blanketed with powBE MANAGED—WHAT TYPE OF der seemingly stretch RECREATION IS ALLOWED, HOW on endlessly, making it MUCH USE IS ALLOWED, AND EVEN a heli-skier’s heaven.

Year-round in this WHO SHOULD MANAGE THEM (THE area adventurers can FEDERAL GOVERNMENT VERSUS STATE do single to multiday GOVERNMENT)—HAS BEEN IN LIMBO ski/hiking/snowmoFOR NEARLY THIRTY YEARS. biling tours and see only a handful of other people.

Archaeological evidence shows that until 1868, when the U.S. government dramatically reduced Shoshone territory, Native American tribes seasonally occupied the region. Animals remain year-round residents of the Snake River Range’s forests of subal-

The Bridger-Teton National Forest portion of the Palisades Wilderness Study Area allows mechanized and motorized use, which High Mountain HeliSkiing benefits from.

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elected Teton County Board of County Commissioners with recommendations on what to do with the Palisades WSA and the nearby Shoal Creek WSA. How both of these areas should be managed—what type of recreation is allowed, how much use is allowed, and even who should manage them (the federal government versus state government)—has been in limbo for nearly thirty years.

Members of the Teton County WPLI Committee come from conservation, user, and special interest groups, as well as the general public. Six members are conservationists from local and national organizations. Seven people represent “special interests,” which include industry; nonmotorized, motorized, and mechanized recreation; and agriculture/ ranching. The remaining members were selected by Teton County commissioners from the general public and have diverse backgrounds, from law to guiding to landscaping.

IN 1964, THE Wilderness Act preserved 9.1 million acres of federal land as wilderness, a new-at-the-time land-use designation. (While some wilderness areas were designated in Wyoming in 1964, additional areas were set aside as wilderness in 1984 as part of the Wyoming Wilderness Act. In total, the state today has fifteen wilderness areas.) The purpose of a wilderness designation was (and is) to maintain land in as natural a state as possible. It is the most protective designation given to a parcel of federal land, even more so than a national park designation. Roads and structures cannot be built in wilderness, and motorized and mechanized recreation is prohibited (with the exception of a few instances where they were grandfathered in).

The original Wilderness Act and the 1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act also directed federal land agencies to review other areas in their jurisdictions for wilderness qualities. At the time, these were designated wilderness study areas; the idea was that some of them would become full-fledged wilderness areas in the future.

More than 500 areas across the country— forty-five of them in Wyoming—have been designated as WSAs, including Palisades and Shoal Creek.

WHILE WILDERNESS AREAS are managed according to known regula-

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tions, WSAs didn’t come with clear management plans or us- first the state legislature, then the U.S. House of Representatives. age rules. This resulted in widely varying and very localized— But before it has released a single recommendation, WPLI and often confusing and contradictory—management plans. is controversial. The public has asked whether an organization For example: The Palisades WSA, which totals 130,000 acres, whose website lists multiple oil, gas, and energy companies as borders the Caribou-Targhee National Forest’s (CTNF) business partners is the right one to make an unbiased recom61,000-acre Palisades Recommended Wilderness Area. (In the mendation about the future of public land. And what about late 1990s, the CTNF decided this area should be designated Wyoming counties, some of which are heavily reliant on an recommended wilderness rather than merely WSA.) While it extractive economy—can they be impartial? awaits official designation, CTNF manages that land as if it “That’s a fair question,” Cowan says. “WPLI is not being were already wilderness; motorized and mechanized devices supported financially by our business partners. I reject the are prohibited. But the neighboring premise that because oil and gas Palisades WSA allows some use by would be supporting WCCA or mechanized and motorized means at WPLI that it’s somehow bad. We IT’S NOT ABOUT, “WHERE CAN I DO MY certain levels. So mountain biking, hold ourselves accountable. That’s ACTIVITY?” BUT INSTEAD “LOOKING AT snowmobiling, heli-skiing, and dirt where transparency really comes THE FUTURE AND WHAT I CAN DO TO biking are allowed in parts of it, but into play.” Cowan continues, PROTECT THESE LANDS. IT’S NOT [ABOUT] not in the adjacent 61,000 acres.

“WPLI represents the pursuit of WSAs were not meant to be in an opportunity. We don’t have the WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE NEXT limbo for perpetuity. After WSA desexternal factor forcing us to do FIVE YEARS. IT’S [ABOUT] WHAT’S GOING ignations were made, federal land this like the threat of a national TO HAPPEN IN THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS.” agencies with any in their portfolios monument proclamation.” (Due — LINDA MERIGLIANO, BTNF NORTH ZONE WILDERNESS were tasked with submitting recomto concessions made when presAND RECREATION PROGRAM MANAGER mendations to their respective state ent-day Grand Teton National legislatures for a WSA’s future manPark was created in 1950, agement: to be a wilderness or not.

Wyoming is the only state fully The BTNF had its recommendations for Shoal Creek and its exempt from Presidential National Monument declarations. portion of Palisades ready in 1990—the recommendation was Other states worry about presidents stepping in and unilaterto make both full wilderness areas, as a handshake agreement ally proclaiming federal lands, including WSAs, to be a nationbetween conservationists and legislators at the time these al monument. Such a move is almost always unwanted by WSAs were designated promised—but bureaucracy, conten- states and also controversial within the general public because tion, and litigation interfered, and kept interfering. And now, it reaches over both.) here we are twenty-eight years later with no plan for what to do with either of these areas. The WCCA sees WPLI as a way to get TO DATE, TEN of the thirteen Wyoming counties with a WSA things moving again. in their borders are participating in WPLI. Given the complexities of the process, it’s beneficial that facilitators from the ACCORDING TO WCCA’S Natural Resource Staff Attorney University of Wyoming’s (UW) Ruckelshaus Institute, which Gregory Cowan, the governor’s office, the WCCA, and various specializes in collaborative decision-making on complex envicounty commissioners were growing increasingly frustrated ronmental topics, are helping. “You’re trying to expand options with Wyoming’s WSAs being in limbo. WCCA’s ambitious goal to all parties so that all parties can maximize gains and walk is to get counties, through local WPLI committees, to create away from these agreements pretty well satisfied,” says UW’s individual management plans for their WSAs. These plans Spicer Chair of Collaborative Practice and Lead Facilitator would then be reviewed and, eventually, perhaps ratified by Steve Smutko. The institute hopes to teach WPLI committees 76

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RYAN DORGAN

The Teton County Wyoming Public Lands Initiative Committee is made up of representatives from the general public and conservation, user, and special interest groups. It is tasked with providing management recommendations for the Palisades and Shoal Creek WSAs to the Teton County Board of County Commissioners.

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BRADLY J. BONER

how to navigate the nuances of collabora- Bruce Gordon, founder and executive county’s WPLI committee includes Dan director of EcoFlight, flies over the Shoal tive decision-making. Three of the ten Creek Wilderness Study Area. The AspenSmitherman, a rancher and former counties working on creating new recom- based nonprofit advocates for protection of Marine who led the battle against drilling mendations, including Teton County, wild lands across the West. in the Wyoming Range and now works for have accepted the institute’s offer.

The Wilderness Society, and also Jim Since Teton County has a deep and Woodmencey, a meteorologist, avid uniquely powerful lineage of environmental advocacy, the mountain biker, former ranger, and High Mountain Helihope is that it may emerge as a leader in WPLI. (Jackson locals Skiing guide. Smitherman represents the conservation viewwere instrumental in drafting the original Wilderness Act, in point, and Woodmencey was tasked as the winter commercial establishing Grand Teton National Park, and in placing thou- motorized recreation representative. Woodmencey says, “If sands of acres of open space in the region under conservation nothing else, it gives everyone a chance to understand the otheasements.) er side’s perspective.” Smitherman agrees: “Nothing may be acSmutko readily admits the process is going to be difficult, complished legislatively, but I hope we’ve at least turned a page though. The WCCA didn’t stipulate guiding parameters for in Wyoming where we can sit across a table and discuss these committees: There is no recommended overarching context to things. If we can navigate this type of discussion to other issues work within, such as a county’s comprehensive plan, maximiz- in Wyoming, then it’s been a success. It may not be the perfect ing economic development, or habitat resiliency in a changing opportunity. But it’s an opportunity.” climate. Also, counties have radically varying outlooks toward Not all counties are as open to discussion. Park County, public land and who should have a say in how it’s managed. home to the McCullough Peaks and High Lakes WSAs, has Cowan emphasizes WPLI is a user-based process. (An im- already announced it won’t accept recommendations for any portant group of users has been overlooked, though: No coun- areas outside of its borders. In a December 2016 letter to the ties, including Fremont, home to the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming Congressional Delegation, commissioners from have tribal representation on their WPLI committees.) “If this Lincoln County, which includes 62,637 acres of the Palisades were done as a state, it could be done in its totality,” Smutko WSA, wrote, “Wilderness is not an appropriate, effective, efsays. “[But done county by county] Sublette County may say, ficient, economical, or wise use of land,” and that “ultimate‘Shoal Creek is the prime wilderness area for us,’ while Teton ly, the transfer of Federal lands to State ownership/manageCounty says, ‘We’re going to use Shoal as a sacrifice for ment is the only solution big enough to address the myriad Palisades.’ ” of issues facing the West.” This letter reveals that some interTeton County is showing this might not be as hopeless as it ested groups aren’t just asking the question, “Should a WSA sounds, and that even if it is, there is benefit to the process. The become a wilderness area or not?” but also, “Should the fed78

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eral government even have jurisdiction over it?”

TURNING OVER FEDERAL land to the state is not a new idea. In the 1970s and ’80s, the Sagebrush Rebellion, named for the vast tracts of sagebrush occupying much of the western land in question, gained momentum in direct response to the roadless inventories that created wilderness areas and WSAs. The movement sought to turn over federal land to state and private control, thereby possibly lessening rules, regulations, and the costs associated with grazing, mining, road building, and other extractive industries.

This long-simmering rebellion has gained new life. The Republican platform has recently adopted language to support public land transfers to states. On the first day of its 2017 session, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a rule designed to make transfers of federal land to states easier. Thus far, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead and Cowboy State citizens seem committed to maintaining the status quo of the ownership of federal land in the state. A 350-page state-funded report released in October 2016 made multiple cases against federal-to-state land transfers. The report concluded that, among other things, doing this would create economic hardship for Wyoming, including a loss of nearly $30 million in federal funds.

In December 2016, Mead described the transfer of federal land to Wyoming as “legally and financially impractical,” referring in part to the cost of fighting wildfires. Still, some Wyoming state legislators, rallying behind Republican Senator Larry Hicks, who represents Albany and Carbon Counties, are pushing for an amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that would enable the state to own and operate federal public land by 2019. If the GOP’s platform succeeds, the rebellion may escalate into all-out war. The BTNF’s North Zone Wilderness and Recreation Program Manager Linda Merigliano says the real threat isn’t WSAs being in limbo, but of “having some sort of designation that makes it easier to transfer these lands to state control.” She continues, saying that it’s not about, “Where can I do my activity?” but instead “looking at the future and what I can do to protect these lands. It’s not [about] what’s going to happen in the next five years. It’s [about] what’s going to happen in the next fifty years.” JH

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JH Living

photo gallery

Stash, Kaki Orr’s dog, takes in the view from near the top of Mt. Glory on Teton Pass.

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Partners in the Snow

BY TED KERASOTE PHOTOGRAPHY BY JONATHAN SELKOWITZ HE LEADS THE way, tail steadily beating his joy. Today, we’re on dusk patrol, having left the parking lot in the late afternoon, headlamp in my pack. He, of course, doesn’t need one. His nose can lead us home.

Muscles rippling under his golden fur, he bounds ahead, disappearing into the forest. A minute later, he’s back with his bright-eyed scout’s report: Grouse up there!

On he goes, and at our habitual drop-off, he waits for me, his eyes lustrous as they peer downhill.

Wag-wag-wag goes his tail as I come up to him: Couldn’t be better.

And he’s right. It’s totally untracked.

While I rip my skins, he tears a dead branch from a nearby spruce, places it in the powder, and flicks it high into the air with his nose, leaping up to catch it. He glances back at me, making sure I’ve noticed.

“Well done, Pukka!” I cry.

He grins and continues to play.

“Do you want to ski?” I ask him.

In an instant, he’s by my side, laughing.

And down we drop, spiraling into the dusk, snow flying over my shoulders as he arcs like a golden porpoise from a darkening sea.

“Oh, ski dog!” I cry, as he swims the last steep, panting in glee: Ha-haha! What a run!

“What a run!” I agree, as he puts his paws upon my shoulders and rubs his cheek against mine: Oh, I love you!

From the moment we left the house, he has asked no questions about the route. And though it’s now almost dark, he’s made no comment about the lateness of the hour. His trust is complete, his faith sublime, our partnership like no other.

After our hug, he forges ahead, and soon comes to a junction where he gazes to the right, his look saying, This is the way.

I follow. I learned long ago to let him bring us home in the dark.

Ted Kerasote is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Merle’s Door and Pukka’s Promise.

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Timber follows his owner, Brady Johnston, up a peak in the southern Tetons.

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Top: Johnston, skiing with Timber on the west side of Teton Pass, says the dog used to ski one hundred days a season.

Bottom: Crystal Wright and Brian Mulvihill’s border collie, Tess, barrels through fresh snow on the Pass.

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Top: Ted Kerasote, who wrote the intro for this photo essay, and his dog, Pukka, get face shots on the south side of Teton Pass.

Right: Tracy Stull’s dog, Hazel, was a backcountry adventurer in her younger years. Now that she’s nine years old, her big days of backcountry skiing are over. In this photo from last winter, Hazel waits for her ski partners on the west side of the Pass.

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we are

Jackson Hole Individuals make this valley the inspiring, engaged, dedicated, interesting, and intelligent community it is.

Meet some of us.

STORY BY DINA MISHEV PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLE BUCKHART 86

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

The Skiing Cowboy Cody Lockhart “I think that everybody who grows up here is a skier,” Cody Lockhart says. But not everyone who grows up here does so cross-country skiing around a cattle ranch founded by their great-great-grandparents like Cody and his younger brother, Chase. But skiing on the family ranch wasn’t as cool to Cody as the other things he could do there, like drive a tractor.

Once Cody and Chase were old enough to drive a tractor, “which is younger than you’d think,” Cody says with a laugh, “we were able to cowboy at our summer range in Grand Teton [National Park].” Summer cowboying entailed “doctoring the cows, dealing with cow issues, fighting grizzly bears and wolves, and looking for lost cows,” he says. “We grew up at ranch headquarters, so I was always able to be involved with what was going on on the ranch. The ranch was our life, and it continues to be.”

Today, at age thirty-four, Cody, whose full-time job is as a financial planner at Wells Fargo Advisors, says, “I ride a desk more than I ride a horse.” But he’s still involved with the ranch, Lockhart Cattle Company, and he still skis. Cody, wife Shauna (also a skier), and toddler Amelia “putz around the ranch” whenever they can, and, while Chase “does most of the heavy lifting [at the ranch], I’m lucky to get to help him out when and how I can,” Cody says. With a degree in business finance from Boston University, “I handle a lot of the desk part of the ranch business.”

The week before I interviewed him, Cody skied Mount Rainier in Washington. His most memorable day of skiing last winter was closer to home, though, on Snow King: “I skinned up before the lifts opened and skied blower powder down. My ten-month-old daughter, Amelia, was on my back.” The plan is for her to be as comfortable around cows as on skis. “At age eight, you’re allowed to enter 4-H and raise your own animals,” Cody says. “And she’ll be skiing way before that.”

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The Ski Bum, Grown Up Wade McKoy When Wade McKoy arrived in Jackson in the fall of 1974, freshly graduated from Mississippi State, he and a former frat buddy “crashed on the floor of a trailer of these two girls I knew from high school,” he says. McKoy had only ever skied once (his frat friend was a lifelong skier and was the one to suggest spending a winter in Jackson), and he had made it his goal to learn how. He thought this would take one year. Skiing mastered, McKoy would then return to Mississippi, where his family lived, and get on with his life.

McKoy got a job at the ski area as a chairlift operator, working one day a week on Thunder, one day on Casper, and one day on Apres Vous. While he had plenty of time to ski, still, “I was blown away by how hard it was,” he says. “The first three weeks that winter were on hardpack, and I was doing great—sliding through turns and having a ball. Then it started snowing, and I had the struggle of my life trying to ski powder. Halfway through the winter I wrote my parents a letter and told them that for me to learn how to do this, it wasn’t going to happen in one winter. I thought it would take one more winter.”

And then McKoy experienced his first summer in Jackson.

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“One month into my first summer here, I took a hike and the wildflowers were so huge,” he says. “It was summer that married me to this place. [Jackson] fits me like a glove. It’s been a struggle sometimes, but it did all work out.”

After one season of being a liftie, McCoy went on to work on the resort’s winter trail crew. He did this for ten years. “It was a great job for a ski bum,” he says. “We got to do a lot of freeskiing.”

It was during his time on trail crew that McCoy began to turn skiing into a bigger career—as a ski photographer and writer. First, he shot images of his trail crew buddies and later of the Jackson Hole Air Force, an informal group of hard-charging local skiers. Powder and Skiing magazines published his images and articles.

Soon, McCoy was traveling the world to shoot and write about expeditions. “For about ten years I was writing and shooting these adventure stories in big mountains around the world—China, India, Africa, Europe, Antarctica, Alaska.” Back in Jackson Hole he, along with Bob Woodall, founded Focus Productions, which annually publishes Jackson Hole Skier, Jackson Hole Dining Guide, and Adventure Guide magazines. (This winter is the thirty-fifth edition of Jackson Hole Skier.) McCoy and his wife, Holly McCoy (nee Riedman), currently the office manager for the Jackson Hole Land Trust, celebrate their thirty-first anniversary in 2018.

McCoy has had two skiing accidents in which he almost died. Most recently, two winters ago he ruptured his vena cava. McCoy says, “My mind is still hungry like a twenty- or maybe a thirtyyear-old, but the body is sixty-six.

Although I think it feels even older.” He has two artificial knees, back problems, and a “shoulder that’s about to explode.”

“I can’t ski every day anymore,” McCoy says. “It’s probably four days a week.

Maybe five. And on the days I do ski, I can only do three trams rather than seven or ten.” Still, “I’ve never thought of leaving,” he says. “The tram, the vertical drop, the steepness, the variety, the wildness—from the weather to actual wildlife—and also the community. I got tied in with a great group of people that I know to this day. It’s a special place. I just need to learn not to run too hot, but it’s hard. Living here is running hot. There are so many people here that run hot all the time.”

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The Amateur Ultra-Athlete Katie Steinberg At Jackson Hole Middle School, she’s “Mrs. Steinberg” to the 130 students in her life sciences classes and “Coach Steinberg” to the cross-country team. Out on the trails around town or, in winter, skinning up Snow King, Katie Steinberg, thirty-two, is one runner in a town full of athletes; albeit, she’s often out running when most others are sleeping. (She does have a classroom to get to at 8 a.m., after all.) In the spring and summer, lining up at the starting line of an ultramarathon, Steinberg is often the runner to beat, even if winning is not her goal. “My ultimate goal isn’t winning—although, of course, that is nice—but is to run happy. [Running] is not my livelihood. It is my passion,” she says.

Running—Steinberg started in middle school, going out for several miles before classes with her dad—turned into racing for her only three years ago. “I had a group of friends that wanted to see what we could do,” says Steinberg, who hadn’t yet run a marathon when she signed up for a 50K in Tahoe in 2013. “I thought that [it] seemed a lofty goal, but we followed a plan together and [at the starting line] I crossed my fingers.

And then I won that race.” The next year she won the Bighorn Trail 50K, which draws ultrarunners from across the West. She won the Bighorn again in 2015, and also won The North Face Endurance Challenge Utah (fifty-miler) in Park City.

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An injury—an avulsion fracture, several torn ligaments, cartilage damage, and microtearing to her Achilles tendon that required she wear a boot—then sidelined her for five months, but Steinberg never thought about not returning to running. To keep in shape she put flat pedals on her mountain bike and went riding. “My first ride I cried out of happiness,” she says. “I was in the outdoors, and I could get somewhere remote and sweat and feel my heart beat.” When she was able to run again, Steinberg says she “didn’t feel like I had to win anymore. I was just enjoying being able to run again and appreciating what my body can do and the feeling of being strong pushing myself.”

Since Steinberg pushes herself harder than any outside competitor can, she usually does two training sessions a day that range from running to yoga (she’s a certified yoga instructor and teaches fitness classes once a week at Pursue) to strength training. She sometimes runs and skis with friends before and after school. “I’ve had a few people tell me, ‘If it’s not above zero, I’m not going,’ ” she says. On those days, Steinberg goes solo.

Why? “I’m a much better teacher when I show up after a Putt Putt run or a Snow King ski,” Steinberg says. “I’m energized, awake, alert, and attentive and ready to have 30 thirteen-yearolds in my classroom. I love running, but where I feel like I’m making a difference is making a connection with kids in the classroom, and I couldn’t do my job without training the way I do. When my job is hard, I train harder.”

The Philanthropists Frances & Allan Tessler “We had always been involved in different not-for-profits and charities wherever we were,” says Allan Tessler. “It was natural for us to find out what we could do when we got here.” Allan, who served in the Navy and received his LL.B. from Cornell University, and his wife, Frances, who worked as a computer consultant for IBM and then as a financial consultant at what is now Morgan Stanley Wealth Management for twenty years, moved to Jackson Hole from New York in 1988.

Frances grew up spending summers horseback riding at a valley dude ranch, and after she and Allan married (in 1958) and had kids, they returned to Jackson Hole as a family for ski vacations. “We always had a great time and looked for places to buy [as a vacation

home], but we were always out of sync with the market. Whenever we wanted to do it, we couldn’t afford it,” Allan says.

Until finally, back home in New York, “Our car was broken into for the fourth time in a year,” Frances says. “We said, ‘Enough. We’re out of here.’ ” And that was that.

Allan’s first foray into philanthropy in the valley was a donation to the Teton County Search and Rescue team.

“When I found out they didn’t have any radios, I offered to fund the acquisition. In New York, our donations seemed to get lost sometimes in the vastness of organizations. Here, those radios were a game changer.” From funding radios the Tesslers went on to donate to organizations as diverse as the Grand Teton Music Festival, the Jackson Hole Land Trust, Climb Wyoming, Astoria Hot Springs, the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, and the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust.

But, “Just giving money isn’t what’s needed,” Frances says. “You need to give time and energy.” Frances joined the Housing Trust board in the late 1990s, and, after retiring in 2000, also joined the boards of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole and the Center of Wonder.

Including his present term that started this past September, Allan has twice been the chair of the board of the Grand Teton Music Festival. Besides serving on the boards of the Land Trust and of several national notfor-profits, Allan has also served on the boards of numerous publicly traded companies.

The Tesslers say that board work here differs from that of big cities. Allan says, “Here you get involved, and if people don’t like what you’re doing, they call you up. It is much more demanding personally, and much more rewarding personally.”

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“This place has special meaning,” says Dr. Susan G. Clark, who grew up on a small farm in eastern Oklahoma and first began doing conservation work in the valley in 1968. “The people of the U.S. created this place of public good 140 years ago. It is very important to me personally to be near a place like this. It is an emotional touchstone.”

Dr. Clark, who has been the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Adjunct Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Policy Sciences at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies for at least eleven years, says that at this point in her life, “I’m not out building nest boxes for birds, but working to integrate the work of the gazillions of people here doing good stuff. There is good work being done here, but a lot of it is fragmented and piecemeal.

One of my goals is to encourage more fundamental thought about places like the Greater Yellowstone [Ecosystem] and nature. I want to help find a genuine coexistence with the region’s remarkable wildlife.

Yellowstone is not just a place to visit, it is a place of work.”

Dr. Clark describes her conservation view as “hopeful pragmatism.” “It is not about being optimistic or pessimistic,”

The Advocate Carmina Oaks Carmina and John Oaks first visited Jackson together one summer in the early 1990s. They pulled in with their trailer, parked, and shortly after were offered jobs. “Someone nearby heard us speaking in Spanish and English, and, before we knew it, he offered us jobs,” Carmina Oaks says. The couple were living and working in Deming, New Mexico, but, “It was a really depressed area at the time,” she says. “So we were kind of already looking for somewhere else.” But the pair—Carmina is from Mexico City and had worked there as a kindergarten teacher and studied anthropology, while John hailed from Alabama—weren’t excited about Jackson’s winters. They left at the end of the summer, but returned to the valley several summers later. Before the autumn, Carmina was offered a full-time job with the Town of Jackson as a victim 92

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she says. “Pragmatic hope is recognizing the challenges we face and working to make it better.”

To facilitate this, Dr. Clark founded, with Denise Casey, the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative in 1988. Since its founding, the Jackson-based nonprofit has supported hundreds of projects in the region and further afield (the group helped with fifty-seven projects in the last five years alone). While much of Dr. Clark’s field and academic research—she was an author or editor on about fifteen books and has written more than 400 articles in

scientific journals—has focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, she has investigated more than thirty mammal species in numerous states and fourteen foreign countries. Even with her world travels, Dr. Clark chooses to spend her summers in Jackson Hole.

In 1974-75, she and her husband built their own home in East Jackson overlooking the elk refuge. And that’s still where they live today. “In the early seventies, there were no other houses out here,” she says. “It was a virtual pasture. We built everything in our own time and with our own labor.

witness advocate. The two became yearround residents.

At the time, there weren’t any other people in the valley working as SpanishEnglish translators. Oaks’ job with the town went well beyond doing translation work—“I had a beeper and had to be available twenty-four hours a day,” she says. While her full-time job was as a victim witness advocate, she had a second, unofficial job: “Latinos heard I could translate and help them navigate different things, like enrolling their kids in school,” she says. “They followed me to my house.” Oaks would tell them that she didn’t do this kind of assistance as part of her job, but “I’d still find out answers to their questions. It was so different than today. Then there were no resources for the Latino community.”

To be fair, the Latino community at the time was a fraction of what it is today. (It is estimated that 30 percent of the valley’s current population is Latino.) Oaks was among the first Latino

women to move to Jackson Hole. “The love I have for this place and its people, it’s special,” she says.

As the number of Latinos grew, so too did the need to help integrate them into the community. In 2001, Oaks left her job with the town to be the executive director of the nonprofit Latino Resource Center, the valley’s first organization advocating for Latinos. Oaks held this position until she retired in 2009, at age sixty-five. Since she “retired” she has been a client advocate with One22 and is a consultant with the local firm Eriksen-Meier. “I couldn’t not work,” Oaks says. “I love what I do. It is helping people, and that’s something I learned was important from my parents.”

Eighteen of Oaks’ family members have followed her to Jackson from Mexico.

“Eight of them have already become citizens,” she says. “So kudos for this community.” Carmina and John, who have two adult kids living in the San Francisco area, celebrated their forty-sixth wedding anniversary last July. JH

RYAN DORGAN

The Conservationist Dr. Susan Clark

Land was less expensive. You didn’t need much money to live here then. Not like now.” Another change Dr. Clark has seen is that “for most people who came here [back then], recreating was not their fundamental mission in life,” she says. “They were here because they had a fundamental connection to this place. Today people come to recreate or escape some other place.”

Dr. Clark has no problem with recreation but sees that people are increasingly disconnected from nature, and she thinks that this disconnect is one of the greatest challenges to conservation today. She challenges recreationalists to look at and think of nature as more than an object. “The young bikers and skiers show up here to experience their physicality, and that is a good place to start,” Dr. Clark says. “But one of my goals is to stimulate a deeper self-awareness of what it means to live in and take a deeper responsibility for a place like this.”

Most of the classes Dr. Clark teaches at Yale, all of which are multidisciplinary and strive to do no less than consider the meaning of life, she describes as “transformative education.” Transformative education is about “helping people discover things for themselves [that] they wouldn’t discover elsewhere,” she says. “The more we can be reflective and open up opportunities for pragmatic hope, the better.”

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looking back

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

The Wasting Sickness of Jackson Funk Botox is erasing town’s laugh lines.

BY RICHARD ANDERSON • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN DORGAN

IT’S NOT SO much the history as it is the story.

That apartment at Willow and Pearl was the first place you lived when you got to Jackson Hole. That little white house on South Glenwood was the site of more raucous parties than you can remember. There on Pine Drive is the fourplex where you and your girlfriend had your first apartment on your own.

And there, off Gregory Lane, is the shack where you lived alone after you and your girlfriend broke up.

Not every house has historical significance—a one-hundred-year-old example of native vernacular, or at one time the home of Uncle Nick Wilson’s second cousin—but most have personal meaning to someone, even if just as part of the familiar face you’ve gotten to know over the years.

And so it’s a shock to be walking down Kelly Avenue, as you do most every day, on your way to work or to play, and realize that the shabby, little red bungalow that used to crouch in the shade of a couple of huge, old pines has been replaced by a pile of dirt and an excavator. Some call them “scrapers,” the

kinds of places that, sooner or later, someone is going to buy only to bulldoze and replace with another metalclad cube that stretches from lot line to lot line.

Sometimes there is no choice.

Sometimes a structure is too far gone to consider shoring it up to squeeze a couple more years of habitability out of it. Nevertheless, all too often, the scrape job is a loss: the loss of a hundred stories and a thousand memories. It’s the erasure of another reminder of what Jackson used to be, where it came from, and who gave it personality. It’s like a chronic disease, the long, drawn-out death of that je ne sais quoi we all look for in our town, the wasting sickness of Jackson Funk.

ETYMOLOGISTS TRACE THE word “funk” back to Middle English, Middle German, and Middle Dutch, meaning “spark.” A seventeenth-century definition—a strong, usually offensive smell, like that of certain cheeses or tobacco— lives on today, as when one wishes to describe the odor of unwashed ski socks. A 1739 reference uses the word to mean WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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panic or fear, particularly that of the coward, or, also still commonly used, a paralyzing, depressed state of mind.

And then, of course, there’s the musical definition, which goes back to at least circa-1900 New Orleans, where African-American and Creole styles cross-pollinated for a syncopated, polyrhythmic approach to time and tempo—a deep sense of groove some say demands firsthand intimacy with the grit and pain of the black American experience to master. In the 1950s and ’60s that developed into the “funk” of George Clinton and James Brown, et al. Brown’s longtime sax man, Maceo Parker, once defined funk as music that makes you want to move.

But when speaking of Jackson Funk, the reference that epitomizes the concept may be the mid-twentieth-century American art movement called funk art.

Spawned in the Bay Area of California in the late fifties, funk art prized individuality, the personal quirks and peculiarities of its creators—artists like Bruce Conner, Peter Saul, Jess, Viola Frey, and Gladys Nilsson. Representational, humorous, even bawdy, funk art often was composed of found objects and took the form of collage or assemblage. It was art that reacted to and rejected East Coast pretensions and academic orthodoxies.

MANY OF THESE characteristics dovetail neatly with those of Jackson Funk: personal, makeshift, whimsical, a hodgepodge of styles and elements, with additions and subtractions, edits and repurposings evident, even intentionally conspicuous, and with that feeling that the structure self-assembled from whatever materials had been lying about. Those traits developed naturally in early Jackson Hole architecture. The hands of the homesteaders and pioneers can be seen in every cope and corner.

Clever improvisation was a requirement of getting through another season. Back then, funk was not aesthetic; it was pragmatic.

But then along came the 1950s and ’60s, the beatniks—cousins of the California funksters—and the hippies (a plague on the community’s moral fiber, as many articles in the Jackson Hole press bemoaned), and other antiestablishment types. They flocked West to escape their oppressors in the East, in search of alternatives to the convention96

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

al life of clocking in and out for forty years. And they found it—or at least found a place where they could create it—in many a Rocky Mountain cow town: a new kind of lifestyle, authentic and expressive, personal and handmade, stitched together from found objects, found jobs, and found housing.

Vestiges of Jackson Funk can be seen all over. Nearly whole blocks in East Jackson have retained their funk— Nelson, Rancher, the blocks west of South Jean, with their cottonwoods of Bunyanesque girth, their rickety slat fences, the vintage neon sign advertising the Wilson Motel long forgotten. Many are tidy and well-kept; some have aged gracefully; others, their shirtfronts despoiled by magpies and ravens, just don’t give a damn. Most east-west alleys run the gamut, with a wide assortment of junky, funky off-buildings, some inhabited, others sagging into the land. Some are sagging but still inhabited, perhaps

long past when they should have been.

A certain species of split-level ranch house indigenous to Simpson and Hansen Avenues, as well as the West Jackson residential neighborhoods, date to the seventies and early eighties and might be called “late funk.” Plopped in nearly any other place in the U.S. these would just be Levittown-style tract houses, but here they have weathered well, accumulating a patina of funk and a sense of self that comes with wisdom.

Despite its tony reputation, Wilson proper is still well-represented, with some examples of “high funk”: miniature log cabins, additions that look like their builders never quite bothered to finish them, and shaggy landscaping.

The further reaches of South Park Loop Road epitomize the look, and one passes many examples heading south on Highway 89 to Hoback Junction, which prides itself on its own orthodox variant of funk.

IT’S TEMPTING TO anthropomorphize these structures, and it’s easy. A pair of gables take on the appearance of eyebrows. A low log cabin broods. The twinkle remains in the glass eyes that bracket the nose of a door. That, actually, is part of the point: These are human buildings, permeated by the energy of triumphs and tragedies, redolent of the spark and the stink—the funk—of we who have called them home. They sit sturdy and comfortable with what they are, like a middle-aged backcountry skier who knows her next greatest adventure still lies ahead. They stand resolute, prepared for whatever tests the Teton elements throw their way, knowing that this may be the year that a new roof or water heater or, God forbid, foundation is in the cards.

It has nothing to do with the way they are designed or built (you cannot draw funk into an architectural plan) but everything to do with the lives lived there—all the good funky times and tunes, and the deep blue funks when adversity or loss shadowed the doorstep.

No facade, no matter how resolute, stands a chance against the wrecking ball. It’s inexorable: Year after year the changes come. We walk past certain

properties and can’t help but think, “It’s only a matter of time.” It’s insidious: One night, while wandering East Jackson with friends after having altered our minds a bit with various chemicals, walking heads-down, deep in conversation, I happened to look up to find myself surrounded by rectilinear solids of synthetics and steel, concrete, and Hardie board, and for a split second I could have sworn I was not in Jackson Hole anymore.

Maybe those new metal cubes that crop up each month to replace the peaked roofs and craggy countenances of the last century’s architecture will prove pervious to the funky tales, the stories of bootstraps and belle epoques, the generations, the crazy-good time, the promise of a mad winter, the poignancy of a formative summer.

Is it going too far to say that this is what is at stake every time one of Jackson Hole’s funky, historically dubious, warped, and warty domiciles falls to make room for the new and nifty? Just how much do we want to clean up this old town, anyway? Maceo said funk was music that made you want to move.

Jackson Funk is the groove of the valley that makes you want to stay. JH WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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DIY Yellowstone With a permit, you can snowmobile into Yellowstone without a guide.

BY MIKE KOSHMRL • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN JONES

IN ALL THE times I had driven by Lewis Falls, between Canyon Village and Yellowstone’s South Gate, I’m ashamed to say I’d never stopped to admire it. But now, even though temperatures are well below freezing and the road is buried beneath so much snow the only way to travel is via snowmobile (or snowcoach, skis, or snowshoes), I finally feel the im-

pulse. Our group—all on snowmobiles—stops at a pullover near the falls.

We dismount our sleds and crunch through snow to the best vantage point.

It turns out Lewis Falls is impressive. But more impressive is that nothing but silence competes with the sounds of water rushing thirty feet over the falls.

There is no chatter from dozens of

JH

In 2014, after more than a decade of only being able to snowmobile in Yellowstone National Park accompanied by a guide, it became legal to snowmobile in the park without one (but a permit is necessary). This way of visiting the park lets you escape crowds and set your own schedule.

other visitors. There are no vehicles, snowmobile or otherwise, whizzing by.

There is no yelling to “bring the camera!” or “hurry!” It’s just water pushing around and over rocks until it crashes into a frothy pool at the bottom. In the sounds of the falls I imagine I hear, “Welcome to winter in Yellowstone.”

In wintertime, Yellowstone National Park is transformed. Its transformation isn’t just from the thirteen feet of snow it gets annually, but also because this snow—and the road, hotel, restaurant, and visitor center closures it causes— impacts the number of park visitors.

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Right: More than 4 million people visit Yellowstone every summer. In winter, the park gets about 100,000 visitors.

Bottom: Tourists walk by the Old Faithful Visitor Center in Yellowstone. Familiar attractions throughout the park transform in the winter when they are covered with snow and ice—and when summer crowds have gone home.

More than 4 million people visit the park each summer. Between mid-December and mid-March, Yellowstone’s winter season, it gets only about 100,000 visitors. Snow-covered, Yellowstone is a seldom-seen world. The fact that we’re here on our own—our group of four is without a guide, even—makes the park that much more our own private playground. Our group has two days to explore as much of it as we can.

IT WAS ONLY three winters ago that planning a private, unguided overnight trip into Yellowstone (like my three friends and I have done) became possible 102

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for visitors who weren’t the most intrepid of adventurers. Between 2004 and 2014, it was illegal to snowmobile into Yellowstone on your own. The options were a guided snowmobile or snowcoach trip, or, if you didn’t want a guide, humanpowered means like snowshoes or skis.

Since the only services and lodging (at Old Faithful) are forty-two miles from the end of the plowed road at Yellowstone’s South Gate (only thirty miles if you start at the West Gate) snowshoers and skiers had better be in superhero shape or planning to camp. Also, they can’t afford for anything to go wrong because cell service in the park is nil.

So the return of legal nonguided travel in Yellowstone is enabling: Hundreds of people who would otherwise not be able to experience the park in winter can again do so, their legs straddling a snowmobile. It is in the guise of my job as the environmental reporter for the Jackson Hole News&Guide (the newspaper secured a leftover “noncommercially guided” permit, required for snowmobile adventures) that we are able to snowmobile in sans guide.

Heading north from Flagg Ranch, the solitude is striking and colors the whole experience: Without a doubt, it’s the lack of anyone around that triggers

my urge to pull over at Lewis Falls. Save for a single guided group peering through the windows of a snowcoach, we see no one for over an hour on the ride in. And until early afternoon, when we approach Old Faithful, we pass no snowmobilers or snowcoaches with any regularity. Yellowstone, impossibly, feels like it is all ours.

There’s plenty of space to get the hang of driving our Ski-Doo Grand Touring Sport 600s. Snowmobiling turns out to be simple, especially because snowmobiling in Yellowstone is restricted to groomed trails and parking lots, and there’s a park-wide 35 mph

speed limit. My friends and I have only been on snow machines a few times.

Still, accelerating, braking, and staying on the wide, groomed road surface are intuitive.

IN THE LATE afternoon, as the skies dim (winter days in Yellowstone are short), an adequate command of my snowmobile, specifically knowing how to go backwards, comes in handy. As we head for our cabins at Old Faithful, an ornery cow bison blocks the entrance road. My attempt to pass her, which requires me to get unnervingly close, results only in an annoyed look and low-

ered head (from her), and for me, a heightened heart rate. Since she shows no signs of moving—and a warm bed, cold beer, and dinner sound good—I employ the reverse button. We find a seldom-used alternative entrance to the Frontier Cabins at Old Faithful, which are just behind the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Together, they make up the park’s lone interior winter lodging options.

The next morning, we squeeze in an Old Faithful viewing before tackling the 140(ish)-mile route we’ve planned. It’s a long day of riding, but we prefer that option to merely retracing what we rode yesterday. Instead of heading directly WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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An adult bison is taller and heavier than a snowmobile.

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back to the South Gate from Old Faithful, we opt to go north toward Madison, then to Norris, Canyon, Fishing Bridge, and West Thumb on the inner park road before arriving back at our cars at the park’s South Gate.

It starts off with the trip’s first bonechilling cold, courtesy of a frigid fog socking in the Firehole River Valley.

Likely caused by hot water wisping off the valley’s thermal pools and geysers in the bitter morning air, the fog freezes onto our helmet shields, which makes visibility tough. We have to keep the plastic shields down, though; at 35 mph, any exposed skin gets very cold very quickly. South of Madison Junction, we finally punch through the fog and into sunshine. The sun doesn’t disappear for the rest of the ride.

As the miles tick by, I yearn to explore off the trail, or at least move my legs more than the length of a boardwalk. But without the equipment to do so—cross-country skis or snowshoes— it’s a tough itch to scratch. The day before, trying to walk up to a ridge above Grand Prismatic Spring, we quickly sank in the snow, first to our thighs, then our waists. We realized quickly it could take hours to gain the ridge and eventually gave up. Maybe the ultimate way to explore Yellowstone in winter is a combination of new and old—snowmobile in, and then use skis or snowshoes for side trips. A walk to inspect a distant bison carcass in the Hayden Valley and a ski to the Lone Star Geyser are on my short list of side trips. Next time. JH

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NUTS & BOLTS DAILY DURING THE park’s winter season, one permit (for a group of up to five snowmobiles) is available from each of Yellowstone’s four main entrances, at the west, the south, the east, and the north. Permits are distributed via a lottery that accepts applications from September 1 until September 30. Leftover permits (like the one I got) are available firstcome, first-served starting November 3 (and also throughout the winter, as trips get canceled).

Entering the lottery is $6, and, if awarded a permit, it’s an additional $40 permit cost plus a $25-per-snowmobile entrance fee. Visit recreation. gov for information. Best available technology sleds can be found at Leisure Sports, at 1075 US-89. Book a winter stay at Old Faithful at yellowstonenationalparklodges.com.

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Take a Walk on the Wild Side No experience is necessary to go snowshoeing, and there are free ranger-guided snowshoe treks in Grand Teton National Park.

BY MAGGIE DOMOWITZ • PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

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GTNP’s World War II-era ash and rawhide snowshoes predate the park’s modern boundaries.

A visitor from Virginia tests a pair of Grand Teton National Park’s circa-World War II snowshoes, which the general public can use when going on a ranger-guided snowshoe tour.

FOUR COLLEGE FRIENDS visited me here in the middle of my second winter. Since these friends were important to me, and because Jackson had also become very important to me, I wanted the former to get a sense of the latter. I loved Jackson Hole for many reasons, and I decided the most easily experienced of these was Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). But I didn’t want to merely drive the few roads in the park that are open in the winter—I wanted to get my college friends into the park’s wilds. I was in Jackson Hole for all of two weeks when I realized that, as astonishingly beautiful as the Tetons were from afar, they were utterly magical when you took the time and energy to get into them, even if only for a couple of hours and miles.

I didn’t make it easy on my friends, though. While snowshoeing is generally believed to be the simplest way to explore snowy landscapes, at the time I was avidly antisnowshoe. (I can’t remember why, but perhaps it was because snowshoeing doesn’t take any specialized skill, and I was spending so much time and energy learning how to ski without making much progress.)

Equal to my disdain for snowshoes was my cluelessness about travel in or over snow. I thought we could just hike up the summer trail from the Granite Canyon parking lot at the south end of the Moose-Wilson Road. I knew there would be snow on the trail, but thought it’d simply be a minor inconvenience. It turned out I was majorly mistaken.

Within five minutes of setting out from the car we sunk into the snowpack with each step. And we sunk in deep. On a good step, we’d sink in only to our knees. A bad step would capture us crotch-deep and make it impossible to extricate ourselves without assistance from the rest of the group. Still, I didn’t admit my plan was a poor one and allow us to return to the car until all five of us got trapped in a thigh-deep hole of WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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No experience is necessary to do current boundaries were estabour own making. lished in 1950). GTNP’s snowshoes Tony took a bad step first. Amy one of the three weekly rangerguided snowshoe tours in GTNP. were made for World War II solwent to his aid, and ended up stuck diers; the oldest pair is from 1942. herself. The same thing happened While I marveled at the craftsmanship behind to Jer, and then Alison, and, finally, me. While it took less than five minutes to get into this predicament, it the rawhide laces running the length of the wood took more than twenty minutes to get out of it. frame, our ranger/guide gave the group a short hisWhen we got back to the car, we were all soaked, tory lesson, no part of which (beyond WWII itself) had been touched upon in my AP U.S. History class. cold, and tired.

During the war, the U.S. government commisDEFEATED, I WAS ready to consider other options, sioned four companies to make snowshoes for use even snowshoeing. A local friend mentioning that by 10th Mountain Division soldiers: Lund, American Grand Teton National Park rangers did free guided Fork and Hoe Co., Snocraft, and Bentley-Wilson. snowshoe tours, snowshoes included, sealed the GTNP has snowshoes made by three of these four.

(Unrepresented in its collection is Bentley-Wilson.) deal. I made reservations for us for the next day.

As antisnowshoeing as I was, I certainly didn’t Because the government had strict design specificaexpect to be so taken with GTNP’s snowshoes them- tions, it’s difficult to tell snowshoes from these manselves. Our tour group hadn’t even left the Bradley- ufacturers apart. But it’s not at all difficult to tell the Taggart Lakes parking lot and I was already pro- snowshoes in this collection apart from other snowclaiming it one of the coolest experiences ever. The shoes. A couple of the members of our group of park’s snowshoe fleet, which includes about forty fourteen brought their own modern snowshoes. pairs, is not made up of normal snowshoes. GTNP’s Next to the antique ones, they looked foolish and insnowshoes are older than the park itself (at least elegant.

GTNP’s snowshoes are pieces of art. It is possible they’re older than the park as it exists today—the 108

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another national park has such a collection, but, if they do, it’s certain they don’t let visitors use them. These snowshoes are made of ash, the same wood Louisville Slugger traditionally used to make its baseball bats. Real rawhide is strung across the frame. The year each pair was manufactured is stamped on its tail. They are more than three feet long, but are narrow and have rockered tips.

The ranger explained this shape makes them ideal for walking in powder, which was the next lesson.

Anyone who can walk can snowshoe, but, especially with snowshoes this big, you have to modify your walking. I doubled the usual distance between my feet and didn’t have any problems.

For the next two hours, we tromped around the open flats and pine forests near the parking lot. We learned about how local wildlife adapted to survive winter. We saw the tracks of red squirrels and coyotes. We stopped chattering, listened, and heard nothing but silence.

Finally, we dug a snowpit. As we dug, the ranger, while starting to take his snowshoes off, asked if anyone had an idea of how deep the snow was. Before we could tell him that we had firsthand knowledge that it was very deep and that he could save himself the exertion of a demonstration, he stepped out of his snowshoes and into the snow. And everything below his waist disappeared. “Snowshoes are our way of adapting to move around on snow,” the ranger said. Five minutes later, when we arrived back at the car dry, warm, and invigorated, I was happy to have evolved. JH

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est. 1987

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NUTS & BOLTS THE RANGER-LED snowshoe tours in Grand Teton National Park are held at 1:30 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday between mid-December and early March (the end of the season is weather-dependent).

Tours start at the Bradley-Taggart Lakes trailhead, cover about one mile, and last for about two hours.

Reservations are required and can be made by calling 307/739-3399. At the time you make a reservation, a ranger will talk to you about what to bring. These tours are free, but a $5 donation, which goes to the upkeep of the historic snowshoes, is suggested. Both the Bradley-Taggart Lakes trailhead and the Granite Canyon trailhead are great spots to go snowshoeing on your own if you can’t do a ranger-guided tour. nps.gov/grte

www.whitechapel-ltd.com - 1135 Maple Way, Jackson, WY Use code ‘JHMAG’ at checkout for 10% off WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Best of

JH

body & soul

Cozy Contentment The Danish concept of hygge is perfectly at home in Jackson Hole.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW • PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

The centerpiece of hygge is a welcoming fire warming up your woolly socks and slippers.

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FOR THOSE HARDY souls who weathered some or all of our epic winter of 2017—Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) closed for five days?!—there were some silver linings on those storm clouds. Despite knee-deep fresh pow every forty-five minutes, with JHMR closed and avalanche conditions rated high, locals and visitors alike found themselves forced to rest and nest. The demands of school, work, errands, and chores faded, if just for a day or two, and we got our hygge on like a village of Lego designers, even if we didn’t know the word for it, or, if we did, didn’t know how to pronounce it (FYI, it’s HOO-gah).

Hygge, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being [regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture].” It is a noun that is also used as a verb.

Hyggelig is the adjective. Compound word combinations can elevate even your saggy-bottomed MEIK WIKING DESCRIBES an almost ideal hygge in his book, The Little Book of Hygge: Danish sweatpants into hyggebusker, Danish for that Secrets to Happy Living. It will sound familiar to Jackson locals: “I was spending the weekend cherished pair of comfy pants that you only wear with some friends at an old cabin. The shortest day of the year was brightened by the blanket at home. of snow covering the surrounding landscape. … We were all tired after hiking and were half And the idea of hygge is getting huge. The asleep, sitting in a semicircle around the fireplace in the cabin, wearing big sweaters and word was on the Oxford Dictionaries 2016 Word woolen socks. The only sounds you could hear were the stew boiling, the sparks from the of the Year shortlist. fireplace, and someone having a sip of mulled wine.” The only thing missing was a raging Hygge is more loving and cuddly than “chillstorm. ing out,” and you can’t buy it from the Vermont Hygge is not a lifestyle aesthetic that can be purchased, but there are many traditional Country Store catalog. Meik Wiking, founder of accoutrements you can buy to complement the love and company of friends and family. Fires, a Danish think tank called The Happiness candles, big sweaters and socks, wine, and cake are hygge standards. Here’s our guide to taking some Jackson Hole hygge home with you: Research Institute, describes hygge as “an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about • Unscented candles (never scented!), like the beeswax candles from Market at Vertical things. It is about being with the people we love.

Harvest, are key. 155 W. Simpson Ave., from $18 A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe, that we are shielded from the world, and allow our• Start a fire with long matchsticks from Pearl Street Market. 40 W. Pearl Ave., $8 selves to let our guard down.” Widely regarded as the happiest people across the globe, Danes • Put on big woolly socks from Skinny Skis and a soft flannel shirt from Stio. Socks at 65 W. know their happiness like Argentinians know a Deloney Ave., from $5; Stio shirts at 10 E. Broadway, from $99 good steak.

Jackson is a naturally hygge place. Our small• Wrap yourself in a Big Yarn blanket from Mountain Dandy. 125 N. Cache St., from $115 town commitment to community and seasonal • Throw down a shaggy sheepskin rug from Overland Sheepskin Co. 86 E. Broadway, from $99 demands for cozying up with a hot drink mean a wealth of hygge spots. Here are four very differ• Find a perfect wine to mull from Bin22. 200 W. Broadway, from $8 ent hyggelig corners:

TAKE HYGGE HOME

NORDIC CABIN AT TRAIL CREEK RANCH

• Serve lots of pretty cakes from Jackson Whole Grocer. 1155 US-89, whole cakes from $17 • Serve steaming cups of coffee in Danish painted cups from Picnic. 1110 Maple Way, Suite

Perhaps the most authentically hygge place in B, from $30 the valley, Trail Creek Ranch is a protected 270acre ranch in Wilson, largely under conservation easement, and is also the training ground for the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club’s (JHSC) Nordic team. The Nordic trails, which are groomed daily during the season, are open to the public, as is the welcoming Nordic cabin at the ranch’s entrance at the Old Pass Road. Inside, you’ll likely find a crackling fire in the cast-iron stove, a former Olympian or two in woolly Fair Isle sweaters waxing skis and telling bad jokes, and JHSC Nordic Program Director Ben Morley sipping green tea at his desk. If Ben is out chasing moose, you can leave the daily fee in the wooden box by the door (so hyggelig). jhnordic.com KNIT ON PEARL Knit on Pearl is a quiet oasis in downtown Jackson for every kind of knitter, from beginners with three thumbs to artisans crafting wares for art

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Evenings are often set aside as shows. This knitting and needle- Left: Light some unscented—never scented— beeswax candles to set the mood. open mic nights for ukulelearts supply store serves as a soothstrumming locals, and the walls ing gathering place to ask ques- Right: Put on a well-worn flannel. Few things are display work from up-and-comtions of one of the expert employ- as hygge as flannel shirts. ing area artists. If you must have ees, admire finished projects for your breakfast meetings there, sale, take classes or private lessons, and also to sit and knit. Most afternoons will find two or keep it down! cowboycoffee.com three knitters sitting in the comfy armchairs in jovial conversation over the gentle click-clack of their needles. Pick ANVIL HOTEL up a Loopy Mango big loop hat kit to make an adorable chunky pom-pom hat, which is totally doable in about an With a recent change in ownership and a complete décor hour. “Owner and calming influence” Margaret Brady is refresh, the Anvil’s stylishly low-key vibe is warm and welcoming, and just a couple blocks from the Town Square. there to help. knitonpearl.com Even if you are not staying in one of its “Alpine modern” guestrooms, stop by the inviting lobby, which doubles as a COWBOY COFFEE lounge space/general store, to hygge by the wood stove Few places are more hygge than the perfect coffee shop. with a steaming cup of coffee. The artfully curated store Meet Cowboy Coffee, the kind of unassuming coffee features perfect shearling slippers, big wool blankets, and shop local coffee aficionados would like to keep a secret. floppy mittens alongside light outing gear that manages to Cowboy Coffee roasts its own beans, and its baristas are be sleek and rugged at once. The Anvil also offers or can knowledgeable without the snark. Modestly tucked away help facilitate authentic outdoorsy experiences, like a wildnear the northwest corner of the Town Square, Cowboy life tour with a biologist or a snowshoe tour of the park.

Coffee serves outstanding coffee and espresso drinks in Don’t worry—you can wear your hyggebusker for board the most unpretentious, sit-for-hours kind of comfort. games and wine in the lobby afterwards. anvilhotel.com JH 112

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Best of

JH

nightlife

Under the

Lights

Who says après-ski can’t include more skiing?

SEAN BECKETT

BY DINA MISHEV

THERE WAS A time when I thought the only kind of skiing was night skiing. Embarrassingly, this “time” lasted a full decade. In my defense, this decade coincided with my tween and teen years, which were spent living in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs and taking occasional trips with my Camp Fire troop to “resorts” with vertical drops of about 800 feet.

By the time I moved to Jackson at age twenty-one, I knew most skiing happened during daylight hours. And I wasn’t happy about it. I had come to Jackson Hole to ski and didn’t want ski days to stop at 4 p.m. I was particularly sensitive to these “short” ski days because I was the world’s worst ski bum: I had an 8-to-5 Monday through Friday office job, which meant I had only two ski days a week.

And then one evening I noticed a high-wattage glow illumi- Sunset in Jackson Hole nating the lower slopes of Snow doesn’t mean the lifts King Mountain. The day after this stop spinning.

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revelation, I added a Snow King season pass to my collection, which, since it included only one other pass—a Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) Weekend Warrior—wasn’t actually much of a collection. For the rest of that season, every Saturday and Sunday I’d ski until the last lift at JHMR closed.

Then I’d come into town and ski at Snow King for as long as my quads lasted. This usually wasn’t as long as I would have liked. Still, I was in heaven. Since Snow King’s lights were on most weekday evenings, too, I started skiing there after work. I got more days in at the King that year than at JHMR. It’s been twenty years since my first Jackson ski season. I no longer have a weekday office job. Working for myself, I set my own hours. Still, every season I get a Snow King season pass in addition to a JHMR pass; I do this specifically for the King’s night skiing. I no longer have to go night skiing, but find that I want to.

I’ll take actual skiing over après-skiing any day of the week (at least for as long as my quads can stand it).

Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club members rely on Snow King’s illuminated slopes for much of their after-school training.

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SKIING UNDER THE brilliance of lights so bright they illuminate the several blocks of town nearest Snow King’s base area has a completely different vibe than skiing when the sun is out. The biggest difference is crowds. The night skiing I did on the East Coast as a Camp Fire Girl was crowded; my greatest standout memory from these adventures is of waiting in lift lines.

Another difference is the cold.

While Snow King’s nighttime lift lines are benign—nonexistent, really— often the temperature is not. I have been colder than when night skiing on Snow King, but not too often. I’ll admit this was my own fault, though. The few times I spent my lift rides shivering and my lips turning blue, I had dressed for day skiing, prioritizing cuteness over comfort. That lesson learned, today it’s not unusual for me to wear two puffy jackets on top of my warmest base layer and a fleece midlayer, down mittens, and, beneath my helmet, a thick wool hat. The first time I dressed this aggressively, it

BRANDON ULP

felt bulky, but now it feels more like a hug and Evening lift access at Snow lingo translator: A “grom” is a young skier, reinforces the sense of coziness I get from night King, where chairs spin boarder, or surfer. It’s not unusual for Jackson until 7 p.m., starts at $25. skiing. Swaddled in so many layers, combined Early morning or late-night groms to be ripping from the top of the JHMR with often being the only skier on a run, which skiing is accessible by tram by age five and skiing Corbet’s Couloir for happens especially the last hour the King’s lifts obtaining an uphill travel the first time the next year.) are open, night skiing is peaceful and meditative pass through the resort.

Two-time Olympian Resi Stiegler and in ways I never feel when carving turns in dayOlympic hopeful Breezy Johnson are just two of light. Night skiing is not a secret—you can see Snow King’s the JHSC’s success stories. Fifteen years ago, Stiegler was the lights from miles in most every direction—but it feels like it.

JHSC racer with tiger ears on her helmet. (And yes, she continued to wear them when she graduated to World Cup and SNOW KING HASN’T always had night skiing. The resort’s Olympic races.) Maybe the young woman who added flair to her current general manager, Ryan Stanley, isn’t exactly sure when JHSC uniform with ribbons and a tutu, and who flew past you it started but says, “I think it was in the late eighties. At the lat- on Old Man’s Flats, is a future Olympian or World Cup racer. est it was 1994. I’ve got a set of plans sitting around dated to As fast as these kids freeski, you should check them out 1994 for some lighting.” Lights were installed not with the practicing in the gates, which you can easily do. Coaches set up main purpose of selling more lift tickets to the general public, the JHSC training courses on the skier’s left side of the Lower but to give local junior ski racers a place to train. And that re- Elk run. Take a break from your skiing and stop alongside the mains the case today. “Night skiing is critical for the Jackson course to watch as the racers zoom past. There’s no “whoosh” Hole Ski & Snowboard Club (JHSC),” Stanley says. “Pretty from the younger racers, but there is when the older racers— much all their athletes train under the lights. If there weren’t high schoolers—fly past. lights, they couldn’t train after school.”

The majority of Snow King’s night skiing terrain is rated as If you hit the early side of the King’s night skiing, say be- intermediate. If you’re looking for the easiest of these runs, tween 4 and 5:30 p.m., and stick head for the Rafferty lift instead to the Cougar lift, it’s hard to of Cougar. (These, along with a NUTS & BOLTS miss the JHSC athletes zipping short Magic Carpet lift for realaround. When they’re not runly young kids, are the only lifts ning gates, groups of these SNOW KING IS open for night skiing from 4 to 7 p.m. open at night.) A benefit of skiMonday through Saturday from December 2 until March groms—only slightly less feral ing Rafferty is that it puts you 25. Lift tickets are $30 for adults and $25 for juniors than a pack of wolves—zip in close proximity to Haydens (ages 6 to 14) and seniors (64 and older). The Magic Carpet Family around jibbing off the smallest Post, which, when you’ve had Area is also open for night skiing, and a pass for the whole family features, launching off lips, and enough skiing and are ready for to use this beginner area for young children is $10. 307/734-3194; generally skiing better and fastaprès, has food and drinks waitsnowkingmountain.com er than you ever will. (Local ing. JH WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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dining

New Kids on the Block Our take on the valley’s newest restaurants.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

DINING ON TOWN SQUARE

BRADLY J. BONER

Joshua Governale and Fred Peightal, owners of Cafe Genevieve, opened Orsetto Italian Bar and Eatery, shown, last winter.

LOCALS GREET NEW restaurants in mountain towns such as Jackson Hole like new recruits to a football team.

Everybody cheers, excited by the prospect of fresh talent, hopeful and optimistic for touchdowns and field goals.

(To be clear, that exhausted all my knowledge of football.) Jokes aside about newbies to the field, the restaurant business in the valley is not for the hob-

byist restaurateur with an ego to feed.

Extreme seasonality, sky-high rents, and a constantly shifting workforce make for an unforgiving environment for the hospitality trade—all the more reason locals are deeply grateful and supportive of new ventures.

Jackson saw a flurry of openings in the past twelve months (read about five of our favorites on the following pages), and, not surprisingly, established owners with track records were behind many of them.

While not locally owned, Glorietta Trattoria is backed by a team of seasoned hotel, restaurant, design, and retail talent from around the country. One gets the sense that successfully running one yearround restaurant here is an all-consuming, Herculean task, much less opening a second. Fine Dining Restaurant Group and Blue Collar Restaurant Group, both founded by local entrepreneurs, have defied market vagaries and continue to thrive through a careful balance of expertbut-approachable management, dependable consistency, and invigorating change.

The owners of local favorite Cafe Genevieve opened Orsetto Italian Bar and Eatery last year, offering ItalianAmerican comfort food in a cozy setting.

Managing partner Fred Peightal explains the straightforward appeal of the venture: “We were interested in the space and its proximity to the Town Square and parking. The opportunity to move into the space came up, and we jumped at the chance to totally redesign [it].”

Despite all the work and risk, for restaurant owners passionate about their trade, it sometimes comes down to, “Why not?”

Asked if he’d open a third restaurant anytime soon, Peightal strikes a typical entrepreneurial tone: “I don’t think a third is going to happen anytime soon, but never say never.”

DINING NIGHTLY 161 N Center Street | 307-203-2664 OR SETTOJH.C OM

B R E A K FA ST, L U N C H A N D D I NNE R

135 E Broadway | 307-732-1910 G ENEV IEV EJH.C OM

INQUIRE FOR MENU AND AVAILABILITY 307-690-7878 GENEVIEVECATERINGJH.COM

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ASHLEY COOPER

GLORIETTA TRATTORIA

Christian Bustamante and Troy Furuta get to work in the kitchen at Glorietta Trattoria, one of two Italian restaurants recently opened in Jackson.

RELAX

W E ’ V E GO T YOU C OV ER ED 20 YEARS STRONG

Ren d e zvo u s Mo u n tai n Re n t al s ha s b e e n th e p re f e r re d We s t b an k ren t al m an ag e m e n t c o m p an y f o r t h e p as t 2 0 ye ar s .

Now ac c e p t i n g n e w p ro p e r ti e s .

O W N E R O P E R A T E D. 1 0 0 % L O C A L. G U E S T F O C U S E D. S U C C E S S D R I V E N. www.rmrentals.com | (307) 739-9050 | 3610 N. Moose Wilson Rd, Wilson, WY 83014

700FT ABOVE THE VALLEY FLOOR the Grill is open daily and specializes in local, sustainable ranch meats and seasonal farm-to-table produce.

+1 307 734 4878 1535 NE butte road, jackson 118

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

Glorietta occupies the former Nani’s space, a decades-old stalwart of simple Italian fare, but make no mistake, the space and cuisine have been completely transformed along with its partner hotel, The Anvil. A central bar commands the open, hearth-warmed dining space and creates a convivial, unpretentious atmosphere. Wood-fired oven techniques inform much of the rustic Italian menu. A sizzling cast-iron skillet of cauliflower roasted with lemon, sea salt, mint, and almonds sets the tone for hearty pasta and meat courses to follow. The roasted half or whole rabbit often sells out, though the duck would be a worthy stand-in. Try the grilled wild mushrooms, satisfyingly salty and earthy, to share, and definitely order a plate of the excellent house-made giardiniera for refreshing bites of marinated cauliflower, bell peppers, carrots, and celery to cleanse your palate now awash with umami. Glorietta is the kind of place where you can drop in at the bar for drinks along with a bite or two. The specialty cocktail menu, curated by the folks behind New York’s Death and Co., is almost as fun to read as imbibe. Lighter spritzers share space with darker, moody concoctions like the “Sticks and Stones,” a heavyweight made with Drambuie and Scotch. The creative, approachable wine list spans across all regions, with an expected Italian predominance—and is delightfully reasonable in pricing—as well as the added benefit that all wines are available for purchase to go.

ORSETTO ITALIAN BAR AND EATERY Orsetto, from the owners of Cafe Genevieve and Genevieve Catering, brings a welcome panache to the corner of Center and Deloney Streets, set back half a block from Town Square. Its dapper bear welcomes diners for homey, classic Italian-American fare. “We knew we wanted to do an Italian restaurant, because it’s the kind of food you want to eat when it’s winter for nine months,” explains the aforementioned Peightal.

Orsetto is the kind of Italian food most of us grew up with—hearty bolognese sauces, eggplant parmesan, and veal marsala—but refined for a sophisticated, grown-up audience. The bruschetta are generously portioned and perfect to

You’re a Stranger Here But Once.

BRADLY J. BONER

Contemporary Italian Cuisine Wood-Fired Grill Handcrafted Cocktails Private Dining

The popular Victor, Idaho, eatery Big Hole BBQ opened a location in Jackson on Pearl Avenue across from Jackson Hole Twin Cinema.

share before a more substantial pasta or secondi course. Order the chicken liver bruschetta for the table, a Tuscan classic, laced with balsamic shallots. Follow it with the little gem Caesar salad, briny with fresh anchovies and a little heat in its Calabrian chili dressing. Rigatoni with vodka sauce and the chicken cacciatore would make fine second and third courses, all accompanied by a fun all-Italian wine list. The wines offered by the glass are scattered across varietals and price, encouraging course pairings and some reasonable splurging. Treat yourself, as the kids say, to a glass of the Guidalberto Tenuta San Guido with the Steak Diane.

MOE’S ORIGINAL BAR B QUE Reading the backstory on Moe’s BBQ makes you want to grab the three founders and give them all a bear hug and a high five. They learned to smoke meats while undergraduates at the University of Alabama under the tutelage of Tuscaloosa barbecue legend Moses Day. (By the way, that would be enough information for a lot of Southern folk to drop this magazine and immediately drive over to Moe’s.)

Jeff Kennedy, Ben Gilbert, and Mike Fernandez started their first barbecue business in Vail, Colorado, with an old diesel barrel sawed in half. Fifteen years

later, with more than fifty locations across the country, they partnered with local Tom Fay of Pinky G’s Pizzeria to bring Moe’s to Jackson Hole. Moe’s fans will recognize most of the Jackson menu, but every Moe’s location is slightly different, allowing each “friendchise” owner to cater to its local market.

Moe’s is decidedly Southern, a “Southern soul food revival,” as its website claims, and the menu is pegged with classics like crispy fried pickles, fried catfish, and banana pudding.

Nevertheless, the smoked meats are the stars here, with pulled pork, smoked turkey, and ribs taking center stage, served with Moe’s signature white barbecue sauce. Regulars swear by Moe’s take-home and catering menus to feed crowds for Super Bowl and ski team dinners. Carry out a couple of whole smoked chickens and a pan of mac and cheese for Moe’s take on après-ski.

BIG HOLE BBQ Devoted fans of Big Hole’s original location in Victor, Idaho, no longer have to find excuses to drive over Teton Pass for Nick and Lindsey Jacob’s homegrown barbecue. They opened a second location in Jackson, and it elicited collective elation across the valley. Try the smoked brisket and pulled pork on your first visit, served with Nick’s secret barbecue sauce, but go back for outstanding

(307) 733 3888 242 GLENWOOD S T. J A C K S O N , W Y O MI N G 83001 g lo r ie tta ja c k s o n .c o m

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RYAN DORGAN

Carter Country burgers served on 460 Bread’s brioche buns, or for Big Hole’s surprisingly good tacos. There is a certain genius in smoked brisket tacos topped with tangy slaw and that secret sauce, and also in the cultural mash-up of their loaded fries, blanketed with house-made onions, cheese sauce, jalapenos, brisket, green onions, and barbecue sauce. It’s like a messy love triangle between barbecue, nachos, and poutine.

I even recomChef de Cuisine Chas mend Big Hole to Baki spent a couple vegetarians or of years downtown at wannabe vegetarGather before moving ians who eschew to Palate. typical barbecue fare. Have the shamelessly rich and addictive macaroni and cheese. It’s the perfect foil for the mahi mahi or shrimp tacos, just smoky enough off the grill and topped with slaw and firecracker sauce. There’s no shame in ordering salads at Big Hole, especially the crunchy cabbage salad with honey-sesame dressing. You can order it with brisket on top.

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K I C K BAC K A N D R E L A X AT T H E H I D E O U T

6175 Heck of a Hill Road, Wilson, WY 83014 | 307-733-3233 | www.jacksonholehideout.com 120

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

From the husband-and-wife team behind Gather in downtown Jackson, Palate is a total revision of what was previously the Rising Sage Cafe at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Mostly open for lunch, with occasional wine-centered dinners, the menu is equal parts Jackson Hole rustic and ladies’ luncheon elegant. Redbird chicken wings with chicharron and black pepper glaze share space on the starters section, with smoked trout served with Pommes Anna, sorrels, and caraway cream. A BLT is elevated and redefined with pork belly, tomato jam, caper-lemon aioli, sunflower pesto, and juustoleipa, a Finnish cheese. Try the bison gyro, a Jackson take on the classic Greek lamb sandwich, with whipped feta cheese and zucchini baba ghanoush, and wrapped in Indian fry bread. They used to say beware of restaurants with good views because the food can play a lazy second to the vistas. Not the case at Palate, where the fare can certainly stand on its own and is worth a drive out to the museum just for lunch. Now, whether the art on the walls can compete with the art of our landscape, that can be discussed over lunch with a glass of wine! JH

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING • JHFINEDINING.COM

Distinctive

DINING EXPERIENCES

IN-TOWN

French-American Bistro 380 S. Broadway • Jackson 307-739-1100 • rendezvousbistro.net

Wine and Tapas Bar, Specialty Grocer and Bottle Shop

Modern American Cuisine

200 W. Broadway • Downtown Jackson

307-734-1633 • thekitchenjacksonhole.com

307-739-9463 • bin22jacksonhole.com

155 N. Glenwood • Downtown Jackson

TETON VILLAGE CMYK

C=0 M=22 Y=100 K=89 C=0 M=26 Y=100 K=26

Wine Bar and Small Plate Restaurant

Rustic Italian Fare

3335 W. Village Dr, Hotel Terra • Teton Village

3335 W. Village Dr, Hotel Terra • Teton Village

Locally-Focused Specialty Grocer, Bottle Shop and Grab-and-Go Food

307-739-4225 • enotecajacksonhole.com

307-739-4100 • jhosteria.com

3200 W. McCollister Dr • Teton Village

C=0 M=0 Y=25 K=10

307-200-4666 • bodegajacksonhole.com

Weddings - Rehearsal Dinners Private & Corporate Events

Pub & Eatery Reopening Summer 2018 on Town Square

307-739-4682 • bistrocatering.net

Brewery and Tap Room open now: 1225 Gregory Lane • Jackson

Best of

JH

dining out

RESTAURANT

LOCATION

PHONE

BREAKFAST

LUNCH

DINNER

The Alpenhof Lodge Alpenrose

Teton Village

307-733-3242

$$/$$$

The Hof

Teton Village

307-733-3242

$

$/$$

$$/$$$

Amangani Grill

East Butte

307-734-4877

$$$

$$$ $$$

Branding Iron Grill

Grand Targhee Resort

307-353-2300

$$

$$ $$$

The Bunnery Bakery & Restaurant

Jackson

307-733-5474

$

$

Cafe Genevieve

Jackson

307-732-1910

$

$

$$

FIGS Restaurant & Lounge

Jackson

307-733-1200

$/$$

$$/$$$

$$$

Bin22

Jackson

307-739-9463

$/$$

$/$$

Bodega

Teton Village

307-200-4666

$

$

$/$$

Enoteca

Teton Village

307-739-4225

$/$$

$/$$

$/$$

The Kitchen

Jackson

307-734-1633 $/$$$

Il Villaggio Osteria

Teton Village

307-739-4100

Rendezvous Bistro

Jackson

307-739-1100

$/$$$

Gather

Jackson

307-264-1820

$$

Glorietta Trattoria

Jackson

307-733-3888

Kazumi

Jackson

$$

$$

Kim’s Cafe

Jackson

307-200-6544

$

$

Orsetto Italian Bar and Eatery

Jackson

307-203-2664 $$$

Palate

Jackson

307-201-5208

Snake River Brewing

Jackson

307-739-2337(BEER)

Spur Restaurant & Bar

Teton Village

307-732-6932 $ $$ $$$

Sweet Cheeks Meat

Jackson

307-734-MEAT $ $/$$

Teton Pines Restaurant

Teton Village Road

307-733-1005x1 $$ $$$

Teton Thai

Teton Village

307-733-0022 $$ $$

The Wildwood Room

Victor, Idaho

208-787-2667

Fine Dining Restaurant Group

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$

$$

$

$/$$$

$$$

$$$ $$ $

$$

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art scene

VibrART Explore one of the country’s most vibrant art communities.

JACKSON HOLE HAS one of the most vibrant art scenes in the country. Since the National Center for Arts Research began measuring arts vibrancy in every U.S. county in 2015, we’ve rated in the index’s top 10 for small to medium-size cities. In 2016, Jackson Hole even ranked No. 1, ahead of Glenwood Springs, Colorado; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Breckenridge, Colorado; and Edwards, Colorado. The index, on a per capita basis, measures supply, demand, and public support for arts and culture.

“It is wonderful to see Jackson being nationally recognized,” says Lyndsay McCandless, executive director of the Center of Wonder, a local, collaborative nonprofit that supports programs that invoke a sense of wonder and inspire creativity in participants. “We have painters, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and all kinds of creative thinkers living and creating here. It is the people here in Jackson that help bring us such

RUGILE KALADYTE

BY LILA EDYTHE

More than thirty galleries participate in the Palates and Palettes Gallery Walk, the opening event of the annual Fall Arts Festival each September.

incredible art experiences every day.”

As impressive as it is to receive these top-10 rankings, experiencing the vibrancy behind them is more so. Shari Brownfield, a fine art appraiser and consultant who founded Shari Brownfield Fine Art in 2015 and previously worked in galleries in the U.S. and Canada, says she—and her guests and clients—never fail to be impressed by the amount of art offerings. “I’m not just talking about visual arts,” she says. “But also performing arts, theater, dance, literature, and music.” Brownfield, who is the board chair of the Center of Wonder and on the board of the Art Association of Jackson

Hole, says a problem she had in the recent past was that Jackson had so many art events going on that she couldn’t keep track of them all. “Even the newspapers had difficulties tracking all of the various events,” she says.

This problem has been solved, though. In September 2016, the Center of Wonder launched DailyWonder.org, an online arts calendar that lists and describes every art-related activity happening on any given day. Listings for a recent day ranged from an open ceramics studio at the Art Association of Jackson Hole to Knit Night; the opening reception for Weaving an Adventure: WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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RYAN JONES

Since the Jackson Hole Art Auction

Works by Doris Florig at Teton County was founded in 2006, it has had more galleries. “That art is the history of this Library; an open studio and artist talk at than $80 million in sales and is one of place,” Brownfield says. “The gallery ownTeton Artlab; Tasha and the Goodfellows the country’s pre-eminent auctions for ers that partake in [it] along with the singing at The Silver Dollar Bar; and a per- western and wildlife art.

National Museum of Wildlife Art, they formance of The Unsinkable Molly Brown at take it very seriously and have a great the Jackson Hole Playhouse. These were only about half of the amount of expertise with it.” day’s events.

Galleries selling contemporary works have opened in the last decade, though. And traditional galleries, especially THE HISTORY OF Jackson Hole’s art scene lies in visual arts, Trailside, “have worked hard to offer quality representational and visual arts are its single largest component. Jackson Hole art while also introducing new artists with a more modern has more art galleries per capita than most anywhere else in style,” Leshe says. “Quality is the guiding principle in what we the country. At last count there were thirty galleries; twenty- offer.” eight of these are members of the Jackson Hole Gallery Brownfield thinks the quality of Jackson’s traditional galAssociation. leries is partly responsible for the quality of work in the newer “Many people do not realize what a rich history this valley contemporary galleries. “When contemporary work came to has in terms of attracting artists to paint the dramatic land- Jackson, the galleries that were doing it did it very intentionscapes and the incredible wildlife of this area,” says Maryvonne ally,” she says. “Traditional galleries had set a high standard for Leshe, managing partner of Trailside Galleries, the valley’s old- the quality of art shown here. The contemporary work couldn’t est gallery that has since expanded to a second location in be of a lesser quality.”

Scottsdale, Arizona. Brownfield adds, “This is where [Thomas] Another reason the contemporary scene here is so strong is Moran painted. There is a history that goes along with art in because of the community’s ties to traditional art. “The peothe Rocky Mountain West.” ple—Tayloe [Piggott of Tayloe Piggott Gallery], Lyndsay It was a natural progression from artists coming here to [McCandless], Mariam [Diehl of Diehl Gallery]—bringing in paint the area’s landscapes and wildlife to galleries opening to contemporary art understood that, since it wasn’t something sell the works of these artists and of others painting similar that existed here, they had to present it in the best way so that subjects. When Dick Flood opened Trailside Galleries on the the community would accept it. They understood that if they Town Square in 1963, he actually tried to hide what it was he wanted to integrate it into the art scene and the community, was doing because he knew the community would tell him he they needed to bring the best of the best.” That’s why “you’ll was crazy. Of course, history shows him prescient rather than find work by Salvador Dali, Hunt Slonem, and Jane Rosen insane. here,” says Kiera Wakeman, president of the Jackson Hole For decades, it was this style of traditional art—representa- Gallery Association and sales manager at Diehl Gallery. “Lots tional landscape and wildlife pieces—that dominated Jackson’s of collectors who walk into a gallery here will recognize artists 128

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Andy Warhol’s 1986 series, Cowboys and Indians Suite, was on display at Heather James Fine Art.

COURTESY PHOTO

not art people come up to me at the end and tell me how much they loved it,” says Maggie Davis, the museum’s supervisor of group tours and visitor services.

they’ve seen in New York, Dallas, and Chicago.”

The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) highlights the expansion of the local art scene. Its permanent collection includes more than 4,900 objects, from circa 2500 B.C. Native American birdstones to works by

Thomas Moran, Carl Rungius, Albert Bierstadt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maynard Dixon, Andy Warhol, and Paul Manship.

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary last year, the museum is a must-see for any visitor to the valley, whether they think they’re into art or not. “I often have visitors who came in grumbling that they’re

FOR ITS VIBRANCY, Jackson’s art scene isn’t always obvious. The NMWA, arguably the scene’s heart, is somewhat hidden—two miles north of downtown and tucked into a butte overlooking the National Elk Refuge. You wouldn’t think a building inspired by a sixteenth-century Scottish castle could be missed, but, “We’re the best-kept secret in Jackson,” says Debbie Petersen, chairwoman of the museum’s board of trustees. “Secrets are great, but it’s frustrating. Visitors to this valley have no idea what they’re missing if they don’t understand what we have.” The same can be said of the extent of the valley’s galleries.

In downtown, where the majority of galleries and performance spaces are, “You have to put in a little bit of extra effort,” says Wakeman, who has a master’s degree in arts administration from

Fine Cowboy, Indian and National Park Antiques

255 North Glenwood PO Box 1006 Jackson, WY 83001 p. 307.739.1940 e. info@cayusewa.com www.cayusewa.com

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Diehl Gallery provides shelter for art enthusiasts during a chilly February evening art walk.

the Savannah College of Art and Design.

“In places like Park City, Aspen, and Vail, there might be one long street you can walk and hit most of everything. Here, we have a lot of art spaces hidden away.”

Kind of. Diehl Gallery is on Broadway Avenue, one of the two main streets in downtown, but two blocks west of the Town Square. “That one extra block

makes such a difference,” Wakeman says.

“So many people stop at The Wort. The ones that walk just a little further are always pleasantly surprised.”

Wakeman also mentions Tayloe Piggott Gallery, RARE, and Heather James Fine Art as galleries that require “just a little extra effort.” Tayloe Piggott (who represents artists including Jane

Rosen and Nicola Hicks) is located on Glenwood Street on the west side of the Square. RARE (representing Michael Swearngin and Shonto Begay, among others) is on the Square’s southeast corner, but up a flight of stairs. Heather James (which sells pieces by artists from Monet to Ai Weiwei, Andy Warhol, and Edward S. Curtis) is one block north of the Square on Center Street. None of these are more than a five-minute walk from the Town Square. “I think the effort of finding these galleries makes them that much richer,” Wakeman says.

Finding them is the hardest part.

“We get told a lot about how welcoming galleries here are,” says Sarah Fischel, gallery manager at Heather James Fine Art. “In urban art scenes, I think it is more usual for people to be standoffish.

Anyone who walks in here, everyone is welcome. Everyone working in a gallery is there because they love art, so if we can talk to someone for a few minutes about a piece they like, why wouldn’t we?” JH

VISIT THE WORLD’S PREMIER

John Fery (American, born Austria, 1859 – 1934), Jackson Lake and the Tetons—detail, c. 1900. Oil on canvas. 18 x 30 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Inspiring Appreciation Of Humanity’s Relationship With Nature L o c a t e d 2 . 5 m i l e s f r o m t h e To w n o f J a c k s o n .

www. Wi l d l i feAr t. o r g | 2820 Run g ius Roa d , Ja ck son , Wyomin g 130

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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 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 arts-related classes and events.

NATIVE JACKSON HOLE

Native has been serving clients in Jackson Hole since 1983. We feature contemporary, museum quality fine artwork, bronzes, and artisan, precious, and semi-precious jewelry. We specialize in local landscapes, wildlife, Western and one-of-a-kind Native American art. Whether you are searching for a specialty item such as a bull skull intricately adorned with historic buffalo pennies or a hand-crafted piece of unique, fine jewelry, our curated selection and decades of experience will to connect you to Jackson Hole’s rich living history.

10 West Broadway (800) 726-1803 nativejh.com

TRAILSIDE GALLERIES

Since 1963, Trailside Galleries has been regarded as one of the preeminent dealers in American representational art, specializing in a rich and varied collection of works by the leading western, wildlife, figurative, impressionist, and landscape artists in the country. The artist roster includes award-winning members of the Cowboy Artists of America, The National Academy of Design, the Society of Animal Artists, Plein-Air Painters of America, the National Sculpture Society, and Oil Painters of America among other noted organizations.

130 East Broadway (307) 733-3186 trailsidegalleries.com

RARE GALLERY OF JACKSON HOLE

RARE Gallery, a collector’s destination! At 6,100 square feet, one of Jackson Hole’s largest and most acclaimed galleries, we represent nationally and internationally collected artists.

Featuring museum exhibited artists in mediums of painting, sculpture, photography, glass, 3 dimensional art, and designer jewelry. RARE Gallery was named Mountain Living Magazine “Hot Shop in Jackson Hole.” Our Curator is available for private gallery or in home consultations.

60 East Broadway (307) 733-8726 raregalleryjacksonhole.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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ALTAMIRA FINE ART

Altamira Fine Art specializes in the exhibition and sale of Western Contemporary artwork, offering an active exhibition schedule year round between the two gallery locations in Jackson, Wyoming and Scottsdale, Arizona. The gallery works with estate collections and offers expertise with auctions, conservation and other curatorial concerns.

Altamira is a wonderful resource for design firms and corporate collections. The gallery also buys and consigns quality artwork—currently seeking work from Fritz Scholder, Ed Mell, Maynard Dixon, Taos Society artists, Santa Fe Art Colony and others. Contact the gallery for details.

Fighting Bear Antiques has been a fixture in Jackson since opening in 1981. Owner, Terry Winchell penned a book on Thomas Molesworth in 2004 and is the recognized authority on the subject. Located at 375 South Cache since 2002, they specialize in Molesworth, Stickley, and Art & Crafts furniture, Native American bead work, pottery and textiles, plus deceased Western and Wildlife art. Open 9:00am – 6:00 pm Monday through Saturday, and Sundays by appointment.

172 Center Street (307) 739-4700 altamiraart.com

375 South Cache Street (307) 733-2669 fightingbear.com

HINES GOLDSMITHS

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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART

Jackson’s original Fine Jewelry Store and exclusive designers of the Teton Jewelry Collection since 1970. Our collection features Teton pendants, charms, rings and earrings ranging in size and price range with our stunning Diamond pave and Gemstone inlay pieces being the highlight. In our Jackson studio we also handcraft the Wyoming Bucking Bronco jewelry and extraordinary Elk Ivory jewelry. We have created Wyoming’s largest selection of unique gold and silver charms indicative of the area.

Our entire collection is also available in Sterling Silver. We also specialize in a dazzling selection of hand etched crystal and barware.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art, founded in 1987, is a world-class art museum holding more than 5,000 artworks representing wild animals from around the world. Featuring work by prominent artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Robert Kuhn, John James Audubon, and Carl Rungius, the Museum’s unsurpassed permanent collection chronicles the history of wildlife art, from 2500 B.C. to the present.

Boasting a museum shop, interactive children’s gallery, restaurant, and outdoor sculpture trail, the Museum is only two-and-a-half miles north of Jackson Town Square.

80 Center Street (307) 733-5599 hinesgold.com

2820 Rungius Road (307) 733-5771 wildlifeart.org

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

CRAZY HORSE JEWELRY

Crazy Horse Jewelry opened in 1978 and has the largest collection of authentic, handmade Native American Indian jewelry and crafts in Jackson Hole. Visit our store in Gaslight Alley to explore intricate sterling and precious stone jewelry, home wares, rugs, authentic Zuni Fetishes, storytellers, baskets, pottery and spectacular beadwork. Our artists from Zuni, Navajo, Hopi and Santo Domingo peoples handcraft each item we carry, from contemporary to historical.

125 North Cache (307) 733-4028 crazyhorsejewelry.com

CAYUSE WESTERN AMERICANA

Cayuse Western Americana offers a carefully curated selection of antique Native American, Cowboy, and National Park art and handwork.

In addition, the gallery houses an incredible selection of antique Navajo and Zuni turquoise, bits, spurs, saddles, chaps and vintage silver and gold buckles.

255 North Glenwood (307) 739-1940 cayusewa.com

WEST LIVES ON TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES

C ELEB R AT I N G 5 5 Y E A R S

Since 1998 clients have been discovering an extraordinary collection of original western art at the WEST LIVES ON GALLERIES. 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 national and regional artists. Our knowledgeable staff will work with you to locate that special piece for your home or office.

55 & 75 North Glenwood (307) 734-2888 westliveson.com

THE LEGACY GALLERY

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 celebrate its 29th Anniversary and has two other locations in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bozeman, Montana.

75 North Cache (307) 733-2353 legacygallery.com

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: Jenness Cortez Tools of the Trade Michael Godfrey A Fall of Light Ezra Tucker I'm Just Sunning

130 East Broadway 307 733-3186 : trailsidegalleries.com info@trailsidegalleries.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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as the hole deepens

World Peace Through Totality

BY TIM SANDLIN ILLUSTRATIONS BY BIRGITTA SIF

LIFE IN JACKSON Hole last summer was dominated by the upcoming eclipse. Every conversation for months centered on the run-up—not so much to the eclipse itself as the prediction that a Woodstock-size horde would descend on the valley, consuming our food, water, gasoline, parking spaces, and toilet paper, stripping our town the way Mormon crickets strip a field of sugar beets.

Rumors ran rampant. I heard urban motorcycle gangs would bathe in the Home Ranch sinks, geriatrics in Winnebagos would squat on every inch of asphalt, wolves and badgers would go insane and attack 134

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

females having their time of month, bats would go blind and fly into satellite dishes, cellphones would only work in Russian, Jesus would rise from Flat Creek.

Anyone with a screen and a squeegee designed a hole-in-the-middle T-shirt. Eclipse beer, wine, bagels, shot glasses, flower arrangements, disposable diapers, TED talks—we sold them all. Every Porta-Potty in the Intermountain West was hauled to the Hole.

While most of us recall August 21, 2017, as the miracle of the moon swallowing the sun, park employees call it the Day of the Great Outhouse Shortage.

My friend Roger Ramsey sold 15,000 pairs of eclipse glasses. Then when the market saturated, he jumped on social media to start the rumor of counterfeit glasses that would make you blind, and he sold another 5,000 pairs to people who already owned them.

The weirdest rumor—besides two weddings, a mass L.A. funeral home spreading ashes, and an outdoor cesarean during totality—was that the Mount Moran Harmonic Convergence Club (MMHCC) planned to sacrifice barnyard birds in the belief that it would bring nine nuns who died in a plane crash on Mount Moran in 1950 back to life. As the club slit the domestic fowl’s throats, the nuns would glissade down Skillet Glacier.

Almost immediately, a second rumor kicked in that a group known as Chickens Matter would kidnap the sacrificees and turn them loose in the Gros Ventre Wilderness, where they would form the Clan of the Chicken.

Somehow Roger discovered MMHCC was camped with their cages of grain-fed chickens in the Atherton Creek Campground. On the morning of the eclipse we hit the road early to drive out and watch, on the theory that dead nuns would be the eclipse icing on the cake.

The predictions of gridlock in town were worth less than predictions for the World Series in 2056. Broadway was dead, Cache Street deserted. The fear tactics had worked. Locals either got out of town or stayed home. A hundred thousand tourists hunkered in place for fear the other hundred thousand would drive in circles.

It wasn’t until we entered Grand Teton that we found the throngs. The Park Service had turned the right lane of the Antelope Flats Loop Road into a parking lot. The left lane was bumper to butt with cars searching for a spot to land. Each and every one of the hundred outhouses had a lengthy line. No one wanted to spend totality in the potty.

The upshot was Roger and I didn’t make Atherton Creek till the eclipse had already started. There we found the cultists and the chicken protectors in a face-off. The prospect of violence would have been palpable had both sides not been wearing eclipse glasses. Little cardboard multicolored eclipse glasses give one the aspect of a praying mantis. Nazi frat brothers in eclipse glasses couldn’t frighten a flamingo.

Even in goggles, I recognized Meadow Morningstar, leader of Chickens Matter, and Phoenix Rising, First Facilitator of the Mount Moran Harmonic Convergence Club. Except in their attitudes toward slitting bird throats, the two women have much in common. They’re both vegan Bikram hot yoga instructors who wouldn’t buy Monsanto bottled water if their lives were at risk.

Of course, they hate each other.

Meadow got right in Phoenix’s face and shouted, “Chickens are people too. They love. They have children.

They feel pain.” Behind her five CMers chanted, “Thou shalt not desecrate poultry.”

Phoenix didn’t shout. She formed her fingers into Om air holes and whispered, “We love our chickens.”

“So you kill them?”

“Our sacred birds give their beingness so others may achieve eternal life.”

Roger said, “Eternal life is better than dead nuns on Moran. Sign me up.”

Phoenix gave him a look of disdain. “The nuns will have eternal life. Not us.” She turned back to Meadow.

“And how long will your free chickens last in the wilderness? The coyotes will declare a feast day.”

Meadow said, “The coyotes will see the higher plane in our chickens’ hearts and protect them. The lion shall lie with the lamb.”

I said, “You’re both interesting, but nuts.”

At my words, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees. Imagine the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen only it’s on all four sides of the horizon. The shadow swept toward us.

One of the Harmonics said, “Totality is nigh,” and we all stared at the sky.

For the first time in my life, hype undersold reality.

The corona, the spires and loops, snakes in the pavement, beads, dancing plasma, darkness in the day.

Roger, normally God’s own cynic, said, “I knew it would be cool, but I never dreamed it would be this cool.”

Meadow wept. Phoenix’s crew dropped to their knees. Night fell, first with Venus and Mercury visible, then an array of stars. The chickens roosted and slept.

Bats swooped over the campground. Coyotes howled.

Phoenix and Meadow swept into each other’s arms.

All along a sixty-mile swath of America, every person of every opinion looked at the same thing and marveled.

Even now, months later, I haven’t met anyone who saw totality who is blasé about it, even teenagers.

A couple minutes later, the diamond ring appeared on the upper right side of the moon, dawn filtered to light. Up on the highway, we heard howls, not of coyotes, but of blown-away crowds.

I said, “You forgot to kill your chickens.”

Phoenix said, “That was better than immortality. The nuns can wait.”

Roger said, “I’m giving all the money I made on glasses to Bill Nye the Science Guy.” I said, “Let’s not go overboard.”

Then the CMers pulled out their high-protein sweetand-salty maple trail mix, and the sides who were enemies before the eclipse came together over organic oatmeal and nuts. JH WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JUST A FEW THINGS TO DO IN

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JACKSON n Watch future Olympians (p. 18).

n See lithographs by Andy Warhol (p. 127).

n Take an Elk Refuge sleigh ride (p. 38).

n Buy a new ski outfit (p. 42).

n Check out the art scene (p. 127).

n Look for furniture made from old skis (p. 48).

n Go for Southern BBQ (p. 116).

n Go night skiing on Snow King (p. 113).

TETON VILLAGE n Ski the backcountry at JHMR (if you have the skills and gear). Carry your skis in style (p. 24). n Have lunch at Piste.

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK

n Snowshoe into Granite Canyon (p. 106).

n Hike on historic snowshoes with a

WILSON

ranger (p. 106).

n Soak up some hygge at Dornan’s in Moose (p. 110).

n Ride a fat bike on a groomed

pathway. Nordic ski at Trail Creek Ranch (p. 110).

n Walk along the Snake River dike.

FURTHER AFIELD n Go heli-skiing (p. 72). n Organize a private snowmobile trip into Yellowstone (p. 101).

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calendar of events

BRADLY J. BONER

Sleigh rides to view the wildlife on the National Elk Refuge depart daily through April from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Winter 2017-18 *Area code 307 unless noted

ONGOING JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT’S 2,500acre, 4,139 vertical feet of terrain is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through April 8 with an aerial tram, two gondolas, and eleven other lifts. The Mountain Sports School offers ski, snowboard, telemark, and adaptive lessons for all ages and abilities. 1-888-DEEP-SNO (733-2292), jacksonhole.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 GRAND TARGHEE RESORT, on the west side of 138

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Teton Pass, is open through April 15. Take advantage of short lift lines on all five lifts, 2,602 acres of powder, and a 2,270-foot vertical drop. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., 353-2300, grandtarghee.com PICA’S MARGARITA CUP is Jackson’s adult ski-racing league. Teams consist of up to six people, with four scoring points each race. Races begin mid-January and run through March 6. 733-6433, jhskiclub.org SNOW KING MOUNTAIN is Jackson’s locals’ hill—and was the first ski resort in the state—with four hundred acres of terrain and a 1,571-foot vertical drop. With three chairlifts and thirty-two named runs, the King is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday from December 2 to March 25; night skiing is 4 to 7 p.m.

Monday through Saturday. Nonskiers can take a scenic chair ride daily until 3:30 p.m.

734-3194, snowkingmountain.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 through April 7 (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 7330277. fws.gov/nationalelkrefuge NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART takes an expansive view of wildlife art with pieces in its 4,900-plus-item permanent collection from Albert Bierstadt to Pablo Picasso. It celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year. Open Tuesday through Saturday from

9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., 733-5771, wildlifeart.org

accompaniment by Southbank Sinofina.

7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $10-$18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

COWBOY COASTER is the first Alpine Coaster in the state, with individual carts (to hold one or two people) that climb nearly four hundred feet before winding and looping their way down two-thirds of a mile back to the base. Open Monday through Friday from 2 to 7 p.m., weekends from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., snowkingmountain.com

31: GONDI GALA is a New Year’s Eve celebration atop the Bridger Gondola. Celebrate the year and dance your resolutions in with Jackson’s local band, Whiskey Mornin’. 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Rendezvous Lodge, 7392686, jacksonhole.com

DECEMBER

31: TORCHLIGHT PARADE AND FIREWORKS start with skiers carrying torches descending Apres Vous. Fireworks follow. 6 p.m., Teton Village, free, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

1-2: LAFF STAFF brings zany, original improv comedy to Jackson. 8 p.m., Center for the Arts, The Black Box, $10, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

JANUARY

9: HOLIDAY ART BAZAAR showcases local artists in time for the holiday season. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., The Lodge at Jackson Hole, Conference Center, $5 suggested donation, 733-6379, artassociation.org 8-9: JACKSON HOLE SNOCROSS NATIONAL takes place at Snow King Mountain, hosting rounds 3 and 4 of the greatest show on snow. Snow King Mountain, from $15, 7343194, snowkingmountain.com 8-10: DANCERS’ WORKSHOP PRESENTS ALICE, a production based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Center for the Arts Center Theater, $13-$28, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 18: AMADEUS presented live from the National Theatre, and with live orchestral

21: PETER PAN recorded live at the National Theatre. JM Barrie’s much-loved tale is popular with all ages. 4 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $10-$18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 26: DOWN UNDER THE TRAM: AUSTRALIA DAY celebration with free beer and giveaways.

4 to 6 p.m., Teton Village Commons, 7392686, jacksonhole.com 26: PEDIGREE STAGE STOP SLED DOG RACE begins in Jackson with a ceremonial twomile leg starting at the Town Square. 5 to 8 p.m., 733-3316, wyomingstagestop.org

FEBRUARY 5: SAINT JOAN presented live from the National Theatre. Watch as charismatic Joan of Arc

carved a victory that defined France in Bernard Shaw’s classic play. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $10-$18, 7334900, jhcenterforthearts.org 6-8: SPECIAL OLYMPICS WYOMING at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. 235-3062, sowy.org 9-10: LAFF STAFF brings zany, original improv comedy to Jackson. 8 p.m., Center for the Arts, The Black Box, $10, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 7: TOSCA – The Met: Live in HD is copresented

by Grand Teton Music Festival and the Center for the Arts. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, 733-4900, gtmf.org/met-2017/ 10-11: JH SHRINERS SKIJORING RACES jhshriners.org 17: 26TH ANNUAL MOOSE CHASE NORDIC SKI RACE includes a 30k, 15k, 5k, 3k, and, for kids, a free 1/2k. Trail Creek Nordic Center, 733-6433, jhskiclub.org 18-19: ANNUAL CUTTER RACES IN JACKSON HOLE is the only thoroughbred Cutter Race on a groomed snow track in the U.S. Melody Ranch – five miles south of Jackson, jhshriners.org 23: BLACKTAIL GALA is an evening filled with wildlife art, delicious wines and food, and the excitement of voting on artwork for acquisition by the National Museum of Wildlife Art. 5:30 to 9 p.m., 733-5771, wildlifeart.org 24-25: USASA SLOPESTYLE COMPETITION Watch the Big Mountain West division competition. Teton Village, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

MARCH 1: THE ELIXIR OF LOVE – The Met: Live in HD is copresented by Grand Teton Music Festival and Center for the Arts. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, 733-4900, gtmf. org/met-2017/

RYAN JONES

2-3: LAFF STAFF brings zany, original improv comedy to Jackson. 8 p.m., Center for the Arts, The Black Box, $10, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org Ski racing meets cowboying February 10 and 11 with skijoring.

2-5: DICK’S DITCH CLASSIC BANKED SLALOM challenges racers to descend a challenging run as fast as they can. JHMR, jacksonhole.com WINTER 2018 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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8-12: RENDEZVOUS SPRING FESTIVAL is two weekends of free live concerts at the base of JHMR and on the Town Square. jacksonhole.com

copresented by Grand Teton Music Festival and Center for the Arts. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, 733-4900, gtmf. org/met-2017/

copresented by Grand Teton Music Festival and Center for the Arts. 6 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, 733-4900, gtmf. org/met-2017/

9: MINI HAHNENKAMM TOWN DOWNHILL is one of spring’s most popular events, both for racers and spectators. Snow King Mountain, 733-6433, jhskiclub.org

23-25: 42ND ANNUAL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SNOWMOBILE HILL CLIMB. Snow King Mountain, 734-3194, snowdevils.org

13-14: LAFF STAFF brings zany, original improv comedy to Jackson. 8 p.m., Center for the Arts, The Black Box, $10, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

12: TWELFTH NIGHT presented live from the National Theatre. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $10-$18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 15-18: USSA U14 REGIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS hosted in Teton Village. 739-2686, jacksonhole.com 16-18: RENDEZVOUS SPRING FESTIVAL is two weekends of free live concerts at the base of JHMR and on the Town Square. jacksonhole.com

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PRICE CHAMBERS

Catch the 43rd annual Karen Oatey Pole Pedal Paddle four-leg race March 24 from Teton Village to the Snake River Canyon.

24: KAREN OATEY POLE PEDAL PADDLE consists of four events: alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, biking, and kayaking. Teton Village to the Snake River Canyon, 7336433, jhskiclub.org

APRIL 1: INTERDENOMINATIONAL SUNRISE EASTER SERVICE. Load the gondola at 6:05 a.m. for 6:35 service, JHMR at the top of Bridger Gondola, free, 733-2292, jacksonhole.com

18: MARMOT COOMBS CLASSIC honors legendary local skier Doug Coombs with a full day of events. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., JHMR, free, 733-2292, jacksonhole.com

8: JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT CLOSING DAY. Celebrate the end of the winter season dressed in your best (or goofiest) ski and snowboard gear. 7392686, jacksonhole.com

21: LA BOHEME – The Met: Live in HD is

12: SEMIRAMIDE – The Met: Live in HD is

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018

MAY 3: COSI FAN TUTTE – The Met: Live in HD is copresented by Grand Teton Music Festival and Center for the Arts. 6 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, 733-4900, gtmf. org/met-2017/ 11-12: LAFF STAFF brings zany, original improv comedy to Jackson. 8 p.m., Center for the Arts, The Black Box, $10, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 19: JACKSON HOLE MINI MAKER FAIRE celebrates the Maker movement. Makers, from tech enthusiasts to crafters, show what they’re making. Jackson Campus of Teton Science Schools, free, 413-5654, tetonscience.org

LIVE CLASSIC We all h ave drea m s , a n d t h ey a re a s va st an d vari e d as t h e worl d i s w i de. But t h ey all star t with in s p i ra t i on , a n d i ns p i ra t i on starts w i t h your s urroun di n gs . Th at ’s what h o m e is. Fa mi l y. Fri e n d s . A se n se of pl ace. A n amazi n g vi ew. It ’s al l part of what m a kes a s pa ce a hom e, b e ca use your h ome i s w h e re you t rul y L I V E .

JHSIR.com | 307.733.9009 | 185 W. Broadway Jackson, Wyoming | Property ID: #4Z833N. Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated.