Jackson Hole magazine Winter 2016

WINTER 2016

WILD CHILD

At fifty years old, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has grown up while staying true to its founders’ visions.

ENVIRONMENT

The NPS Turns 100

DINING

Game Meat

OUTDOORS

A Destination Nordic Resort

BODY

Banish Dry Skin

A life lived wild is a life well lived.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

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E I G H T I N T I M AT E S PA S U I T E S – J A C K S O N H O L E ’ S P R E E M I N E N T A C C O M M O D AT I O N S .

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Jackson Hole Features

Page

66

P H O T O G A L L E RY

66

Wild Child

88

At fifty years old, JHMR has grown up while staying true to its founders’ visions.

Engraving Yellowstone Before there were photos, there were illustrations and engravings.

BY THE EDITORS

76

Crown Jewels at the End of their Golden Age? As the National Park Service turns one hundred, the examples set by—and the problems seen by— Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks are more important than ever.

94

Riding High In Jackson Hole, snowmobiling isn’t just a sport, but a culture.

BY JOHANNA LOVE

BY TODD WILKINSON

ON THE COVER: Professional skier Chris Benchetler drops into the gaping maw of Corbet’s Couloir during the record snowfall winter of 2010-11. The day before this photo was taken, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort received twenty-nine inches of snow, the most ever recorded in a twenty-four-hour period. Corbet’s is one of JHMR’s most iconic chutes (see story on p. 24) and is considered a test piece for expert skiers. PHOTO BY BRADLY J. BONER 6

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

BRADLY J. BONER

Winter 2016

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

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The 2015 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction realized over $23 million in sales at the single largest event in the field of classic Western and American Art .

We are now accepting quality consignments for our 2016 sale to be held July 23rd in Reno, Nev. Visit our website at www.cdaartauction.com THE COEUR D’ALENE ART AUCTION tel. 208-772-9009 info@cdaartauction.com

Charles M. Russell (1864–1926), A Bronc Twister, bronze, 18” high, Est.: $300-500,000, Sold at Auction: $1,033,000 WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Jackson Hole

Winter 2016

Best of JH TETONSCAPES

20 Mountain Coaster, Nonprofit Skiing, Corbet’s, Take the Bus

30

PIQUED Some of our favorite winter stuff

Q&A

36 Meet the Locals Phil Cameron, Mickey Babcock, and Sophia Andrikopoulos

ON THE JOB

42 Baking Bagels Page

Page

115

Pearl Street Bagels bakes fresh all day.

BY ELIZABETH HOCHREIN

BUSINESS

46 Airport Helps Jackson Hole Soar The valley’s economy would be very different if it weren’t for our airport.

124

BY BEN GRAHAM

DESIGN

52 Classic Lodge Some things never go out of style.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

LOOKING BACK

104 An Oasis in East Moose Enduring for nearly a century, Dornan’s has aged like a fine wine.

BY JIM STANFORD

SARGENT SCHUTT

OUTDOORS

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

108 Rolling Over Put clownishly large wheels and tires on a bike and you can ride on snow.

BY JULIE KLING

115 Splitting Up Sometimes it’s good for snowboards to break in half.

BY FREDERICK REIMERS

120 The Gist of our Geology Free talks explain this valley’s landscape.

BY LILA EDYTHE

124 Glide On Cross-country skiing at a historic dude ranch.

BY DINA MISHEV

BODY & SOUL

130 Soak It Up Make dry skin a problem of the past

BY MAGGIE THEODORA

NIGHTLIFE

134 Playing Bar Bars aren’t just about drinking.

BY JULIE KLING

DINING

138 Game On Hunting for wild game at Jackson Hole eateries

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW

ART SCENE

148 A New Sense of Place Contemporary western landscape art is not an oxymoron.

BY JEANNETTE BONER

AS THE HOLE DEEPENS

156 Bears eat ice cream.

Moose don’t.

BY TIM SANDLIN

158 JACKSON HOLE MAPPED 160 CALENDAR OF EVENTS

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WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Greetings from the Editor IT’S NO SECRET that last winter wasn’t the best. I think the last time I skied fresh powder was late January. But as much as locals complained, Jackson Hole fared better than most everywhere else in the West. Friends from Colorado, California, Utah, and Montana came here to, ostensibly, visit me. Without fail, though, on their first full day they’d disappear into the backcountry or to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Thinking the skiing wouldn’t be great, I didn’t mind staying home to work until they returned in the evening to regale me with stories of how awesome it was. But even if it hadn’t been awesome, what’s that saying? “Even a bad day of skiing is better than a good day at work”?

Except that doesn’t hold true when work is editing Jackson Hole magazine. Sure, my visiting friends’ dinner conversations made me wish I didn’t have stories to edit or write, but that sentiment always only lasted briefly, until I opened the next article

or reread an interview. Turn to Jim Stanford’s piece about the history of Dornan’s on page 104 and tell me what you learn in it isn’t worth giving up a ski run or two.

As usual, Todd Wilkinson’s environmental feature is a highlight. Montana-based Wilkinson, who wrote the text to accompany Tom Mangelsen’s recent coffee table book, Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek, looks at the National Park Service as it readies to celebrate its one hundredth anniversary in 2016 (“Crown Jewels at the End of their Golden Age?” on p. 76). Wilkinson presents that organization’s history, and critically and thoughtfully looks ahead to what its future might hold.

Tim Sandlin writes an essay poking fun at our valley for every issue of this magazine. He’s been doing this since long before my time as editor. Of each of his eight essays I’ve had the privilege to work on, I’ve said and believed: “This is the funniest one ever!” I really mean it this time (“Bears eat ice cream. Moose don’t.,” p. 156). (If you agree, you should check out Tim’s books, several of which are set in a fictional Jackson Hole.)

When you’re done marinating on Todd’s article and laughing at Tim’s, learn which moisturizers are best for you in “Soak It Up,” p. 130. Or if your skin is already silky and soft, read Sam Morse’s short piece about the new Cowboy Coaster at Snow King, “Soar Down the Slopes,” p. 20. Tell me it doesn’t get you fired up to try it. Fresh powder or not, that ride is definitely worth sacrificing a ski run or two. – DINA MISHEV @DINAMISHEV

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

magazine

Jackson Hole

Winter 2016 // jacksonholemagazine.com

It’s JHMR’s 50th anniversary this year. How are you going to celebrate?

PUBLISHER

Kevin Olson

Eat fifty fresh waffles at Corbet’s Cabin.

EDITOR

Dina Mishev ART DIRECTOR

Wayne Smith

Strap a pair of skis on our two-year-old daughter and send her down Rendezvous!

Or maybe just take her to the base of the mountain.

PHOTO EDITOR

Bradly J. Boner

Photograph the return of the Powder 8 competition in Cody Bowl.

COPY EDITOR

Pamela Periconi CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

I’m going to spend

a lot of time writing

at Corbet’s Cabin,

enjoying the space

before the inevitable

Jeannette Boner Kelsey Dayton Lila Edythe Ben Graham Mark Huffman Julie Kling Johanna Love Caroline Markowitz Sam Morse Joohee Muromcew Frederick Reimers Tim Sandlin Jim Stanford Maggie Theodora Todd Wilkinson

upgrade.

See how many tram laps I can do in one day.

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Master the Wiggle.

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Deidre Norman

Take my toddler to the mountain for his first skiing experience!

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT COORDINATOR

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Snowboard fifty days.

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Ski Corbet ,s Couloir.

OFFICE MANAGER

Kathleen Godines

© 2016 Jackson Hole magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. No responsibility will be assumed for unsolicited editorial contributions. Manuscripts or other material to be returned must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope adequate to return the material. Jackson Hole magazine is published semiannually. Send subscription requests to: Jackson Hole magazine, P.O. Box 7445, Jackson, Wyoming 83002. (307) 732-5900.

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

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Contributors

Yellowstone national park Multi-Day winter tours

Todd Wilkinson (“Crown Jewels at the End of their Golden Age?” p. 76) is the author of the new book Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399, The Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone, featuring 150 images by famed Jackson Hole wildlife photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen (available at mangelsen. com/grizzly). Known today for his environmental reporting, Wilkinson started his career as a violent crime reporter with the City News Bureau of Chicago and is a contributor to National Geographic, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications.

Though Frederick Reimers (“Splitting Up,” p. 115) grew up in Mississippi, skiing was there at the inception—his parents met on a ski trip to Timberline Lodge on Oregon’s Mount Hood.

A blizzard shut the lifts down, so all there was to do was hang out in the bar, his parents say.

Fortunately, they met, creating not only Reimers but also an origin story befitting a ski writer. The former editor of Canoe & Kayak magazine is also a regular contributor to Skiing, Outside, and Men’s Journal.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Ashley Wilkerson (“Game On,” p. 138) specializes in wedding, portrait, and commercial photography. After working in photojournalism for five years—her photos appeared in The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, and the Jackson Hole News&Guide, among other publications—she launched her own photography business in 2009.

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

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Teton scapes

fun

Soar Down the Slopes The state’s first Alpine Coaster opens at Snow King Mountain.

COURTESY PHOTO

BY SAM MORSE

I’M A GUINEA pig on Snow King Mountain Resort’s new mountain Cowboy Coaster, riding it almost immediately after it opens at the in-town ski hill this fall. I apprehensively load the cart-sled hybrid and give the attendant an enthusiastic thumbs-up. With that simple gesture, magnets mounted on the tubular stainless steel system tug me forward and up the ride’s 370 vertical feet.

Snow King Mountain, the first ski area in the state of Wyoming, had lost some of its luster in recent decades as its lifts aged and other ski resorts morphed into year-round destinations. This winter, though, skiers and snowboarders enjoy a revamped Rafferty lift: the double chair is now a fixed-grip quad that extends a couple hundred feet higher up the mountain. Earlier, the Treetop Adventure Park—a ropes-type obstacle course in the trees above what are ski slopes in winter 20

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

The state’s first mountain coaster opened at the state’s first ski area, Snow King, this fall.

It runs this winter season.

and hiking and biking trails in summer— was completed. And then came the Cowboy Coaster, Wyoming’s first mountain coaster, which opened in early October.

It takes only a few minutes to get to the top of the coaster. Excited to test the promised high speed of 27 mph, I push my cart’s controls forward, effectively throwing the throttle wide open. Riders don’t have to go max speed; every rider can control his or her own pace, and there is anti-collision technology that prevents speedsters from slamming into the coaster carts of slower riders in front of them.

Mountain coasters differ from standard

roller coasters most notably in how they are powered and how quiet they are. Magnets pull the coaster carts up, while gravity powers their descent. Snow King’s was engineered and built by Wiegand Sports, which has installed over 180 Alpine Coasters™ around the world. The Cowboy Coaster differs from the Alpine Slide, which Snow King opened about forty years ago, in that it is, well, like a roller coaster rather than a slide. Faster and twistier, mountain coasters have rolls, 360-degree turns, and waves. (The addition of the Cowboy Coaster does not mean Snow King will discontinue its Alpine Slide; the slide only operates in the summer.)

My coaster expectation is of a toneddown kiddie experience, and almost immediately, the Cowboy shows me I’m wrong.

Flying out of the first turn, speed and gravity already anchor me to the back of my seat, but, seeing a corkscrew coming, I brace further. I’d rather do that than check the cart’s speed. Going through the second turn, it has my full attention, and my vocal cords.

What else can you do when so exhilarated other than scream? About five minutes after I first sit in the cart, I’m back at the bottom, laughing and reveling in the fact that I have a ticket for a second ride.

The idea of installing a mountain coaster at Snow King was controversial; a major concern was its noise. If my reaction—hollering and laughing loudly—is any indication, it might not be noise from the coaster that locals need to worry about but the roar of happy riders.

The country’s first mountain coaster opened in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 2005. Since then, nearly two dozen more have been built, from Park City, Utah, to the continent’s longest (the descent is just over one mile) at Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Compared to other coasters around the country, the Cowboy Coaster is above average in terms of speed, length, and exhilaration. After climbing 370 vertical feet straight and steady from the resort’s base, it winds and loops its way down nearly two-thirds of a mile through a thick pine forest. The trees occasionally open to yield views of the Tetons, town, and the National Elk Refuge, but, going full speed, I’ll admit my attention wasn’t focused on the scenery.

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Teton scapes

community

Coming Together Through Skiing

kids, and their parents, ski but is about so much more than skiing.

Teaching kids that otherwise would not have the opportunity to ski bridges a barrier in this community.

Jackson Hole has deep ties to skiing, and the sport is a big part of life here. The more residents who can be exposed to it, the closer the community becomes. “Skiing is good to get kids into the wider community,” Coombs says. “It’s a way for them to complete their integration. It’s a problem in the future if they stay segregated. This is a good opportunity when they’re little to make friends.”

Mary and Beatriz Chavez have been in Jackson close to a decade, and their daughters are proof of what Coombs saw. “Once they first tried skiing, they loved it,” Mary Chavez says.

“Now they don’t want to miss a class.”

Its first year, the foundation’s skiing program grew from an initial meeting of 8 kids to 28. Last winter, there were 123 young skiers, as well as some of their parents. The foundation raises money to buy skis and lift tickets for kids who can’t afford them. It also works with Snow King Mountain Resort to provide instruction. The foundation has supported two students to join The Doug Coombs the Jackson Hole Ski and Snowboard Foundation raises money Club’s alpine racing program. to buy equipment and lift Coombs started the program with tickets for area kids who $5,000 of her own cash. She gets can’t afford them. It also works with Snow King to discounted gear from Marmot and provide instruction. Above are K2. The program ran last year on foundation kids on the first about $200,000. The biggest part of day of ski school in 2014. that was spent on skiing, though the foundation has expanded to include a summer climbing program with Exum Mountain Guides and a partnership with Jackson Hole Youth Soccer. “We want kids to stay in shape year-round,” Coombs says. Most donations are small and come via Internet appeals. The foundation has never seen a gift larger than $5,000, Coombs says.

Scott McGee, director of the Mountain Sports School at Snow King, says the Coombs Foundation has broken down the wall between Hispanics and the sport and business of skiing. “For people who have always lived here, skiing is easy,” McGee says. “But if you don’t know anyone here who skis, it’s hard to get started. This program has brought kids like that in.” He expects Jackson’s Latino residents will come to see skiing the way its Anglo-American residents do: “You’ve got to put up with the cold, so you might as well enjoy it.” JH

A nonprofit founded by the widow of one of the world’s greatest skiers introduces kids to the sport her husband loved.

BRADLY J. BONER

BY MARK HUFFMAN

THE THOUSANDS OF Mexicans who arrived in Jackson Hole in the past twenty years didn’t come for the powder. Emily Coombs, who has traveled far and wide for a fresh line and founded steep-skiing and heli-skiing camps with her late husband, Doug Coombs, knows that.

“They’re not here to ski,” Coombs says of the immigrants. “They’re here to work.” Add to that the cost and the cultural barrier, and you can see why getting Latino children on downhill skis is an uphill battle.

Jorge Moreno is a good example. Now a caseworker at Jackson’s Latino Resource Center, Moreno came to Jackson from the Mexican state of Guerrero via Texas in 1997, when he was fourteen, to work as a dishwasher. He didn’t get on skis until 2014. “Ninety percent of Mexican citizens haven’t seen snow,” he says. Their first Rocky Mountain winter is “overwhelming.” Moreno says Hispanics, now nearly 20 percent of Teton County’s population, look up at the slopes, see skiers, and “they think it’s something they are never going to do.”

Coombs saw the unplanned segregation when she took her son, David, now in sixth grade, to ski. The faces in David’s ski school classes were almost as pure white as the snow. That was a few years after her husband, Doug—who helped pioneer the sport of extreme skiing—died in 2006 in France while trying to help a fellow skier. She had been looking for an opportunity to honor Doug in a meaningful way. Enter the Doug Coombs Foundation, which helps low-income 22

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Recreation over hibernation.

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WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Teton scapes

icon

BRADLY J. BONER

Rock walls guard the couloir. Whether you “ease” yourself in, as was possible in the huge winter of 2010-11, or have to take the straight-line plunge off the cornice at the top, once you are in, there’s no turning back. The entrance and first turn—if you don’t immediately make a hard right, you’ll smash into the western rock wall—are the toughest parts of the run. Make it past those and things get easy, relatively speaking: the fifty-some-degree pitch mellows out to fortysome degrees and the couloir widens. Often, its middle and bottom are choked with powder sloughed off above, a reward for making it that far.

Corbet’s Couloir Ski it or see it, but don’t miss it

Costumed spectators line the cliff band above Corbet’s Couloir as a skier takes the plunge on the last day of the season at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

BY KELSEY DAYTON AFTER SHE MADE the decision to ski Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Morgan Kilmain knew she needed to follow one tip: “You don’t look at it for too long,” she says. “You just go for it. If you stare at it, you’ll get superscared and you’ll be like, ‘That’s too scary.’ ” Morgan was seven years old when she decided she was ready to ski Corbet’s—the run often called out in magazines like SKI and Skiing as the most difficult in the country. (She’s now eleven.)

The conditions were about as good as they could get for Morgan’s first time. It was a huge snow year, and some of the most imposing rocks along the run’s sides were covered. Also, there was enough snow at the entrance that she could ease her way in instead of doing the ten-foot jump usually required. Still, it was a fifty-some-degree slope she “eased” her way in to. Despite knowing better, it was impossible for Morgan not to pause at the top—but only for several seconds and some final coaching from 24

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

her father, Bob, who skis the run about fifty times a season, sometimes showboating and entering with a flip. “You can do it. Trust your edges,” he told her. Then came the magic words he’d said to Morgan the first time she skied any new, intimidating run: “three, two, one, dropping.”

“Usually when he says that, I do it,” Morgan explains. And she did it at the top of Corbet’s, nailing the run. When she was seven years old.

Don’t let the fact that Morgan, at such a young age, successfully skied Corbet’s Couloir, known throughout the ski world simply as “Corbet’s,” fool you. The run is a test piece for North American skiers. If you’re an expert skier and tell a fellow skier you’ve skied Jackson, chances are the first question he or she will ask is, “Did you ski Corbet’s?” If your answer is “no,” chances are the conversation will veer back to last weekend’s game.

If the answer is “yes,” chances are the asker will nod with approval and awe.

CORBET’S COULOIR IS named after Barry Corbet, a Dartmouth grad (Class of ’58) who came to Jackson Hole and became one of the valley’s, and country’s, most accomplished ski and climbing guides. Corbet saw the narrow crease of snow surrounded by rock walls and prophesized, “Some day somebody will ski that.”

That somebody was Lonnie Ball, a nineteen-year-old ski patroller. He did it the second season the resort was open. Ball did not ski it on purpose but fell into it and, landing upright, figured he should just keep going. Since then people have done it on snowboards, telemark skis, and even monoskis. It’s been skied by someone wearing a costume that made them look like a slice of pizza.

“Corbet’s is one of those runs you can never truly master,” Bob Kilmain says. “It’s like a puzzle. It’s always different. There’s always a new line. There’s always a chance of everything going wrong and that does happen even to the best skiers in this town.

That run will getcha. It’s not one you can be complacent about.” Kilmain himself has wrecked in spectacular fashion several times, with skis, poles, and gear flying everywhere.

Locals call this type of fall a “yard sale.” If you wreck in Corbet’s there’s usually a yard sale involved, and it’s always viewed by several dozen people. The resort’s tram passes the run. There is a crowd at the top, some waiting to ski it themselves, but most are just there to spectate, and then there are spectators down in Tensleep Bowl, which the run opens into. “If you fall in Corbet’s, everyone knows about it,” says Tigger Knecht, who yard-saled magnificently his first time. One local skier recommends the resort put a webcam on the couloir: “People would watch it constantly.” JH

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Teton scapes

outdoors

Ride the bus between Jackson and Teton Village and enjoy a classic Jackson Hole experience.

BY MAGGIE THEODORA

IT’S ALMOST TEN o’clock at night. Teton Village is still and silent with one exception: its bus stop, which is packed. Despite the fact the lifts closed nearly six hours ago, some waiting passengers are still in their ski and snowboard gear, including boots. These champion après-skiers, all reeking of beer, are in two categories: the long day caught up with two of them, who slump on the benches inside the covered waiting area; three others are still going strong, beers in hand, loudly talking about how hard they shredded the slopes that day and oblivious to the frigid temperatures.

Not one of them is wearing a hat or gloves.

While the drunk skiers are the loudest, they’re not so loud as to drown out snippets of languages other than English. A handful of twenty-something guys speaks in Japanese. A cluster of what is most likely a group of students here working at the ski resort or one of the hotels at the base on J-1 visas chatters in Spanish. From their accents it’s likely they’re from Argentina. Four Latino women in their thirties and forties giggle more than they talk. A fifty-something couple, both wrapped in long, black, down coats, speak quietly in French.

When the bus, which is a Red Line, the route with the greatest coverage of East Jackson, pulls up, a cheer led by the skiers still drinking reverberates through the base area.

The valley’s START—Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit—buses efficiently get riders around Jackson (the Town Shuttle) and 26

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

BRADLY J. BONER

Jackson Hole by Bus Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) is the state’s busiest public transportation system.

Routes go between Jackson and Teton Village, around Jackson, and, for commuters, between Jackson and Star Valley and Jackson and Teton Valley, Idaho.

between Jackson and Teton Village (four routes: green, red, yellow, and blue) and also between Jackson and Star Valley and Jackson and Teton Valley (commuter routes). In winter, when there are one hundred daily trips between town and Teton Village (compared to nineteen daily trips during summer), a START ride doubles as a not-to-be-missed experience. After all, it is the busiest transit system in the state. “We do five thousand rides a day in winter,” says shift supervisor Tom Guheen, who has worked for START since 1999. “Few other areas in the state have a public transit system, and they don’t come anywhere close to our numbers.”

START WAS FOUNDED in 1987 as a winteronly enterprise. The idea was to get local and visiting skiers living/staying in town to the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village. Its first year, it had no buses of its own. “We used the buses that whitewater companies used in the summer,” Guheen says. Within a couple of years, START bought a handful of its own buses.

The next big milestone was around the turn of the millennium—the addition of the Town Shuttle, a free service with stops in East and West Jackson that brings riders from outside the downtown area to hubs where they can then connect to buses going to Teton Village. “Say a bus to Teton Village starts at Snow King Resort. You get on there and thirty-four minutes later, you’re at Teton Village,” Guheen says. “What if that bus had to go to the high school or meander around town for an hour and a half? Then no one would ride it. That’s where the Town Shuttle comes in,

bringing riders to central hubs like Kmart.”

By 2002, annual ridership was up to about two hundred thousand, and, in winter, there were about thirty-seven daily trips between town and Teton Village.

In 2014, the most recent year for which stats are available, nearly one million people rode a START bus. Transit staff calculated this kept enough cars off the road that 143,000 gallons of gas were saved. That equates to saving 2.45 million pounds of carbon emissions. Today, the START fleet includes twenty-nine vehicles—including the state’s first hybrid buses and nearly one dozen buses with Wi-Fi. In December 2014, START got a new 42,000-square-foot transit center/headquarters. START employees call it the “bus barn.” “We can park the entire fleet in there at night now,” Guheen says.

Prior to the transit center, every winter morning START’s fleet idled in an open parking lot as the buses warmed up.

“The bus barn is the most awesome building in Jackson,” Guheen says, being completely serious. “These buses used to be outside in 10- to 20-degree-below-zero weather all winter long. Now they’re inside in a heated environment. It is hard to appreciate it, but these buses are a good size. Imagine if you left the windows and doors of your house open all night and then at 6 a.m. turned on the heat to try and get the house warm.

That’s kind of what it was like with these buses. Finally, after a couple of hours, the heat would get going. The new building is a much better situation.” Bus repairs are also down, as is maintenance. The opportunity for people watching is as high as ever, though. JH

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JH Living

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1/ CITY SLICKER Waterproof, windproof wool has never looked as good as it does in Oregon-based designer Hillary Day’s Origami coat. Her secret? Schoeller’s c_change™ fabric.

For the Origami coat, Rhode Island School of Design-trained Day (she apprenticed under Vera Wang) took inspiration from a vintage fur coat and updated it with a sculptural folded collar and wide cuffs. $625, hillaryday.com

2/ HEAD CASE Developed in collaboration with POC team athlete Aaron Blunck, the new, highly ventilated Auric helmet is lightweight while providing increased protection for the ears and temples. Best of all? Your beanie and goggles fit underneath it. $120, Jackson Hole Sports, 7720 Granite Rd., Teton Village

3/ HYDRO FLASK Thermoses are so twentieth century, and heavy. Hydro Flask comes in fun colors and their BPA-free, stainless steel, insulated bottles—from 12-ounce water bottles to a 64-ounce growler—are the lightest out there. It’s their food flasks, available in 12and 18-ounce sizes, that we’re never without, though. While friends break out trail mix or a frozen bar, we’ve got hot soup. From $21.99, Skinny Skis, 65 W. Deloney 30

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4/ GLORY BE The men’s and women’s models of Dakine’s new Heli Pro DLX 24L pack have different fits but share a smart design that carries skis (diagonally) or a snowboard (horizontally or vertically). Both come with a shovel pocket, a fleece-lined goggle pocket, and an insulated hydro sleeve. If there’s a better pack for the hike up Mt. Glory, we have yet to find it. $110, dakine.com

5/ CLASSIC MEETS CONTEMPORARY This season, Smith pairs its technologically advanced I/O 7 goggles—its dualaxis outrigger system and three-layer DriWix foam conform to your face without pinching, an AirEvac system interfaces with your helmet to reduce fogging, and its spherical Carbonic-X polycarbonate lens is designed using TLT optics, mirroring the shape of your eyes—with classic prints from Woolrich. $225, Jackson Hole Sports, 7720 Granite Rd., Teton Village

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6/ A PERFECT PARKA Stay warm and dry while storm skiing. Stio’s Shot 7 Insulated Jacket (available in men’s and women’s) combines 800-fill HyperDRY™ water-repellent down with a waterproof/breathable outer layer, pit zips, a removable powder skirt, and helmetcompatible hood. Tell us it’s not the ski jacket of this season. $550, 10 E. Broadway Ave.

7/ DUAL PERSONALITY Mammut’s Trea pants feature stretch, water-resistant Schoeller® and Dyneema® ski-edge protection. Combine these with integrated gaiters, articulated knees, and side ventilation and you’ve got the best backcountry ski pants around. Or maybe the best mountaineering pants around. $300, mammut.com 32

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Winner of Powder Magazine Skier’s Choice, Backcountry Magazine Editors’ Choice, and Ski Magazine Gold Medal Gear, Dynastar’s Cham 2.0 97 seems made for Jackson Hole. Its moderate tip rocker, traditional camber, and sidecut proportions can handle most anywhere on the mountain. $800, dynastar.com

9/ FOOT-FRIENDLY Designed by a former ski racer, Apex’s new ML-3 (women’s) and MC-3 (men’s) boots feature a unique two-part system—a Walkable Support Boot that locks into an Open Chassis. The boots won “2016 fitter’s favorite” and “2016 innovator” awards from the group America’s Best Bootfitters. Walking around the base area, or to the slopes, wear just the Support Boot, which has an outsole with serious traction. When it’s time to ski, lock the Support Boot into its Open Chassis, step into your bindings, tighten up the boot’s Boa® Focus Closure System, and you’ll feel more connected to your skis (and more comfortable) than ever before. $795, apexskiboots.com

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PRICE CHAMBERS

JH Living

Phil Cameron PHIL CAMERON DIDN’T come here to tell people to turn off lights. (Like most, he came for a season after college—in his case, to be a fishing guide.) Thirteen years later, he finds himself talking lights, though. The Ohio native, who has a geology degree from Amherst College, spent nearly six years as a guide, environmental educator, and resource manager before he got into working to reshape the way the community looks at and uses energy. Today, he’s the executive director of Energy Conservation Works (ECW), a Town of Jackson/Teton County/Lower Valley Energy (LVE) program that pushes and provides funding so that people “can make more efficient and sustainable energy choices,” says Cameron, thirty-five. With LVE, ECW gives valley homeowners and businesses LED “starter kits” for free. Kits contain an assortment of LED light bulbs. ECW also worked to install new lights for night skiing at Snow King.

These lights cut electricity consumption by 40 percent while better illuminating the slopes and sending less light pollution into the sky.

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Q: Why Jackson Hole?

A: I first came during college to drop off a friend. I went on to a summer geology project near Red Lodge [Montana].

A year after that, I came here to work as a fishing guide. Later, I completed graduate work and taught field science courses at Teton Science Schools. It’s an unparalleled place to teach about the natural world.

Q: Fishing guide to energy guru seems like a leap. How’d that happen?

A: I’ve always been a great one for asking questions—so my parents tell me—and I thrive on new challenges and have a knack for reading my way into new skills.

Q: And what about a knack for telling people what to do, even if it’s in the best interest of the planet?

A: Most people are interested to better understand the issue of energy conservation. Very few people choose to be willfully wasteful. We help them improve the comfort and value of their home while saving on their utility bill. I haven’t met anyone yet who’s not interested in one or all of those things.

Q: Do you ever feel like a bossy pants?

A: No. The way I look at it, we’re connecting people with resources and information that can influence their decisions. They make the decisions. It’s not like we’re asking people to make huge sacrifices. We provide ideas for reasonable things they can undertake.

Q: Such as?

A: The cheapest thing is changing your behavior. Turn off the lights. If you turn your thermostat down 10 to 15 degrees for eight hours while you sleep, you can save 5 to 15 percent a year on your heating bill. That’s from the Department of Energy. If you live here, a home energy audit through LVE helps you understand your baseline energy usage.

Q: How energy-efficient is your own house?

A: My wife, Robin, and I recently moved into a single-family home. One of the first things I did was to understand its energy use. Then we started making changes like upgrading to a Wi-Fi thermostat. I signed up to receive LED light bulbs to turn every bulb in it to LED. We updated appliances to be Energy Star-rated, which made them eligible for rebates. We’re looking at adding insulation to the attic and the crawl space and at installing solar panels.

Q: What about outside your home?

A: We have a little person (toddler son Dylan) to tote around, but we still have a fairly compact footprint. We have six bikes to our two cars.

Q: Will you share any of your favorite spots to fish?

A: Fishing for brown trout in the Lewis Channel in Yellowstone in the fall. It is quiet and isolated.

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WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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locals

BRADLY J. BONER

JH Living

Mickey Babcock MICKEY BABCOCK WAS a self-professed “princess” the first time she came to Jackson Hole. It was 1983, and her trip here marked her first time sleeping in a tent and her first time backpacking. “It was two weeks of hell, and I couldn’t wait to come back,” says Babcock, sixty-three. “I came out here expecting to be treated like a princess and this land doesn’t do that.” Trip leader Lucius Burch Jr., who was a leading civil rights lawyer in Memphis, Tennessee, when not introducing friends to the wild, didn’t mince words explaining to Babcock how things were out here: “Mother Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass who you are.” Babcock hasn’t missed a summer in the valley since and moved here full-time in 2004. She relocated with seed money saved from selling her Memphis interior design business, and her plan was to found a new business here. Fast-forwarding to the present, there is no shortage of designers working in the valley, though Babcock is not one of them. Her seed money instead went to philanthropy. “Instead of starting another business, I decided I’d start a foundation,” she says. Babcock’s Equipoise Fund works to energize the vision, voice, and visibility of the women and girls of Wyoming.

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Q: What is the essence of you that your first trip here revealed?

A: Earthy, salty, compassionate.

Committed. There are the things that you think you are, but this place makes you really face who you are.

Q: Why direct some of your commitment toward girls and women?

A: I’ve always been drawn to the underdog.

Q: Were you ever an underdog for reasons other than being female?

A: Yes, I was bullied in elementary school and the first year of junior high.

I just never really fit in but tried hard to be one of the “cool girls.” Those early experiences, coupled with the ethic of my grandparents—all four of them were immigrants from Poland—to “give” fostered my own giving ethic.

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Q: Growing up with this ethic you still considered yourself a princess?

A: I perceive of my “self ” in Memphis as a princess, as I lived a very privileged life. I had a thriving design practice and had a lovely home. I might have finally made it as a “cool girl.” And I took much of this privileged lifestyle for granted.

Q: Equipoise focuses on getting programs and groups out on their own. Why do that instead of holding onto them?

A: For the first two years of Equipoise, we didn’t do any funding. I traveled the state doing listening tours and meeting with folks who had roots serving women. I learned there were groups out there doing good work, but there wasn’t a connection, no binder. It seemed the thing to do was to help jump-start the binding. Part of Equipoise’s niche is to listen to good ideas and see what we can do to get them going and then let them fly on their own.

live where you love

Q: When do you know an idea is ready to fly on its own?

A: There’s no formula, but it’s apparent when the time comes.

Q: What’s left in Equipoise’s house?

A: We’ve fledged all of our chicks except for the Wyoming Women’s Legislative Caucus. We’re positioning it to spin off on its own by 2017.

Q: Are you looking for new programs?

A: I’m at a place where I need to think about what Equipoise looks like going forward. I recently realized that what Equipoise set out to do, it has happened.

The landscape that I traveled when doing the listening tours has changed.

Now I need to understand what the new landscape looks like and understand what I need to do to serve that new landscape.

Q: Advice for aspiring philanthropists?

A: Philanthropy doesn’t have to be money; it can be about energy.

INTERVIEW BY LILA EDYTHE

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

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

www.JacksonWyomingRealEstate.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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locals

BRADLY J. BONER

JH Living

Sophia Andrikopoulos SOPHIA ANDRIKOPOULOS IS a fifth-generation Wyoming gal with Cuban roots who’s just as comfortable wrangling cattle at her father’s family ranch in Daniel as she is baking in her grandmother’s Miami kitchen or designing a wire mesh bench. (Her bench design, which she fabricated in the Jackson Hole High School Digital Fabrication Lab, or FabLab, won a contest held by the local nonprofit Vertical Harvest.) Two years ago, her parents had a custom, prefabricated home delivered to East Jackson; a crew assembled it in six hours. Sophia videotaped it. Now she’s all moved into her bedroom, where her sophisticated, urban style is evident in clean lines and a muted color palette. But the Pearl Jam poster taped to the wall, the clothesline of Polaroid pictures, and the article about the high school drama club getting busted for possession of marijuana over her desk give away her age: sixteen.

A self-described nerd, Sophia loves speech and debate and playing clarinet. Last year, her musical talent landed her a spot at the All-State Band competition in Hawaii. This year, she barely has time to practice.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Q: What’s your earliest musical memory?

A: The first song I remember hearing was “Free Fallin’ ” by Tom Petty. I was three years old.

Q: Why the clarinet?

A: I chose it in sixth grade. I wanted to play sax because it’s a supercool instrument, but everyone wanted to play sax.

So I bit the bullet, and I learned I was pretty OK at learning it. I really, really liked playing. But I’ve never been a fan of classical music.

Q: What do you like?

A: I like anything but country and really lewd rap. I like rock.

Q: Where do you play besides the usual high school band?

A: I play sometimes with the [Jackson Hole] Community Band. It’s superfun to play with a talented group of mostly adults. We tried to have a marching band in high school, but it didn’t happen. We did parades around Wyoming all summer.

Q: Met any famous musicians?

A: Michael Franti at [Grand] Targhee and Sara Bareilles. That was really cool.

And I met Gregory Raden [first clarinet in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra] at the Grand Teton Music Festival, where I was in the mentorship program. I got to eat lunch with him and see him play Mozart. He’s such a nice guy.

Q: Are you a band nerd?

A: I’m not a nerd because I’m in band.

I’m just a nerd because I am one.

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Q: What about life outside of music?

A: It’s my third year doing speech and debate. I’m the captain this year. There are new debate topics chosen every month. I like original oratory, drama, and humor. I love making people laugh even if I’m the most strange, most sadistic, dark-humored person I know.

Q: Binges of dark stuff on Netflix?

A: I’m watching Twin Peaks with my mom, and she’s cheating on me. But it’s OK; I’m cheating on her, too.

Q: Plans past high school?

A: I’m thinking about what I’d like to do in college: be a product designer.

Growing up in Jackson I’ve really appreciated beauty, but I’m a math person. I’ve always been drawn to functionalism, too. Design is a happy medium. I need things to be functional and pretty. I really, really like the clash between nature and a cold, modern aesthetic.

Q: And you like baking?

A: I make these cookies, alfajores. They are shortbready, citrusy cookies with dulce de leche sandwiched between. My mom makes a lot of Cuban food. I get Cuban culture definitely through food and whenever I speak Spanish.

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INTERVIEW BY JULIE KLING

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JH Living

on the job

Baking Bagels Pearl Street Bagels doesn’t toast their bagels because a crew of bakers makes them fresh all day long.

BY ELIZABETH HOCHREIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID STUBBS

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THE SMELL IS intense. Make that Intense. Capital I. If the beginning of life had a smell, it would be like the one wafting in the kitchen of the downtown Pearl Street Bagels location—a mixture of moisture, yeast, and malt that is primordially fertile. Walking into this kitchen is like walking into a loaf of fresh bread. In addition to the smell, the small space is hot, anywhere from 80 degrees to 90-something, depending on the season. Even when it’s zero degrees outside, opening the back door can only do so much against a 400-degree oven.

Seven days a week, 363 days of the year, two to three bakers at a time work together here to churn out between six hundred (winter) and nine hundred (summer) bagels a day. One comes in at 4:30 a.m. to bake the first four batches of bagels that baristas sell starting at 6:30, when the shop opens. The second shift, a prep shift, starts at a relatively more reasonable time, between 7 and 8 a.m. When asked about what happens if the employee on the bake shift oversleeps, Ryan Coleman, who worked as a baker until last September, said, “I don’t know of anyone ever missing their bake shift. I’ve come in still stumbling around from the night before, but I’ve come in. When I’m on a bake shift, I try to get to bed at ten o’clock the night before, but that rarely actually happens.

Something often ends up keeping me from sleeping.”

Maggie and Les Gibson founded Pearl Street Bagels (PSB) in 1990. While in college in Burlington, Vermont, Maggie Matt Berube was introduced prepares racks of boiled bagels for to real bagels and baking at Pearl learned how to make Street Bagels’ them. After several town location. years in Jackson Hole, she began missing bagels enough that she decided to make them herself. Pearl Street Bagels was an instant hit. In 1996, the couple opened an outpost in Wilson. For eighteen years, Maggie and/or Les could be found in one of the two locations most every day. And then it was time for them to move on.

In 2008, three PSB employees— Brevan Daniel (kitchen manager), Polly Danz (Wilson manager), and Heather Gould (office manager) purchased the business. (As of last September, Danz and Gould bought Daniel out.) Aside from Maggie and Les no longer being around, customers noticed little difference after the sale. Pearl Street Bagels still made the best bagels in the valley, was a great space for aspiring local artists to show their work, had some of the friendliest baristas around, and refused to toast bagels, instead baking them fresh throughout the morning.

WHEN MATT BERUBE comes in at 4:30 a.m. for the bake shift, his responsibilities include the first bake, making the first round of breakfast sandwiches, and baking all of the cookies.

Walking into the kitchen, Berube, who’s been baking bagels for two and a half years and is also now the assistant

kitchen manager, finds the kettle and oven hot and nearly ready to go; both are on a timer. Also ready is the bagel dough, which has already been formed, put on racks, and stored overnight in the refrigerator. Berube gets to boiling, the first step. All true bagels are boiled for a couple of minutes before being baked. If a bagel is not boiled, it will be “dull in appearance,” Gould says. Unboiled bagels are also chewier all the way through and lack the satisfying crunch of a boiled bagel’s outer shell. “I believe most people would say that boiling a bagel before baking it is what makes it a ‘real’ bagel,” Gould says.

“This is definitely how they do it in New York City, and New York bagels are still the gold standard to which all others are compared.”

PSB’s kettle has the capacity to boil a couple hundred bagels at a time; it holds seventy-five gallons of water. A petite adult woman could easily stand in it.

Ryan Coleman dices onions during his prep shift at Pearl Street Bagels’ town location.

But, because only seventy-two bagels at a time fit onto the boards that then go into the oven, only seventy-two bagels are boiled at a time. “This is the step where a lot of the artistry comes into the baking process,” Gould says. “The bakers get to know how different dough reacts, when it is new versus older, over- or underproofed, or any number of other variations between batches. They’ll see what’s up and adjust the boiling and then the baking times accordingly.”

Berube rescues the bagels, cheerfully bobbing in the roiling boil, from the kettle with a giant perforated scoop and efficiently lines them up on a burlapcovered board. The board then goes into the 400-degree oven. They are baked for about five minutes before Berube flips them off the board and onto the open oven shelves. The boiled dough needs to WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

43

Pearl Street Bagels mixes all of the flavored cream cheeses—Mexican, honey walnut, fresh herb, and berry—it serves in-house.

be started on boards so the outside of the bagels can harden just a bit. Otherwise, the dough would stick to the oven shelf.

Once flipped, the bagels rotate on the shelves for another ten minutes or so.

After that, they are ready to serve— scooped into wire bins and brought to the front of the house, where the line of customers stretches out the front door.

The most popular flavors at PSB are everything, cinnamon raisin, and plain.

“Depending on how busy we are, when I’m baking, I’m usually out of here at one o’clock or two. Sometimes three o’clock, if we’re really busy,” Berube says. “That’s one of the perks of the job. You get your work done and have afternoons free.”

THAT’S JUST THE bagel baking. You have to have dough to bake. In the winter, bakers make dough three days a week. In summer, it’s four days a week.

The downtown location makes the bagel dough for the Wilson location as well, but all of the bagels sold in Wilson are baked and boiled there.

The mixer is as big as the kettle. Each batch of dough includes one hundred pounds of flour, malt, salt, and yeast and about twenty pounds of water. This makes enough dough for six hundred bagels, which fills one rack. In the Three bakers winter, the goal is to (from left), make four racks on Berube, Coleman, each dough-mak- and Rob Denton take a break last ing day. Once the summer outside dough is mixed, it the downtown goes into the “bagel location.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

machine.” “Technically, it’s called an automatic divider/former; we just call it the ‘bagel machine,’ though,” Gould says. This machine does what its name suggests: it forms blobs of dough into bagels, each perfectly round with a small hole in the center. It does this at the rate of thirty bagels a minute. “Catching them is mindless, but you have to be on it,” Coleman says.

The bagel machine has to be on it, too. “When we bought the business, we were using the original machine that Les and Maggie had bought used in 1990,” Gould says. “It had developed lots of issues, which made dough days very stressful. There aren’t many people around here who work on them, so our bakers have figured out how to solve

any glitches that arise. It is high-stakes.

Since we’re a bagel shop, having bagels is pretty basic!” A new bagel machine was bought several years ago, “but it came with new and different issues,” Gould says. “It took some getting used to, but the bakers are able to troubleshoot any issues that arise really well now.” All three of the current bakers—Berube, newbie Nelson Jones, and Bob Sanders, a baker for fifteen years and also the kitchen manager—are comfortable tinkering with the machine, but Gould says Sanders is the bagel machine whisperer.

After being formed, trays of raw bagels go into the proofer for about ten minutes. In here, the dough rises.

Once done in the proofer, they go into the chilled storage area until tomorrow morning’s baker comes in. “The dough we make today is for tomorrow and the day after,” Berube explains. “Dough can last longer, but we can only make as much as we have room to store, and that’s not that much.”

Once it becomes apparent to me that Coleman isn’t going to miss a bagel coming down the bagel machine’s treadmill—resulting in a bagel version of the famous I Love Lucy chocolate factory scene—I decide I’d rather enjoy a bagel out front than stand beside him for the twenty-some minutes it takes to fill a rack. Since Pearl Street doesn’t toast bagels, I go with what is freshest. The sesame bagels aren’t merely fresh but still hot. The barista slices one in half and then half again. Steam rises when she pulls the halves apart, proving that fresh is indeed better than toasted. JH

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

45

JH Living

business

Airport Helps Jackson Hole Soar The valley’s economy would be very different if it weren’t for our newly remodeled and expanded airport. It doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the most beautiful in the country, inside and out.

BRADLY J. BONER

BY BEN GRAHAM

THE JOKE USED to be that flights from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole were shorter than the wait at the baggage claim once you arrived. The flights, run by Delta/SkyWest, take about thirty-five minutes and, along with Denver, account for most daily arrivals at the Jackson Hole Airport (JAC).

While the anecdote was not necessarily accurate, the underlying message was clear: people needed to get their luggage quicker. “It’s part of the customer experience,” says Jim Elwood, director of the Jackson Hole Airport. “It needed additional ability to handle the number of people using the airport.”

That was the reasoning behind the airport’s $21 million terminal overhaul and baggage claim expansion. The new 46

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Visitors flying into Jackson Hole are greeted not only by views of the Tetons, but also by a slew of recent airport improvements, including a renovated terminal and a baggage claim expansion.

baggage wing, which opened in December 2014 after more than a year of construction, includes four luggage belts; pre-expansion, there were just two. Because the airport might have some of the best views of any in the United States—it is the country’s only airport inside a national park—the overhaul also added panoramic windows that offer sweeping vistas of the Teton Range, from Mount Glory in the south all the way north to the Grand Teton and beyond. The departure area has contemporary

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BRADLY J. BONER

Richard Painter’s 5’ x 30’ charred wood and pastel piece, Final View, dominates Jackson Hole Airport’s main terminal.

furniture, from armchairs upholstered in raw cowhide to sleek leather sofas, and also a two-sided gas fireplace. The main terminal includes oversize artwork by Richard Painter. Elsewhere in the terminal are pieces by Z.S. Liang and Nelson Boren, both nationally renowned artists represented by galleries in Jackson.

Elwood is particularly fond of Boren’s painting of a moose calf seated amidst a row of cowboy boots. “The eyes follow you as you walk,” he says. “It’s like the Mona Lisa of moose.”

The baggage and terminal projects are the main components of a series of expansions that have transformed this once-

dusty air strip into a travel hub that is now not only the most beautiful airport in Wyoming but also the busiest airport in the state—the Jackson Hole Airport accounts for more than half of all the state’s commercial airline activity.

Over the last six years, $28.6 million was spent on projects that included new airline ticket counters and outbound baggage facilities, runway improvements ($5 million), and the installation of new runway lights ($3 million). There was also $6 million invested in infrastructure that allows the airport to capture glycol, which is used to de-ice planes, before it runs off the tarmac and seeps into the ground.

The investments in the airport have bolstered its standing, making it more appealing to airlines and passengers alike.

Over the last several years, the number THE TOWN BUILT the Jackson Hole Airport at its present location in the 1930s, before the land it sits of cities with nonstop flights to Jackson on was part of Grand Teton National Park. And by “built” we mean it was an unpaved landing strip.

Hole has doubled. During the ski season, Commercial air service—Western Airlines flew DC-3 propeller aircraft into the valley—began in the there are direct flights to/from thirteen early 1940s. Planes landed on the simple, short dirt runway until 1959, when a 6,300-foot runway was airports: Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, built. (By this time, the land the airport was on was part of the park; the airport got a lease on it that Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, JFK, ran through 1995.) By the late 1960s, the town and county formed a joint board to oversee the airport’s Newark, Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, operations; this board still runs things today.

Washington Dulles, Houston, and San In the late 1970s, the National Park Service (NPS) announced that the airport would close when Francisco. Jackson Hole is now the No. 1 its lease ended in 1995. This was great news to the valley residents who viewed it as an intrusion on ski resort for access in the Rockies.

How Grand Teton National Park Ended Up with an Airport

park values. But under James Watt, a Wyoming native and Secretary of the Interior for the Reagan administration, the Federal Aviation Administration was strengthened while the NPS’ control over the airport was weakened. Instead of being relocated, the airport signed a new lease that extends well into the twenty-first century.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

THE INCREASE IN flights isn’t only the result of airport improvements. It is, in fact, mostly due to Jackson Hole Air Improvement Resources (JH AIR). This

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at a reasonable price (although the argument could be made that it’s still difficult to find an inexpensive seat). Today, “For those of us who want to get out of here sometime in the winter, the more and better flights are important,” says Jerry Blann, the president of JHMR and one of the five members of the Jackson Hole Airport Board, which governs the airport.

Passenger numbers were actually down slightly this past summer (only by 1 percent, though) when compared with the year before, but traffic in general is up.

Jackson Hole Airport saw its busiest year on record in 2014, when more than 313,000 visitors arrived/departed on commercial jets. That was a 2.5 percent increase over the previous record—306,000 passengers—set in 2008. “That [2014] was a record passenger year for the airport and, in recent years, the growth has been occurring in winter travel,” Elwood says.

Each of those new visitors spends money at valley hotels and shops. During the summer of 2014, tourists who came to Jackson Hole through the airport spent an average of $254 each day, according to the passenger survey in which departing passengers self-report their activities while visiting the valley. Air passengers pumped an Not all of the estimated total of $269 upgrades are million into the valley’s obvious; $6 million was spent economy that summer. on a system that The winter of 2013-14, captures de-icing the average spent per day fluid before it was $326, for a total of seeps into the ground. $130 million that season.

STEVE REMICH

nonprofit organization uses money from valley businesses— most often those that rely on tourist dollars—and government money to provide minimum-revenue guarantees for airlines.

Additional winter flights have proven to be a boon for businesses beyond the obvious one, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR). “Oh god, it’s huge,” says Scott Sanchez, store manager at JD High Country Outfitters, which sells outdoor gear for sports from hunting and fishing to skiing at its shop on

the Town Square. “Direct flights work,” he says. More frequent THE JACKSON HOLE Airport Board is under the purview and direct flights allow people to jet in for just a long weekend, of the Jackson Town Council and the Teton County Board of which wasn’t always so easy. “There are a lot of people you talk Commissioners. Politicians appoint community members who to who are basically coming from the hubs,” Sanchez says. “A serve as volunteers. It is this board that hired Elwood, who has lot of people come for a few days, which wasn’t really an option been the airport’s director since September 2014. (Previously, when it took a whole day to get here. It’s not cheap to get in Elwood was the director of the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport here, but [now] it’s easy.” in Colorado.) JHMR president Blann is the longest-serving The most recent JH AIR Jackson Hole Airport Passenger member in the board’s history. There is no official limit on Survey, from the winter of 2014-15, found that the option of flying direct During the ski season, there are direct flights to/from thirteen played a large role in visitors’ decisions to airports: Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas/ come to Jackson Hole. Asked to rate the Fort Worth, JFK, Newark, Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, importance of nonstop flights on a scale of 1 to 10, passengers on average gave it Washington Dulles, Houston, and San Francisco. an 8. Slightly more than half of passengers rated it a 9 or 10. the number of terms a member can serve, but traditionally All of the investment and planning has helped the airport members move on after two terms. Last year, local government power Jackson Hole’s economy, although Elwood says he appointed Blann to a fourth consecutive term. A recent study prefers to think of it as an “economic responder” rather than an showed that 85 percent of winter visitors—83 percent of whom economic engine. “What we’re doing is simply giving a portal ski at least one day at JHMR—arrive by air. “The summer is for people to arrive and depart from this community,” he says. still more than half of the total passenger activity of the year,” This includes locals. As recently as ten years ago, locals looking Elwood says. “But summer numbers have been relatively flat for a break from winter had a difficult time flying out because since 2008. Summer has been a relatively mature market at the of both the fewer number of daily flights and the number of airport; there’s room for growth in the winter market, though, connections required. In summer, when flights have always and that’s a beautiful time to visit the area. We want to help been more frequent, it could be difficult for locals to find a seat people get here.” JH 50

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Doug Herrick

307-413-8899 dherrick@jhrealestate.com Associate Broker / Owner 33 years of Jackson Hole real estate experience...

Residential, Commercial, Ranch Development

Jack Stout

307-413-7118 (c) 307-733-4339 (o) Jackstout1@gmail.com www.bhhsjacksonhole.com Associate Broker/Owner Licensed in Wyoming since 1992

Creating value, from the start to the end and beyond WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

51

JH Living

design

Classic Lodge Some things never go out of style.

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

THOMAS MOLESWORTH WAS a small-time furniture maker based in Cody when publishing magnate Moses Annenberg commissioned him to design and build the furniture for—and also to decorate—his luxury Wyoming hunting retreat, Ranch A. Molesworth created 245 pieces of furniture for the main lodge and associated guest cabins, and brought in Native American artifacts, taxidermy, and artwork as interior accents. (Annenberg’s main interest in the area was hunting.) That was 1932.

Today, Ranch A, which is in Beulah, Wyoming, near the state’s border with South Dakota, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and at downtown Jackson’s Fighting Bear Antiques—one of the country’s experts on Molesworth—you can buy a Molesworth chair for several thousand dollars.

Designed by South Dakota architect Ray Ewing and built from locally cut and milled wood by Finnish craftsmen, Ranch A’s write-up on the National Register states its log structures are

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No lodge can be called “classic” without an oversize river-rock fireplace. Leather furniture and Navajo textiles help, too.

“some of the finest architect-designed buildings in Wyoming.” As remarkable as Ranch A’s log buildings are, the retreat was perhaps most important for its Molesworth furnishings and interiors.

Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, Molesworth’s work melded elements of the Arts and Crafts movement with local materials like horns, natural wood, and hides. Today, his style is called “Cowboy High Style.” After Ranch A, his Shoshone WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

53

Furniture Company went on to do the interiors of Cody’s TE Ranch; the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne; Jackson’s own Wort Hotel; the Pendleton Hotel in Pendleton, Oregon; Elko, Nevada’s Stockmen’s Hotel; Rawlins’ Ferris Hotel; and the Northern Hotel in Billings, Montana.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, even had some Molesworth pieces in it.

An armchair made of willow branches, accessorized with a Pendleton wool blanket, is classic lodge style.

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MOLESWORTH’S HEYDAY WAS during the second iteration of rustic arts, according to Ralph Kylloe, the author of The Rustic Home, Rustic Elegance, The Log Home Book, and ten other books. Kylloe says the original rustic aesthetic in this country was the Great Camp period, in the early 1900s. New Yorkers and Philadelphians escaping the grime and heat of a city summer retreated to modest, simply built cabins in the Adirondacks.

Molesworth and the other designers, craftsmen, and architects that created cowboy rustic started in the 1920s.

(Molesworth’s furniture company was in business until 1961.) Even though it was happening in the West, wealthy easterners again fueled this second take on rustic. They’d often visit dude ranches in the Rocky Mountains, see cowboy style, and, inspired, build lavish summer homes in the area in the same fashion, which included river-rock chimneys and rough-hewn lodgepole pine walls.

These details and materials weren’t so

much choices, but necessity: Wyoming was still very much the Wild West, and river rocks and logs were the materials in most abundant supply.

Kylloe says a third iteration of rustic—the one he also says we’re still mostly in—started in the early 1990s.

Even though he was deceased for more than a decade at that point, Molesworth influenced it. Terry Winchell, co-owner of Fighting Bear Antiques with his wife, Claudia, says it was a 1989 exhibition, Interior West: The Craft & Style of Thomas Molesworth, at Cody’s Buffalo Bill Historical Center that brought about a renewed interest in the rustic lodge look. (After closing at the BBHC, the Molesworth exhibit moved to the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.) “The West was reintroduced to this iconic architect of western vernacular design in this exhibit,” Winchell says.

LOOKING AROUND JACKSON Hole today, it could be argued that the rustic look is now in its fourth phase. The sensibilities that gave rise to such grand lodges like Ranch A have been redefined and refined for contemporary tastes. The

Contemporary kitchen meets classic lodge with stainless steel appliances and lodgepole ceiling beams.

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

COURTESY PHOTO

design elements remain traditional—reclaimed wood, antler and horn details, and animal hide finishes—but are now cast in a contemporary light. Still, they express the original aesthetics of those early dude ranch owners: homes that are relaxed, comfortable, at peace in their natural surroundings, and rely heavily on local craftsmen.

Jackson designer Nanette Mattei’s project for one family (from the West Coast but with fond attachment to Maine) speaks of classic western lodge style with a lighter eye. The owners desired a “hunters’ lodge feel with all the conveniences of modern living.” Details like custom willow chairs and a basket woven by a Native American artist add a highly personal feel and story to the home.

Irene and Alan Lund’s Jackson home could almost be a second-phase lodge home but, owing to oversize picture windows, living spaces are awash with light. (First- and second-generation rustic lodges are often dark inside because the materials and engineering didn’t exist to do large windows.) Also, there is a river-rock fireplace, but it has a steel inset. The staircase is lodgepole but, unburdened by a banister or balustrade, is open and airy, lightening the weight of the kitchen space. An armchair upholstered in wool plaid and the rough-hewn mantel would be right at home at Ranch A, though. JH

Top: A cozy nook in a bedroom presents a modern girl’s vision of lodge decor. The lasso and bridle are decorative, though well-worn. Muchloved cowboy hats hang waiting for summer days.

Bottom: Jackson designer Nanette Mattei likes doing a clean, contemporary take on lodge decor. Here, she made cabinet and drawer pulls out of antlers.

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

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Special Interest Feature

JOHN DODGE HAVEN

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.

HOBACK VISTAS

5,821

square feet

4

bedrooms

5

This is your opportunity to purchase a beautiful home on 6 acres adjacent to national forest land. Just 20 minutes south of Jackson, the home was designed by Jules Wilson of San Diego and includes 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a 2,000 square foot garage with a shop and studio. There are plans for an additional garage and guesthouse on the property.

MLS#

58

4

bedrooms

4.5 baths

$6,250,000 dollars

15-1860 MLS#

3,765

square feet

4

bedrooms

4.5

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Mercedes Huff - (307) 690-9000 mercedes.huff@jhsir.com - mercedeshuff.com

This high quality home is situated on 3 very private acres in John Dodge subdivision on the Village Road, just minutes from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The one level living creates a beautiful layout for entertaining between the kitchen, dining, and living areas. Filtered Teton views can be enjoyed from the gracious patio. A 1,320 square foot garage is perfect for 3 cars and all of the outdoor equipment needed to enjoy Jackson Hole.

baths

2,650,000

15-131

square feet

You’ll love listening to the freely flowing creek from every room of this residence, set among 4 acres of lawns and conifers. Enjoy your evenings sitting on the terrace with direct views of the Grand Teton or wandering back to the Snake River for some fishing or a stroll. The 4 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom home was completely remodeled in 2013 using the highest quality finishes and is complemented by a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom guest house.

2775 W. YELLOWBELL CIRCLE

baths

dollars

3,635

3,600,000

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

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

dollars

15-1904 MLS#

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

POLO RANCHES

3,008

square feet

3

bedrooms

DREAMLIKE SETTING IN WILDERNESS

This beautifully maintained contemporary home on 3.98 acres is located in Polo Ranches subdivision.

The residence offers 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, wonderful natural light in an open living/dining/kitchen area, luxury master bedroom and bath, spacious familyentertainment room, plentiful storage areas, attached oversized garage, separate guest house and more.

3

4,200,000

dollars

Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@aol.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

15-755 MLS#

3 CREEK RANCH

4

bedrooms

4.5 baths

15-2522 MLS#

dollars

15-2649 MLS#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Laurie & Mercedes Huff - (307) 413-6297 laurie.huff@jhsir.com - mercedeshuff.com

FRONT LINE CONDOMINIUM AT SPRING CREEK RANCH

This pristine 4 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom cabin is located in Jackson Hole’s only private golf course community, 3 Creek Ranch. Amenities include first floor master bedroom with second floor junior master, rustic vaulted ceilings, cobblestone driveway, and large two-car garage. A massive stone double fireplace divides the living room from an eat-in kitchen and separate lounge area. An expansive outdoor patio with in-ground hot tub offers privacy with views of the Grand and mature landscaping.

2,294

square feet

3

bedrooms

3.5 baths

Unobstructed and enormously grand views of the entire Teton Mountain Range are captured from this front line position Choate condominium. Property features include three en-suite bedrooms, two fireplaces, a great room with wet bar, modern kitchen, and multiple decks. Offered fully furnished. Central to all of the recreational activities found in Jackson Hole, amenities include a shuttle service between the airport, town and skiing, restaurants, fitness, tennis, pool, concierge and horseback riding.

2,200,000

$4,100,000 dollars

5

bedrooms

baths

1,995,000

square feet

square feet

Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to own one of the best kept secrets in Wilderness Ranches! Situated on 3 incredibly private acres at the north end of Tucker Lake, this 5 bedroom home exudes warmth and charm.

In addition to tranquility and southerly views across the lake, you’ll enjoy deeded Snake River access for limitless fishing and strolls along the levee.

4

baths

4,357

3,475

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

dollars

15-2357 MLS#

Brokerage JHREA/Christie’s International Realty Carol Linton - (307) 732-7518 CarolLinton@jhrea.com - LintonBingle.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

59

SOLITUDE LOG LODGE

6,314

square feet

4

bedrooms

5

baths

A Yellowstone Lodge in Jackson Hole. The craftsmanship, the western design, and the log construction make this 6,300 square foot lodge feel historic. 4 bedrooms, 5 baths, a great room, gourmet kitchen, game room, river rock fireplaces and wrap around porches are all well located on 7+ acres. The property is rich in native vegetation, streams and ponds, and abundant wildlife.

The massive barn with horse stalls and workshop and the 3 car garage provide room for your recreational toys.

4,995,000 dollars

14-1646 MLS#

acres

—

bedrooms

Owl Creek Subdivision has 3.4 to 8.3 acre building lots offering views of the Grand Teton, Sleeping Indian, and Death Canyon or framed and filtered views of the same but with the privacy of tree cover. Available lots have been competitively priced for the 2015 market. You will find wildlife, seclusion, and Snake River access for fishing and hiking! Priced from $995,000 to $1,695,000.

—

MLS#

60

—

bedrooms

—

Take in the panoramic Teton views from this 8.25 acre parcel located in Gros Ventre North, a private subdivision conveniently situated between the Town of Jackson and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Rolling contours, view corridors, and Aspen groves create a peaceful setting.

This lot allows for several different building options, all of which provide special mountain vistas of the Grand Teton, open ranch land, the Aerial Tram and ski area.

baths

dollars

14-2595 MLS#

Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@aol.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

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

STUNNING CONTEMPORARY ESTATE

4,403

square feet

6

bedrooms

6.5 2,390,000

$1,695,000 15-649

acres

baths

baths

dollars

8.25

2,400,000

Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@aol.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

OWL CREEK BUILDING LOTS

8.364

2555 TRADER ROAD

dollars

15-973 MLS#

Dynamic views complement the stunning architecture of this contemporary home on 4.55 acres in Game Creek, just ten minutes from downtown Jackson Hole.

Peacefully surrounded by a native landscape, its elevated position offers panoramas to Glory Bowl and Munger Mountain. The quality residence boasts custom finishes and outstanding craftsmanship. Its nearby guesthouse is ADA compliant. The property enjoys deeded national forest access for mountain biking, hiking, and riding. Zoned for horses.

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Carol Linton - (307) 732-7518 CarolLinton@jhrea.com - LintonBingle.com

TETON VIEWS AND LUSH GARDENS IN EAST JACKSON

8,305

square feet

7

bedrooms

7.5 baths

Overlooking the National Elk Refuge with dramatic Teton views this 8,305 square foot home is on 1.7 acres of gently rolling, lush acres, minutes from the Town Square.

Featuring 7 bedrooms, 7.5 baths, 2 living spaces, a library, an exercise room, hot tub, exterior rock climbing wall and two 2-car garages—the property is delightfully versatile and functional. Multiple outdoor spaces invite you to enjoy the exquisite grounds punctuated by alluring stone arches.

4,900,000 dollars

15-1627 MLS#

square feet

3

bedrooms

3.5 baths

With the Lodges at Fish Creek, the North Cabins, the Lodges at Shooting Star, and the Lodges at Shooting Star II sold out, Shooting Star has released the Lodges at Fish Creek II. Designed by John Carney, these 3-bedroom Lodges will have two spacious master suites, spectacular views of Après Vous Mountain, and on-call shuttle service to and from the Tram. A Shooting Star membership is included, allowing access to all the Club’s world-class amenities.

— MLS#

acres

—

bedrooms

—

baths

This ranch is located in the northern portion of Jackson Hole locally known as Buffalo Valley and offers 160 acres (four 40 acre parcels) rich in the early ranching history of Jackson Hole. Property borders Teton National Forest to the south, historic Black Rock Creek water rights included and US Forest Service permitted reservoir water rights included. Grand Teton, Mt. Moran, and Teton Mountain Range views unfold as you traverse the lush meadows.

dollars

15-1035 MLS#

Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Timothy C. Mayo - (307) 690-4339 tcmayo@aol.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

345 EAST BROADWAY AVENUE

1,453

square feet

Great development opportunity with new town zoning coming soon (TN-2 office mixed use). Corner Broadway lot only two blocks off Town Square.

3

bedrooms

1

baths

1,300,000

3,425,000 dollars

160

18,900,000

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Tom Evans - (307) 739-8149 TomEvansRE@JHSIR.com - TomEvansRealEstate.com

THE LODGES AT FISH CREEK II

3,400

HISTORIC RANCH OPPORTUNITY

TCCG Real Estate (The Clear Creek Group, LLC) John Resor - (307) 739-1908 Jresor@Shootingstarjh.com - theclearcreekgroup.com

dollars

15-1750 MLS#

RARE Properties of Jackson Hole Nick Czesnakowicz - (307) 413-3388 nickczes@aol.com - RAREJH.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

61

GORGEOUS ROCKY MOUNTAIN RETREAT AT GRANITE RIDGE

7,582

square feet

6

bedrooms

This slopeside masterpiece enjoys direct ski-in/ski-out access to the world-renowned Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Designed by local architects Ellis Nunn and Associates, the rustic design complements the wooded setting of the 0.87-acre hillside property.

5

MLS#

TCCG Real Estate (The Clear Creek Group, LLC) John L. Resor - (307) 739-1908 Jresor@Shootingstarjh.com - theclearcreekgroup.com

TETON PINES RETREAT

6,868

square feet

5

bedrooms

Overlooking nearly 100 acres of protected ranch land, this stunning and private custom home offers a ground-level-living floor plan that includes the luxurious master bedroom en suite and is located just three miles from world class skiing at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

4

bedrooms

UPON REQUEST dollars

— MLS#

6,000 + square feet

—

bedrooms

baths

baths

4,850,000

25,000,000

dollars

15-1766 MLS#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Spackmans & Associates - (307) 739-8156 Spackmans@JHSIR.com - spackmansinjacksonhole.com

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

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

DODGE RANCH, WHEATLAND, WY

—

5.5

62

square feet

Enjoy south and west facing sunshine and views from this charming 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath farmhouse with two living areas, each with a wood burning stove. Beautiful oak hardwood floors in living, dining, and kitchen.

Large family room with built-in bookshelves and desk.

Oversized 2-car attached garage plus large covered carport or work area. 3 acres with no CC&Rs and no HOA fees. Listing agent is related to seller.

baths

12,750,000

15-2683

2,240

3.5

baths

dollars

ALTA, WYOMING - 3 ACRES, NO CCRS

dollars

— MLS#

The Dodge Ranch encompasses 20,502± deeded acres plus an additional 5,554± leased acres with 11± miles of Laramie River and 3.7± miles of Bluegrass Creek access that offer excellent private fisheries. Enjoy world class elk hunting (up to 800 elk spotted) on the property. Four residences: Owner home and guest house are nicely done and 3,000± square feet each. 1,000± yearlings run in summer. 800± acres flood irrigated grass land.

Fay Ranches Mike Jorgenson - (800) 238-8616 mjorgenson@fayranches.com - fayranches.com

QUINTESSENTIAL MOUNTAIN RETREAT

2,854

square feet

3

bedrooms

3

This property really does have it all. Beautiful log main house on 5.5 acres, adorable 1 bedroom, 1 bath log guest house and a cute log building with indoor heated endless swimming pool. Stunning south-easterly views of the Snake River and Munger Mountain. Adjacent to USFS and Crescent H open space with creek frontage and hiking and biking trails at your door step. This is truly ‘’the’’ property to enjoy all Jackson Hole has to offer.

baths

15-2087 MLS#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Jane Carhart - (307) 739-8026 jane.carhart@jhsir.com - jhsir.com

BEAUTIFUL LOG HOME IN WILSON

5,846

square feet

5

bedrooms

4.5 baths

Located in River Meadows just south of Wilson on the east side of Fall Creek Road, this spectacular log home is surrounded by conservation land with unobstructed views of the Grand Teton and the Snake River. With a great floor plan of 5,846 square feet, 5 bedrooms, and 4.5 baths, this home will be sure to impress. Proximity to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, the Snake River and the national forest provides the ultimate location to enjoy all that Jackson Hole has to offer.

5,695,000 dollars

15-2352 MLS#

6,800

square feet

6

bedrooms

7

baths

2,295,000 dollars

WOODSIDE ESTATE

UPON REQUEST dollars

— SIR#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Chris Grant - (307) 413-3814 chris.grant@jhsir.com - propertiesjacksonhole.com

DESIRABLE EAST JACKSON

2,970

square feet

4

bedrooms

This home has been beautifully remodeled from top to bottom. New cabinets, quartz countertops, brushed steel backsplash, paint, hardwood flooring, carpeting, and tile.

Convenient in town living, close to the hospital and along the bus line. Nice fenced backyard with hot tub and deck and views of Snow King.

4

baths

1,395,000

Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates Sean Clark - (307) 690-8716 SeanClark@jhrea.com

Woodside Estate was completed in 2014, and offers up expansive Teton views from every room in the house. With over 6,800 square feet of living space, this 6 bedroom, 7 bathroom home was built with beautiful reclaimed materials and the finest quality finishes available. The craftsmanship and attention to detail are evident in every room. Situated on 5 private acres in Woodside Subdivision, just 10 minutes north of the town of Jackson.

This area of the valley has abundant wildlife and some of the most beautiful scenery in the Rocky Mountain Region.

dollars

15-123 MLS#

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Doug Herrick - (307) 413-8899 doug@bhhsjacksonhole.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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360 DEGREE VIEWS

3,365

square feet

3

bedrooms

3

baths

3,395,000 dollars

15-2118 MLS#

This preferred Wilson location has abundant wildlife frequenting the property. Being close to everything with extremely easy access is a tremendous feature of this location. 360 degree views that include the Grand Teton on 5+ acres create privacy in this peaceful retreat (setting). Wildflowers, mature vegetation, along with the pond greatly add to the outdoor experience. This property is the reason people have been moving to Jackson for the last 30 years.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Kurt Harland - (307) 413-6887 kurt@bhhsjacksonhole.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

CHANGE YOUR WORLDVIEW

5.59 acres

—

bedrooms

Hillside setting, 5.59 acre building site with sensational views of the Teton Range and Jackson Hole valley.

Atop Gros Ventre West with easy access, 10 minutes to town and 15 minutes to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, unparalleled views, dramatic - yet private!

MLS#

64

square feet

2

bedrooms

2

baths

This beautifully updated 2 bedroom condo is within short walking distance to the market, shops, bus-stop and restaurants. Located in the desirable Windflower building, this very clean bright unit is finished off with new carpeting, new paint and many fresh new furnishings. The sun filled property has a desirable walk-in pantry, floor-to-ceiling fireplace, large windows, new washer/dryer, 3 decks plus lovely views over a common area park. Sold completely furnished.

652,000 dollars

— MLS#

Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty Pamela Renner - (307) 690-5530 pamela.renner@jhsir.com - pamelarenner.com

PERFECT FAMILY SKI HOME

3,352

square feet

4

bedrooms

Located just 3 miles from the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, this extremely well built 4 bedroom, 3,352 square foot house is the perfect ski vacation home or residence.

Separate guest apartment, Grand Teton views, over-sized garage, and separate outbuildings compliment this wonderful Jackson Hole property.

baths

1,995,000

1,150,000

15-945

1,172

5

—

baths

dollars

BEAUTIFULLY UPDATED CONDO IN THE ASPENS

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

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

dollars

15-909 MLS#

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Brokers of Jackson Hole Real Estate Jack Stout - (307) 413-7118 jack@bhhsjacksonhole.com - bhhsjacksonhole.com

W Save the Date

EXHIBIT2016 + SALE

SEPTEMBER 8-11

JACKSON HOLE, WY SNOW KING CENTER

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANNA TRZEBINSKI, VICTORIA SCARLETT INTERIOR DESIGNS, BRIT WEST, ELLIE THOMPSON + CO, BRIAN BOGGS CHAIRMAKERS, FORSYTH & BROWN INTERIOR DESIGN

WesternDesignConference.com

2 4 T H

A N N U A L

C O N F E R E N C E

2 0 1 6

OPENING PREVIEW PARTY • DESIGNER SHOW HOUSE RETAIL ROW • 3-DAY EXHIBIT + SALE WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

65

JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT 50TH ANNIVERSARY

At fifty years old, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has grown up while staying true to its founders’ visions.

SINCE ITS AERIAL tram first took skiers to the 10,450-foot summit of Rendezvous Mountain just outside the boundary of Grand Teton National Park in December 1965, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has been equally loved and feared by extreme skiers and snowboarders for its challenging terrain, 4,139 feet of vertical, and powder. As recently as a decade ago, though, skiers and riders at every other level just plain feared it. The majority of the resort’s runs were black diamond. Grooming wasn’t a priority. The only thing in shorter supply than intermediate terrain was base-area amenities. Want to pamper yourself with an afternoon at the spa? Good luck. “It was clear Jackson Hole was high-testosterone skiing,” says resort president Jerry Blann. “You found a resort with the terrain we have, you hire an Olympic champion to be your ski school director, and you attract a certain type of person.”

This season, JHMR turns fifty and is now as family friendly and intermediate- and amenity-rich as most any destination resort. The transition is almost unbelievable, but not quite. What is unbelievable is that the resort has gone from punishing to polished without 66

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

sacrificing its soul. “We’ll never be a megaresort or pure vanilla,” Blann says. “We’ve got a Four Seasons and a hostel and everything in between. We’ll never be all things to all people. We have our mountain, and we’ll be us.” Jackson’s “us” is “a small town where everyone helps everyone else out,” says Jackson native and former U.S. and World Freeskiing champion Jess McMillan. “It may feel like this huge resort, but at the same time everyone will say, ‘Hello.’ It still has that small-town camaraderie to it.” This year, as a birthday present to itself, JHMR also has a new high-speed quad.

The Teton Lift, which accesses intermediate and advanced terrain previously only available if you had the strength and will to hike to it, is the best kind of gift: one that we all get to enjoy. — The Editors

Since first opening in 1965, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has grown to be ranked the No. 1 ski resort in North America by readers of SKI magazine. Forbes has also rated it the No. 1 ski resort in the country for several years running, including 2015.

JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

67

A SHORT HISTORY OF

JHMR

BOB WOODALL - FOCUS PRODUCTIONS

ALEX MORLEY MOVED to Jackson Hole to be a ski bum. At Snow King. “I didn’t move to Jackson to build a ski area but to be a ski bum,” Morley said in an interview a few months before his death in November. It was the 1960s when Morley bought land and built a house on Antelope Flats in Grand Teton National Park.

“I looked across the valley at the Tetons and thought, ‘Some of those mountains are better than Snow King by ten times!’ ” Paul McCollister, a retired (at age forty-two) “We first thought about advertising executive, lived about one mile from putting the ski resort on Morley. McCollister had Buck, but we realized pretty a similar view from his quickly that was a bad idea. home as Morley did and had the same thought Can you imagine skiing about the Tetons compared to Snow King. off that summit? It was too “We formed a partnertough. Rendezvous itself is ship,” Morley said. “I first thought about putting tough enough.” ski resort on Buck — Alex Morley, resort cofounder the [Mountain], but we realized pretty quickly that was a bad idea. It was too tough, and it was inside the park.”

The two men turned their attention to Rendezvous Mountain, just outside the park’s southern boundary. “We put skins on and were the first to climb Rendezvous,” Morley said.

They thought they might be onto something Howie Henderson gets powder, but hired University of Denver ski coach and and air, skiing through a cliff noted ski area consultant Willy Schaeffler to band beneath the aerial tram. study the area for its potential. “All ski areas in America at the time were on north slopes,” 68

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Morley said. Rendezvous and Apres Vous mountains faced east and south. “We worried they’d ice up,” Morley said.

For three winters, the men packed out a slope on Apres Vous Mountain that “the sun really hit.” They’d bring up skiers—all friends—with a Kristi snowcat to test conditions. It never got icy. The men still wanted Schaeffler’s full report, though. “Once we heard from Willy, that set us off,” Morley said. “He wrote this would be one of the best ski resorts in the world. We formed a corporation and got to work. We got a lease from the forest service that today would be flat-out impossible. You couldn’t build Jackson Hole today.”

Because the valley was considered an economically depressed/distressed area at the time—in the winter, about half of the valley’s population was on welfare—the corporation got a low-interest government development loan. Morley also turned to his friend, Wyoming governor Cliff Hansen, to get loans from the state. “Paul didn’t have much money, and I had a little money,” Morley said. “We put in what we could personally, but we needed more.”

“From the beginning, it was always intended to be an international ski area,” he said. “We planned on bringing people from everywhere.”

Even though there was only one existing aerial tram in the country at the time—at Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire, and it was much shorter—McCollister and Morley decided to build one at Jackson Hole. They didn’t opt for a tram because of skiers, however; Morley was thinking ahead to summer visitors. “Summertime in Jackson Hole back in those days was booming. I got to thinking

COFOUNDER ALEX MORLEY’S

GREAT RUN

ALEX K. MORLEY

YOU KNOW SOMEONE has lived an incredible life when cofounding Jackson Hole Mountain Resort isn’t the most interesting, or even the second most interesting, thing they’ve done. Paul McCollister gets much of the credit for creating JHMR, but today’s skiers should direct some serious thanks to Alex Morley, too. Everyone, skier or not, should be in awe of the way Morley, who died this fall, lived and loved life.

Meeting Morley for the first time this past summer at a pancake place not far from his home in Bend, Oregon, where he has lived since 1994, I guessed he was in his mid-seventies. He arrived in a canary yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser. Emblazoned on each side was a photo of him carving on a groomer. Brighter than Morley’s Toyota were his eyes, twinkling and bluer than even Paul Newman’s.

We were both through our pancakes before I realized my estimate of Morley’s age was off. He mentioned he was married, to Rachel, for sixty-five years. Assuming he and Rachel married young, I revised my estimate to eighty- Jackson Hole Mountain Resort cofounder Alex Morley died Nov. 1, just shy of his ninety-seventh birthday. He skied until he was ninety-two. Above he skis at three years old. Several minutes later, in passing, he menMt. Bachelor at age eighty-eight. tioned he flew 237 combat missions in World War II, about as many as any pilot who had lived through that war. My life No. 3. Morley first skied at age eight, on a small hill outside Cheyenne estimate was way off. on skis he made in his basement.

Morley was ninety-six. He skied until he was ninety-two.

Morley debated between Aspen, Switzerland, or Jackson Hole, where Morley died of pancreatic cancer in November, just short of his ninetyseventh birthday. In September, sitting with him in his home overlooking he kept a boat on Jackson Lake in the summer. “Aspen was starting to get a drug culture, and, in Switzerland, you’d always be a foreigner. They the Deschutes River, he talked about the five lives he had lived.

“My first life had nothing to do with any of the subsequent ones,” he didn’t accept people unless they were born there. I was born in Wyoming,” said. “I was an Air Force paratrooper pilot. I was blind lucky to survive 237 he said. And so, Jackson Hole—home to Wyoming’s first ski resort, Snow combat missions.” One of the missions Morley flew has been depicted in King—it was. Morley moved to the valley with his family in 1961.

Life No. 4, living on Orcas Island, Washington, and spending most of movies as well as in the 2015 book, Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II. Morley’s second life was as a contrac- his time sailing with Rachel and his family, started after he sold his intertor/developer in his hometown of Cheyenne. Morley pounded nails starting est in the ski area to Paul McCollister. It lasted until he moved to Bend.

Morley’s life in Bend consisted of taking care of Rachel, who died in high school and through college, where he was also in ROTC. When he returned home from the war, Morley decided he would be a developer and in 2006, working to develop a ski area on the part of Mount Jefferson on builder. The company he founded built five hundred houses for soldiers on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, and adventuring with friend Helen Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. A bad deal with the government eventu- Vandervort. “I was fortunate to have had so many experiences,” he said. ally soured Morley on building, and he decided to be a ski bum, which was “What a ride it has been.” — Dina Mishev WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

69

2 SKIERS, 1 RESORT

summer would be our biggest business and wanted something that would attract tourists,” he said. “Gondolas didn’t exist yet, and I knew people wouldn’t want to sit on a chairlift for that long. A tramway was the obvious thing.” They hired Canadian engineer Bob McClellan to design it. “We knew it’d be good for winter, too. It’s fast. And it worked; it really did. And that’s when the trouble started.”

“We were a brand new ski area, but where were the skiers?” asked Morley.

“They stayed away.” Jackson Hole had the unfortunate timing to open in 1965, shortly after Vail in 1962. “Vail was huge competition,” Morley said. “It was easy access. People flocked there.”

Olympic medalist (silver in 1960 and gold and bronze in 1964) and JHMR ski school director from its opening until 1995

“Building [Jackson Hole], I had the greatest time. I loved every minute of it,” Morley said. “It was running it that was hard. Paul was a salesman who could sell you anything. I was the businessman who raised the money and did the building. But I wasn’t a manager. I wanted to hire someone, but we didn’t have the money.” Sometimes the resort didn’t have money to pay the employees it did have. “I had a horrible time keeping it together,” Morley said. When they couldn’t make payroll, Morley called his 70

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

SPENCER RANK MOVED to Jackson in 1999. “I came for one winter and here I am sixteen years later,” he says. Rank, founder of Teton Art Services, “gravitated to Jackson because of the open boundaries and continuous vertical. I also picked it because it was difficult to get to. That’s now changed, but I’m still ruined for most every other resort I go to.” We had Blann and Rank sit down and chat about the resort they both love.

BRADLY J. BONER

PRICE CHAMBERS

“Rendezvous Mountain is a beautiful mountain, and it is something that not many ski resorts—then or now—were: steep. At the beginning, ‘steep’ was not a good word. We’d go to ski shows in New York, and when people learned we were from Jackson Hole, they’d say, ‘Oh that’s the one that is steep and cold.’ The steepness of the mountain worked against us.” — Pepi Stiegler,

JERRY BLANN STARTED working at Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor, where his father was general manager, when he was ten. “Dad said, ‘I need some help and you’re it,’ ” Blann recalls. “It was great and what got me started.” Blann went on to race at the University of Denver on a skiing scholarship and then got into ski-area management after graduating. Before taking the job of president of JHMR in 1995, Blann was president and CEO of Aspen Skiing Co.

PRESIDENT

(former) SKID

Favorite Run

When we get new snow, I’m up on the tram and then I stay on that side of the resort. I love R Trail and Bivouac. When they’re right, the Hobacks can’t be beat.

Just in that section we’ve got more terrain than many ski areas.

Rendezvous Bowl to Cheyenne Bowl to Sparky’s Traverse to North Hoback. Get that top to bottom on a powder day and basically it’s better than a day of heliskiing, and you get it with a ski pass.

Overcrowding?

We actually scaled down the mountain’s approved capacity. It was 10,500. The master plan we did reduced it to 7,690 at build-out, though.

Most of the vacationing skiers who come don’t use the same terrain I do. My beef is too many college kids moving here every winter, trying to prove themselves.

Best AprèsSki Spot

Ascent Lounge at the Four Seasons was a usual, but since the Spur was redone, that’s my spot.

Village Cafe and Spur. I rue the loss of the VC—this is our first season without it. Don’t get me started on missing the Boom Boom Room.

Favorite Ski Day

Any powder day in the Hobacks

December 10, 2012. You could ski any aspect and the wind kept blowing it in.

Learned Wisdom

No matter the intermediate terrain we add, Jackson will always attract adventuresome families. Even in our Kids Ranch, they’re out skiing. It’s not day care; we’re getting kids out. It is that ethos that comes along with the resort.

The people who just watch the number on the snow report sometimes miss out. The snow report doesn’t tell everything.

© 2015

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B o z e m a n , mT • J ac k s o n H o l e , WY • S c o T T Sda L e , az 4977 • 75 nortH cacHe • Jackson, WYoming 83001 • 307 733-2353 W W W . L e g a c y g a L L e ry . c o m

Box

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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BRADLY J. BONER

Closing day is always a party at JHMR. This year, the resort has special events all season long. (See the Calendar of Events, p. 160, for details.)

friend, Dr. King Curtis. “I asked to borrow $250,000, which was like $2 million today,” Morley said. “I did that again and again. I’d make the payroll for a few weeks. And then we’d sell a lot, or I’d go back to King. We also sold lifetime passes for practically nothing.”

Several years after opening, the resort still struggled. Jackson Hole was just too difficult to get to. “My wife told me that if I didn’t quit, I was going to die,” Morley said. “It was that stressful. I sold my interest in the resort back to the [Jackson Hole] Ski Corporation.”

McCollister, who died in 1999, continued to run the resort until selling it to the Kemmerer family in 1992. “It’s amazing Paul kept it going as long as he did,” Morley said. “He had a vision, but the

“We have a vision for this place that wants to be about quality, not quantity. We don’t want to be Vail or Aspen. We love those guys, but that’s not us.” — Jerry Blann, JHMR president

economics became a staggering problem.”

Since buying the resort, the Kemmerers have invested upwards of $138 million in new lifts, expanding terrain and snowmaking, grooming, and on-mountain amenities. They built

the Bridger gondola and Marmot lift; replaced the Apres Vous, Casper, and Teewinot lifts and, in their single biggest expenditure, the aerial tram; and this winter they added the Teton Lift.

As the skiing has improved, so have the offerings at the base area. The first spa appeared in 2000, inside the Snake River Lodge & Spa, which at the time was the most luxurious overnight option in Teton Village. Three years later, Jackson Hole became the first ski resort in the world to get a Four Seasons. Then came the world’s first LEED Silver certified boutique hotel, Hotel Terra.

“Luckily the Kemmerers came along,” Morley said. “Paul and I had a vision when we started building it, but never like it is today. That is beyond my belief.” JH

PEPI STIEGLER’S

FOCUS PRODUCTIONS

STORY

72

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

JOSEF “PEPI” STIEGLER, ski school director from the resort’s opening until 1995, has much to do with what Jackson Hole’s Mountain Sports School looks like today. But Stiegler wasn’t the first (or second) choice of resort cofounders Paul McCollister and Alex Morley for the position.

The job was first offered to American ski star Buddy Werner. Werner, a native of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, accepted the post but died in an avalanche near St. Moritz, Switzerland, the season before Jackson Hole opened. Jackson Hole next approached Austrian Othmar Schneider, who was the ski school director at Boyne Mountain in Michigan. Schneider did not accept the position but did recommend former teammate and Olympic medalist—silver at the 1960 Games and gold and bronze in 1964—Stiegler.

“For me, it was a big deal to take on a ski school that was originally offered to a great American

skier,” Stiegler, now seventy-eight, says. “I felt very privileged.” Prior to Jackson Hole, Stiegler had never directed a ski school.

“The first thing I had to do was separate the ski bums who only wanted to get on the staff so that they could get a free ride on the tram,” Stiegler says. “They weren’t professional, and I had to sort those guys out. I was a disciplinarian.” While finding qualified instructors was a challenge—Stiegler initially ended up with a staff of mostly Austrians—finding students in the early days was not. “The ski school meeting place was right near the [bottom of] the aerial tram and Apres Vous lift,” Stiegler says. “We took advantage of people being intimidated to some degree.” Even with a ready supply of students, though, “The ski school didn’t make any money for six years,” Stiegler says. “I look at it today and it is so big. It is unbelievable.” — D.M.

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JACKSON HOLE MOUNTAIN RESORT

BY THE NUMBERS

19661970; 1975

130 the total number of lifetime passes sold these years

years lifetime passes were sold

60 lifetime passes still in use

22,000 skier days the 65/66 season

563,631

current record for skier days, set in 13/14

20

number of years an employee must work before getting a lifetime pass

6

$

Price of a lift ticket the first season

115

lifties in 65/66

lifties in 15/16

584

45

50

12/28/14

busiest day ever in the resort’s 50 years

20 most inches of snow that fell during a season (96/97)

8,000+

skiers on the mountain on the busiest day

lifties in 1985

15 80

ski patrollers in 65/66

ski patrollers in 15/16

4 17

snowcats used for grooming in 65/66 74

cats and winch groomers in 15/16

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

BRADLY J. BONER

number of seasons current JHMR grooming manager Earl Ward has skied at the resort

Woodside Estate 6,800 SQUARE FEET • 6 BEDROOMS • 7 BATHROOMS • PRICE UPON REQUEST

For more information contact Chris Grant WOODSIDEESTATEJH.COM • 307/413-3814 • CHRIS.GRANT@JHSIR.COM

PROPERTIESJACKSONHOLE.COM JACKSON HOLE’S BEST PROPERTY SEARCH WEBSITE

Top Producers 2013 & 2014

WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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ZACK CLOTHIER

76

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Crown Jewels at the End of their Golden Age? As the National Park Service turns one hundred, the examples set by—and the problems seen by—Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks are more important than ever.

BY TODD WILKINSON

The Roosevelt Arch at Yellowstone’s North Entrance stands as a timeless icon welcoming visitors to one of the most popular national parks in the country.

WALLACE STEGNER, THE late godfather of contemporary western literature, famously declared national parks the best idea America ever had.

With high-profile help from noted filmmaker Ken Burns and historian Dayton Duncan (who together produced the six-episode 2009 documentary aired on PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea)—and passionate boosters like Jackson Hole author and poet Terry Tempest Williams—our national parks have certainly

been popularized as sacred shrines woven deep into the fabric of our country. They’re held up as birthrights that come with citizenship. As places to escape the cacophony of urban civilization. As touchstones of history. As venues where nature still wields primacy and authority. And today, as attractions that make the cash registers in gateway communities sing with the sound of commerce.

In 2014, the most recent year for which statistics are available, nearly 292 million visits were notched to all federal park units. More than 8 WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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million of those were recorded in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, the two parks closest to Jackson Hole and the two preserves that give this valley much of its identity. In 2015, the attendance figure was even higher, with record numbers passing through the entrance stations of both parks.

When I ask author David Quammen if Stegner’s adage resonates with him, he delivers a surprising answer: “National parks as America’s best idea? No, I think our greatest contribution to the world has been our model of modern democracy,” Quammen says. “But parks are a brilliant concept that becomes more important with age. What they are and the role they play continues to evolve. I think, in that sense, parks serve as mirrors, reflecting what kind of country we aspire to be.”

On August 25, 2016, the National Park Service (NPS), the government agency that manages the parks, turns a century old.

While it is the centenary of the NPS that is being celebrated this year, Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks figure at the center of an unprecedented edition of National Geographic magazine.

The April 2016 issue focuses entirely on the Greater Yellowstone

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

“Parks are a brilliant concept that becomes more important with age. What they are and the role they play continues to evolve. I think, in that sense, parks serve as mirrors reflecting what kind of country we aspire to be.” —David Quammen

A man dips a trout into the famous Fishing Cone thermal feature on Yellowstone Lake in a postcard from the late 1800s. The practice, long since banned, is representative of the loose and flippant attitudes shown toward preservation, even after the National Park Service was founded in 1916.

Ecosystem, which has Yellowstone and Grand Teton at its geographical heart. Quammen, who lives in Bozeman, Montana, penned the whole issue—the first time that honor has been bestowed upon a single writer in the legendary yellow magazine’s 127-year history.

ALL TOLD, THE NPS encompasses 408 “units” in the form of parks, monuments, battlefields, recreation areas, the homes of famous Americans, and other historical or ecological areas significant at a national level. Of course it is the parks—fifty-nine in twenty-seven states—that are the service’s pride, and only a handful of these are considered true crown jewels: Yellowstone, which was the country’s first national park and actually preceded the NPS by forty-four years, along with Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, and Grand Teton, among a select few others.

With a 2015 budget of $3.65 billion, the NPS has 22,000 employees, from iconic rangers and scientists to historians, law enforcement, and seasonal trail crews. Rangers today manage bear jams in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, rescue injured climbers from peril in the Tetons, and host campfire chats. In 1963, they flanked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall in WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Thousands of tourists gather in the Upper Geyser Basin to watch an eruption of Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. In 2015, Yellowstone surpassed four million annual visitors for the first time. The only national parks with more visitors were the Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, and Yosemite.

Washington, D.C., with the Lincoln Memorial at his back.

In their documentary, following an exhaustive coast-tocoast exploration trying to put their finger on the essence of national parks, Burns and Duncan said that parks “are more than a collection of rocks and trees and inspiration scenes from nature. They embody something less tangible yet equally enduring—an idea, born in the United States nearly a century after its creation, as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical.”

Like the Declaration of Independence, which promulgated the founding of this country, the Park Service, which is administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, traces its origin to a document, the 1916 Organic Act. The act established public enjoyment and resource protection as its principal objectives.

In public opinion polls through the years, the National Park Service has been consistently regarded as one of the most beloved agencies in the federal government, says former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. So fond are Americans that 221,000 volunteer to work in parks nationwide every year. Yet, in recent years, its budget has not kept pace with the growing demands of keeping parks running. Today, the NPS has a maintenance backlog of $11.5 billion. Parks, despite increased visitation, are expected to deliver far more on much less. Besides carrying out the usual duties of tourism, parks are laboratories for science, 80

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and the age of heightened ecological consciousness has created more demands to have management informed by research.

YELLOWSTONE, BORN BY an act of Congress in 1872, is not only the first national park in the United States but also in the world. No one suspected this at the time, but it became a template. Denis Galvan, the longtime NPS policy chief, who is now retired, notes that America’s park system became the model emulated globally.

The origin tale of Yellowstone is packaged like this: once upon a time a group of farsighted white-guy conservationists sat around a campfire and conceived of the national park ideal.

The reality is that Yellowstone came into being as a ruse— carve a protected area out of the rapidly dwindling frontier and Easterners will want to visit it, buying tickets on the newly established transcontinental rail line.

These early Yellowstone visitors didn’t come because they were green-minded but for refined adventure. Members of the American upper crust, they dined on white tablecloths in rustic luxury lodges at night and, by day, tramped around the park’s geothermal features, often trampling them and even bathing and washing their clothes in them. They hauled unsustainable numbers of trout out of lakes and streams, threw out table scraps to lure in bears for viewing, and chipped off chunks of travertine to bring home as souvenirs. In the park’s

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earliest days, its elk were hunted and killed Recent agreements have reduced number of wapiti, but immediately adjato feed guests and rangers. Only later, and the number of snow machines in cent to the park, in the National Elk Refuge, incrementally over decades as the toll on Yellowstone in favor of cleaner and thousands of elk are artificially fed. The park quieter snowcoaches in an effort resources rose, did Yellowstone’s—and the to balance visitor enjoyment with and elk refuge are at cross-purposes. Feeding national parks’ in general—purpose become preservation of the natural resources. elk also is known to increase the percentage protecting its natural wonders, ecosystems, of them carrying brucellosis and it leaves and landscapes. herds vulnerable to a new, looming threat: But even today there are contradictions. Yellowstone has chronic wasting disease. the greatest migrations of megafauna in the Lower 48, but the Although there is no shortage of controversies, common state of Montana has killed over eight thousand Yellowstone sense often prevails. For years, rising numbers of snowmobiles bison since the 1980s. Bison of course don’t recognize invis- in Yellowstone had reached a crisis point with air and noise ible boundaries and, in winter, while looking for forage, often pollution. It got so bad that rangers working the entrance wander out of the park’s safe confines. Bison carry the disease station at West Yellowstone, Montana—the self-proclaimed brucellosis, which causes females to abort their firstborn, and “snowmobile capital of the world”—wore gas masks to protect it is feared they will transmit the disease to private cattle herds their lungs from pollution. However, recent agreements have grazing nearby, even though there has never been a docu- reduced the number of snowmobiles allowed to enter the park, mented case of such a transmission happening. Cattle herds given way to new generations of cleaner-running vehicles, and in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho have indeed been infected, resulted in more tourists being ferried into Old Faithful during but all cases involving wildlife have been traced to brucellosis- the winter via quieter snowcoaches. carrying wild elk.

In his landmark book, Preserving Nature In the National Yellowstone is not alone in its incongruities. Sage grouse Parks: A History, retired NPS historian Richard West Sellars and hikers in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) both are addresses this sometimes-schizophrenic approach to park bothered by jets landing and taking off from the Jackson Hole management—accommodating the desires of people and Airport, the only airport in the country inside a national park. also claiming to protect resources through decision-making In the same park, for ten and a half months of each year, it is informed by science. When Sellars’ book was published in illegal to “invade the space” of wildlife (the distances vary for 1997 he was skeptical that the Park Service could successfully different species) or to otherwise harass them. And yet, every step up to and fend off meddling by politicians and business autumn, GTNP allows hunters to kill a select number of elk interests that put commerce before environmental protecwithin its borders. tion. That debate still rages and is as complex and compliWildlife officials say the hunt is necessary to reduce the cated as ever.

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MANY PEOPLE IN Wyoming vigorously resisted efforts to have the grizzly bear receive federal protection under the Endangered Species Act and for wolf restoration in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Both were successful, and in their wake today is a thriving nonconsumptive wildlife safari industry. In addition, claims that bears and wolves would cause significant damage to big game herds and livestock have proved to be exaggerated.

BRADLY J. BONER

leadership positions, is worried that many Americans take parks for granted. “If we were depending on today’s Congress to establish national parks, there would be no Yellowstone, no Grand Canyon, no Yosemite, and no uniquely American system of national parks that are the exemplar of the world,” she says.

Anzelmo shares a quote from the journals of John Muir, who penned this observation in 1898 following one of his two visits to Yellowstone: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.”

At the time of Muir’s visit, fewer than twelve thousand people came to Yellowstone each year.

In 2015, for the first time in its 143-year history, Yellowstone had over four million visitors. By the end of September 2015, both Yellowstone and GTNP had each had more visitors than in the entirety of 2014.

The NPS has an $11.5 billion backlog, with $1 billion of that accrued in Yellowstone alone; much of this involves the park’s three-hundred-plus miles of crumbling highways.

Wenk says that during Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk began his career with the NPS in 1975 and took over peak summer visitation, stewardship of Yellowstone in 2011. He believes the park remains a destination that is woven into millions of Yellowstone surpasses its family vacations every year. “The notion of Yellowstone being a necessary pilgrimage still lives large for people carrying capacity. The park in this country,” Wenk says. is being visited to death. If visitation continues to rise, Today, the two parks anchor an annual $1 billion nature- it is inevitable that the quality of the visitor experience will tourism economy, from wolf- and grizzly-watchers to wild- be diminished. life photographers, backpackers, cyclists, hikers, anglers, and So what will Yellowstone do? those for whom a trip to Yellowstone is still considered an I remember a conversation I had with late U.S. Senator all-American vacation. After agriculture and energy develop- Malcolm Wallop, of Wyoming, in the early 1990s when he prement/mining, the northwest corner of Wyoming, defined by sciently said the only antidote was getting people untethered protected public landscapes, is the third major pillar of the from their cars. Wallop suggested looking at the feasibility of state’s economy. a Disney World-like monorail in Yellowstone. It was roundly This fall, during an interview at his office—constructed long rejected as too costly and impractical. The irony is that had it ago by the U.S. Cavalry before there were cars—Yellowstone been built a quarter-century ago, it would have likely cost less superintendent Dan Wenk was reeling from the busiest tour- than the park’s current maintenance backlog. ist season ever recorded in the national park. “These days are different from the era when families would pile into a station MIKE FINLEY SPENT thirty-two years with the Park Service, wagon and trek cross-country to get here on vacation,” Wenk working his way up to park superintendent, first of Everglades, says. “But the notion of Yellowstone being a necessary pilgrim- then Yosemite, and finally Yellowstone. He points to something age still lives large for people in this country.” that he calls a “holy oath”—it’s the sacred trust that all elected Still, Jackson Hole resident Joan Anzelmo, who spent officials are bound to uphold on behalf of the American peodecades working for the NPS, holding a number of senior ple, and it’s to abide by the law. The 1916 Organic Act is clear 84

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in stating the duty of superintendents is to make management decisions that leave parks unimpaired for future generations, Finley says.

Etched into the Roosevelt Arch at the Northern Entrance to Yellowstone are the words, “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” Finley notes that in the dual purpose of entertaining people and maintaining the line on resource protection, courts have sided with the latter.

In one of the most colorful quotes I’ve ever heard from a Yellowstone superintendent during my thirty years of writing about national parks, after keeping a ban on paddling the park’s rivers in place because of concerns for wildlife, Bob Barbee (superintendent from 198394) told me: “The smooth marble floor of the Sistine Chapel or the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., would frankly be great for skateboard-

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ing and roller blading—terrific places to have fun on wheels and get a good workout in—but we don’t allow it. Why? Because it comes down to self-restraint and having respect for special places.”

(Side note: although Barbee upheld the paddling ban in the early 1990s and it was kept intact by his successors, the prohibition is being challenged today by a Jackson Hole-based group of packrafters who has enlisted the help of U.S. Representative Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming. It reminds me of the words of the late American conservationist David Brower who said, “No conservation victories are ever permanent. Some battles are destined to be fought again and again as each generation must learn anew the value of conservation.”)

IR

Etched into the Roosevelt Arch at the Northern Entrance to Yellowstone are the words, “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

AN

TEED PR

IC

DESPITE THE CHALLENGES, Wenk points to the catalyst that causes him to rise enthusiastically out of bed every morning: “People love this place. They WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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dream of coming here. When they arrive and they see a bear or a moose or elk or they stroll through the boardwalks of the geyser basins, they experience the magic, it becomes part of their family history, and they remember it for the rest of their lives.”

The power of national parks transcends biology. Every year, visitors send the ashes of loved ones spiraling into the chasm of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Or they climb the Grand Teton and scatter them from the summit. Marriage proposals are made at scenic overlooks, and the elderly and those seeking to have their last wishes fulfilled come to parks to gaze upon places or animals that matter to them.

Before Dave Hallac left Yellowstone as its chief scientist last year and became superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, he and I walked along a tiny creek discussing threats to the park, many of which are off the radar of its millions of visitors.

“The inspiring thing to me is that this might be Yellowstone’s Golden Age. At no point in the last one hundred years has this place—with the restoration of wolves and recovery of grizzly bears—felt wilder,” he said. “And yet, if you examine all of the scientific evidence and look at the trendlines of human visitation, development, exotic organisms taking hold, and climate change, it could all unravel. We could lose it and we’re going to lose it faster if we don’t come to terms with its limitations.”

In Searching for Yellowstone, Paul Schullery penned what I believe is arguably the best philosophical reflection about the importance not only of Yellowstone but all of our national parks.

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Yellowstone, he says, is like the Millions of parents share Shangri-La of Lost Horizon, Yellowstone and other national with their children James Hilton’s classic novel of a parks every year. A core value of the secret Himalayan paradise. “Its NPS’ mission is to preserve residents and visitors knew that “unimpaired the natural and Shangri-La was precious, and cultural resources and values the National Park System they knew it contained impor- of for the enjoyment, education, tant treasures, especially in the and inspiration of this and lessons it held for the rest of the future generations.” world. But they also knew that it alone could not serve the world’s many needs.”

Schullery considers Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks an interconnected lifeboat, not only physically protecting wildlife and natural wonders, but also serving as a beacon that proves humans are capable of exercising self-restraint in refraining from destroying the natural places they profess to love.

But with rising human population, the impacts of climate change, and new user groups pushing for access, he’s concerned about the park buckling under the new, unprecedented pressures.

“For all our increased awareness of the vulnerability of this particular lifeboat, we do not seem to have figured out how to prevent it from going down,” Schullery says. “In our attempts to justify our positions in the debates over Yellowstone’s management, we invoke the needs of future generations, because we see our care of this place as a great trust. We are saving these things for them, and they’ll never forgive us if we mess it up.” JH

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photo gallery

Engraving Yellowstone

Before photos could be reprinted in magazines, artists had to come up with a different way to share the park’s scenery with the masses.

IN THE SUMMER of 1872, Picturesque America published the article “Our Great National Park.” It was a poetic narrative introducing the country to the wonders of the newly created Yellowstone National Park, established by an act of Congress on March 1 of that year. The article boasted that Yellowstone exhibited “the grand and magnificent in its snow-capped mountains and dark cañons [sic], the picturesque in its splendid water-falls and strangely formed rocks, the beautiful in the sylvan shore of its noble lake, and the phenomenal in its geysers, hot springs, and mountains of sulphur.”

Famed photographer William Henry Jackson thoroughly documented Yellowstone’s iconic landmarks as a member of the 1871 Hayden Geological Survey. A process for reproducing photography—a relatively new medium at the time—in

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print for mass distribution was virtually nonexistent, though. Artists, including landscape painter Thomas Moran and New York-based illustrator Henry Fenn, had to reproduce Jackson’s Yellowstone photographs in detailed black-and-white drawings. They then had to turn their work over to an engraver.

An artistic medium in and of itself (an engraver’s signature often appeared on a printed illustration alongside that of the artist), engraving involved meticulously carving an image into a flat, smooth piece of wood. Once finished—a single engraving could take weeks—these blocks were inserted into a printing press, pressed in ink, and then, finally, stamped onto paper. We didn’t stamp these engravings onto the following pages, but that doesn’t make them any less artistic.

Bottom: Hayden Survey members shoot waterfowl on Yellowstone Lake in 1871. Illustration by Thomas Moran.

Right: While illustrators such as Henry Fenn made great efforts to preserve detail when reproducing photography, they also took liberties, the results of which were sometimes comical. Here, Fenn inserted a figure fleeing an erupting Giant Geyser, the cone of which appears to be much larger than its actual height of about twelve feet. Unlike Moran, Fenn had not visited Yellowstone at the time he was reproducing Jackson’s photographs and therefore did not have firsthand experience with the environment.

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Thomas Moran’s depiction of Tower Fall, formerly Tower Falls, closely resembles W.H. Jackson’s photograph of the waterfall from its base. Moran added storm clouds and streaming light for dramatic effect.

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The base of the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River was not photographed in 1871. It is likely that artist Moran visited the location at the time and created this illustration from his sketches.

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Top: Moran’s illustration of Anna, the first boat on Yellowstone Lake, is a composite of two 1871 W.H. Jackson photographs. Moran likely did this to give the viewer a sense of perspective of the largest body of water above 7,000 feet in the Lower 48 states.

Bottom: Moran took liberties with his illustration of figures exploring Jupiter Terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs. He often served as a subject in many of Jackson’s 1871 photographs at Mammoth.

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H I G H

IT’S RACE DAY for Ryley Hasenack, and her stomach is turning backflips. The thirteen-yearold is lined up on her six-hundred-cubic-centimeter snowmobile, and almost all the other kids around her are boys. The machines emit a low rumble, and when the light turns green she releases the brake lever and hits the throttle hard, spraying snow all over the other snocross racers.

She gets the hole shot—first sled into the turn— and that puts her out in front as the one to beat.

The slender blonde flies around the track, whipping through tight turns, flying over jumps, and not missing a beat in rhythm sections.

Sometimes she bumps up against other machines.

A few years ago, Hasenack was shier and reluctant to At the northwestern end be aggressive. “I had to learn of Jackson Hole, Togwotee Pass has 829 miles of to hold my ground, to start trails and more fields of learning how to push back,” powder than you could she says. “Now I’m not afraid ride in a lifetime. to do that. If you’re nice, you’re not going to do well.”

When she hits a jump, she must have enough speed and the right body position to land it “smooth as butter.” If she loses confidence, it could cost her not only the podium, but also a broken sled or broken bone. “If you go into it halfcommitted, you won’t come out of it well,” says Hasenack, who started racing at age seven. “You’re gonna have to hit it hard.” Hasenack goes all out for her entire race, eight laps of the three-quartermile track.

For this race, the national finals on the International Series of Champions (ISOC) circuit, her whole family—mom Shannon, dad Brian, and brother Brody—has driven 1,400 miles to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in a one-ton truck towing an

In Jackson Hole, snowmobiling isn’t just a sport, but a culture.

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enclosed trailer loaded with five sleds. About six weekends each winter they leave the family’s Jackson roofing business so Ryley can “put the whoopins on the boys,” as Brody says, in races on the national snocross circuit. Brody’s on the circuit, too, but at age eleven he doesn’t beat Ryley much yet. She’s calculated and skilled and pushes the envelope just enough. He’s focused and fearless, “a crash test dummy,” he says.

Most winter evenings they’re practicing, running laps on the snocross track their father built on their property near Hoback Junction.

He collects snow from across the neighborhood and molds it into a racetrack. Snowmobiling is a way of life for the Hasenacks, who call themselves “motorheads” and ride under their brand, Hold Fast Racing. “We’re on snowmobiles as much as possible,” Brian says.

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at age five and introduced his wife to the sport soon after they met in the early 1990s. Their children have known the throbbing of an engine since they were in the womb and were riding their own miniature 120cc sleds before they started kindergarten. Most of the kids’ Jackson Hole friends ski each weekend, but they’ve made snowmobile-racing friends who are scattered around the West.

IT WAS MORE than half a century ago that snowmobiles were introduced in Jackson Hole. At first it wasn’t for sport. Ranchers used them to access herds of cattle or travel to town on unplowed roads. It didn’t take long for others to see that riding a motorized sled across snow was fun. The Jackson Hole Snow Devils, a snowmobiling club, formed in 1964, hosting social rides, oval races at the Teton County Fairgrounds, and cross-country races up Mosquito Creek near Wilson.

It was 1968 when valley mechanic Ted George bought his first snowmobile, an Arctic Cat. With friends, he took off each weekend on epic overnight trips through Yellowstone National Park to West Yellowstone,

Montana, or along Grassy Lake Road to Ashton, Idaho.

The machines only held 3.5 gallons of fuel, so they packed along several gas cans. “There was virtually no rules and no rangers,” George says. “You had to break your own trail.” George, now seventy-two, has ridden snowmobiles every winter since then. “I just fell in love Above: Thirteen-year-old with them and been on them ever since,” he says.

Hoback Junction resident Getting deep into the backcountry is his primary Ryley Hasenack races on motivation these days. the International Series of Champions circuit.

“You can go in half an hour on a snowmobile where it would take you all day to walk back,” George says. “You leave tracks but they melt off, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s ever been there. It’s just fabulous.”

Even though the Hasenacks are busy racing, they do get out and play like George. When there’s no race or training on the schedule, the family spends weekends on Togwotee Pass, where there are 829 miles of marked and groomed trails along the Continental Divide and tens of thousands of acres for freeriding high in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. “Going to Togwotee is like going to Mecca,” says Jeff Golightly, CEO of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce and the former general manager (for twelve years) of Togwotee Mountain Lodge, which offers overnight accommodations, snowmobile rentals, and guided trips, and is completely booked almost all winter long. “Lots of publications do rankings on the best Opposite page: Held annually by the Pink Ribbon Riders, the Wyoming Snow Run (March 18-19, 2016) raises money for breast cancer patients.

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places to ride in the country, and Togwotee is always [in the] top three, usually number one. Togwotee is to snowmobilers what Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is to skiers.”

Togwotee is the preferred destination for locals, too. “Up there,” Brody says, “you can carve, and you feel like nothing can stop you at that moment.” Ryley adds, “except ditches and holes and rocks and that stuff.”

The young snowmobilers like to freeride with their parents, mostly technical lines through the trees. “Technical riding makes the kids better riders,” says Brian, who keeps extra sleds in his fleet to introduce friends to his favorite sport. “They have to think, pick and pull their lines or you get stuck.”

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THERE ARE MORE than Among snowmobilers 33,000 snowmobiles registered across the country, in Wyoming, and seventeen Togwotee Pass is known as one snowmobiling clubs around of the sport’s top the state, including the Snow destinations.

Devils. Nationally, snowmobile sales increased 8 percent in 2015, according to the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. Most Wanted Performance in Jackson is seeing 15 to 25 percent sales growth each year, says part-owner Tyler Doucette. For five years, the crew at the shop has been aiding snowmobilers of all

There are more than 33,000 snowmobiles registered in Wyoming, and seventeen snowmobiling clubs around the state.

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stripes, “from full-blown motorheads to people who use them to get into the backcountry for skiing.”

Real motorheads, Doucette says, get a new machine every two to three years.

They enjoy it for a few years and then sell it while they can still get good money for it before investing in the newest technology, which is always improving. Today’s mountain sleds have more horsepower, are thinner and lighter, and have longer tracks to push more snow. “It’s unreal,” Doucette says. “About every four years a new chassis and new motor and a new something else comes out.”

Snowmobiling is not cheap. New models cost an average of $13,000. On top of that, riders need a helmet, goggles, boots, pants, jacket, and avalanche gear, including a shovel, beacon, probe, and, ideally, an airbag backpack that could keep you on top of a snow slide. This is easily another $1,500.

Snowmobiles are used for many purposes and are becoming increasingly specialized. There are sleds for snow-covered roads and groomed trails, off-trail backcountry riding, snocross racing, track racing, and hill climbing. The most popular snowmobiles in town are specialized for mountain riding. Polaris’ model is the RMK, which stands for Rocky Mountain King. It’s what you see most often around Jackson Hole, whether it’s being used for high-marking, playing in open meadows, or hauling skiers or snowboarders uphill.

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Dan Adams’ Next Level Riding Clinics aim to take snowmobilers to the next level, teaching skills such as riding hillside terrain.

While skiing gets more attention, snowmobiling is an integral part of the winter fabric of the valley and draws visitors as well, Doucette says. “We live in the most pristine country in the world to do these winter sports,” he says. “It’s always been a ski town. But as a snowmobile town, we get people from all over the world because it’s so world-renowned.”

The main difference between skiing in Jackson Hole and snowmobil-

According to Doucette, more and more skiers and snowboarders are walking into Most Wanted Performance to buy a snowmobile to access the backcountry. “There are no lift lines with a snowmobile,” he says.

WHILE BACKCOUNTRY RIDING and skiing each have their own culture, they share the need to know about safely navigating avalanche terrain. (Since January

During his two decades of backcountry riding, Dan Adams has seen and been a part of many avalanches. ing? One of them is crowded, says Jacob Stark, who purchased his season pass at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for nine years before putting that money toward a snowmobile two years ago. “It’s been so advertised,” Stark says. “When I take a day off of work to go play and sit in the tram line till 11:30 for a decent run, it’s not worth it. I can take my snowmobile, go to the backcountry, take my snowboard, and have a better experience in many ways. I’m out there by myself with my friends.”

2010, twelve backcountry skiers have died in avalanches in the Jackson Hole area; avalanches have killed six snowmobilers in the same time frame.) Dan Adams started Next Level Riding Clinics in 2008 partially to educate snowmobilers about avalanches. From his base in Alpine, Adams leads small groups, a mix of visitors and locals, on two-day adventures into the Greys River drainage in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Courses include snowmobile maneuvering, footwork, body positioning, and avalanche

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YOU MIGHT NOT be doing heel clickers off a sick jump like Dan Adams of Next Level Riding Clinics, but trail etiquette, courtesy, and following the rules will keep you from looking like a newbie. “Everyone’s welcome as long as they’re respectful,” says Tyler Doucette, part-owner of Most Wanted Performance.

• Be courteous to other user groups like crosscountry skiers. “Don’t haul ass past them,” Doucette says. “Don’t give us a bad name because you want to be a speed demon.”

• Don’t trespass on private lands.

• Don’t poach the wilderness, national parks, or forest lands that are closed to protect wintering wildlife.

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• If you buy a snowmobile, register it each year with the state. The $35 fee goes to pay for trail grooming. Even if trail riding isn’t your objective, the trails are how you get to the backcountry powder. “Everybody likes to ride on nice, smooth trails,” says Ray Spencer, winter sports coordinator for the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Photography: ©Thomas D. Mangelsen

• When you get your sticker, donate at least the requested $2 extra to search and rescue. “Pay it,” Doucette says. “None of us ever wants to use it. But support them.”

• Bring avalanche rescue equipment—beacon, shovel, probe, airbag pack—and know how to use it. Check the Bridger-Teton’s Avalanche Center (jhavalanche.org) before every outing to assess conditions and report observations after your ride.

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A FEW FAVORITE RIDES

doing a backflip. While Adams left the group a while ago, the Slednecks continue to put out DVDs and now design clothing. Their eighteenth film was released in fall 2015.

About a decade ago Adams realized that when he offered friends just a few technique tips, their riding improved exponentially. Seeing a rider get to the next level is his favorite part of his clinics.

“I get to unlock people’s hidden potential,” he says. “When they come here they don’t believe in themselves enough.

When I make the impossible possible for them, that really helps charge me.”

Because Adams teaches people to ride in a mountain environment, summiting a peak like Elk Mountain is often part of the package. Snowmobiling to 10,000 feet, miles away from any road, is an exhilarating experience, the ultimate

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awareness. During his two decades of backcountry riding, Adams has seen and been a part of many avalanches. “When you see that happening, it changes you,” he says. “You really get a grasp of the power of Mother Nature. Practice is never gonna make perfect, but practice is gonna make prepared. It’s not if it happens, but when it happens.”

Adams grew up south of Jackson, in an area where he and his siblings had to ride snowmobiles to the school bus stop.

He began taking his sled off-trail first to access backcountry snowboarding lines, but soon the thrill of the machine won out. He was one of the riders in Slednecks’ 1998 self-titled movie, which is full of high-flying hijinks. Riders catch major air while lifting their bodies into Superman poses or doing heel clicks. By the eighth movie, Adams was featured

Continental Divide trails to Brooks Lake Lodge Built in 1922 to serve early Yellowstone National Park visitors, the luxe Brooks Lake Lodge sits more than five miles from any plowed road—so the only way to get there is via sled, snowshoes, or skis. If you can’t afford a room, the lodge is open to nonguests for lunch. Don’t miss the Mountain Man Nachos. brookslake.com

feeling of freedom, isolation, camaraderie, and spirituality all at once.

Doucette, who races up hills as part of the Rocky Mountain Snowmobile Hillclimb Association and enjoys mountain riding with his friends, says the different snowmobiler user groups share a common culture. “They’re level-headed, friendly, and no one really judges,” he says. “I love the friendships when out riding with buddies.”

George agrees. “The snowmobile group is a good bunch of people,” he says. “They all help you, help each other, help anybody that’s broke down.”

Carter Gerdes, Togwotee Mountain Lodge’s longest-serving guide (this will be his twentieth winter), challenges residents and visitors alike: “Go get on a sled just once this year. Go see how much fun it is.” JH

E X P E R I E N C E P AY S

LE T US P R OV E IT

Greys River Road to Box Y Lodge It takes a while to wend your way back 30 miles from Alpine to the Box Y, between the Wyoming and Salt River ranges, and many tempting meadows will try to lure you in. But once you’re there, warm hospitality makes up for the lack of cell service. boxylodge.com

Grassy Lake Road to Headwaters Lodge & Cabins Start at Flagg Ranch for a scenic out-andback journey along the road between the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway and Ashton, Idaho.

Turn around in time for elk and bison chili. gtlc. com/headwaters-lodge.aspx

Choose your own adventure to the Red Fox Saloon Hundreds of miles of trails through millions of acres of forest mean any number of adventures will occupy you until hunger and thirst finally force you to pilot your sled back to Togwotee Mountain Lodge for hot wings, a chicken quesadilla, or a friendly game of billiards. togwoteelodge.com

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JH Living

looking back

An Oasis in East Moose Enduring for nearly a century, Dornan’s has aged like a fine wine.

COURTESY PHOTO

BY JIM STANFORD

&GUIDE JACKSON HOLE NEWS

ride over Teton Pass, she arrived in Moose to stay with Maud Noble, operator of Menor’s Ferry.

“The scenery is wonderful, the flowers, birds and mountains sublime and the water all live streams,” Evelyn wrote in her diary on July 29.

The vacation with Noble, a fellow Philadelphian, left a deep impression on Evelyn. Three years later, the war over and her job making wing panels for airplanes finished, she returned to the Tetons and planted roots. Evelyn homesteaded on the east bank of the Snake and started a family enterprise that nearly a century later is a Jackson Hole institution. The

IN JULY 1918, as the Allies fought a battle along the River Marne that would prove decisive in ending World War I, a young woman on leave from her job in a warplane factory first laid eyes on the Snake River.

Evelyn Middleton Dornan took a furlough from the League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia and traveled by train to Victor, Idaho. After an all-day stagecoach 104

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Above: The Tetons, Snake River, and Dornan’s complex from above in 1957. Left: Jack and Bob Dornan at their wine shop.

iconic compound, an inholding within Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), remains surrounded by scenery nearly as sublime as when she first set foot in the dusty sagebrush.

Today Dornan’s has a bar and restaurant, wine shop, grocery store, gift shop, gas pumps, the outdoor Chuckwagon restaurant, family homes, guest cabins, and several retail and rental shops. The place buzzes with tourists in summer but is much quieter in winter, bounded by tall banks of snow. The bar, with its sweeping view of the Tetons, is a cherished watering hole where generations of climbers, hikers, skiers, and river

runners have gathered to share tales over post-adventure refreshments.

LIKE MANY OF the early pioneers on nearby Mormon Row, Dornan eked out a living amongst the sage and river cobbles. As a veteran of the war effort, she received preference for homesteading and staked a claim to just over twenty acres south and east of the ferry Noble ran. There was an abandoned blacksmith’s shop on the site, walled on three sides and with a sod roof and dirt floor.

She refurbished the cabin, put in a heating stove, and fenced the property. She grew rhubarb, which she canned and sometimes traded for other goods, as well as carrots, cabbage, and rutabagas.

Jackson Hole was her summer home.

Evelyn spent winters in San Diego. One of eleven siblings, she inherited money from her father, an industrialist, and

experience was transformative, and by the end of summer he abandoned his plan to attend West Point and chose to instead become a cowboy. His mother gave him fifty dollars to buy groceries to get him through the winter. With the help of neighbor Holiday Menor, whose brother, Bill, built the namesake Menor’s Ferry in 1894, he survived. He fed and saddled horses and harnessed a team for Menor.

Jack Dornan built the family homestead into a business. In 1927, he married Ellen Jones; the couple were the first wed in the Chapel of the Transfiguration.

Ellen was the daughter of J.R. Jones, a selftaught writer and poker player raised in the California gold camps. Jones homesteaded in Jackson Hole in 1906 and was part of the famous July 1923 meeting in Noble’s cabin that led to the formation of Grand Teton park.

Jack Dornan worked for the Forest Service, helped build the Death Canyon trail, and cut logs from Timbered Island and near Jenny Lake (before Congress established GTNP in 1929). He learned to lay logs and built three log cabins, which were rented out to guests. The place

Quintessential Mountain Retreat

Tastes from the vine Bob Dornan has passed, but the wine tradition lives on at Dornan’s under the guidance of wine shop manager Dennis Johnson, who has been with the business since 1985. From 6 to 8 p.m. on the first Sunday of every month, Dornan’s hosts Wine Tasting on a Budget. The cost is $10 to taste several reds and whites priced under $20. Participants receive a coupon for $5 off one of the featured bottles.

Dornan’s also hosts a monthly wine dinner, usually on a Saturday night in the middle of the month. The cost for food and wine is $85. In February, A to Z Wineworks and Oregon’s Rex Hill will be featured. dornans. com, 307/733-2415

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came West looking to start over after a divorce. “She was the only one of her family with enough gumption to get out of Philadelphia,” her grandson, the late Bob Dornan, recalled earlier this year.

She and her husband, Jack P. Dornan Sr., divorced when their son, Jack, was about eight or nine years old. Before his final year of prep school, Jack Jr. came out to visit his mother in Wyoming. The

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WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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who had made money in the Yukon gold rush negotiated to buy the property for $33,500. He said he would return in the morning to sign the papers but never showed. Evelyn eventually deeded nine and a half acres to Jack and sold the rest to the Park Service.

The Park Service made several attempts to buy the entire parcel, but Jack resisted. A tense exchange took place in the early 1950s when superintendent

was a good salesman and had plans to expand the business to Arizona, but the stock market crash that fall quashed sales, and the family returned to Jackson Hole.

Jack borrowed money from Grace Miller, Jackson’s first female mayor, and started a short-lived trucking business with Paul Petzoldt, the famous climber, who rented one of the cabins. With tourists beginning to stream into the newly created national park, Jack opened a service station on the property with a lunch counter and beer parlor. In the fall of 1941, he built the log building that now houses the grocery store. A partner, John Mears, was securing financing to open a casino there.

On Dec. 6, 1941, they laid the last log of the store. The next day, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and “the world went to hell,” Bob Dornan said. The store sat roofless for years, and the family moved to Idaho so Jack could work for a military contractor.

After the war, the Dornans returned home and finished the original store and bar. In the summer of 1946, a man

Bob Dornan at the Chuckwagon in 1958

COURTESY PHOTO

initially was called the Spur Ranch— hanging on the wall of the bar is a framed pair of World War I British Cavalry spurs, given to Evelyn by a soldier with whom she may have had a romance.

Dornan’s might not be the landmark it is today were it not for several twists of fate. In the fall of 1928, the family went to San Diego and Jack found work at a car dealership. Ellen gave birth to the couple’s eldest son, Bob, in June 1929. Jack

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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

Ed Freeland stopped by Dornan’s and delivered an ultimatum: sell or be forced out. A young Bob Dornan expected his dad to pull out the six-shooter he kept beneath the bar. Instead, Jack pointed toward the exit. “I’ll have this property after you’re dead and gone,” Bob recalled his father saying. “See that door over there? I want you to go out that door and never set foot in this building again.”

OVER TIME, DORNAN’S expanded its offerings. The outdoor Chuckwagon restaurant, famous for its beef short ribs and mashed potatoes cooked in Dutch ovens over an open fire, opened in 1948. Three men from Riverton—the Warpness brothers, who had operated a similar eatery at Flagg Ranch—ran the chuckwagon before the Dornans took it over. Beginning in the 1960s, the relationship with the Park Service improved.

The current bar (built by Bob Dornan and brother Dick), indoor restaurant,

COURTESY PHOTO

Ellen M. Jones and Jack Dornan were the first couple to be married in the Chapel of the Transfiguration (1927), which was built across the river from the Dornan homestead.

and wine shop were added in 1978, followed by the gift shop in 1987, and new cabins in 1992.

SINCE THE 1950s, Dornan’s has carved out a niche as a vendor of fine wines.

Eastern dudes, many of them staying at the Whitegrass Ranch, often brought their own wine with them. Jack Dornan saw an opportunity. Malcolm Ramsay, the first husband of late Jackson Hole News&Guide copublisher Elizabeth McCabe, lived in Napa Valley, California, and introduced Dornan to some of the region’s winemakers. As tourism in Jackson Hole grew, “All these damn Californians wanted their California wine,” Bob Dornan recalled. Dornan’s became the go-to supplier for many of the valley’s most genteel guests.

Bob Dornan learned the business from his father and began making trips to California in the late 1960s. He became a noted oenophile. “We wouldn’t buy wine unless we could taste it,” he said. By the 1990s, representatives from the wineries were traveling to Moose, and Dornan held court at the front table of the bar, a large selection of wines spread out before him for tasting.

JACK AND ELLEN had seven children, one of whom, Dick, continues to work at the enterprise today with his wife, Tricia.

Several other family members also have a hand in the business. Huntley Dornan, great-grandson of Evelyn, serves as CEO. Much of the early history was passed down orally by Bob Dornan, a kindhearted grizzly bear of a man who died

of cancer in September at age eightysix. Known for his cowboy hat, round glasses, and pearl-button shirts as much as his liberal use of expletives, he was a bridge to a bygone era.

The “live water” of the Snake still trickles by Menor’s Ferry and Dornan’s each winter. In a time when the valley has seen dizzying changes, Dornan’s, to the relief of many, has maintained its charm. “We don’t try to change too [damn] much,” Bob Dornan said a few months before his death. “We purposefully keep a low profile.” JH

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JH Living

outdoors

ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

Rolling Over Put clownishly large wheels and tires on a bike and you can ride on snow.

BY JULIE KLING

FAT BIKES AREN’T a fad anymore. Originally designed to float on top of groomed or packed snow, fat bikes were originally called snow bikes. You went snow biking. Since the earliest models of these bikes—they have frames similar to those of mountain bikes, but wider forks to accommodate wheels and tires that are nearly four inches wide— debuted around 2000, enterprising cyclists have found enough other uses for them that they’re now called, more generically, fat bikes. Riders use them on sand. They’re also a good option for some types of mountain biking trails. Arnold Schwarzenegger was even photographed riding one around a Beverly Hills neighborhood.

“Now that there are carbon frame and dual and full-suspension fat bikes, there are lots of people buying them and getting new wheelsets,” says Kyle Wies, sales manager at Fitzgerald’s Bicycles, located at the base of the west side of Teton Pass in Victor, Idaho.

“This year, sales have taken off year-round.” With one hundred manufacturers now on the scene, fat bike sales are the fastest-growing segment of the $6.2 billion bike industry, accounting for $40 million of business last year. Kmart and Walmart even sell them.

While fat bikes are no longer limited to snow, that is where they shine and why most riders, at least riders around here, buy them. “When the skiing is not great, it is a fun way to get out for a couple of hours,” says Todd Johnson, an avid cyclist and 108

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

A cyclist pedals on a groomed road in the Gros Ventre Mountains on an excursion to Granite Hot Springs. Tires twice as wide as those on a mountain bike give fat bikes the ability to stay on top of groomed and packed snow.

about wildlife and sharing trails with snowcoaches, snowmobiles, and skiers have led the park to deny the one or two requests Vagias says it gets a year. “When we look at conflicts with fat bikes and start to overlay the safety concerns, it hasn’t penciled out,” says Vagias, who is now superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho. “It is a new and emerging use, WADE VAGIAS, THE former manage- and there are ample opportunities for ment assistant to Yellowstone’s superin- snow biking in the area.”

Yellowstone last considered fat bikes tendent, says one of the safety concerns Yellowstone has about fat bikes is the ease three years ago and just closed another of travel on the hard-packed groomed long-term monitoring plan where it trails in the morning and the potential to received more comments requesting get stuck when the snow softens. Riders access, Vagias says. But it has no plans could easily cruise ten miles down a road to revise its restrictions. Grand Teton covered in packed snow in the morning National Park spokesman Andrew White when temperatures are cool and the says they look at the use each spring, snow is frozen hard. But if temperatures but it would take an analysis of the 1969 rise in the afternoon and the packed National Environmental Policy Act to snow softens, it takes much more energy change the rules, which are determined and time to return. Additional concerns on a park-by-park basis. “It is definitely on our radar,” White says. “If we see this use continuing to increase, that is something we would look into.”

For now, fat bikes are considered wheeled vehicles and are allowed only on the roads open to cars in the winter.

You can ride a fat bike on the Inner Park Loop Road until the Bradley/ Taggart lakes Founded in Teton Valley, Idaho, the Global Fat Bike Summit is an annual trailhead but not event. In 2015, it was held at Snow King Mountain in Jackson. on the groomed snow beyond that. That is the same point at which Teton Mountain Bike Tours’ cars must stop in the winter. Riding fat bikes is also restricted in some national Top 5 forests and many privately groomed nearby winter snow tracks.

David Hunger has run Teton riding destinations: Mountain Bike Tours on the main roads in Grand Teton National Park for 1. Turpin Meadow Ranch twenty-five years and is confident that 2. Brooks Lake Lodge the industry growth will change the cur3. Slide Lake to Gros Ventre rent policies in the park and open up more access in the national forest as well.

4. Granite Hot Springs “I think the national parks will open up 5. Cache Creek down the road. They see fat biking is not ski instructor. “Whether you are in town or towing your kids around, it’s a great feeling to be on a bike when it’s cold out. The groomed trails on Cache Creek make it really easy to train.” While there are many places that welcome them, there are two destinations you will not— at least not yet—see a fat bike: Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

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Fat Bike Right FAT BIKES AREN’T meant for all snow conditions, especially since they often share Nordic and cross-country skiing trails, for which good, smooth terrain is paramount.

If ridden in the wrong conditions, fat bikes can ruin the careful grooming maintained by local organizations. Fat biking guidelines created by Teton Valley Trails and Pathways (TVTAP) have been adopted by the International Mountain Bicycling Association, among other organizations.

“Are you being considerate of other users, or are you putting a big groove in the trail?” asks TVTAP executive director Tim Adams.

Fat Biking Guidelines: n Tires should be 3.7”

or bigger.

n Bikes should yield the right-

of-way at all intersections.

Bikes have brakes, skis don’t.

PRICE CHAMBERS

n Never ride in classic ski tracks.

A fat biker checks his tire during the Global Fat Bike Summit at Snow King last year.

n Ride on the firmest part of the

track and leave room for skiers. n Stay to right side of the trail

around corners and look for oncoming skiers. n Allow time for track to set

up after grooming and before riding.

going away. It has grown so fast,” Hunger says. “Someone said four years ago we are riding a wave. I didn’t understand what they were saying, [but] I do now.

And I think we have two more years to go before it crests.”

“We have been trying to open up a dialogue with the national parks so we can ride,” says Scott Fitzgerald, the founder of Fitzgerald’s Bicycles and its owner until June. “The regulations for wheeled vehicles were written before fat bikes existed.

But the agencies don’t have the bandwidth to open up a dialogue.” Fitzgerald even started a pilot program where he offered fat bikes to park rangers in the national parks. “Everyone who gets on one realizes pretty quickly there is no conflict,” he says.

But the fat bike lobby has been met with nothing but “classic government red tape,” Fitzgerald says. “The park had no 110

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

mechanism to accept the bikes, because there are no fat bikes allowed on snow.”

Do Not Ride: n In soft conditions (if you leave

WHILE HUNGER IS clearly partial to Jackson Hole trails, he concedes the local fat bike lobby has made more inroads in Teton Valley, Idaho. Grand Targhee Ski Resort began grooming singletrack trails last winter (it opened its Nordic trails, conditions permitting, to fat bikes several years ago), and this winter, Teton Valley Trails and Pathways (TVTAP) allows fat bikes on the five winter tracks it grooms for Nordic skiers.

In an attempt to help TVTAP keep an open mind to fat bikes, Fitzgerald’s Bicycles sells around $500 of by-donation stickers a year. Fat bikers are not required to purchase them, but if they do, the proceeds of their donations go to TVTAP’s grooming fund.

a rut that is 1 inch deep, it’s too soft). n If your tires are less than 3.7”. n If your bike’s tire pressure is

greater than 10psi.

Also, the Global Fat Bike Summit was conceived in Victor, Idaho. Four years ago, Fitzgerald—whose shop was the first in the area to begin selling fat bikes more than a decade ago—reached out to his largest distributor, Gary Sjoquist of Quality Bicycle Products, to start the summit. Now held annually in the

biking is allowed, too. At the base of Togwotee Pass, Turpin Meadow Ranch (see page 124) allows fat bikes on its ten miles of groomed trails. If you’re willing to share the trail with dog sleds and snowmobiles, the ten-mile road to Granite Hot Springs in the Gros Ventre Mountains has a steaming, 103-degree reward at its end. East of downtown Jackson, Cache Creek is popular with every user group imaginable, from friends taking their dogs out for a leisurely after-work walk to skate and classic skiers, snowmobilers, and fat

bikers. If the main road, groomed twice weekly by Teton County/Jackson Parks & Recreation, is too busy, look for the summer singletrack trails. The last two years, a group of fat biking friends has taken to tamping many of them down with snowshoes so they can ride them.

“What we can really showcase here is the variety of styles and categories of fat biking—from wide Nordic trails to steeps and snowmobile tracks that are not as manicured,” Fitzgerald says.

“The cool thing about riding here is we have it all.” JH

PRICE CHAMBERS

wintertime, the summit seeks to raise awareness of fat biking and also to secure greater access to riding fat bikes on public lands. The summit has been held in West Yellowstone, Montana; Island Park, Idaho; Ogden, Utah; and, last year, at Snow King Mountain Resort in Jackson Hole.

Attendance set a record: 152 riders, fat biking advocates, and private and public land managers, including a representative from Grand Teton National Park, came.

Sjoquist, now a full-time fat bike advocate, this year hosts regional summits attached to large fat bike races in Crested Butte, Colorado; Ogden; and Marquette, Michigan. His goal is to increase fat bike access to public lands while educating local riders about etiquette for the snow conditions unique to each area.

WHILE RIDERS WAIT for entry into national parks, there are plenty of other places to go. Fat bikes can’t handle powder, but can do most any trail groomed for cross-country skiing or snowmobiling (assuming they are allowed).

In addition to the twenty-eight miles of multiuse tracks, TVTAP estimates there are dozens more miles of trails, stretching from Victor to Rexburg.

Some of these are packed in by the bikers themselves and go into the Big Hole Mountains and up Darby and Teton canyons in the Tetons. Warning if you’re planning on riding in the Big Holes: locals joke that if you’re not pushing your bike, you’re not riding in the Big Holes.

Trails on and around Togwotee Pass are groomed for snowmobiling, but fat WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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刀䄀刀䔀

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JH

Best of

Your local guide to: GETTING OUT BODY & SOUL NIGHTLIFE DINING ART SCENE

BRADLY J. BONER

EXPLORING JACKSON UPCOMING EVENTS WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JH

Splitting Up Sometimes it’s good for snowboards to break in half.

BY FREDERICK REIMERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID STUBBS

A guide leads the way during Exum Mountain Guides’ Snowboard Mountaineering Clinic.

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AFTER FIFTEEN SEASONS guiding snowboard clients around the steeps of Valdez, Alaska, via helicopter—most everyone’s dream job—Jamie Weeks has reached a sort of saturation point. “On my days off, I’m finding myself in the calm and quiet of the backcountry under my own steam,” says the Wilson-based Weeks.

“That’s what I want my clients to experience, too.”

Which is how Weeks finds himself in January 2015 showing a group of clients how to split their boards in half and walk uphill on them through No Name Basin just south of the boundaries of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR). It’s a warm Friday during a dry spell, and soft snow is scarce at the resort, so there is a line of backcountry skiers herding up the famous Four Pines bootpack above them in search of untracked pockets. Weeks and his crew of eight (including coguide Nathanial Murphy) slap climbing skins on the bottom of the twinned boards and start gliding uphill in a loose line. As they zigzag up the steep slope, hikers struggle along the bootpack. “This 116

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is so much more casual,” says one of Weeks’ clients.

Up top, they peel the skins, stash them in backpacks, fasten their boards back together with metal joiners, and make the long, cruisy descent. “It’s an elegant way to travel,” Weeks says. “Simple and free.”

WEEKS’ FOUR-DAY Backcountry Snowboarding Clinic, offered through Exum Mountain Guides, is aimed at advanced snowboarders looking to expand their skills to the backcountry. It’s an introduction to the gear— snowboards that split in half, bindings that convert to hinged walking platforms, and skins that adhere to the base of the planks to keep them from slipping backward while traveling uphill—as well as to strategies for efficient travel and staying safe in avalanche terrain. The course starts in the backcountry beside JHMR to take advantage of the lifts and then spends the next three days in the mountains near Teton Pass and in Grand Teton National Park, where skiers are abundant but where it’s still relatively rare to see snowboarders.

The reason for that: “Backcountry snowboard gear is just coming into its own,” Weeks says. “It’s a bit more complicated than backcountry ski gear, so that intimidates a lot of people. Once you get good with it, though, it’s just as fast and efficient in the backcountry as skiing.” Weeks starts his course at the resort because he wants to pack in as much practice on the gear as possible via multiple tram laps. “There’s no torsional rigidity when the board has been cut in half,” he says. “It rides differently. We want people to get used to that first thing.”

The uphill travel also takes a little getting used to. “I fell down on my first kick turn in No Name,” says Amy Golightly with a laugh. The Jackson local and her husband, Jeff, have dabbled in backcountry snowboarding but have been intimidated to head out with their skier friends. “Skiers approach the slopes

Opposite and above: Before splitboards came around, snowboarders carried their snowboards and either snowshoed or skinned on short skis to access remote backcountry terrain.

differently than snowboarders do,” she says. “They pick different routes, which aren’t always suitable for snowboards, and can get impatient waiting for us to fiddle with the gear. It was nice to be able to practice the techniques in a supportive environment and to see the route choices through Jamie’s eyes.”

On the camp’s third day, Golightly isn’t holding anyone up. Instead, she’s charging out in front of the group as members march their way up the flanks of Grand Teton National Park’s popular 25 Short, so named because it tops out WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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just 25 feet below an elevation of 10,000. It’s a warm, sunny day, and Weeks looks down the slope and spots client Sam Collins bringing up the rear. He’s tugging at his sweat-soaked shirt like he wants to take it off.

“Sam, you gotta leave at least one shirt on!” Weeks shouts.

The two have known each other for years, with Weeks having guided him both at Jackson Hole and in Alaska. “I might be slow,” calls Collins, a retired banker from Brooklyn, New York, “but I’ll get there.”

The group spent a similarly warm day on Teton Pass the day before, wending their way up forested Mail Cabin Creek to the top of a popular powder stash called Windy Ridge. Before they dropped in, the group dug a pit in the snow to assess avalanche conditions and compared what they found to the daily reports from the local forecast center, all part of the process for backcountry skiers. Conditions were safe, and the group was rewarded for their efforts with a lap or two of surprisingly light, untracked power.

Today, though, on the east-facing aprons of 25 Short, Weeks hopes for a corn cycle. As the group slogs along, he’s got a trick up his sleeve to break up the three-hour ascent.

“THERE’S BEEN AN avalanche!” calls out Murphy, trundling down the hill from above. “Two of my buddies are buried. I need help!” There’s confusion amongst the group even though they realize their coleader snuck ahead to enact this scenario as a drill. How will they organize themselves to search for the “victims” (actually a pair of avalanche transceivers buried in backpacks under the snow by Murphy)?

The crux is figuring out how to travel over the snow—do they click their boards back together, spending precious time, or sidle along awkwardly with their boards split in half?

They all struggle a bit, which is the goal.

“It was a pretty eye-opening experience to realize how awkward it can be in an emergency,” Golightly says. “The best solution, obviously, is not to get into avalanches. That’s all about practicing good judgment.”

“Victims” located, the crew continues upwards, cresting a gradual ridge and arriving at the summit 2,000-some feet above the southern arm of Avalanche Canyon. The broken jaw of the Cathedral Group looms across the precipice. It’s a stunning view, and the group soaks it up as they relax, sitting on their packs, savoring the honest effort it took to get here. “This is why we do it,” Weeks says, “that and the powder waiting down below us.” JH

NUTS & BOLTS Exum’s 4-day Backcountry Snowboarding Clinic ($995, not including the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort lift ticket required for the first day) is February 5-8, 2016. From February 25-27, Exum offers a 3-day Snowboard Mountaineering Clinic ($795). The first day of this is at Snow King Resort. The last two days are in Grand Teton National Park. 307/733-2297, exumguides.com Above: At the top of a run, splitboarders remove skins and reassemble their snowboards. They are then ready to ride down.

Right: Exum offers both a Snowboard Mountaineering Clinic (above) and a lesstechnical Backcountry Snowboarding Clinic.

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getting out

The Gist of our Geology Free talks explain this valley’s landscape, and also why Mars is rusty, the state of modern cosmology, and plates versus plumes.

BY LILA EDYTHE PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLY J. BONER 120

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TETON COUNTY LIBRARY’S Ordway Auditorium is packed. Every seat is taken, and people stand against the back and side walls. The crowd includes teenagers and their parents as well as senior citizens. The auditorium’s double doors are open so latecomers relegated to the lobby can at least hear some of what is going on. The reason everyone’s here? A bimonthly public talk presented by Geologists of Jackson Hole. This one is about the geology of the Gros Ventre Mountains, the range on Jackson Hole’s eastern side and often overlooked because it is not as jaggedly spectacular as the Tetons.

While visually outclassed by the Tetons, the Gros Ventres are geologically more interesting. Or so I’ve heard. I’m at this talk to learn if that is true and, if so, the hows and whys. But first I need to find a seat.

The Gros Ventre talk is my first Geologists of Jackson Hole program. Being a newbie, and never guessing that a talk about the Gros Ventres would draw a standing-roomonly crowd, I make the mistake of arriving only a couple of minutes before its posted six o’clock start time. When I first walk into the room, two thoughts run through my head:

Often the most popular Geologists of Jackson Hole talks explain something about local geology, like the uniqueness of the Gros Ventre Mountains, which are pictured above.

1) It’s not cool for whatever group using the room earlier to run over their allotted time, and 2) Maybe I’m in the wrong place. But then I see maps of the Gros Ventre in the front of the room and a single open seat in the back row.

While Geologists of Jackson Hole often brings in speakers from the University of Wyoming, Idaho State, and the University of Utah, locals like Bridger-Teton National Forest North Ranger District recreation supervisor Linda Merigliano; her husband, Mike Merigliano, a research plant ecologist and former forest manager; Susan Marsh, BTNF recreation staff officer from May 1988 until she retired in

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The free, bimonthly Geologists of Jackson Hole talks at the Teton County Library often involve standing-room-only crowds that spill out into the lobby of the Ordway Auditorium.

February 2010; and BTNF trails supervisor Tim Farris, among others, lead this program. Combined, the night’s speakers have more than a century of hiking and exploring in the Gros Ventres, which cover an area one and a half times the size of the Tetons and include the 317,874acre Gros Ventre Wilderness.

Linda Merigliano gets the talk going, immediately addressing one of the things I’m here to find out. “One of the reasons the Gros Ventres were designated a wilderness were their unique expressions of geology,” she says. Well then. Mike Merigliano adds, “This is a range that is more than the sum of its parts. With EXCELLENCE a few exceptions, none of the parts are that interesting on their own but finding COMMUNICATION them all together makes for a very interesting mountain range.”

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“These talks are given at a high level and get into the details of the science. One of the biggest surprises for me is how open to truly complex topics people in this community are.” — Geologists of JH co-vice president John J. Hebberger Jr. truly complex topics people in this community are.”

Two hours after sitting down, I’ve got the answers to “how” and “why” the Gros Ventre Range is a geological superstar. I’ve also got a curiosity to check out more of these free public talks. With the exception of December, when organizers take a break, there are two talks every month.

“I CAN’T SAY we had a brilliant and complete plan when we started these talks,” Hebberger Jr. says. “But we certainly never expected the audiences to get as big as they have. If the auditorium at the library were larger, there are times we could have well over 150 people in the room.”

When it first formed in the mid1980s—“there were a bunch of geologists here in town who got together to talk shop and rocks and have lunch,” says John Willott, the group’s president—the gathering was comprised of professional geologists, some still working and others retired. Today, anyone willing to pay the annual twenty-dollar membership dues (thirty-five dollars for a couple) and “with an interest in the world about them, the whole universe” can become a member, Hebberger Jr. says. There are about two hundred members, and they enjoy access to member-only lunches and field trips, the latter both nearby (Sunlight Basin) and far away (Scotland). You need not be a member to enjoy the bimonthly talks, like the Gros Ventre one, that are the most popular of the group’s offerings.

These public programs evolved out of Geologists of Jackson Hole’s desire “to offer something to the community rather than just to ourselves,” Hebberger Jr. says.

Willott adds, “Our underlying mission for all that we do is to educate the public on how the earth works. We’re fortunate that earth science incorporates aspects of so many other sciences—biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy. All of these things need to be used to understand the world around us. What we’re able to bring under the umbrella and have people interested in is incredibly diverse.”

Many programs look at and explain some aspect of local geology, but “we work very hard on having talks from general-interest astronomy to deep earth,” Willott says. The night after my interview with Willott, the topic of the group’s public talk is “Magnetism, Magmatism & Ice: Traveling to the South Pole to Understand Magnetic Field Reversals.” Sadly (seriously!) I already have plans. But I put two later programs, “Life After Death: Whale Fall Scavenging Successions” and “The Challenges of Forecasting Snowfall Around Jackson Hole,” in my calendar. JH

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Journey to the wild

ExpEriEncE YEllowstonE this wintEr!

NUTS & BOLTS Geologists of Jackson Hole’s public programs are typically from 6 to 8 p.m. the first and third Tuesdays of every month except December, when none are held. Talks are free and held in the Ordway Auditorium at Teton County Library (125 Virginian Lane). For the current schedule, go to geologistsofjacksonhole.org.

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getting out

Glide On

A historic dude ranch is newly opened in winter, becoming the valley’s first destination Nordic ski spot.

BY DINA MISHEV PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARGENT SCHUTT 124

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UNTIL LAST WINTER, one of the prettiest ranches in Buffalo Valley was closed most of the year. Counted in years, Turpin Meadow Ranch has been open almost forever—since 1932. But up until January 1, 2015, you could only stay there as a guest for four or so months of every year, June(ish) through September.

None of the ranch’s log cabins were winterized. (Not having foundations was the least of their problems.) It took two years of work, but they’re now ready for winter. They’re also ready for Nordic skiers. About fifteen kilometers of groomed trails—Nordic skiers are the priority, but fat bikers are welcome when conditions permit—wind around and through open meadows and pine forest. These trails are world-class.

Jackson Hole finally has its first destination Nordic resort. One of the couples that co-owns the ranch, Nancy and Hans Johnstone, are both former Olympic biathletes. Biathlon combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.

“We’re still working on the permits to get the shooting part of the sport going at the ranch, but the skiing terrain is pretty phenomenal,” Nancy Johnstone says. “There are a lot of challenging hills and downhills, turns, and rolling terrain.

I think it is the best Turpin Meadow Nordic skiing— Ranch has upwards dare I say it—in of fifteen kilometers the West.” of trails that are I am a downgroomed daily for skate and classic hill skier. Crossskiing. The trail country skiing system was laid terrifies me.

I out by two of the have classic skied ranch owners who are former Olympic a total of three biathletes. Their times. Each time, goal was to have faster than you beautiful trails, with can say “ouch,” my some challenging accomplished skiers skis, edgeless and and others suitable as rigid as overfor beginners. cooked spaghetti, flew out from beneath me. Each time, my coccyx took the brunt of the fall and I limped around like a saddle-sore city slicker for a week.

The last time I stepped into skinny skis was seven years ago. Crumpled in a mess of skis, poles, and outerwear and

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LIFESTYLE ART FAMILY HOME VOWS For 40 years, visitors and locals have turned the pages of Jackson Hole’s leading glossy magazines for insights on the character and characters of our Valley. Find these titles on magazine stands throughout the region.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: jacksonholemagazine.com | rangejh.com 307.733.2047 126

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DEREK STAL

Turpin Meadow Ranch’s menu is seasonal and hearty. Breakfast is reserved for guests only, but the ranch is open to the public for lunch and dinner.

rubbing my tailbone in a parking lot

by Flagg Ranch, I swore never again to attempt this death sport.

But I’m a sucker for cozy cabins.

I am also a fan of the Alpine House, the Johnstones’ Scandinavian-feeling, twenty-two-room inn tucked near the end of a side street several blocks from Jackson’s Town Square. When I first heard the couple were involved in the redo of Turpin Meadow Ranch—with Nancy handling most of the design and decor—I imagined a blonde-log cabin with a bed covered in wool blankets and a down comforter, a wood-burning stove in a corner, and cheerfully colored furniture and interiors. I deemed that vision almost worth further coccyx trauma. But firsthand reports of the ranch’s fabulous food—fresh pastries, granola, fruit, and a buffet for breakfast, as well as hearty soups and sandwiches for lunch and multicourse dinners—were what really sealed the deal.

TURPIN MEADOW RANCH is about an hour from downtown Jackson and feels like another universe. Driving eleven miles down Buffalo Valley Road, between Moran and the western side of

Togwotee Pass, that feeling only intensifies. In the summer, this road connects to the modern highway over Togwotee, but in the winter, Turpin Meadow Ranch is the end of the road. Snowplows make it over the small bridge spanning the Buffalo Fork of the Snake River and continue the couple hundred feet to the ranch’s main lodge. And that’s it.

“We’re literally the end of the road,” Johnstone says. In winter it’s skis, snowshoes, fat bikes, and snowmobiles only past that point. (Unusual for a Nordic resort, the ranch welcomes snowmobilers. The Continental Divide Trail, one of the most popular groomed snowmobile trails in the country, passes through it.)

“Everyone told us it’s like oil and water with snowmobilers and skiers, but it has worked out great,” she says. “People can snowmobile to the ranch but not around the ranch. So far, we haven’t had any conflicts. In fact, it makes it a little more fun having snowmobilers around.”

As badly as cross-country skiing has treated me, snowmobiling is worse. Over a decade ago, while riding in a whiteout not that far from Turpin Meadow Ranch, I rode into a gully. I broke several ribs and my tibial plateau. A small blood clot

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formed in my right calf. If cross-country skiing scares me, snowmobiling terrifies me. So cross-country skiing it is.

It was only last winter that Turpin Meadow Ranch’s historic cabins opened to winter guests.

Since they were built in 1932, they had only been used in summer, when it didn’t much matter that they had no foundations or heat.

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THE METALLIC TASTE of fear settles in as soon as my boyfriend, Derek, and I, along with our dog, Rio, check in (for a twenty-five-dollar cleaning fee, dogs are welcome). Arriving at the ranch with plenty of daylight left, I know I will have to ski that afternoon. First, though, I take a nap to fortify myself for what I assume will be yet another adventure that ends with a bruised coccyx.

Our cabin, which was built in the 1930s, is almost identical to my vision.

Logs are peeled, making them cheery rather than dark and dour. Linens are bright. The walls that aren’t log are painted the color of lemon meringue.

A gas stove in the corner starts up with the flip of a switch. The bed is tall with blankets; a down quilt hides beneath a Pendleton blanket.

An hour later, I awake mildly steeled for suffering and excited about an idea: I will try skate skiing instead of classic skiing. True, skate skiing is supposedly tougher than classic skiing. Still, I think my chances with this type of cross-country skiing will be better. They certainly can’t be worse. Because I ice skated for much of my childhood, I figure the memory of the motion is hidden within my muscles. I do not, however, think about the difference in length between ice skate blades and skate skis.

DEREK AND I get rental gear from the lodge and, with Rio running circles around us in the snow, set off on the ranch’s three-kilometer Summer Homes Loop, which is accurately described as flat.

Even without hills to negotiate, “graceful” does not describe my technique. (At the beginning level, skate skiing requires more technique than classic skiing, which offers assistance in the form of parallel grooves set into the track. These grooves usually keep beginning skiers from tripping themselves with their skis.) Yet what I lack in grace I make up for with verticality.

Once, distracted by the toothiness of the Tetons in the distance, I nearly cross my skis. But I quickly correct. Ninety minutes after setting off, we return to the main lodge. I step out of my skis as quickly as possible. After going this long without falling, I’m not about to eat it in the parking lot. I am, though, more than ready to eat some snacks in front of the fire roaring in the lodge’s double-sided, river-rock fireplace. JH

Why wait until Summer?

The natives are stirring.

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WILD by NATURE GALLERY

NUTS & BOLTS Nightly rates include breakfast, dinner, and use of the ranch’s Nordic Center.

(Rental gear starts at $20/day.) Rooms start at $295/night for two people. (Weekends have a two-night minimum stay.) Lunch, served 11 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. daily (until 3 on weekends), is not included in overnight rates. Lunch entrees range from $6-$12. Nordic Center day passes start at $15. The ranch rents fat bikes but does not offer guided fat bike trips. It does offer guided snowmobile trips starting at $125.

Dinner is served from 5 to 8 p.m. daily. Nonguests must make advance reservations. 307/543-9147, 24505 Buffalo Valley Road, Moran, turpinmeadow ranch.com

Photography by Henry H. Holdsworth | Winter Aspens

95 West Deloney Avenue | Behind the Wort Hotel 307.733.8877 | www.wildbynaturegallery.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Snake River Builders, Inc.

John McIntosh (208) 787-9836 snakeriverbuilders.com

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body & soul

Soak It Up Because dry skin is as much a part of Jackson Hole life as deep powder, we tested lotions for the face, hands, and body.

BY MAGGIE THEODORA PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY KAPHAN

FINGER SPLITS? PLEASE. You know you’ve got seriously dry skin when the corners of your nostrils are cracked and bleeding. This happens with regularity to Jackson Hole locals. “The severity of the weather conditions here—the sun, the dryness, the cold—is unique and there aren’t many effective products in the marketplace to solve the dry skin it causes,” says Frank Fanning, the founder of Jackson-based trilipiderm. “Everyone says their product works, though.” Even if your nostrils are doing fine, chances are our weather is going to get some part of you. We sorted though salves, rubs, lotions, and, yes, even lotion wipes, to find the ones that work best on all body parts in our extreme climate.

For Your Face

Other night creams might be as good as Jackson-based trilipiderm’s Rehydration Night Crème—vitamins A, C, D, and E, hyaluronic acid, and a proprietary lipid complex enhance elasticity, boost collagen, hydrate and plump skin, and fight free radicals— but they cost three times as much. $50, Goodie 2 Shoes, trilipiderm.com Trilipiderm’s Broad Spectrum SPF 30 neither feels nor smells like sunscreen, so you’ll have no problem reapplying it when you’re out on the slopes all day. From $17.95, Jackson Whole Grocer, 1155 S. Hwy 89, trilipiderm.com

When your regular daytime facial moisturizer isn’t cutting it anymore, bring in sebamed’s Anti-Dry Day Defence Cream. What the supermoisturizer lacks in sun protection—it doesn’t have any—it makes up for in thickness and penetration. $22.95, sebamedusa.com

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All-Body Lotions

When you need just a little bit of moisture and you’re in a hurry, go for Pacifica’s Lotion Wipes, biodegradable and infused with coconut milk and signature scents. $7.99, Jackson Whole Grocer, 1155 S. Hwy 89

Look no further than Dr. Bronner’s for an organic lotion that’s as friendly to your wallet as your skin, and suitable for your face, hands, and body. $9.99, Lucky’s Market, 974 W. Broadway

Locals went crazy for trilipiderm’s All-Body Moisture Retention Crème when it came out several years ago. It’s no wonder: it’s equally good at healing dryness as it is at preventing it. From $14.95, available at retailers around the valley

If you can get past its greasiness, Aquaphor excels as a skin protectant against windburn. We also love it to help heal chapped lips. From $4.99, available at grocery and drugstores around the valley

Even though it has shea butter, chamomile, calendula, St. John’s wort, rosemary and linden flower, Burt’s Bees’ hypoallergenic Body Lotion is fragrancefree. Plus, it lasts all day long and is thick enough to help with finger splits. $8, Jackson Whole Grocer, 1155 S. Hwy 89

The Naked Bee’s Moisturizing Hand & Body Lotion lives up to its promise of “all the good stuff, none of the bad stuff.” It contains certified organic aloe and sunflower oils, green and white teas, honey, hyaluronic acid, and spirulina. Missing are parabens, gluten, artificial colors and dyes, and phthalate fragrances. $6.99, amazon.com

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Keep dryness at bay by using sebamed’s nongreasy, nonsticky, all-body Anti-Dry Hydrating Body Lotion after every shower. $22.95, sebamedusa.com

Extreme Dryness Badger Balm has dozens of products now, but its original, For Hardworking Hands, is still the best, treating the worst finger cracks and splits along with chapped and weathered skin. $7.99, available at retailers around the valley

We were skeptical of the emu oil, but combined in this cream with herbs and clove oil—the latter has antibacterial properties—we now don’t know how our feet ever lived without Montana Emu Ranch’s Workers Hand & Foot Cream. After a week of daily use, calluses started softening. $11.95, montanaemuranch.com and Jackson Whole Grocer, 1155 S. Hwy 89

You can’t get more local or natural than Auntie Bru’s Comfrey Comfort. Made with organic comfrey and lavender grown in Auntie Bru’s garden in downtown Jackson, we use this on everything from itchy skin to burns and the driest of skin. $12.99, comfortcare andnourishment.com and Jackson Whole Grocer, 1155 S. Hwy 89

Created in 1899 to help make milking cows comfortable, Bag Balm today is used as everything from a salve for sore muscles to chamois butter, always moisturizing wherever it’s rubbed. $14.99, available at grocery and drugstores around the valley

When you care for your nails as much as your skin, sebamed’s Hand & Nail Balm helps manicures last longer. $12.95, sebamedusa.com Even if it didn’t come with a lemon-cream scent, J.R. Watkins’ Shea Butter Hand Cream would be our top pick for medium-dry hands. It soaks in quickly and leaves no greasy residue. Best of all? Its price. $7.99, Lucky’s Market, 974 W. Broadway

Guys usually first gravitate to Jack Black Industrial Strength Hand Healer because it is fragrance-, color-, and frill-free. They stick with it because it’s “simply the best hand lotion ever,” to quote a valley carpenter. From $15, getjackblack.com

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nightlife

Playing Bar Bars aren’t just about drinking.

PRICE CHAMBERS

BY JULIE KLING

YOUNG MEN WITH gapped teeth and backwards baseball caps fill the game room at the Virginian Lodge on a Wednesday. The unpretentious bar, better known as the Virg, is gearing up for karaoke. It doesn’t get busy until around 10 p.m., though, so manager Dustin Morehead takes me out back. He needs a smoke break, and I want to hear tales about the regular brawls that broke out back in the day. The Virg, which is still owned by its namesake and founder Virginia Napierskie, is “more western than uptown,” Morehead says. “Virginia’s late husband, Glenn, always wanted to make this a place where you can get a strong drink for a cheap price.”

Back inside, I get a Jameson Whiskey for $3.75 and watch as Kyle, whose last name I didn’t catch, points his gun at the screen of the Big Buck arcade game and a man in a Blues Brothers’ suit sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” alone on the dance floor.

Bars aren’t just meant for drinking. In the interest of in-depth journalism, I searched out the valley’s watering holes that go beyond the basics, offering darts, trivia, pool, karaoke, disco dancing, and shake-a-day in addition to alcohol. Mark Allison, who has bartended at the Town Square Tavern since it opened nine years ago, says more and more people want to find community 134

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The Virginian has a “strong drink for a good price” and also pool, darts, karaoke, and cornhole.

at bars. “There’s always something going on, from live music to dice and Jenga,” he says. “If you want to get people to stick around these days you have to give them a reason to get off the couch.”

Enter the Tavern’s Wednesday family friendly trivia night. Ski instructor and DJ Tom Haigh, a.k.a. Crazy Tom, moved his spermology show (“spermology” is the study of trivia) to the Tavern from Cutty’s Bar & Grill two years ago. If your team knows things like who sings the Winnie the Pooh song “Return to Pooh Corner” (Kenny Loggins), you might win a bottle of Wyoming Whiskey or 20 percent off dinner. But you better not get caught cheating (using your phone to Google answers or call friends) or texting.

“Ironically, I use a DJ system, a laptop, and PowerPoint to get people off their phones and get them to start exercising their brains,” Haigh says. Tavern spermologists work with their teammates at card tables. Haigh poses a question and everyone scribbles his or her answers on a piece of paper. After the question, everyone’s answers are collected and put in a bucket. The first correct answer picked out of the bucket wins.

THE VIRG DRAWS in people looking for more old-school entertainment. Indeed, walking into the bar, which was built in 1965 and remains mostly the same, feels like stepping back in time. In some ways, it is. A grid on a white board over the foosball table is a reminder of an old bet.

The TV is a 12-inch Toshiba. Morehead says he plans on moving that and getting new pool tables—every Thursday night, the Virg hosts a pool tournament that draws competitors from as far away as Pinedale—and two new dartboards.

Bringing the bar into the twenty-first century, the darts will be hooked up to the Internet and have cameras. Shooters at the Virg can compete with people at other bars around the world in real time.

Darts not your thing? Some nights the bar pulls out its cornhole “board” and dice; a group of locals likes to play Pitch, which Morehead describes as being similar to Euchre. “When they get too drunk they argue a lot,” he says.

Although they’re not regulationsize, the four pool tables at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar—open until 2 a.m.—are the most popular in town; you have to lay quarters down on a table and wait your turn. If you’re more

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REQUIRING LESS SKILL than two step and available at more bars is shake-aday. If bars didn’t donate a portion of the pot to charity, shake-a-day would be considered gambling. It’s a Yahtzee-style dice game that you win when you roll five of a kind. At most valley bars, buy a drink and you can then buy a chance to roll for $1. These dollar bills accumulate in a pot until someone rolls five of a kind. Do that and the pot, minus the portion donated to charity, is yours.

Besides paying to roll and five-of-a-kind winning, the shake-a-days at valley bars have different rules. Three or four of a kind might win you a drink, a free roll, or nothing. At the Snake River Brewery,

BRADLY J. BONER

interested in playing than being a part of the Cowboy’s scene—although the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar definitely needs to be seen at some point—head to the Stagecoach Bar at the base of Teton Pass in Wilson. Its two pool tables are often available every night but Sunday, when the Stagecoach Band holds “Church” at the bar. The band that has played from 6 to 10 p.m. every Sunday night for forty-five years (not including the Sundays that Christmas and New Year’s fall on) leads the valley’s best two-step scene. Whether playing pool or at Church, the Coach is “like Cheers,” says regular Brian Schwartz.

“It’s a very friendly environment, and there is not a thick wall between locals and tourists. I don’t think that happens in Telluride or Aspen.”

Above: Someone used this cup and six of these dice to win $12,888 in the shake-a-day at Eleanor’s Again.

Below: Wednesday Trivia Night at the Town Square Tavern

better known as the Brewpub, if you roll two of a kind twice, you get a free beer.

As of press time, the record for the biggest pot belonged to Eleanor’s Again Bar & Grill, a gritty (for Jackson) bar hidden in the back of Plaza Liquors in Grand Teton Plaza. In 2013, there was a line out its door for the chance to roll for a pot that eventually made it to $12,888.

Aside from the valley’s shake-a-day record, Eleanor’s is also known as one of the best places to play darts in town.

Cutty’s, the Brewpub, the Virg, and the

Coach also have dartboards, but Eleanor’s is the most active. Dave Dussault, who grew up shooting darts outside Boston, hopes to change that. He’s trying to start a luck-of-the-draw tournament that rotates between bars. It’d be on Wednesdays and have a $10 buy-in. “There’s actually a lot of people who shoot,” he says. “The nice part of the luck-of-the-draw format is that you get paired with the best shooter or the worst shooter, so it levels the playing field.” And if it doesn’t, there’s plenty of alcohol around. JH

The Virginian: 750 West Broadway; 307/733-2792; virginianlodge.com Town Square Tavern: 20 East Broadway; 307/733-3886; townsquaretavern.com The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar: 25 North Cache St.; 307/733-2207; milliondollarcowboybar.com Stagecoach Bar: 5755 WY Highway 22; 307/733-4407; stagecoachbar.net Eleanor’s Again: 832 West Broadway; 307/733-7901; eleanorsbarandgrill.com

PRICE CHAMBERS

Cutty’s: 1140 WY Highway 22; 307/201-1079; cuttysgrill.com

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Snake River Brewery & Restaurant: 265 South Millward St.; 307/739-2337; snakeriverbrewing.com

Stone Works of Jackson Hole

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GRANITE | MARBLE | ENGINEERED STONE | TILE Fabrication Facility in Jackson Showroom at Fish Creek Center in Wilson By appointment: 307.734.8744 www.StoneWorksofJacksonHole.com

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PIXAR’S DINOSAURS ROAM TETON SCREENS STARTING TODAY. SEE STEPPING OUT.

Jackson, Wyoming

Wednesday, November 25, 2015 s

Village readies for road dispute

One dollar

Powder Punch

Angst was high and substance was lacking at meeting, Teton County officials say.

By Mike Koshmrl Representing Teton Village, Jerry Blann vented his frustrations about the proposed changes in store for Moose-Wilson Road at a closed — and then opened — Cheyenne meeting that furrowed brows on the other side of the state in Teton County.

Called by the office of Gov. Matt Mead, the meeting on Monday conPRICE CHAMBERS / NEWS&GUIDE

Simon Lynes blasts through a frosty pine tree on Friday at Grand Targhee. The Alta resort received nearly a foot of new snow on opening day of the ski season and boasts a total snow depth of 32 inches at the Chief Joseph Plot.

Meetings law examined, see page 23. vened Grand Teton National Park, Teton County and Wyoming officials in a conference room for a 40-minute discussion. Blann, in his capacity as a Teton Village Association board member, worried about a proposed 200-vehicle limit in the corridor, a lack of public transit in the proposal and the omission of a pathway in Teton park’s plans.

The National Park Service’s rationale for limiting traffic was unclear, Blann suggested, and buried in a 694-page draft environmental impact statement.

“I did notice it was on page 577 of the doc,” said Blann, who’s also the president of Jackson Hole Mountain See MooSe-WILSon on 22A

Housing board uncertainty Confusion arises as county commissioners begin the process of restructuring the housing board and implementing Housing Action Plan.

By Melissa Cassutt It was clear after the Housing Action Plan was approved earlier this month that the Teton County Housing Authority Board would be restructured.

Less clear: how that restructuring would occur.

The issue has been a source of frustration and miscommunication in the past several weeks as elected officials and Housing Authority board members try

to decipher how to implement the approved “vision document.”

The most recent confusion largely stems from a letter sent to applicants interested in filling an upcoming vacancy on the Housing Authority board. The letter stated the seat would not be filled, as the board would be restructured in the next six months.

The direction blindsided members of the Housing Authority board, as well as some commissioners who said they were unaware this was the formal position of the board as no vote had been taken.

“I honestly didn’t know that letter was going out,” said Commissioner Smokey Rhea to board members of the Housing Authority last week. “The Board of County Commissioners did not vote on that.”

See HouSInG on 23A

START rolls out new town, late-night bus routes New shuttle will slash ride times around the heart of Jackson.

By Ben Graham It’s too circuitous!

That has been the common complaint about the START bus system’s town shuttle.

The shuttle ferries riders around

Jackson for free, visiting stops every 30 minutes. But the route loops around various sections of town, adding precious minutes to the commutes of workers who use the bus the most.

The shuttle even became a political talking point among mayoral candidates during the 2014 election season.

The message was clear: Make it more convenient.

Town officials and transit staffers heard the message and the results will

InSIde © 2015 Teton Media Works

2A 2A 11A

Storm forecast scares travelers Airport awards bus contract Aspens seeks sewage renewal

show beginning this week.

Starting Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, START will offer a new shuttle route designed to get people across town more quickly.

Councilor Jim Stanford, who along with Councilor Hailey Morton Levinson pushed for the new service, said the result will chop 15 minutes off of a cross-town commute.

“This is the next step in improving the shuttle service and making it more 14A 16A 25A

usable for people in Jackson,” Stanford said. “It’s going to cut cross-town trips from 25 minutes to 10 minutes.”

The new service comes in the form of a new route, called “town shuttle B.” It will be shorter and more direct than the current route, able to get people to destinations from east Jackson to Maple Way but not extending past Kmart to the west or visiting areas around Town Square.

School boards try to curb dropouts Pedestrian Weber hit, killed Archaeologists find fish stew

See START on 21A

26A 28A 31A

Landowner sues assessor Grove estimate goes down Blotter

Subscribe today! Call 307-733-2047 or visit www.jhnewsandguide.com/subscribe WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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dining

Game On Hunting for wild game around the valley

BY JOOHEE MUROMCEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY ASHLEY WILKERSON The menu at Wild Sage includes a roasted baby beet salad with smoked goose, Chioggia beets, crispy beet greens, Point Reyes blue cheese, and crushed pistachio rolls.

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TWENTY YEARS AGO, when I was dating my now-husband, I was a young staffer at a glossy lifestyle magazine in New York City. I only remember the glamorous parts, including dinners at fabulous restaurants such as Raoul’s (steak frites) or Il Mulino (risotto porcini). Early on in our relationship, I saw a future with Alex, one filled with good food and drink.

Never in a million glasses of champagne did I imagine that one day our good food would be wild elk, antelope, pheasant, and turkey that Alex had hunted. Even further fetched were the ideas that we’d store this good food in two freezers in our garage in Wyoming and we’d feed it to our four kids.

“Wild turkey.” Hearing that still sends a slight shudder down my spine, though I can’t entirely remember why. Now “wild turkey” requires a three-day hunting trip and two days to braise and coax it out of its shoeleather toughness.

Fortunately, for diners in the valley, game meat preparation is a widely practiced, and perfected, art among Jackson Hole chefs. Game meat here has a range of interpretations that constantly evolves with the seasons.

Complementing the herbal notes of antelope or tenderizing a chewy cut

of elk into a velvety stew are commonplace skills in a valley chef ’s wheelhouse.

Game meat is to Jackson Hole what seafood is to Cape Cod. A highlight for many first-time visitors to the area is sampling game meat. Initial forays can be as approachable as a pizza topped with seasoned elk sausage or more adventurous, like bison tenderloin.

The Adventurous Gamer WILD SAGE’S INTIMATE dining room—seven tables—at the Rusty Parrot Lodge is quiet and low-key. Still, it has one of the most adventurous yet refined dinner menus in the valley. During his tenure at Wild Sage, former head chef Art Jeffries put wild game front and center. “We’ve always had some game meat on the menu, but in the past few years, it has definitely become more game-centric,” Jeffries says. “Diners are becoming more sophisticated.”

Wild Sage’s game meat vendors are a hunter’s dream road trip: rabbit from Iowa, quail from Wisconsin, bison from Nebraska, and elk from Canada. The roasted rabbit loin is a favorite. The legs are confited and, saving the loins, the rest of the meat is ground into sausage.

The loins are wrapped in the sausage, then roasted to medium-pink perfection. It is served over a black garlic pappardelle. Another favorite is the teasmoked elk tenderloin, cold-smoked in-house with green tea. The elk loin is then pan-seared and served with a Thai-inspired orange demi-glace, a crispy scallion pancake on the side.

The Rusty Parrot Cookbook is a beautiful volume (see sidebar) to take home.

For the home cook, it encourages liberal use of spices—a Wild Sage favorite is juniper berries. A standing rule? Unless it’s a braise or a stew, do not overcook. rustyparrot.com

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Game with a Twist CHEF JEFF DREW’S wild game Korean hot bowl hits all the right cool-weather notes while doing a Wyoming take on a traditional Korean rice bowl dish (dolsot bibimbap). The bowl arrives with a satisfying hiss of rice sizzling to a crispy finish. (When your server warns you this bowl is hot, believe them.) Tender slices of venison, seasonal vegetables, and a spicy black bean sauce are meant to be WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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At Il Villaggio Osteria, the winter menu includes venison carpaccio with shaved Fiore Sardo, chopped celery leaf, and granola.

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DEDICATED TO YOUR ACTIVE LIFESTYLE

mixed together. The last chewy-crispy bites are the tastiest. This is the perfect meal to enjoy at the bar. Order a Trout Saddle cocktail (Stoli Citros, fresh lime and orange juice, and a splash of cranberry) while you wait for your entree to arrive. Pair the main course’s spicysavory venison and black bean flavors with an adventurous red from SRG’s extensive wine list. snakerivergrill.com Dinner and a Show THE GUN BARREL describes itself as “Jackson Hole’s legendary dining experience.” In this case, the hyperbole is called for. Housed in the former Wyoming Museum of Wildlife and Taxidermy, the restaurant’s lodgepole interiors still showcase some of that occupant’s original artifacts, artwork, antique guns, and mounted trophy game. A bison stands just inside the entrance, setting the tone for a dignified, no-nonsense dining experience. The elk chop is simply described on the menu as “a thick, mesquite-grilled chop.”

Special-occasion dinners call for the eight-ounce buffalo prime rib, served with au jus on the side, or the mixed game grill—a paleo-cowboy fantasy of elk steak, buffalo prime rib, and venison bratwurst. gunbarrel.com Unexpectedly Exotic THE WELL-EDITED WINE list at Il Villaggio Osteria, with a focus on Sangiovese and Barbera, presents excellent options for pairing with their seasonally driven menu. Begin with chef Serge Smith’s chilled carpaccio of venison. Wild boar tenderloin makes for a secondi worthy of one of their fine Brunellos. Always finish a meal here with a house-made gelato sandwich. jhosteria.com

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Completely Classic SWISS CHARM AND fine dining meet at the homey Alpenhof Lodge’s Alpenrose at Teton Village. While the fondue dinners at the Alpenhof Bistro are irresistible, the menu at the Alpenrose includes an elegant antelope dish, wachholder antilope, prepared in traditional Swiss fashion with juniper berries, goat cheese, and fingerling potatoes. alpenhoflodge.com

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Pizzeria Caldera’s Il Bisonte pizza pairs bison sausage with tomato sauce, mozzarella, yellow peppers, fresh red onion, and sage.

A Wild Burger FOR A STRAIGHTFORWARD introduction to game flavors, try Local’s buffalo burger for lunch. Made with buffalo that is farm-raised in Montana, it’s a juicy patty served with lettuce, tomato, and “special sauce.” A house-made pickle comes on the side. Go back for dinner and order the buffalo tartare, served with crispy potatoes and a drizzle of truffle oil. localjh.com Easing In WHETHER YOU’RE SHY to sample new game flavors or not, one of the most delicious pizzas in town is the Il Bisonte at Pizzeria Caldera. Tomato sauce, mozzarella, yellow peppers, fresh red onion, and sage set a sweet, succulent background for mildly spiced bison sausage from the Jackson Hole Buffalo Meat Company. Wash it down with a pitcher of Pako’s India Pale Ale from Snake River Brewing, and you can say you’re living, or at least eating, like a local. pizzeria caldera.com JH 142

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Get Game at Home NORTH AMERICAN ELK AU POIVRE WITH LINGONBERRY REDUCTION (Adapted from The Rusty Parrot Cookbook by Darla Worden and Eliza Cross) ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED WITH a parsnip puree accompaniment, this recipe also pairs well with roasted root vegetables or a fresh baguette. Medallions of elk loin are marinated, dredged in a fragrant spice blend, seared, and served with a peppery lingonberry reduction. If grinding whole spices proves too ambitious, try quality ground spices in similar proportions.

For the elk marinade: 2 pounds elk short loin, denuded 3 cloves garlic, halved 1 shallot, cut into 1/2-inch slices For the spice blend: 2 star anise pods 2 tablespoons whole coriander For the reduction: 5 cups apple cider 1 cup lingonberries

1 thumb-size lobe ginger, peeled and chopped 1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped 2 cups canola oil 4 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns

The evening before cooking, marinate the elk. Portion the loins into approximately 8 servings. Mix the marinade ingredients and pour over the elk. Cover and refrigerate overnight, turning once.

To prepare your spice crust, first grind the anise pods into a powder using a spice grinder. Then add coriander and peppercorns, grinding to a coarser texture.

To prepare the reduction, combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan and cook over mediumhigh heat until the mixture is reduced by 90 percent and small, syrupy bubbles form.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Heat a large cast-iron skillet. Remove the elk portions from the marinade (discard remaining marinade) and coat the elk on all sides with the spice blend. Sear the elk on high heat, 2 minutes per side. Finish the elk in the oven to desired temperature. Be careful not to overcook. Let it rest for 4 minutes. Slice the elk on the bias and serve drizzled with reduction.

Distinctive

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Weddings - Rehearsal Dinners - Private & Corporate Events • 307-739-4682 • bistrocatering.net

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dining out

RESTAURANT

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LOCATION

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experience …

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Jackson Hole’s Best New Restaurant Creative American Cuisine Catering • Private Parties • Chef’s Table

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

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

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Open nightly for dinner 72 S. Glenwood • Jackson, WY • Parking available 307.264.1820 • www.gatherjh.com

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

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GREAT FOOD I LIBATIONS I MUSIC UNMATCHED ATMOSPHERE Inside the Historic Wort Hotel Just off the Town Square • 307-732-3939 • worthotel.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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art scene

A New Sense of Place Contemporary western landscape art is not an oxymoron.

BY JEANNETTE BONER

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YOU REMEMBER THAT day when you first saw the Tetons towering over Jackson Hole, the sun pouring through the cracks of the range’s deep canyons like rays from heaven. That was a good day. Unforgettable, both visually and emotionally. That kind of day is why so many people are still in Jackson years after they planned to leave.

“It was May 15, 2000, and I was coming up over Togwotee Pass, and I remember slamming on the breaks and asking, ‘What the hell are those?’ ” says Todd Kosharek. “Those” were the Tetons. “I couldn’t believe I was looking at something like that that was sixty to eighty miles away,” says Kosharek, who now lives and

BY NATURE GALLERY BRING YOUR CURIOSI T Y Jacksonhole@bynaturegallery.com | www.bynaturegallery.com 86 East Broadway | Jackson Wyoming 83001 | 307.200.6060 Also visit our gallery in Beaver Creek, CO.

The First of May by Todd Kosharek, 14” x 26”, Acrylic on Canvas

paints in Jackson.

Kosharek is not the first artist to have an emotional response to the Tetons.

Jackson Hole and its environs have attracted artists seeking to capture the emotion and essence of this place since the 1850s. With paint and brushes, lenses and film, they seek to bring to the masses the feeling found in that first glimpse of the Tetons or a bubbling geyser in

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you are outside, taking in the view, seeing the details of sage and the way the sun hits the hills at any given time of day.

Inspired by realistic landscape artists including Moran and Iceland’s Johannes Kjarval, Kosharek says he didn’t really paint the mountains for two years after that moment on Togwotee. It took him that long to find his own brushstrokes and his own style. Kosharek needed to break free of what he calls his “juvenile sense of art” and what he thought others wanted to see so that he could paint what he felt and saw, and how he felt it and saw it.

Now Kosharek, who attended the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where he pursued a bachelor of fine arts (BFA) in painting before graduating with a degree in art history, is a father and happily struggles to layer paint upon paint, wanting to show his son what he felt that first day he saw the Tetons. “In art, you are trying to say something new.

I want to say something true,” he says.

Elemental by Pamela Gibson, 48” x 36”

Yellowstone or the thunderous Upper Falls of the Yellowstone.

While the earliest artists to the valley stuck to strict re-creations of our landscapes—a member of the Hayden Expedition of 1871, Thomas Moran, accurately sketched the wonders of Yellowstone in an effort to convince the U.S. Congress that the area was worthy of protection—landscape artists today have more freedom.

Kosharek’s landscape work is heavy with paint, layered and layered again with deep blues and greens as he works multiple seasons—summer and fall and even winter, all at once—into the canvas.

To see Kosharek’s point of view requires considering his landscapes from every angle, from a distance, and then from close-up, nose almost pressed to the paint. It’s the same feeling you get when 150

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PORTLAND TRANSPLANT PAMELA Gibson always starts a painting by studying a photograph she has taken in the landscape. She then begins sketching.

“In the underpainting there is a realistic sketch as I try evoking the feeling I get thinking about the landscape,” she says.

Gibson’s finished work is fully abstract; any use of a photo is unrecognizable once a piece is complete. “There is a lot of metaphor in landscape,” she says. “Most of my paintings are unrecognizable. You can’t look at my paintings and define it.” While you wouldn’t know if a painting of Gibson’s was of the view from her front yard or something on the National Elk Refuge, it doesn’t matter. She seeks to extract mood and feeling in viewers and create emotion. She succeeds. While the landscape Gibson is painting is not recognizable, the feeling of the vastness of Wyoming is, as is our delicate, constantly changing light.

“In Portland, the colors are very saturated, green, and there are so many flowers,” says Gibson, who has been a weaver, painter, and mixed media artist for over twenty-five years and holds a BFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft. “Here, everything is more muted and there is something about the size of the landscape that makes you notice the light more. I expected to love the mountains, but I didn’t know how the huge

landscape would impact me. There is something about the expansiveness that makes me notice the light more—all day, every day. The thing that has always struck me [is], in other places I look at the landscape; here I’m in it. It changed my work a lot. It upset the applecart for me and that’s a good thing.”

IN A BRIGHTLY lit studio space in downtown Jackson, Teton Artlab provides space: studio space, exhibition space, and performance space for local and visiting artists. Last February, Cheyenne-based artist Georgia Rowswell pieced together—weaving and gluing— thousands of miles of fabric to create Hot Yellowstone #6, one in her series inspired by the colors of the geothermal features in Yellowstone National Park. Not that you would recognize a geothermal feature. Rowswell’s pieces are micro perspectives. “I’m attracted to the close-up,” she says. “The average tourist looks at the big picture; I look at the details, the complicated surfaces.” Thermal features are particularly good subjects for Rowswell because “the colors and patterns are beautiful and dangerous,” she says.

BIG SKY MT | 406.995.7572

Fenceline by Pamela Gibson, 18” x 18”

BOZEMAN MT | 406.586.2267

DENVER CO | 303.840.0020 C E N T R E S KY. C O M WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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Cheyenne artist Georgia Rowswell works in a studio at the Teton Artlab during her residency there last year. Rowswell uses fabric to capture micro vistas of Yellowstone’s thermal features.

Travis Walker is not just the executive director at Teton Artlab but an artist himself. Nontraditional landscape art is subjective, like most art. “What is art?” asks Walker when called upon to define nontraditional landscape work. For Walker, his work is born out of moments in his world. Success, failure, and growth are all layered into his pieces. Sitting in the Artlab, Walker leans in to consider the question more thoughtfully. “I came to Wyoming in 2002 from Kansas City via the East Coast. When I got here, I had never seen the mountains and the light,” he says.

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“The way the light hits the mountains and the way a mountain just sits in the background behind a house—seeing these things I had never seen before was like finding something you lost. It’s so familiar when you first see it. That’s how I felt about Jackson.”

And that is Walker’s work. His landscapes are familiar scenes—the demolition derby, the base of Snow King, the Town Square, or a downtown trailer park—rendered in a way that encourages us to take a pause, then a deep breath.

He breaks down scenes, leaving viewers with a simplified version of reality where

light and lines create a new perspective of an old, or ordinary, landscape. Walker reminds viewers of that first time they saw the light hit the Tetons at dusk or how the hay bale interrupted the endless lines made by a tractor across a rancher’s field.

MEG DALY WORKS to publicize art by local contemporary artists through Daly Projects, her gallery founded in February 2015 that recently relocated inside Teton Artlab. “Because [the art] is so abstract, there is this emotion that comes through and mood,” says Daly of the work she sells. “It’s time passing

Two Grey Hills

Indian Arts & Jewelry 110 East Broadway Jackson, WY 307-733-2677

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that can inform the mood, but it seems to represent our lives in Wyoming. As westerners, we’re really aware of the light and the landscape and the time of day.

One of the things I love about [Pamela] Gibson’s work is that it captures the moods of the landscape.” In addition to Gibson, Daly Projects also represents Scotty Craighead, Camille Davis, Katy Ann Fox, Mark Morgan Dunstan, and Ed Lavino, who are all locals. “The gallery has been a work in progress,” Daly says. “That was the plan from the get-go and now it has evolved.” Sounds just like the state of western art today. JH

Fine Indian Art since 1976 Pueblo Pottery • Navajo Weavings Jewelry • Baskets • Zuni Fetishes

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Private Instruction, Community-wide Courses and Entertainment Shooting Experiences Year-Round 307-690-7921 or toll-free 844-Hi-Women ShootInJH.com and HighCaliberWomen.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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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.

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.

172 Center Street (307) 739-4700 altamiraart.com 154

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BY NATURE GALLERY

HINES GOLDSMITHS

By Nature Gallery offers the world’s most unique fossils, minerals, home décor and jewelry, right here in Jackson Hole. Bring your curiosity, and find natural treasures for every interest and age group!

Jackson’s original Jewelry Store, we are celebrating our 45th anniversary. It all started with just a few cases in the 70’s in Jackson Theater building and has expanded to our modern showroom right on the Town Square. We are the exclusive designers of the Teton Jewelry Collection; ranging from stunning diamond pavé pendants, rings and earrings to affordable sterling silver jewelry. Home to Wyoming’s largest selection of handmade gold and silver charms as well as Teton, Bucking Bronco and animal themed hand etched crystal and glassware.

86 East Broadway (307) 200-6060 bynaturegallery.com

80 Center Street (307) 733-5599 hines-gold.com

MANGELSEN - IMAGES OF NATURE GALLERY

RARE GALLERY OF JACKSON HOLE

Legendary nature photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen has traveled throughout the natural world for over 40 years observing and photographing the Earth’s last great wild places.

Mangelsen has captured wild moments and vast panoramas from all seven continents. We invite you to visit the Mangelsen—Images of Nature Gallery located one block north of the historic town square. The gallery features over 200 limited edition and artist proof prints in a variety of display options.

RARE Gallery ... a Collectors Destination! This 6,000 square foot Rick Armstrong signature gallery continues to debut “Art for the New West” in Jackson Hole! Our collections include blue chip works, masters’ collections, museum quality designer jewelry and art from the most acclaimed emerging artists of today. Featuring paintings, sculptures, photographs, glass, 3 dimensional art, and designer jewelry. Specializing in art consultation and collection management.

170 N Cache Street (307) 733-9752 mangelsen.com

60 East Broadway (307) 733-8726 raregalleryjacksonhole.com

TWO GREY HILLS INDIAN ARTS & JEWELRY

For 40 years Two Grey Hills has featured museum quality Navajo Weavings, Pueblo Pottery, Southwest Indian Baskets and distinctive jewelry

by Navajo, Hopi and Zuni Artists.

110 East Broadway (307) 733-2677 fineindianart.com

WEST LIVES ON TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES

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 North West corner of the square and caters to the beginning collector and to the art connoisseur.

Legacy Gallery is proud to be celebrating is 28th Anniversary and has two other locations in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bozeman, Montana.

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

WILD BY NATURE GALLERY

Both galleries have an impressive collection of fine art reflecting the rich heritage of the American West. Featuring Western, wildlife and landscape art in original oils, acrylics, watercolors and bronze. We represent over 100 regional and local artists. Our knowledgeable staff will work with you to locate that special piece for your home or office.

Dedicated to capturing the natural beauty of Jackson Hole and the surrounding National Parks, WILD BY NATURE GALLERY features the unique and striking wildlife and landscape images of local photographer Henry H. Holdsworth. Holdsworth is nationally recognized for his work with publications such as National Geographic, National Wildlife, Nature’s Best and Wildlife Conservation. Henry’s photographs are available as limited edition prints, notecards and local coffee table books and guidebooks. You will find us one block west of the Town Square. Henry also offers a variety of photographic workshops throughout the year.

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

95 West Deloney (307) 733-08877 wildbynaturegallery.com WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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as the hole deepens figure it out when a million didn’t?

Anyway, the note got me thinking: how does Yellowstone position its wildlife for tourist season?

There’s too much money at stake for the deal to be random. I’ve seen the same buffalo in the same swampy pond every June for seven summers. And there’s a moose down in the willows off the Jackson Lake Lodge back deck. You can watch it through a coin-operated tower viewer on a pole, provided by the lodge. That moose hasn’t moved a muscle in years. Nature doesn’t park an animal and leave it.

Obviously many of the national park animals are animatronic. Ever take the jungle ride at Disneyland?

No one over the age of six thinks the hippo is real. Why do people fall for a stuffed wolf on a mountaintop a mile away at Roaring Mountain?

I’m sure you’ll be happy to know many of the animals closest to the roads are real.

In order to ensure survival through the harsh Yellowstone winter, the government rounds up all the wildlife they can catch and keeps them in heated pens under the hot springs terraces at Mammoth. That’s what the hot water is for.

In November I drove to Mammoth to meet my friend, Eats the Dirt, the famous Kickapoo buffalo whisperer.

Eats the Dirt claims he’s in charge of animal placement in Yellowstone. I’ve never known whether to believe him or not. It seems impossible, but I hate to write off a minority shaman’s culture. The Kickapoo say they talk to beasts. It’s arrogant for white people to dismiss their beliefs.

Bottom line is I can’t talk to animals, unless you count being able to read domestic cat moods by their ears.

So I had to trust Eats the Dirt’s translation.

They keep the animals segregated in species-specific pens to cut down on the spread of brucellosis and ripping each other to shreds. Eats the Dirt stood at a podium, like a conductor with an orchestra, and directed the meeting where they divvied up the prime locations. It’s one of the last places in America where seniority matters.

Bears eat ice cream. Moose don’t.

BY TIM SANDLIN ILLUSTRATIONS BY BIRGITTA SIF

“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them. This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”

A visitor left that note in the Comments box at one of the hotels in Yellowstone last summer, and within two weeks it was all over Facebook, Yahoo, and various social media sites where people say snarky things about strangers. None of the hundred or so comments I read thought the tourist was anything other than a sincere idiot.

Having written my share of fake letters to the editor and notes to congressmen—who do you think gave Scott Walker the idea of building a wall across the northern border to keep out Canadians—I myself was dubious as to the innocence of the comment card. But what do I know? How can one person 156

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“Where’s Max?” An ancient-by-moose-years moose lifted his head.

Eats the Dirt translated for me. “He said, ‘Here.’

“I want you in that meadow at Beryl Springs.

But closer to the road this summer. Tourists are getting blasé about ungulates. They won’t slam their brakes for less than carnivores. You can’t cause a decent traffic jam two hundred yards out in the grass.”

“But the feed over by the road is oily from construction trucks. And children throw toys at me. I had ice cream on my horns all last summer. We need a sign that says ‘Bears eat ice cream. Moose don’t.’ ” “Your job isn’t to complain. It’s to stop traffic. The hotels pay us to make certain no one sees the whole park in a day. You can’t shirk.”

“And why do we care about the hotels?”

“Without them making a profit Yellowstone becomes a strip mine. Think where you’d be then. Can’t have land not producing cash. I want more elk in the Hayden Valley. You guys are not earning your keep in the backcountry.”

This brought on a chorus of boos from the elk. Even I could hear them.

“And you buffalo—I’m moving all six of you who stomped tourists at Old Faithful over to Lamar Valley. Let you dodge wolves for a summer. See if that doesn’t make you appreciate our visitors.”

The buffalo expressed outrage, which in a buffalo means a lot of snorting and mucus blowing.

“The fool put a child on my back. Was I supposed to take that lying down?”

“I was surrounded by selfie sticks and flashes went off in my eyes. I charged the phone. Can I help it if a man got in my way? Don’t they know we are wild animals?”

Eats the Dirt said, “Breaking tourist legs is bad public relations.”

Here’s an interesting scientific fact: since selfies became the fad, buffalo stomps have increased threefold. A tourist group— often foreigners who are unable to read the “Danger” flyers— stands with their backs to the buffalo and aims phones at them.

Heck, I would charge if they did it to me.

“At least we didn’t kill anybody,” the elder female whined.

“Grizzlies kill people, but you give them the prime locations.”

Eats the Dirt’s tone was one of a grownup addressing a fractious child. “A grizzly with three cubs can back traffic up for four miles. You cause complete chaos like a good bear jam and we’ll see about a better location.”

“Might happen if you let us mount our cows on the center stripe,” said a bull elk who hadn’t gotten over his rut yet.

“Sorry,” Eats the Dirt said. “We’re a family park.”

The elder buffalo wouldn’t let go of her complaint. “But Blaze ate a health care professional. The government put her to sleep.”

A marmot piped up: “They didn’t put her to sleep. They killed her.”

“And let this be a lesson to you all,” Eats the Dirt said. “Blaze wasn’t destroyed for killing the guy. She was destroyed for eating him. People have a myth that says once an animal has tasted human flesh he’ll never stop killing until the animal is hunted down and exterminated. The story started with Tarzan and spread to Zane Grey. Now all the writers buy it.”

“I’ve eaten human flesh,” said a wolf. “Tastes like chicken.”

There followed an awkward silence, the animal kingdom version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“Why does the government persist in this Put to Sleep balderdash?” asked a sandhill crane. “Do they think we don’t know the difference between sleep and dead?”

Eats the Dirt went into the medicine man voice he uses for explaining deep stuff.

“The government won’t ever say kill. They don’t know the word.”

“But it’s all the same,” the sandhill said. “Do they think we’re stupid?”

“It’s a matter of tone. Tone is important.”

Eats the Dirt held up his hand and counted off his fingers. “Here’s what humans write or say when they mean kill an animal: crop, take, thin, harvest, suppress, put down, put to sleep, subdue, repress, extinguish, censor, localize, secure, limit, check, clear, pacify, reduce, cull, trim, manage, regulate, lose, euthanize, and—my favorite—maintain population objectives.

“Not once have I heard a government minion admit to killing an animal.”

“That’s sick,” said a coyote who was himself the subject of a massive reduction program across the West.

“And those are just some of the terms they use for wiping out animals. They have a whole other set of words for people.”

I perked up for this. I’m interested in how people rationalize legal ways of killing other people. It’s usually religious, but sometimes they mix in money and sex.

Eats the Dirt said, “You should go online and download some of those Pentagon documents. Do a find/replace switching out ‘collateral damage’ for ‘kill innocent bystanders.’ See if that doesn’t change the tone.” JH WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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JUST A FEW THINGS TO DO IN

JACKSON HOLE If you love this map as much as we do, you can buy prints online at jhmarketplace.com (it’s under the “arts” tab).

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JACKSON n Hit Snow King’s new Cowboy

Coaster (p. 20). n Appreciate the made-fresh-

all-day bagels at Pearl Street Bagels (p. 42). n Walk the Sculpture Trail at the

National Museum of Wildlife Art.

n Check out the former Wyoming

Museum of Wildlife and Taxidermy, and some of the best game meat in town at the Gun Barrel (p. 138).

n Bite into bison at the Wild

Sage restaurant in the Rusty Parrot Lodge (p. 138). n See contemporary landscapes

at Teton Artlab (p. 148). n Wander into Daly Projects

(p. 148).

n Go shopping at Fighting Bear

Antiques (p. 52). n Rent a fat bike and go for a

ride up Cache Creek (p. 108).

TETON VILLAGE n Celebrate JHMR’s 50th

anniversary (p. 66). n Take the jump into Corbet’s

Couloir (p. 24). n Donate to the Doug Coombs

Foundation (p. 22). n Become a part of the scene on the

START bus (p. 26).

n Order the wachholder antilope

at the Alpenrose in the Alpenhof Lodge (p. 138).

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK n Wish the National Park Service a

happy 100th birthday (p. 76). n Marvel at the wine selection at

Dornan’s (p. 104).

n Appreciate the artwork at the

Jackson Hole Airport (p. 46). n Sign up for Exum Mountain Guides’

splitboarding camp (p. 115).

WILSON

FURTHER AFIELD n Go Nordic skiing (or just grab

lunch) at Turpin Meadow Ranch (p. 124). n Snowmobile Togwotee Pass (p. 94).

n Fat bike or cross-country ski up

Old Pass Road. n Shoot darts or pool at the

Stagecoach Bar (p. 134).

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Best of

Winter 2015-16 The Jackson Hole Moose Hockey team delivers fast-paced competition most Friday and Saturday nights through early March at the Snow King Sports & Events Center.

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SOFIA JARAMILLO

calendar of events

PRICE CHAMBERS

JH

ONGOING Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s 2,500-acre, 4,139 vertical feet of terrain is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through April 3 with an aerial tram, gondola, and eleven other lifts, including the new Teton Lift. All season the resort celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

The Mountain Sports School offers ski, snowboard, telemark, and adaptive lessons for all ages and abilities. 1-888-DEEPSNOW (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 most Fridays and Saturdays. Snow King Center, moose.pucksystems2.com Pica’s Margarita Cup is Jackson’s adult skiracing league. Teams consist of up to six people, with four scoring points each race.

Races begin mid-January and run through March 4. 733-6433, jhskiclub.org Grand Targhee Resort, on the west side of Teton Pass, is open through April 17. 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 Snow King Mountain is Jackson’s locals’ hill with four hundred acres of terrain and a 1,571-foot vertical drop. It’s got the steepest north-facing FIS racecourse in the continental U.S. With three chairlifts, including a redone-this-year Rafferty Lift, Snow King was the first ski area in the state. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through March 27; night skiing is 4 to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. 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 2 (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 4,000-plus-item permanent collection

from Albert Bierstadt to Pablo Picasso.

Open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., 733-5771, wildlifeart.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. Opens Dec. 19, 201-5096, snowkingmountain.com

DECEMBER

JANUARY 11: Cabin Fever Story Slam is an opportunity to test your story-slam skills. Tell a true story, inspired by the theme “Guts and Glory,” in less than five minutes. 7:30 p.m., The Rose, free, 733-2164, tclib.org 11-14: Mountain Story is a literary festival celebrating the Jackson Hole community’s love for alpine landscapes and the adventure stories they inspire. Teton County Library, free, 733-2164, tclib.org/ mountainstory

12: Holiday Art Bazaar showcases local artists in time for the holiday season. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Snow King Resort, Grand Teton Room & Mezzanine, $5, free to Art Association members, 733-6379, artassociation.org

12-15: GoPro Steep & Deep Camp is led by GoPro/Jackson Hole Mountain Resort athlete Andrew Whiteford and geared toward advanced and expert skiers. Get instruction in skiing steeps and using your GoPro. JHMR, from $1,125, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

14-18: World-Class Ski Training Camp is a chance to get fit and strong for ski season while also brushing up and improving on technique and skill. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR), starts at $955, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

16-17: Wyoming Rando Roundup is a series of uphill ski races. jhskimo.org

17: Tannhäuser – 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, $18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 18: The Jackson Salon Show is an exhibition of work by Art Association members. 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Art Association Gallery in Jackson, free, 733-6379, artassociation.org 19: JH Community Band Holiday Concert.

7 to 8:30 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, free, 200-9463, jhcband.org 31: Glow Worm Parade for Kids welcomes kids to participate in an evening parade lit by glow sticks. 4:50 p.m., Kids Ranch in Teton Village, free, 739-2788, jacksonhole.com

18-22: Women’s Ski Camp at Jackson Hole is geared toward intermediate and advanced skiers. JHMR, from $1,450, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com 28: Les Pêcheurs De Perles – 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, $18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 29: Eukanuba Stage Stop Sled Dog Race begins in Jackson with a ceremonial twomile leg starting at the Town Square. 6:30 p.m., 733-3316, wyomingstagestop.org

FEBRUARY 2-5: Special Olympics Wyoming Winter Games holds alpine events at JHMR and Nordic events at Teton Pines. specialolympicswy.org

31: Kids’ Night Out includes a supervised pizza party, sledding, movies, games, and more. 6 to 10 p.m., Kids Ranch in Teton Village, $100, 739-2788, jacksonhole.com

5-7: JHMR Grand Reunion Weekend is a staff reunion in celebration of JHMR’s fifty years and includes races, après-ski events, and more. Half off lift tickets for the weekend, sign up online at jacksonhole.com/50/ community/#grand-reunion-signup

31: Torchlight Parade and Fireworks start with skiers carrying torches descending Apres Vous. Fireworks follow. 6 p.m., Teton Village, Base of Teewinot, free, jacksonhole.com

9: Cabin Fever Story Slam is an opportunity to test your story-slam skills. Tell a true story, inspired by the theme “Broken,” and do so in less than five minutes. 7:30 p.m., The Rose, free, 733-2164, tclib.org WINTER 2016 JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE

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BRADLY J. BONER

Both Snow King Mountain, pictured above, and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort ring in the new year with torchlight parades and fireworks on Dec. 31.

11: Turandot – 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, $18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 13-14: 45th Annual Cutter Races in Jackson Hole is the only thoroughbred Cutter Race on a groomed snow track in the U.S. 12:30 p.m., Melody Ranch – five miles south of Jackson, jhshriners.org 18: Writers at the Library: Nam Le talks about his own work and also editing fiction for the Harvard Review. 6 p.m., Teton County Library, Ordway Auditorium, free, 733-2164, tclib.org 20: 23rd 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 28: An Evening with Garrison Keillor features the longtime radio personality. 7 p.m., Center for the Arts Center Theater, $95, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org 29-March 4: Women’s Ski Camp at Jackson Hole is a camp for intermediate and 162

JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2016

advanced women to improve. From $1,125, 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

MARCH

24-27: 40th World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb. Snow King Mountain, 734-3194, snowdevils.org

4-6: Dick’s Ditch Classic Banked Slalom challenges racers to descend a challenging run as fast as they can. JHMR, jacksonhole. com

26: 41st annual Karen Oatey Pole Pedal Paddle consists of four events: alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, biking, and kayaking.

Teton Village to the Snake River Canyon, 733-6433, jhskiclub.org

17: Manon Lescaut – 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, $18, 733-4900, jhcenterforthearts.org

27: 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

17-20: 3rd annual Rendezvous Spring Festival is a weekend of free live concerts at the base of JHMR and on the Town Square in downtown Jackson. jacksonhole.com 19-20: Mini Hahnenkamm Town Downhill is one of the spring’s most popular events, both for racers and spectators. Snow King Mountain, 733-6433, jhskiclub.org 20: Marmot Coombs Classic honors legendary local skier Doug Coombs with a full day of events. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., JHMR, free, 7332292, jacksonhole.com

APRIL 3: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Closing Day. Celebrate the end of its fiftieth winter season dressed in your best (or goofiest) ski and snowboard gear. 739-2686, jacksonhole.com

MAY 21: Jackson Hole Mini Maker Faire celebrates the Maker movement. Makers, from tech enthusiasts to crafters, show what they’re making. 12 to 5 p.m., Jackson Campus of Teton Science Schools, free, 413-5654, tetonscience.org

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