The first thing to do before your ski trip to northwest Wyoming is rent “Shane.” The classic 1953 Western was filmed in Jackson Hole. Alan Ladd rides high in the saddle, and Grand Teton National Park provides the spectacularly craggy backdrop. Do not assume, though, that Jackson Hole, for all its Hollywood iconography, is the be-all and end-all of Wyoming skiing. Or scenery. Or authentic Western personality.
“Everybody thinks of Wyoming as a place of extremes,” Stuart Thompson told me, at once defiant and wistful. “Steepest terrain, most vertical this, most radical that. . . . But it’s not necessarily so.”
Thompson owns and almost single-handedly operates the White Pine Ski Area, 80 miles south of Jackson in Wyoming’s emptiest range, the Wind River. His graying, Marlboro- man mustache twitches over a sideways grin. When we met in his sun-splashed day lodge, he walked in wearing cowboy boots and a blue neckerchief. Said he couldn’t stay long; he had to trailer a horse over to American Falls.
I had driven up from my home in Colorado, north through the snow-swept, treeless valley of the Green River. Through Sweetwater and Sublette counties, past the Big Sandy River and up to Pinedale near the northern end of the Winds. I slowed for pronghorn antelope crossing the two-lane in front of me and mistook a couple of ravens in the middle distance for two men standing together on a sage hill.
Horse delivery notwithstanding, Thompson’s innate Western courtesy made for a rambling chat. He bought me coffee; he even changed into ski boots and took me on a tour of what he says is “not really the little ski area it’s thought to be.” True, 500 skiers is “a big day” here. (A big day at Jackson Hole would be closer to 5,000 skiers.) And Thompson and his wife, Mary, and their partner Max Lundberg together “empty the garbage, cut the firewood, teach the kids to ski and change the tires on the truck.”
White Pine has a lot going for it, including 1,100 vertical feet of high-quality north-facing snow, 25 trails off the mile- long triple chairlift, natural, rolling terrain perfect for families and intermediates, and the genuine town of Pinedale in the valley.
Pinedale was a rendezvous point during the fur trade in the 1830s, when mountain men trapped and traded for beaver pelts all through these mountains. My motel, the Half Moon Lodge, wasn’t that old, but it was a real trophy-trout and elk-antler kind of place, its sign a massive tree-ring slice above the office door.
The tall young man behind the counter introduced himself as Shane, Shane Thomson. Yes, he said smiling shyly, he’s seen the movie. Though he couldn’t say if his parents had been inspired by it. And, he knew the White Pine Thompsons; Mary had been his art teacher at school.
Started in 1939
White Pine is actually one of the oldest lift-served ski areas in the West. It opened in 1939, the same season as Alta, Utah. They got financial help from the local pharmacist, road building help from the young men of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps. And they hooked up a Ford flathead V-8 to run the pioneering cable tow.
When Stuart and Mary bought White Pine in the mid- 1990s, the operation was still pretty primitive. They sold hamburgers out of a hole cut in the side of a horse trailer. You’d never know it now. The spacious, wood-and-glass lodge is wired for Wi-Fi and decorated with Mary’s museum-quality collection of ski art. The two triple chairlifts are state-of-the-art Pomas. “We’ve got Deer Valley skiing,” Stuart told me, referring to the famously polished Utah resort, “without Deer Valley prices.”
My next stop was Grand Targhee, on the other side of Teton Pass from Jackson Hole. You drive through Idaho to get there. The road leaves the spud-farming Teton Valley at Driggs and climbs steeply back into Wyoming, up to what the locals call “the Grand side of the Tetons.”
They get away with this boast because the 13,770-foot Grand Teton is actually more prominent here than it is from the Jackson Hole ski area. And because the three Tetons, South, Middle and Grand, were named by French explorers who saw them first from the west side, from what was then called Pierre’s Hole. The “grand” boast sticks, in skiers’ minds anyway, because Targhee gets a lot more snow than Jackson Hole does.
This is true. The afternoon I arrived at Targhee’s compact resort village, Jackson had just broken a mini-drought with a 13-inch storm; Targhee reported over 2 feet, and it was still snowing in the gauzy, apricot light. The roofs all supported 6 feet of overhanging snow, like mushroom caps. And the path up to my room in the Teewinot Lodge was a corridor carved 6 feet deep through the drifts.
Targhee’s operation is self- contained and environmentally progressive. In a dozen simply designed buildings, all within easy walking distance of the lifts, you have your lodge rooms, your general store, your rental and pro shops, your kids club, your spa, your naturalist cabin, your conference center, your family movie theater, your breakfast deli, your fancy steakhouse and your high-beamed bar with red-hot reggae band from Salt Lake City. It’s like Biosphere in the snow.
The ownership may not be quite so folksy as the Thompsons down at White Pine, but the vibe is friendly in a way that the major destinations often find elusive, or a bother. The whole resort is smoke- free. And there is a seven-point manifesto writ large in the central plaza. It sounds a little Pollyanna-ish to repeat here, but the sincerity in situ was wholly charming: “. . . Dedicated to Our Environment, the Community and the Future.”
In my future the next morning was a whole lot of powder skiing. At Snorkel’s for breakfast, I sat beneath a giant photomural of a powder skier engulfed up to his goggles and breathing through an actual snorkel. Targhee is one of the few places in North America where this image is not hyperbole. Alta would be another one. Maybe Red Mountain, British Columbia. Jay Peak, Vt., on a very good day.
I didn’t need a snorkel this day. The new snow had come in with a little wind and so was more like meringue than talcum powder. But it covered every inch of what by any standard is a big mountain: 2,200 vertical feet over 2,000 acres; three high quad lifts; and thanks to the mountain’s breadth — and a dearth of trees courtesy of an ancient burn — there is a giddy sense of choice as you descend. The farther down you go, the more options you seem to have. I didn’t see my feet all day, and I was still finding untracked snow when the next apricot dusk said, stop.
Cross-mountain rivalry
Jackson locals don’t come over to Targhee much. It’s only an hour drive. Sure, they have their own hill 20 minutes from home. But there is a snob factor too. Targhee is not as steep as Jackson Hole. Few places are. Targhee does not have a Swiss-built tram that whisks you 4,139 feet to the summit. Few places do, outside the Alps.
But neither will you find a scrap of untrammeled snow at Jackson Hole the day after a storm. I skied there following my lonely sojourn at Targhee, and while the snow was cold and soft, it was not deep. And I shared the lifts, and lift lines, with what seemed like the entire North American population of extreme skiers. Very good skiers, most of them, young and ambitious and all riding the latest big-mountain sticks. At times in Laramie and Cheyenne bowls, it felt like swimming with sharks.
Don’t get me wrong. Jackson Hole is everything it’s cracked up to be. The reputation is earned: steepest, tallest, toughest, just like Stuart Thompson said. The skiing here will kick your butt no matter how accomplished you are.
It’s just that, like a chosen few other Rockies towns with rich histories and good ski hills (and nearby airports and movie-gorgeous settings), the rush to claim a piece of this paradise has resulted in a, shall we say, split personality.
For example, I stayed one night at the Snake River Lodge and Spa a hundred yards from the tram dock. The concierge whisked my skis right out of my hands. The bed would have satisfied a princess. The indoor/outdoor swimming pool had hot waterfalls and a fake-rock grotto.
I spent a second night in Jackson 12 miles from the ski area at the 400-room Virginian. The Virginian has a full- sized elk on the roof and two bighorn sheep bashing skulls in the smoky Saloon. In Jackson, you can drink Moose Drool at the Cowboy Bar, or sip fine single-malt at 43 Degrees North. You can ski with the sport’s rock stars, or wonder which of the myriad valley-floor subdivisions contains Dick Cheney’s country- club home.
Like Aspen and Telluride, Jackson Hole struggles to be both authentic and gated — of the landscape it occupies and somehow above it.
My favorite spot in Jackson was a breakfast place next door to The Virginian that refused to take itself too seriously. The bacon and hotcakes came fast and generous. There was a big black-and- white still from the movie “Shane” (“Shane! Come back!”) hung on one wall.
The local cops had a table staked out for themselves. Another big table appeared to be reserved for guys in coveralls, coffee mugs in hand. A wooden sign on the wall behind identified it as the “Table of Knowledge.” A second sign corrected the first. It said: “Table of B.S.”
Jackson Hole Insider’s Guide
Jackson Hole Airport has nonstop service from Denver, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, with winter seasonal service from Atlanta and Los Angeles. The airport is inside Grand Teton National Park about a dozen miles from the town of Jackson, 90 miles from Pinedale and 50 miles from Grand Targhee.
Pinedale (“All the Civilization You Need”) is on U.S. 191, southeast of Jackson. White Pine Resort () is out of town up winding Fremont Lake Road toward Gannett Peak, Wyoming’s highest at 13,804 feet. Alpine and groomed cross-country skiing. Lift ticket: full day: $40; half day: $30. For lodging: (click on “Businesses”). The ski area has furnished log cabins for rent during the winter: call 307-367-6606 for rates and reservations.
Grand Targhee Resort (), near Alta, Wyo., is a self-contained resort village on the sunset side of the narrow Teton Range. (Jackson Hole is on the east side.) Check the website for driving directions. Slopeside rooms start at $89, suites and townhomes from $189. See winter specials online. 2009 lift ticket price: $69. Cat skiing on an additional 1,000 acres guarantees untracked powder.
Jackson Hole is two places: Teton Village at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (jacksonhole ), and 12 miles distant, the old town of Jackson. 2009 lift tickets start at $55/day. Lodging runs the gamut from the RockResorts-owned Snake River Lodge and Spa (snakeriverlodge ) to the clean and comfortable Virginian Lodge (; standard double $59), seven blocks from Jackson’s monumental elk- antler arches. On the mountain, you must have at least one Moose Drool at the iconic Mangy Moose Saloon; their dinners are good too, and reasonable. In town, try 43 Degrees North, a “neighborhood pub and grille.” Don’t hold the spelling of grille against them; the food is excellent, and there is live music most nights.
