The American ski resort which prides itself on being ‘difficult’

If skiing is your art, then the mountain is your canvas, but it isn’t always a smooth surface, eager for your brushstrokes. “How’s Rendezvous Bowl skiing?” asks one skier of another in the tram as it ascends. “Oh, the snow’s somewhere between chicken heads and coral up high, but then it gets OK.” Not quite the canvas I was hoping for.

There’s a T-shirt you can buy here that says, “Jackson Hole, I’m difficult” and it is, with swathes of challenging terrain: tight couloirs, trails plummeting through the trees, steep faces and tricky places. More often than not, the snow quality is good, but this season has had a sketchy start, wind and moisture creating frozen features like “chicken heads and coral” at altitude.

In deep in fresh powder snow at Jackson Hole.

Being a US destination resort though, there’s scope beyond the elbow-scraping steeps, with plenty of long cruisy runs and a squadron of snow-grooming machines to keep them in good shape. Still, for a glimpse at the nature of the skiers here, I’ll give you a technical example.

On day one, having made my way through the “coral”, I decide to stick to the groomed runs, and they’re a lot of fun. With skis these days, for making turns on groomed terrain, a narrower waist (the width of the ski under the boot) can give a big lift to the fun factor.

So, being fortunate enough to access the resort’s fleet of demo skis, I wander back in to JH Sports and ask my friendly technician if I might try something a little narrower.

“Sorry man,” he says, “we don’t carry any – we never get conditions like this.” There you go, big wide skis for a big wide mountain on Wyoming’s fabled Teton Range.

A skier on groomed terrain, Jackson Hole.

And he was right about the conditions. I went back out and it started to snow, and it kept on snowing. The groomers kept working overnight and next morning, so boot-deep fresh snow covers a smooth surface underneath. The skiing is sublime, and so easy-going they call it “cowboy powder” in these parts.

I’ve skied Jackson Hole once a decade, more-or-less, since the 1980s and it has been fascinating to see it evolve. On my first visit, the resort’s founder and then-owner, Paul McCollister, told me he thought the skiing market would quickly become so accomplished they’d be thirsty for challenging terrain, and he’d have it sewn up.

Well, part of the market did just that, but overall, it grew so quickly, and kept growing when snowboarding arrived, that Jackson needed some less challenging terrain to suit developing skiers and boarders and people happy just cruising around. They had that terrain too, so they expanded into it.

Like the way the mountain is used, Teton Village, at its base, has also changed dramatically. On my first visit, the hotel, the only one in town, had no hot water and some of the resort admin was in a caravan.

Skating rink in the village centre, Teton Village, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Coyotes and elk roamed the farmland beneath the mountain where you’ll now find streets and condos. “Snow homes” now line the ski runs, timber and glass trophies on real estate they call “beachfront”, which sell for more than $US20 million dollars.

Some of the gondola rides at Jackson go on for a bit, so there’s ample opportunity to chat. “If Jackson Hole were a rock and roll band, which would it be?” I ask. We throw a few around. Led Zeppelin? Hard-core, hippy and out there. Maybe Metallica? Loud but smart, and enduring.

When the obvious one emerges – The Rolling Stones – we realise it is not the band, but the performance, that is most like Jackson. At the outset, obviously talented but rough around the edges. Now? Polished performers and, like the mountain, the music remains the same, but you’ll be hit for hundreds when it comes to the tickets.

Back to the mountain. Today, I’m skiing with Carol Viau, who has worked here and hereabouts as a tour guide and ski patroller and now spends her time as a ski instructor and back-country guide. We meet at the Bridger Gondola. There’s more fresh snow and the skiers and boarders are like sheepdogs sniffing sheep, so eager are they to round it up.

Finding first tracks in the fresh snow.

But here’s the crowd’s conundrum. Up high, the snow safety team is managing the fresh falls, bombing for avalanche control. So, do they wait for the tram or the Bridger Gondola to open in anticipation of the huge vertical and long runs they’ll get, or do they line up for a lesser lift as they’re more likely to open on time?

“Getting first tracks here is really tactical,” Carol tells me. “You’re always better off with an instructor or guide as you’ll get lift queue priority, but it’s still a judgment call on which lift will open first.”

We leave the gondola for later and ride a couple of chairs to ski the deep fresh snow in the trees and on the sides of the runs. There are first tracks aplenty here, so we ride on, and meet Eric Seymour, the director of communications for the mountain.

Eric is married to free-ski superstar Jess McMillant, and they came up with an idea you could only run with at this resort. There’s a feature here called Corbet’s Couloir, a treacherous and narrow chute with a sheer drop on entry, cliff walls either side and rocks here and there to avoid on the way down.

Leap of faith – a contestant in the Kings and Queens of Corbet’s.

So these two concocted a competition that is very much an expression of Jackson Hole: the Kings and Queens of Corbet’s.

The entrants don’t just ski into the couloir, they build a ramp (a “kicker”) at the top so they can enter with style, coming in backwards or forwards, then doing flips backwards, forwards and sideways in any number and combination. It is filmed and broadcast and in a display of the camaraderie, the athletes themselves pick the winners.

Devastated (not) to report that on this visit Corbet’s is closed owing to the snow conditions, so we can’t hop into it. Instead, Eric leads us out to the Hobacks, some more legendary Jackson terrain, but in this case, vast and open fields of powder snow, with trees in glades and strips.

We ski through some of the glades and to their sides, enjoying the deep fresh snow. Eric leaves us about two thirds of the way down – he says he has a meeting to go to, but I suspect my gentle pace is frustrating him. Can’t say I blame him.

Another skier, a local, is leading his young daughter through the powder fields. She barely has her waist above the snow, but is skiing it beautifully. Like an artist, on a canvas she’ll be painting for decades to come.

The details

Fly
The closest airport is Jackson Hole, with regular flights from/to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and other major US hubs. I flew with United (united.com/en/au) and chose Melbourne-San Francisco to avoid LAX. Maybe I was lucky, but two years running I flew out on a Tuesday in early February and the flight was only a third full.

Stay/ski
Unquestionably, the best value visiting here will be with a flight/accommodation/lifting package through Australian specialists such as Travelplan (travelplan.com.au) and Mogul Ski World (mogulski.com.au).

The writer was a guest of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. See jacksonhole.com

Five more need to knows about Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole town and valley and the Teton Mountain Range

Connections
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) is about 30 minutes from the township of Jackson Hole; Teton Village is the accommodation base below the snowfields. The START bus is a great service to connect town and village (and airport if you want). It costs $US3 ($4.50) a ride or $US6 for a day pass. See jacksonwy.gov/587/START-Bus

Pass marks
JHMR is part of the Ikon and Mountain Collective season pass network (lining up with Thredbo and Mount Buller in Australia). However, it isn’t as simple as turning up. This area is popular, and to manage numbers Ikon and MC pass holders need to check in ahead online. “It’s a dynamic process, to cap numbers according to the weather, likely demand and what’s open,” Eric Seymour says.

The food
If there’s a measure of its transformation from rough and ready ski hill to smart international resort, it may well be the quality and variety of village and mountain restaurants here. Try Spur at Teton Mountain Lodge and Spa and don’t go past the tuna tacos; Osteria serves smart Italian; and the Mangy Moose is an entertaining empire with everything from beer and burgers to fine dining. For lunch, RPK3 at the base of the tram and its shrimp po’ boy is a standout.

The town
Judge it from its commercial centre, and Jackson Hole township is half tourist town (souvenir shops, cowboy bars) and half servant to the out-of-town homeowners (art shops, interior design specialists). But there’s more to it than that. For some mountain culture, drop in to the storefront of snow filmmakers, Teton Gravity Research (tetongravity.com) and just a little way out of town is the remarkable National Museum of Wildlife Art (wildlifeart.org).

More skiing?
If you’re coming this far, might as well try another ski field. Grand Targhee (grandtarghee.com) is an easy going area with six lifts and 690 metres vertical, about an hour from Teton Village. Further afield is the massive Montana resort, Big Sky (bigskyresort.com). A shuttle service is available between Big Sky and Teton Village (from $US250/$370 – see ski-shuttle.com).