We met at 3.30am in a car park on the edge of town. At the far side of the dark lot, I saw a van with its lights on, two men in big jackets and trucker caps, their breath steaming in the freezing air. I parked my little rental car alongside and wondered what I was getting myself into.
One of the men was familiar: Brenton Reagan, a mountain guide who over the previous few days had been giving me an introduction to skiing in the Wyoming backcountry. Today was to be the finale, a graduation of sorts, a trip into the heart of the Teton Range, for which we’d be accompanied by Nat Patridge, one of his colleagues at Exum, the storied Jackson-based guiding company that is the oldest in the US.
We said brief hellos, then set off north in convoy, me following their tail-lights out of town and into the blackness of the valley. At one point, the van braked hard as an elk skittered across the tarmac, but otherwise there was nothing but the white snowbanks unfurling on either side of the road and a dark absence above, where looming peaks blotted out the stars.
I’d arrived in town three days earlier, flying into the only airport in the US situated within a national park. It’s small but very smart — the fireplaces, paintings and sculptures giving it the feel of a country club. Jackson Hole is the valley; the old-west town of Jackson, with its wooden boardwalks and elk-antler arches outside the main square, is 20 minutes’ drive along the valley floor from the airport. The main ski area (formally, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort) is 20 minutes from there at the purpose-built Teton Village. Visitors can choose to stay in town, for more life and a sense of frontier charm, or in Teton Village, where the balconies and hot tubs look straight out over the pistes.
I’d barely sat down in the airport taxi before the driver got on to the subject that everyone here is obsessed with — house prices. Jackson is booming: Wyoming’s lack of income tax, combined with both the post-pandemic yearning for outdoor lifestyles and the rise of remote working, have drawn a new wave of wealthy incomers. “The billionaires are buying out the millionaires,” warned a CBS report this summer. Last year the average annual income in Teton County (of which Jackson is the main town) was $471,751, the highest in the US and more than $200,000 above the nearest rival. Rents have soared, forcing many of those who wait the tables and drive the taxis to commute from over the border in Idaho.
Walking Jackson’s boardwalks today, you might pass a gallery selling an original Monet or Warhol. The old blacksmiths, in a low cabin of dark logs, now serves fine sushi and some decent pét nats; locals can’t get enough of the French pâtisserie at the Persephone bakery.
But for all the gentrification, Jackson remains a long way from Aspen, Deer Valley or St Moritz. The most famous restaurant on the ski hill is Corbet’s Cabin, best known for its peanut butter and bacon waffles (and the unfortunate smell of its chemical toilets). Down in town, you can still buy an ice axe or climbing rope more easily than a fur coat or Rolex.
One reason the upwardly mobile town still feels tethered to reality is because people come here to ski, not to be seen — and preferably to ski terrain that is steep, challenging and wild. “It’s a pretty hardcore mountain,” Brenton had told me. “Definitely not for the chi-chi.”
After driving for half an hour, we parked at the foot of the Tetons, pulling on our boots and attaching the skins to the bases of our skis that would allow us to trek uphill. By 4.15am, we were off, a single file of headtorches winding through the whitebark and ponderosa pines, around boulders and across a frozen lake. At times we skirted snow-covered hollows — which made me think back to a sign by the car park warning about bears, which, it said, “usually hibernate from December to March”. It was March 20, but Brenton seemed unconcerned: “To be honest, the thing that scares me is the mountain lions . . .”
Though it was still long before dawn, the mountains slowly began to shift from black to blue, gradually gaining form and texture. The range is neither the highest nor largest in the US, but must be among the most celebrated, photographed and filmed.
In Jackson, the Tetons are an obsession. The classic view of the highest peak, the Grand Teton, with its smaller siblings to either side, adorns the masthead of the two local newspapers, the side of police cars and cans of beer from the local brewery. Shops sell T-shirts, caps and mugs bearing the mountains’ profile; local resident Kanye West put his phone pic of them on the cover of an album. Kids are sent off to their slumbers with an illustrated bedtime book titled Good Night Grand Teton. When I’d checked into my hotel, I’d found a chocolate-cake representation of the peaks waiting on the desk, with icing sugar for the summit snows.
Much of the appeal is the result of a geological quirk. The Native American tribes who first made it over the high passes to get here would have found themselves descending into a hidden valley, its floor uncannily flat, mostly covered in grass and sagebrush, and encircled by mountains.
This enclosed plain — first known as Jackson’s Hole after a 19th-century fur trapper — runs north to south, about 50 miles long and up to a dozen miles wide. On the eastern side the ground rises gently, but on the west, thanks to a faultline that runs right along the edge of the valley, the Tetons soar upwards, erupting straight from the flats for more than a vertical mile. Even the usually sober US Geological Survey guidebook can’t help getting carried away: “the range hangs like a great stone wave poised to break across the valley at its base.”
The pull of the Tetons is felt far beyond Jackson too. Brenton, 50, grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, he told me as we paused to drink water and eat an energy bar. “My mom came in 1980 here on a church choir trip and in a hotel drawer she found a trifold brochure for a basic climbing class.” She had so much fun that she came back the following summer with a friend and, after training with Exum, they ended up climbing the Grand Teton, 4,199 metres high. “A lot of times climbing the Grand changes peoples’ lives — she carried that confidence with her.”
After that she brought her children out for a month every summer; Brenton would sweep the floors or organise the gear at Exum’s office and in return be allowed to tag along on some trips. “I never said I wanted to be a mountain guide, travelling around the world, it was always ‘an Exum guide’ here in the Tetons.”
If the pandemic turbocharged Jackson’s appeal to rich incomers, it had other unlikely consequences too. Forgoing lifts to climb uphill on skis under your own power — an activity known in the US as alpine touring (AT) — had already been growing thanks to better equipment and a general trend towards endurance sports (also including cycling and running). But the closure of lifts during the lockdowns led to many skiers trying touring as an alternative.
When resorts reopened many suffered from overcrowding; touring offered an instant escape from the snaking lift lines. According to Snowsports Industries America’s annual participation survey, 2.15mn skiers went touring in the winter of 2021-22 — a 96 per cent increase on the previous year. And the latest report from the US Sports and Fitness Industry Association found that, based on three-year trends, AT skiing was the second-fastest growing sport in America — pipped only by pickleball.
Exum has gone from having no year-round guides in 2010 to offering a winter guiding programme that supports 15 jobs, with six to eight groups heading out on an average day in midwinter. “It’s astounding to see the changes,” Brenton told me.
Few places are as well set up as Jackson to encourage progression away from the pistes. There’s a three-stage process: first skiing the powder fields, tree-runs and couloirs at the resort, then heading out of the gates in the resort’s upper boundary to get a taste of the adjacent backcountry (Jackson was the first major US resort to introduce a gate system). Finally, skiers can make the leap into Grand Teton National Park, just to the north, where a huge array of runs await those prepared to dispense with lifts altogether.
Brenton had taken me through an abbreviated form of this process, starting with some inbounds laps, then heading out of a gate and boot-packing up part of Cody Peak, before descending into No-Name Canyon. The resort hadn’t been busy, but out here we were completely alone, taking a blissful mellow run through buttery spring snow, then a long traverse through trees to get back to the lifts, once lifting my ski to skirt a pile of moose droppings.
On day two, we drove out into the park to tackle a couloir called Mayan Apocalypse on Prospectors Mountain. After that we were ready to try for one of the higher peaks, setting off in the early hours to get up and down before the snow warmed too much.
The sun rose as we climbed above the trees into Garnet Canyon, the snow turning purple then pink, the rocks glowing a golden red and the tension of the early start beginning to ease. At 7am we stopped to turn off our headtorches and take off a layer.
Up ahead was the Middle Teton, the Grand to the right — the most coveted ski descent in the range. It was first skied in 1971, by Exum guide Bill Briggs, but for decades remained something attempted by only the most extreme professional skiers.
In June 2004, another Exum guide, Doug Coombs, took the first paying client to ski the Grand; nowadays, if conditions are good, it is guided many times each season. Today, though, it was off-limits, the route covered in unskiable hard ice. Instead we turned left, heading to the South Teton, less steep but at 3,816 metres — 1,800 metres up from where we parked — still a big day out.
By 10am we were up on the high flanks of the mountain, the valley flats spread out far below. For the final section we removed our skis, attached them to our packs, and boot-packed upwards. A few metres below the summit, Brenton and Nat hung back, stopping to fiddle with a jacket zip or boot clip, so that I stepped up to the mountain top alone (a classic Exum trick, they confessed later).
Across the canyon to the north, cloud billowed around the summit of the Grand; to the west, the view stretched over empty snowfields far into Idaho. We clicked into our skis and set off, gingerly making the first turns down the ridge. “Nice and slow,” warned Nat, pointing out where the ramp we were descending ended in cliffs. On the long climb up I’d felt fine, but now the altitude and sudden movements of jump turns left my legs on fire and my lungs gasping.
To be honest, the snow was mixed — chalky on the first steep ridge, then sections of smooth soft “corn”, then increasingly heavy and slushy the lower we got. It was not the deep powder of skiers’ dreams — but it was pure adventure, a complete antidote to modern resort skiing and a world away from the tight valleys and pretty villages of the Alps.
As we paused in the sun beside Taggart Creek — the steep sections done, the potential avalanche terrain behind us, weariness joined by a sense of spreading satisfaction — another group shot out of the trees, breathing hard and beaming after a descent of a different peak.
I thought back to Bill Briggs — the first to ski the South Teton as well as the Grand (and who, at 92, is still going strong, playing his banjo most weeks in the Stagecoach bar at Wilson). “The idea wasn’t that I would be the only one that would ever do this,” he said in the film Steep (2007). “My idea was that everyone should be doing it. At the time nobody was, but this is something . . . it’s just too much fun to pass up.” Finally, 50 years after he skied the Grand, it seems his idea is catching on.
Back in the car, and on the way back towards town, I felt drained, slightly delirious, probably dehydrated. It was still only early afternoon, so with time to kill, I followed a signpost off the main road down a narrow lane bordered by high snowbanks. At the end I found a hundred-year-old, single-storey log cabin beside a river, the Chapel of the Transfiguration (named for the passage in Matthew in which Jesus takes his disciples up a mountain).
The door was open and I went in, moving slowly, even though I was alone, so that my rustling Goretex didn’t disturb the peace. Inside were wooden pews and a small organ, like any country church at home. It was dark, with little decoration, nothing to detract your attention from the altar, where, instead of a screen or tapestry, there was a wide window, the building clearly deliberately designed and orientated so it would perfectly frame a view familiar from newspapers, beer cans and police cars — the Tetons, in all their glory.
Tom Robbins is the FT’s travel editor
Details
Tom Robbins was a guest of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (jacksonhole.com), Exum Mountain Guides (exumguides.com), United Airlines (united.com), Four Seasons Jackson Hole (fourseasons.com) and The Cloudveil (thecloudveil.com). Exum offers private guiding from $620 per day, as well as group clinics on set dates, from $250 for a one-day introduction to backcountry skiing and $860 for a two-and-a-half day ski mountaineering clinic. United flies direct to Jackson Hole from six US cities; flights from London Heathrow start from about £820.
Where to stay, eat and drink in Jackson Hole
Where to stay: The first decision is whether to stay beside the ski lifts in Teton Village or in downtown Jackson, a 20-minute, $2 bus ride away. In Jackson, options include the historic Wort Hotel (worthotel.com; doubles from about $350), home to the Silver Dollar Bar where One Ton Pig play bluegrass on Tuesdays, or there’s the boutique Alpine House (alpinehouse.com; doubles from $200). The Cloudveil (thecloudveil.com; doubles from about $450) opened in 2021 on the northeast corner of the Town Square, with a restaurant and open-plan lobby that are popular with locals and stylish rooms that offer a modern take on western style. Teton Village’s ski-from-the-doorstep options include the Gravity Haus (gravityhaus.com; doubles from about $500) and the luxurious Four Seasons (fourseasons.com; doubles from about $720).
Where to eat: At Teton Village, the family-run Teton Thai (tetonthaivillage.com) does exceptional Thai food — but is very popular, and doesn’t take reservations, so be prepared to have a drink and wait for a table. The piste-side Handle Bar (michaelmina.net) is ideal for burgers and beers at lunch or après-ski. In town, The Kitchen (thekitchenjacksonhole.com) is an idiosyncratic gem, with an inventive Asian-influenced menu in a quirky, architect-designed room. For something casual, try Hand Fire Pizza (handfirepizza.com) in the Teton Theater, a local landmark built from volcanic stone in 1941.
Where to drink: The Mangy Moose (mangymoose.com) opened in Teton Village in 1967, only two years after the resort’s first lifts, and has been an après-ski institution ever since. In town, the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar (milliondollarcowboybar.com), with its bar stools made from saddles, is on every tourist’s to-do list but still feels like a genuine saloon. The Stagecoach (stagecoachbar.net) has been going strong since the early 1940s and is well worth the short drive to the hamlet of Wilson.
Tour operators: For those coming from Europe, specialist tour operators offering packages to Jackson Hole include Ski Independence (ski-i.com), Ski Safari (skisafari.com) and Ski Solutions (skisolutions.com).
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