JHStyle Magazine Winter/Spring 2023-24

PUSHING BOUNDARIES
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JHStyleMagazine.com | WINTER • SPRING 2023-2024
part of everyday life, from those who explored the
high peaks all the way to exceedingly hardy and
adventurous mail carriers, who routinely skied over
Teton Pass on wooden skis in the depths of winter
to bring the mail back from Victor, Idaho. And thus
skiing itself became an early part of Jackson Hole
culture. People began backcountry skiing with wood
skis and leather boots in the Tetons, and set up
car-engine powered rope tows on Snow King Mountain
and Teton Pass in the 1930s.
By the 1960s, Alex Morley and Paul McCollister,
two adventurous businessmen and avid skiers,
had developed plans to build a ski resort like none
seen before in North America and inspired by the
Teton Range. The topography of the Tetons themselves
dictated the terms: it would be bigger, more
challenging, more exciting. The market was not
those seeking to be coddled, and critics at the time
thought it was an experiment destined to fail.
The most hard-core skiers embraced the long,
cold winter, deep snow, and the ability to ride a
tram to the alpine heights. They arrived as good
skiers, and the terrain in the Tetons made them
even better skiers, and built an envious bohemian
lifestyle. Over the decades, famous ski racers and
Nordic champions were drawn to the Tetons, and
famous big mountain skiers and ski mountaineers
put down stakes to call the valley home. But it’s
not just the mountains that bring in the best. The
heart of the culture springs from those women
and men whose names will never be known
beyond their home circle, who go out every day
into the Tetons fueled by personal passion and
spreading their inspiration.
It’s also true that the ever-present challenges to
Jackson Hole are stronger than ever. Development
pressure is intense, making the fight to keep
important wildlife habitat and corridors intact
harder, but more important than ever. A truly dedicated
team of local and national conservation
activists and nonprofits struggle to hold the line
and improve what already exists, drawing on those
far-sighted precedents set in the past. And for that
wild, boundary-pushing winter athlete ethos, it’s still
a hard place to live — no longer physically, but financially.
Nonetheless, the pull of the mountains and
the athlete culture is still irresistible to many, and
those who wish to push it in the mountains find their
way, as did the skiers of the past.
Thus, in many ways, it is still the landscape that
drives human passion, and brings out the best in
people, whether it’s speaking for nature or sending
an inspirational ski line. Jackson Hole’s past has
been as a place where people can find limits, personal,
societal or something else, and then push
them forward into a better, more accomplished
future — and that is still true today. Thanks to this
rich past and vibrant present, the valley has an
enviable future. n