Snow King is the friend you’ve known since childhood – the one who feels instantly familiar, the one you can drop by on without notice and immediately feel welcomed. Torchlight Parade, Snow King Mountain, Jackson, Wyoming, circa 1980s
staked its claim as the first ski area in Wyoming in the early 1930s. Facing long winters, significant snow, and a glaring lack of indoor entertainment, locals turned to then Ruth Hannah Simms’s Ski Hill for an outdoor recreation fix. Hiking up to mid-mountain and ski jumping was the trend until the National Forest Service provided hiking and horseback trails for “top to bottom” runs. These days, Jackson residents and guests continue to visit Snow King to add fun to a dreary workday or long winter season. “The King is basically your own personal ski area,” said admitted Snow King junkie and Jackson local George Putnam. “It gives us town desk-bound fanatics a daily ski fix – making laps on Exhibition is one of my favorite lunchtime activities and it is one of the best classic lift-line runs anywhere.” Putnam highly recommends the night skiing off of the Rafferty lift and offers an insider tip: a pair of goggles with clear lenses to prevent the onset of sight-andfun-inhibiting frozen eyelashes.
Wade McKoy photos
Feels Like Home
by Mike Calabrese 2011/12 Jackson Hole Skier Ask any local about the “Town Hill” and immediately, the words “Snow King” color and shape the conversation. Everyone around here knows at least something of its history, its terrain, its vital role in Jackson life year-round. Trot out the term Hausberg, though, and
Zach Schwartz
by Ed Wiand 2001 Jackson Hole Skier During the past 30 years of skiing Snow King I’ve been humbled by its tough runs more than a few times. And I’ve been lured away from the King by other major resorts. But my affection for this steep, challenging little hill hasn’t wavered. Why am I and so many other skiers and snowboarders so loyal to the “King” when “The Big One” is only a few miles away? Maybe it boils down to what my good friend and former Austrian Ski Team member told me after skiing Snow King for the first time some years ago: “It feels like home.” A number of years ago a Ski Magazine writer called Snow King “the steepest little S.O.B. in the West.” His affectionate observation is not without merit: 60 percent of the mountain is rated advanced, 25 percent intermediate, and 15 percent beginner. Locals put it this way: “If you can ski the ‘King,’ you can ski anywhere.” w w w. j h s k i e r. n e t
The House Hill
those same locals likely will go mute, dumbfounded, possibly irritated by the unexpected foray into Deutsch territory. A brief venture into ‘the Google’ could quickly dissolve the chance for insult or ire. Hausberg, the German word for ‘home mountain,’ or better yet, ‘house hill,’ evokes a fondness and pride for the same type of landscape features among the German’s as “Snow King” does for the Jackson Hole populace. Snow King’s role as the ‘town hill’ might lack the historical dust of similar alpine features in Europe, but the mountain lays claim to its own colorful, Western heritage. Back in the 1920s, sheer exhaustion and boredom with winters plagued many valley souls. A bitter-cold snow season, often rivaling expedition-length ordeals into the arctic, drove some Jackson Hole sufferers in search of unusual relief. To wit: after hauling rough-cut 10-foot wooden planks up the King’s demanding vertical, early-day adventurers would then “ski” the fall line with nothing more than a
single pole to steer themselves away from disaster and on to the valley floor. Few surviving accounts attest to the safety of these antics. The ‘Google’ thing attests to Snow King’s appeal to winter’s treasure hunters, even in its nascent form. A YouTube clip, “Rare Footage Jackson Wyoming Snow King Resort 1940,” captures a sizable gathering of cold-weather enthusiasts festooning the hillside above a snowblanketed town and valley. This, even before the famous Rafferty Lift was installed in 1946. The now legendary Neil Rafferty breathed life into the ski area in 1939, when he installed a 4,000-foot tow rope on the bottom half of Snow King. Powered by an old Ford tractor engine, “(s)kiers were towed up the bottom half of Snow King by holding on to a stick that was attached to a rope that was clamped onto the cable with a wrench. Lift tickets cost $2.95 for a full day of skiing.” But Snow King’s historical fabric isn’t limited to hardware. Its ski school was founded by hall-offamer Bill Briggs, the first guy gutsy (insane?) enough to ski the Grand Teton. Briggs, also a founding member of the Stagecoach Band, created a ski school at Snow King that has nurtured thousands of adept long-boarders and even Olympic material. Snow King’s in-town location and hospitality, for instance, spurred one of its homegrown skiers onto the world Olympic scene. Jackson native Andy Chambers trained and competed with the U.S. Ski Team in the men’s downhill for eight years before settling back into a Jackson lifestyle. His insight into the King’s challenges may sound cliché coming from many of us, but not from Chambers: “It’s a difficult mountain to ski: if you learn to ski on it, you can ski anywhere.” And, if by winter’s end, boredom with skiing has taken root, kill the ennui by competing in or viewing the World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb, held on the historic slopes of Snow King, Jackson’s own Hausberg. 2 0 1 3 J AC KS O N H O L E S K I E R
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