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Posted on Sunday, 11.22.09

SKI ISSUE

Not far from busy Jackson Hole lie pristine ski runs that feel worlds away

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IF YOU GO

• Getting there: From Miami or Fort Lauderdale to Jackson Hole Airport requires at least one layover, with roundtrip airfare starting at $800. American, Delta, United, U.S. Air, and Northwest, among other airlines, offer service. 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.

STAY & SKI

• Pinedale (``All the Civilization You Need'') is on U.S. Highway 191, southeast of Jackson. White Pine Resort (www.whitepineski.com) is out of town up winding Fremont Lake Road toward Gannett Peak, with alpine and groomed cross-country skiing. Lift ticket: full day $40; half day $30. For lodging: www.pinedaleonline.com (click on ``Businesses''). The ski area has furnished log cabins for rent during the winter; 307-367-6606 for rates and reservations. Cabins start at $285.

• 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.) Slopeside rooms start at $109, suites and townhomes from $189. See winter specials online, www.grandtarghee.com or call 800-TARGHEE. Lift tickets for 2009 are $69 for a full day or $49 for a half day.

• Teton Village at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (www.jacksonhole.com), where lodging runs the gamut from the RockResorts-owned Snake River Lodge and Spa (www.snakeriverlodge.com) to the clean and comfortable Virginian Lodge (www.virginianlodge.com; standard double $59). Lift tickets for 2009 start at $55/day.

DINING & DRINKING

• Mangy Moose Saloon, (www.mangymoose.net, 307- 733-4913) at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, is an iconic bar where you must have at least one Moose Drool (brown ale); their dinners are good, too, and reasonable. Entrees $15-$29.

• 43 North, (645 S. Cache Dr., 307-733-0043) at the base of Snow King Resort in Jackson is 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.

BY PETER SHELTON

Special to The Miami Herald

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 Rivers. 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.

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 fire wood, teach the kids to ski and change the tires on the truck.''

White Pine has a lot going for it: 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.

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.

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.''

THE OTHER SIDE

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 skier's minds anyway, because Targhee gets a lot more snow than Jackson Hole does.

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