The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 20.2
STILL BUILDING IN JACKSON
Words: Lindsay Vallen. Photos and Captions: Keegan Rice 2022-11-01 09:51:08
Follow the leader—Alex Isley leads Sean Loehle, Sean Cook, Makoa, Zeppelin Zeerip and Patrick Rice to his secret spot for a sunset shoot.
Jackson, WY, is a wild place. Not only in the vast-tracts-of-untouched-wilderness sense that travel and tourism boards push, but also with regard to socioeconomics. Teton County boasts the highest concentration of wealth in the country and there’s a housing crisis in the shadows of one of the most dramatic mountain ranges in the lower 48. The skid houses in town, where you used to be able to get a place with 10 of your friends for $300 each per month, have mostly been demolished and replaced with luxury short-term rentals and modular second homes. At peak season, you’d be lucky to get one for $300 per night. But if you peel back the cowboy-rich facade, you’ll find a handful of dedicated riders making it work, still building on the deep snowboarding history these mountains hold.
At Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, snowmakers often work long hours for roughly two months during early winter in exchange for their season pass, a guaranteed layoff and unlimited time to ride the rest of the season. Restaurant work is easy to come by, pays well in tips and most shifts don’t start until 4 p.m. Teton Thai, located at the base of the resort, has long been a haven for snowboarders looking to make a buck. General programming usually entails slinging food and drinks at night to leave days free to ride. Cam FitzPatrick got his start there by answering phones when he was 15 years old, back when the restaurant was still in town. He retired in 2020, at the ripe old age of 30. The ski area’s terrain park crew, Park and Pow, is mostly made up of snowboarders who build the kinds of features they want to hit. It shows.
Formerly known as Park and Pipe—back when Jackson had a halfpipe—and led by Ranyon D’arge, Park and Pow is composed of a close-knit crew that plays an integral part in the Jackson snowboard scene. While most park crews are confined to one section of their respective resorts, Jackson Hole Park and Pow shapes features across the entire mountain. From the legendary Dick’s Ditch to a plethora of unsuspecting, underrated side hits preceding and following it, locals will often link these connecting zones into what is referred to as “the Run.” It’s common to find a pack of 20 or so snowboarders, all with varying abilities, sessioning any one of these creations before moving onto the next. And whether riders are launching two feet or 20, everyone’s there to cheer each other on.
Although the resort has made the valley an international destination, the roots of the culture here lie in the backcountry. Surrounded by public land, big lines and secret zones are always just around the corner in Teton County. With an average of 500 inches of light snow falling across the range each winter, the Tetons remain a powdery playground, and that’s reason enough to keep the lesser-known subset of Jackson heads scraping by to get a piece of it. It’s a tourist hot spot for obvious reasons, and a few mainstream events bring together some of the world’s best riders at Jackson Hole each season. But before they get there and long after they’re gone, these local riders are building, charging and sometimes documenting it. Keegan Rice has grown with the next generation of Jackson riders as a photographer, and he’s equally happy to point his lens at Bryan Iguchi and Cam FitzPatrick as he is the lesser-known but equally down subsection of Jackson snowboard culture—the riders who put in the hard yards to make the place more fun for everyone. They’re doing their part to cultivate the culture and spirit of snowboarding in Jackson Hole. In turn, the place stays that much wilder than it would without them.
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