Trapped in Paradise

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

By Sam Petri

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-All you’re trying to do is live the peaceful mountain lifestyle. You and your hubby make do - cobble jobs together over the Pass, in Jackson, to meet your mortgage payment. Today, it’s snowing harder than it has in years. Staring at the squall outside, you imagine riding snow when the workday’s through. “This year’s big,” you think.

And then bam - you’re shut down. Teton Pass and Snake River Canyon close due to winter weather and you become trapped in paradise. You can’t get home to Victor, Idaho, where the dogs are growing hungry and anxious in the garage, or to your kids in daycare. They will have to spend the night without you. You’ll have to stay somewhere in town tonight - maybe tomorrow, too.

This scenario has played out repeatedly this year. Jackson’s workforce increasingly lives out of town, and when the Pass is closed, the world seems to stop. At least one third of the Jackson workforce commutes from outlying towns like Alpine and Victor and Driggs in Idaho. Some commute from as far as Dubois.

All roads leading to Jackson are rugged and difficult to drive, especially when they are snow-packed and icy. This season, Teton Pass has closed 10 times, trapping workers on both sides. Depending on how long the road is closed, some people will miss work while others will be forced to bust out triple shifts to keep business running. And when Snake River Canyon closes at the same time, the Town of Jackson is in rural gridlock. This causes strife in everyone’s life and dynamically changes the way the town operates.
Fourteen of the 25 officers at the Jackson police department live outside Teton County.

Two of the four Community Service Officers also live outside the county, as does one of the two Victim Service Officers. This comprises more than half of the Jackson Police Department’s staff. When the roads close down, they have to make do at half-mast.
Of the 75 employees that work for the Teton County Sheriff’s department, 70 percent live outside of Teton County, according to Sheriff Bob Zimmer.

“It makes it a hardship when The Pass is closed or Snake River Canyon’s closed,” said Zimmer, who has held officers on duty for long hours this winter while waiting for others to arrive.

Last week, two of Zimmer’s officers spent $36 each on motel rooms, he said. Zimmer, who lives in town, has offered his house to Sheriff’s department staff stuck in Jackson at night, as the county Sheriff’s department does not reimburse its employees for that cost, he said.

Dorm rooms are planned in the proposed new $34.7 million Justice Center to be built on the same block as the current Jackson Town Hall. But according to Zimmer, these proposed dorms are a source of contention.

“Some folks don’t think they are necessary. I do,” he said. They will not only be useful when the weather closes roads, but also when there is an extended emergency situation that causes officers to be on-duty longer than expected. “If you’re looking 20 to 30 to 40 years out, [the dorms will] get used more than people think,” Zimmer said.
But law enforcement is only a piece of the puzzle when the roads shut down. Tourism, one of the largest driving forces in the regional economy, takes a wallop.

Ray Bishop, Jackson’s Airport Director, said that more than half of the airport’s employees live 40 miles away. Even when roads are closed, the airport often stays open. When this happens, planes are still landing and leaving, and there often aren’t enough employees on hand to get planes off the ground on time, if people couldn’t get to work.

“Last [Tuesday], the airport was still open. Problem was, none of our workers could come or go,” said Bishop. “Some of the screeners were here for three consecutive nights. We put them in a hotel. … This year’s been really tough.”

Bishop said the airport has contracts with a few motels in town, including The Painted Buffalo Inn, to deal with the weather issue. He said that only 40 percent of airport workers live within 10 miles of Jackson, and when roads close the airport is forced to get by with skeleton crews. In those instances flights are often delayed.

When flights can’t land it doesn’t necessarily mean airlines lose money, however. When planes don’t land, airlines make no revenue, but they do save gas. Because this is a resort destination, instead of turning around and going home, people will hop on the next available flight to Jackson. The cluster of tourists headed for Jackson will fills seats in all of the planes arriving, making each flight more profitable.

“You could almost make the argument that [the airlines] make more money [when flights are cancelled] because the flights that do come, their seats are full,” said Bishop.
However, for the destination resorts, having guests arrive a day or two late means they will be spend less money at the resort, as they will be there for a shorter amount of time.

“The primary detriment to us is [for the] people flying in,” said Grand Targhee spokes woman Suzie Barnett-Bushong. “Seventy percent of our guests fly into Jackson airport. … It causes more of a problem when people are not getting here to the rooms they booked. It has a major economic impact especially when it occurs over a two-week period.”

The irony here is that ski areas want snow, crave snow and celebrate how deep snow is in all of their advertising. But this winter has been so big it has made it difficult for resorts to operate normally. “When any roads are closed, it has a significant impact on us, especially with day skiers that come from Idaho side,” said Barnett-Bushong.     Highway 26, which travels to Idaho Falls, has been closed more frequently than Teton Pass due to wind loading roads with snow even after it’s stopped snowing.
One local business, Alltrans, is completely dependent on the roads being open in order to operate their transportation business. Owner John Pearson said it has been a difficult winter.

Pearson said that this year was the first time in 11 years that the Targhee Shuttle, a shuttle bus that takes skiers from Jackson over Teton Pass to Grand Targhee, got stuck over on the Idaho side with no way back, due to road closures. In fact, it has happened twice. The first time, Alltrans had six customers aboard; the second time, fourteen. They made reservations for their customer’s rooms at the Best Western in Driggs and at Grand Targhee Resort.

“It’s the wind, not the snow,” said Pearson, “We’ve seen at least four years of comparable snow, but we’ve never seen the wind.”

Jim Woodmencey, of www.mountainweather.com, agreed. “Since mid-December - for almost two months now - it’s been one storm after another,” he said. “Some of these recent ones have had quite a bit of wind: 50 mph in valley, 100 mph on the ridge tops - that’s the gusts. It’s averaged 20-25 mph in the valley and 40-50 mph steady winds in the mountains.”

Woodmencey said that wind loads snow at a rate 10 times faster than it can accumulate on its own. When snow is blowing across a rural highway, plows are almost useless. However Woodmencey noted that WYDOT has done an incredible job this season keeping roads open despite the wind loading.

“Snowfall has been exceptional,” Woodmencey said. “January was big in both the valley and the mountains. February, we just went over our average snowfall in town.” What was strange about January, he said, was that, on average, it was 4 degrees colder than usual, yet it was the second snowiest January on record. Typically, cold temps mean high pressure and clear blue skies. But, “That doesn’t mean were headed for the next ice age,” he said.

The debate about whether this a big winter or an average winter has raged around pubs, bus stops, and office water coolers. Woodmencey offered this: “You have to remember, it’s actually the extremes of the weather that are normal. There is no average winter,” he said. “You take the low years and the high years and you average them together. It’s either one or the other most of the time. There is no normal.”

The economic impact of a big winter in Jackson, complete with multiple road closures and employees stranded during business hours, is difficult to quantify. Available data is incomplete and does not show what occurs on a day-to-day basis in Teton County. What may be the best day for some could end up being the worst day for others, financially - all due to the weather of the region.

“I feel bad for the people who have to commute out of the valley,” said Woodmencey. “But my personal feeling is, hey, we live in the mountains, accept it.”

Road closures help and hurt Jackson’s economy.

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Trapped in Paradise | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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