There’s no place to push your skiing like the steep slopes at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Pulling into the parking lot in the winter always gives me that familiar feeling of giddy excitement mixed with some nervous butterflies for what’s to come. This time, however, I’m gearing up in the parking lot with knee pads and a full-face helmet, which some might agree is perhaps a little more frightening.
It’s June, and JHMR is putting the finishing touches on their newly expanded lift-accessed bike park.
For a resort that boasts some of North America’s gnarliest ski terrain, Jackson Hole was slow to bring that pucker factor into their summer bike park. The ski resort opened a small downhill bike park in 2011 with purpose-built mountain bike trails crafted with the help of Gravity Logic, the bike park design company that’s had a hand in most major bike parks like Whistler, Winter Park’s Trestle, and Deer Valley. While expanding the bike park has always been in the master plan, it took ten years for JHMR’s bike park to extend past seven mellow slopes off the Teewinot chair.