Mountains > Articles > RV in the Rockies

Trucker’s cap? Check. Country music cd? Check. Chewing tobacco? Hey, enough already – you can go too far with the American road trip thing. But I’d seriously recommend the first two accessories on a motorhome trip around the ski resorts of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.

Because this is cowboy country, and a man needs to fit in and not draw unnecessary attention to himself. This became apparent as my travelling buddy Rob and I sauntered into a diner in the small and admirably monikored settlement of Big Piney, high on the Wyoming plains en route from the Utah ski resort of Solitude to Jackson Hole.

I was wearing my recently purchased ‘Solitude, Utah’ trucker’s cap. Rob’s head remained innocent of covering. Every other male in the establishment sported topiary embellishments not unlike my own, which meant the Rob did not fit in. Who knew where this might lead..?

Actually it lead to a very nice steak dinner amidst the occasional ‘You ain’t from these parts are ya, son?’ look. Or maybe that was just us being paranoid, miles from home on a dark winter night on the high plains. Either way, we drifted on across those high plains eventually rolling into a very frigid Jackson Hole where the mercury fell so low we had to drain our water tanks to avoid the risk of burst pipes etc.

Cold temperature can only be good for the snow though, and we did indeed enjoy two excellent days of skiing on slopes that were bathed in sunshine and, at times, scarily steep. So much so that we encountered American hype at its very finest as we queued for the cable car to the summit of 10,450-ft Rendezvous Mountain ‘Our mountain is like nothing you have skied before!’ advised a sign. ‘It is huge…you could make a mistake and suffer personal injury or death’ it further advised.

Ho hum. Yes, there are some pretty terrifying options for descending from the top of Rendezvous Mountain, but at the same time the more run-of-the-mill descents are no worse than anything you’ll find in resorts such as Chamonix, Verbier or even Avoriaz. Trouble is, Americans being aware that all that’s best on the planet is located in their country never really bother to ski overseas and are thus not qualified to squirm with embarrassment at such comments (nor to make them come to that). Imagine a French versions of the same thing – it would be a shrug and an insouciant ‘pfff…’ from the shrugger.

But hey, Jackson Hole is top notch, for all that. And so is Grand Targhee, the much smaller resort that we visited next after a slow chug over 8,429-ft Teton Pass to the ‘other side’ of the magnificent Teton Range in which we were skiing. The Grand Targhee locals use ‘the other side’ to refer to the backcountry atmosphere of their resort in comparison with the glitz and glamour of upmarket Jackson Hole, and it suited us just fine.

We pulled up outside a fine pub for the night and had empty, sunny slopes to ski for much of the following day – who could complain about an ‘other side’ that consisted of that? Our long and meandering journey (we drove 1,100 miles in total) only allowed for one day of skiing here before heading across the arid sagebrush plains of eastern Idaho to opulent Sun Valley, where the mountain restaurants are so elegant you might imagine yourself in Hollywood. Indeed, you may even spot a Hollywood star here since the resort has been both skied and lived in by the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Clint Eastwood since it opened way back in 1936.

The RV park here was a little out of town which meant a short drive to the slopes each day, but the roads are so wide in the west that it was almost as easy as nipping down the paper shop in your Mini back home (in fact the roads in Salt Lake City are so wide you can do a ‘U’ turn in the very centre of town in a 25-ft RV – apparently they were designed to enable a team of wagon and horses to turn easily. Try that in the centre of Sidcup…).

Sun Valley lived up to its name, being warm enough in the afternoon to ski in a t-shirt (not just a t-shirt, mind) so it was with a healthy tan that we eventually, after almost two weeks on the road, set off on the longest single journey of the trip, the five hour drive back to Salt Lake City. But with wide, empty road and a big comfortable RV and inspiring scenery for most of the drive this was easy in a way a five hour drive in Britain could never be, and if you like variety in your skiing I can think of few better ways to get it than on an RV road trip around the Rocky Mountains.

Alf Alderson is co- author of the Rough Guide to the Rocky Mountains

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