Requiem for a Tram by Arnie Wilson

“Can I have your attention please?” says the cable-car (tram) operator. “Rendezvous Mountain from the tram is recommended for skiers of expert ability only.” The glossy, cardinal-red metal box I am standing in – suspended perhaps 250 feet or more above the steep, snow-filled rocky outcrops - is approximately 1000 cubic feet. As it cruises the 2¼ miles to the top of Rendezvous Peak (10,450 ft), packed with testosterone-charged humanity, and amplified by heavy rock music which pumps up the 53 other skiers and snowboarders even further, it almost feels as though we are in some sort of aerial tank or even a military helicopter on our way to the front line. The tram even has a subliminal voice – or did I imagine that? “Hey, dude - you can do it!” it seems to say. It’s almost as if it wants to shoulder some of the responsibility for the gnarly places it is taking you to.

When Jackson Hole opened for skiing above Teton Village in 1964, its founder, Paul McCollister, was determined to bring a touch of his beloved Alps to Wyoming. What better way than to build a cable-car or tram? And this was it. Two cabins, duly purchased from Austria. It is difficult to over-emphasise their importance to the resort. In Europe, cable-cars are almost two a penny, but they are extremely rare in the USA.

The tram is the flagship – and even the soul - of what is arguably America’s most awe-inspiring ski resort, at the foot of Wyoming’s dramatic Tetons. Only strong skiers and snowboarders ride it – there is no easy way down.

Near the top, as you glance left at the frightening spectre of Corbet’s Couloir, you can almost feel the surge of adrenalin. Fortunately, leaping anything between 10 and 20 feet into Corbet’s - a yawning chasm in the granite near the top of the mountain – is not obligatory. The tram docks, and you fight your way out into what is often a maelstrom of strong winds and snow flurries. If you’re lucky, and it’s calm, you can pause to look out across the widest of wide-open spaces across the vast valley floor, or “hole” which gives Jackson Hole’s ski area its name.

It’s the space as much as the mountains which make the scenery here so hypnotic. When you pause to gaze out across the vast valley floor from the top of some of the long cruising runs like Moran and Werner, on the neighbouring Apres-Vous mountain, there is so much snow-carpeted space that you are almost transfixed – as if you could almost float yourself into the void. The sight of the jagged Tetons springing skywards from such an glittering expanse of nothingness is what gives Jackson’s “hole” its mesmerising quality.

Even without Corbet’s, there is more than enough in the way of challenges for any self-respecting skier. After a bonanza year so far for snow, Anna Olson, the resort’s British communications director is keen to stretch her legs, and with me breathlessly in tow, we are soon attacking old haunts like Expert Chutes, Tower Chutes, Toilet Bowl, Mushroom Chute, and Paint Brush – all steep, all off-piste but all with good snow which makes all the difference. By the time we get into Jackson’s signature ungroomed area, the Hobacks, my legs are aching and I’m in need of lunch. A female moose watches me nonchalantly from the woods as we take the new Union Pass chair back to the village. Even after lunch, Olson shows me no mercy. We are quickly back in the tram. It’s a question of ride it while we can. Its days, sadly, are numbered.

Over the decades I have ridden Jackson’s iconic lift a hundred times or more but this is the last time. To the dismay of all serious Jackson Hole aficionados, the European-style cablecar is being retired because of safety concerns. The cabins were replaced in 1990, but now the problem is that the main cable which hauls the tram up the mountain can’t last for ever. Replacing it would also mean replacing many other components, and the strengthening of the concrete lift-tower supports - and even then the makers couldn’t guarantee a further lengthy period of safe operation. And, 40 years on, the original tolerance and safety specifications and calibrations are no longer sufficient. Times have changed. All of which means the resort might as well build a new tram. Or possibly a gondola. (We’re talking around $20 million).

But would a gondola be as gung-ho, as macho, as sexy? Unequivocally no. Does that matter? To new visitors, probably not. They would never know what they were missing. To the Jackson Hole cognoscenti, it matters like hell. The tram’s absence, of course, will not make the mountain any the less daunting or exciting – yet until the resort has decided on how to replace it, and with what, it will be keenly missed. A new chair will temporarily fill the gap. But a chair is only a chair – and about as iconic as last year’s ski suit. For some locals, the resort will never be the same again – until and unless the prospect of a gleaming new tram, poised for take- off in the tram dock like an Apollo moonshot, brings the sparkle back to their eyes and the fire back to their bellies. But who is going to pay for it?

Watch this space. It’s a big space to fill – in every sense of the word.