By David Page
July 1, 2026 – On the quiet west side of the Tetons, away from the madness of Jackson Hole and the national parks, spring snowmelt runs down from a high basin into a glacier-carved valley called Teton Canyon. It’s a magical place, increasingly rare in these times: undeveloped and wild enough that grizzly bears, wolverines, and one of the last isolated bighorn sheep herds in the Lower 48 can still co-exist with backcountry skiers, mountain bikers and hikers. This spring, under direct pressure from D.C., the U.S. Forest Service decided that should change.

In its draft decision on Grand Targhee Resort’s proposed expansion plan, the Forest Service selected a barely-modified version of the ski resort’s preferred alternative—despite overwhelming opposition from the public and local county governments. The plan would annex 700 acres of wild public-access National Forest land and develop it into a year-round, pay-to-play Special Use Permit recreation zone, complete with new chairlifts, roads, cleared ski runs, avalanche and snowmaking infrastructure, and a mountaintop restaurant visible from the summit of the Grand Teton. To make it legal, the agency is planning to amend the 1977 Forest Plan in at least five places, loosening protections written specifically to safeguard wildlife.

Grand Targhee Resort (GTR) is owned by billionaire George Gillett, former owner of Vail, and operated by his son Geordie. Their plan is to convert what has been a beloved, low-key ski area into something completely different, with crowds, traffic, sprawling parking lots, and high-end real-estate. The environmental analysis was produced not by the Forest Service—on behalf of the public who owns the land—but by a third-party consulting group paid for by the resort, specializing in securing approvals for commercial development on public lands.

Even with this fundamental conflict of interest, the analysis still catalogs a range of negative and irreversible impacts. The draft decision concedes the project “is likely to adversely affect” climate change, water quality, local communities, and the ecosystem broadly, including whitebark pine—a threatened keystone species. Wolverines will lose denning habitat. The Teton bighorn sheep herd, already reeling from a 32% die-off in the brutal 2022–2023 winter, stands to lose 16% of its winter range. Just across the ridge, Grand Teton National Park has been closing terrain to backcountry skiers to give the herd a chance to recover.

And for what? There’s no shortage of skiable terrain here. GTR hosts roughly 200,000 skier visits a year on 2,600 acres. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR), a few miles away, hosts more than double that on slightly less terrain. Is there a line first thing in the morning on a powder day? Of course. But on an average winter day, there’s less than one skier per skiable acre—not even counting the vast sidecountry access. And the ten-year projection for an expanded GTR doesn’t come close to JHMR’s current numbers.

From the outset, the Forest Service has swallowed the premise that GTR needs to expand to “remain viable in the competitive destination skier/rider market.” This is a private business strategy quietly merged with the agency’s legal obligation to act in the public interest—and it doesn’t hold up. According to the ski industry’s own numbers, annual skier visits across the U.S. have remained essentially flat for 50 years. Relative to population growth, resort skiing participation is plummeting. Average ticket prices, meanwhile, have skyrocketed by up to 3,500%. At the same time, snowshoeing, backcountry and Nordic skiing are among the fastest-growing forms of outdoor recreation in the country.

Targhee is not an isolated case. It’s one more entry in a growing ledger of public lands closed to the public in favor of commercial interests. In Minnesota, decades of protection for the Boundary Waters are being unwound for copper-nickel mining. In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, land set aside because it was too ecologically important to develop is back on the table for oil and gas leasing. Different landscapes, different industries, same basic move: take land that was open and free to the public and hand it over to whoever wants to develop it for private gain.

The same pattern repeats locally, too—ski towns across the West have watched resort expansion bring second-home booms and workforce affordability crises. Grand Targhee was founded by locals who wanted a non-profit resort to benefit their community; the analysis this decision is based on barely asks about the impacts a bigger destination resort will have on local communities.

The decision is not final—yet. An objection period runs through July 13, 2026. As with most public-lands fights, this one runs on volunteer hours and small donations, with all the money and cards stacked in favor of the developers. If this story bothers you, find the nonprofits doing the work in your own community and support them. The more of us there are, the harder we are to ignore.