Jackson Hole valley winter
— — the valley after the snow has settled.
Not only on a wall.
“The valley runs about fifty-five miles north to south, walled in by the Tetons on the west and the Gros Ventre on the east. In winter most of it goes quiet. Elk move down to the refuge below town; the cottonwoods along the Snake stand stripped and pale. Mornings start at twenty below and the light comes slow.
Jackson Hole valley winter, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Jackson Hole is the long valley floor of northwest Wyoming, named by nineteenth-century trappers who called any mountain-walled basin a "hole." It sits at roughly 6,200 feet, framed by the Teton Range to the west and the Gros Ventre Range to the east, with the Snake River winding through. The town of Jackson holds the south end; Grand Teton National Park covers most of the north. Winter brings 450-plus inches of snow to the high country and reliable sub-zero mornings on the valley floor.
Winter in the valley runs long: snow on the ground typically from November into April, with the deepest cold settling in January when nighttime temperatures regularly drop below zero Fahrenheit. The National Elk Refuge just north of town becomes the winter range for roughly 7,500 elk that descend from the high country. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, on the west side at Teton Village, records an average annual snowfall near 460 inches. The inner Teton Park Road closes to vehicles and the park travels by ski.
Off the plowed roads the valley quiets in a way that's hard to find at this latitude. Snowfields muffle sound; the Snake River runs under shelf ice; the lodgepole forest east of Jenny Lake holds nothing but the occasional sift of snow off a branch. Cross-country skiers on the Teton Park Road, closed to cars for the season, can travel for miles between tracks. Even Jackson, with around 10,500 residents, empties out in the post-holiday weeks before the late-February rush.