Grand Targhee Opens Nov. 20 With South Bowl Still Outside the Boundary, and Bighorn Sheep Now Set the Expansion Clock

Grand Targhee opens tomorrow, Friday, November 20. That's a week before Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opens in Teton Village on November 27. The mountain on the far side of Teton Pass has 2,600 acres, six lifts and 2,270 vertical feet, the same footprint skiers left in April. South Bowl is still where it has always been, outside the boundary, reached through designated gates, with no avalanche control.

A lot happened on paper this year that could change that. In May the Caribou-Targhee National Forest issued a draft decision approving most of what the resort asked for. On October 26, the Forest Service regional office answered the objections. The final decision now waits on two things: 12 written instructions and a biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Teton Range bighorn sheep herd sits at the center of the most contested of them. Wyoming Public Media reports that the final decision is now expected in 2027.

What Opens Friday

The 2026–27 season runs November 20 through April 18, 2027, depending on snow and weather. Online lift tickets cost $125 to $180 a day depending on the date, and buying at the window adds a $10 surcharge.

The lift list is Huckleberry Conveyor, Shoshone, Dreamcatcher, Blackfoot, Sacajawea and Colter. Colter already changed how Peaked Mountain is skied. Grand Targhee's cat-skiing operation has run its final season, and the Colter Lift now serves that part of the mountain.

Season passholders get three perks the resort lists as new for 26/27:

• Pass Protection Insurance included with every pass
• One free season-pass media card for every new or returning passholder
• 15% off for school faculty and Fire/EMS employees

The Tier 3 adult pass, priced for October 1, 2026 through March 15, 2027, is $2,009.

None of these perks touch the terrain. The fight over the terrain is happening one ridge over.

The Line South Bowl Sits Behind

Under Grand Targhee's posted policy, anything outside the resort boundary is backcountry. Skiers can leave lift-served terrain only through designated backcountry gates, never under a rope. Once through a gate, they are outside the patrolled area at their own risk, and no avalanche hazard reduction happens there. The resort points backcountry users to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center forecast.

That gate system carries a lot of traffic. In 2025, resort representatives told KHOL that South Bowl is already heavily skied from the resort gates and that patrollers make frequent rescues there. The resort's argument for expansion grows out of that. On its Future Vision page, Grand Targhee says bringing South Bowl inbounds would allow avalanche mitigation, and that its proposed lift would not run down to the bottom of Teton Canyon or connect the inbounds area to the canyon.

The Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center's 27th Annual Avalanche Awareness Night, which the center bills as its season kickoff, is December 3 from 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.

What the Draft Decision Would Move

The Forest Service issued its draft Record of Decision on May 28, 2026. Teton Valley News reported that the 45-day objection period ran from May 30 to Tuesday, July 14. The draft approved a smaller version of the resort's request than the one analyzed in the environmental review:

The draft allows lift-served skiing in both new zones, about 160 acres of new trails and glades, one lift in each zone, patrol and toilet facilities in South Bowl, and avalanche-control infrastructure. For anyone who tours from the gates today, the most important line requires an Operations and Boundary Management Plan that names agreed backcountry access points, physical closures and operational measures. The draft says such a plan has to exist. It doesn't say where the new access points would be.

The draft also approves two new places to eat on the mountain, a summit facility on Fred's Mountain and a separate restaurant and guest facility at the top of Sacajawea. The Fred's Mountain building comes with conditions. It can't be used at night, it can operate no later than one hour after NOAA-published sunset, and it needs detailed construction, engineering, architectural and geotechnical plans that meet Forest Service design criteria.

Why the Clock Now Runs Through the Teton Range Herd

By the time objections closed, a wide range of parties had filed. According to Teton Valley News, all five cooperating agencies in the environmental review formally objected: Grand Teton National Park, the Teton Conservation District, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and both Teton counties. Grand Teton Superintendent Chip Jenkins raised "unresolved concerns" about two things. One was South Bowl, which sits in habitat used by the Teton Range bighorn sheep. The other was the Fred's Mountain restaurant, which could be visible from inside the park, including from the summits of the Grand Teton and Middle Teton. Teton County, Idaho, and the cities of Driggs and Tetonia focused on money. Idaho jurisdictions can't collect lodging or sales tax from the Wyoming-based resort, yet they would carry much of the cost of housing new workers. Resort owner Geordie Gillett filed his own objection. He didn't oppose the draft but asked for clarifying language in the final decision.

The October 26 answer sorted all of that into a short list. As Wyoming Public Media reported from KHOL, Regional Forester Kristin Bail's letter to Forest Supervisor Kim Pierson covered the 154 objections reviewed since a September 24 objection meeting and left the forest 12 instructions to complete before a final decision can be signed. One of them tells the forest to "identify appropriate mitigations or alternatives" for the herd. The letter does not call for removing South Bowl from the project.

So the next step is a wildlife question, and the parties disagree about it. The same report quotes Wyoming Game and Fish biologist Aly Courtemanch, who said at the September meeting that with chairlifts, roads, grooming, snowmaking and avalanche control, the sheep would "probably just abandon the area completely." The report describes the Teton herd as one of the few native, isolated groups in the West that has stayed almost entirely intact since the Ice Age, and says the state gives it extra protection as a "coordinated herd." Katie Cheeseborough, executive director of the Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation, said the forest "seems to take our objections seriously that maybe the analysis wasn't done at the right level." According to Teton Valley News, the instructions also ask the forest to clarify whether sheep viability was judged at the herd level or across a broader planning unit, and they require formal consultation and a biological opinion before any final decision.

Teton Basin District Ranger Jay Pence set the order of events in a text to KHOL. "No final decision will be made until all required clarifications and direction have been fully assessed and incorporated, and until the final Biological Opinion from the US Fish and Wildlife Service is received and accepted."

On the resort's side, Gillett told KHOL that if the forest approves the plan, he is ready to move forward. "This plan gives us the best path forward to continue to do that," he said, referring to the ski experience Targhee is known for.

The resort is ready to build and the objectors have filed. What decides the timing now is the forest's work on the 12 instructions and a federal finding that centers on a sheep herd. According to the October 30 report, the next public step will likely be the final decision itself.

The Winter Calendar, Set Against the Decision

Until the Biological Opinion arrives and the forest completes the 12 instructions, South Bowl stays behind its gates, unpatrolled and without avalanche control, as it has been in past seasons.

Here in Teton County, Grand Targhee's future touches everyone from weekend skiers to families who have owned land near Alta for generations. At Deirdre Griffith, we follow decisions like this one closely because public land in this valley shapes what the next decade looks like. If you'd like to talk about how changes on the west slope of the Tetons could affect your property or your plans, let's connect to explore Jackson Hole opportunities.