Building Champions in Life and Sport 

Founded in 1938, the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club (JHSC) is Jackson, WY’s oldest nonprofit, annually serving over 500 student-athletes in alpine and Nordic ski racing, freeski and snowboard competition, and backcountry education.

The Club began with the creation in 1938 of an alpine ski program to serve several Jackson families, most of whom lived right at the base of Snow King Mountain. The Club’s establishment and the mountain’s early development are intricately intertwined; fielding ideas for a mode of uphill transportation, the Club selected Neil Rafferty’s cable-tow design. 

Affectionately known as the “father of Snow King,” Rafferty (JHSC Hall of Fame Class of 2018) was also an integral part of Snow King’s first chairlift, as a planner, builder, and its first passenger in 1947. Constantly pursuing new possibilities for the expansion of skiing in Jackson Hole, Neil operated portable rope tows on Teton and Togwotee Passes in the 1950s and 60s and built a cabin near Jackson Peak for cross-country skiers (which JHSC now improves and maintains), broadening ski experiences in the Gros Ventre and Teton Ranges. Rafferty’s undying love for skiing produced Wyoming’s first ski area—and one of the first dozen ski areas in the United States—as well as its first Club. He always made all skiers feel welcome on Snow King, but his favorite saying was “It’s for the kids.”