Cultural Centers

The first time I walked into Focus Productions at the bottom of the ski area in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I was new to the ski industry, new to skiing in the West, a bit starry-eyed and more than a little intimidated to Ski the Big One, as the old bumper sticker said. It was the late 1980s and photographers Wade McKoy and Bob Woodall had become the image makers on the toughest hill in the States. The walls of their shared Focus office, located in a hobbit hole under the Hostel, then and now the cheapest lodging at the mountain, were a kaleidoscope of tearsheets, postcards, brand marketing, notes, scribbles, and scrawls. Pinned in the midst of this flotsam and jetsam was an aerial photo of Granite Canyon, the off-limits, hatchet-cleaved valley just north of the Jackson boundary, accompanied by the words: The Poacher’s Guide to the Galaxy. Poaching? Hidden steeps? Untracked? Oh, yes. Intimidated or not, this was exactly where I wanted to be.