Big Dick to ride gondola
Just when we thought there would be peace in the Hole for off-season, the great warlord Dick Cheney is returning this week for at least a short visit.
Cheney will attend a private reception for U.S. Sen. John Barrasso on Friday evening at the Couloir restaurant atop the Bridger Gondola at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
The last time resort owner Jay Kemmerer opened his posh new restaurant to politicians, Barrasso was there to schmooze with the airlines that service Jackson Hole.
JH AIR, the business group that subsidizes flights at Jackson Hole Airport, threw syndicated Wyoming columnist Bill Sniffin a buffalo steak, and Sniffin, bedazzled by the views at 9,300 feet, wrote a heady piece gushing about the affair.
This nugget of news, from Sniffin’s column in the Planet, went underreported:
Our newest U. S. Senator, John Barrasso, kicked off the event and was accompanied by his fiancé [sic] Bobbie Brown. He got a positive reaction when he said he would continue to work to lengthen the short runway at the Jackson airport.
Must have raised a few eyebrows at Grand Teton National Park. (The airport sits within the park and is the only commercial airstrip operating inside a national park in America. It’s also the busiest airport in Wyoming, which, as you might imagine, poses some problems for those seeking solitude and quiet in the park.)
Cheney’s last visit to Jackson Hole was a little rough. Not only was he greeted by 300-plus protesters outside the gates of his $3 million home at Teton Pines, but he experienced the worst fishing of the summer on the Snake River due to high releases of water from Jackson Lake Dam.
He also was flipped off by a woman as he prepared to speak at the dedication of the new park visitor center, and many in the crowd refused to stand when Cheney took the microphone. Only between 300 and 500 people showed for the event, fewer than half the number invited.
Cheney’s return on Friday coincides with the reduction in Snake flows by the Bureau of Reclamation.
The vice president is no stranger to the Bridger Gondola, having skied in jeans at the resort over the years.
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