JH Underground – news, sports and music blog from Jackson Hole, Wyoming news, sports and music blog from Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Photographer David Stubbs documents the oil and gas boom in Sublette County, where sagebrush flats formerly home to deer, grouse and antelope have been transformed into an industrial complex.

This video features author Alexandra Fuller reading a passage from her latest book, “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant,” an account of a roughneck who died on an oil rig in 2006.

Stubbs, a former Jackson Hole Guide staffer turned freelancer for Aurora and Getty, has been working on this project for several years, including a big feature for The Nature Conservancy with Rebecca Huntington.

A key phrase in his narration is the BLM’s decision to forego “low-impact, long-term extraction” in favor of an orgy of dense drilling.

This photo story touches on air quality, worker safety, wildlife impacts and the future of a landscape that sits at the base of the Wind River Range and the headwaters of the Green River.

Posted under Environment, Politics, Wyoming, Wyoming Legislature

A workout for the mind, or yet another way to waste time.

“XU” sounds like an utterance on a Manhattan street corner, but in the game of Scrabble it’s an effective weapon, along with “QI,” “ZA” and that most deadly of didactic daggers, “QWERTY.”

After a week-long soapbox derby in the blogosphere, tonight there will be a real war of words as Hard Drive Cafe hosts its second annual Scrabble Tournament. Proceeds will fund scholarships to the Jackson Hole Writers Conference.

The semantic smackdown runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Entry fee is $35. The winner will receive a scholarship for the conference (tuition is $355), slated for June 25-28. Spectators are welcome to watch the grammatical grappling; Hard Drive will serve beer and wine.

To limber up the lobes, some of the contestants no doubt have been indulging in the return of Scrabulous, er, Lexulous.

A procrastinors’ dream and the bane of employers everywhere, Lexulous gained an enormous following last year as an application on Facebook, until board game maker Hasbro sued for copyright infringement. The Indian innovators who devised the online game changed the name, made a few minor alterations and relaunched the application last month.

It’s a dereliction we can chalk up to diction. Time to play my next move.

Posted under Entertainment

The pace of progress.

America needs to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs, but are five lanes warranted between Melody Ranch and Horse Creek?

That’s the central question as the Wyoming Department of Transportation gears up to pave paradise study a redesign of Highway 89 south of Jackson.

The highway department is holding a public meeting from 5 to 7 p.m. today at Jackson Hole High School. A copy of the draft EIS for the seven-mile road segment can be found here.

So far the study allows for only three options: doing nothing; building five lanes the entire way from Melody to Hoback Junction; and building five lanes to Horse Creek, then tapering to four and eventually three to Hoback as the Snake River Canyon narrows.

What’s not on the table, curiously, is tapering the roadway farther north.

The last time we went through a process like this, we got a sea of asphalt south of town. Comments may be e-mailed to hobackcomments@dot.state.wy.us by March 9.

Posted under Economy, Environment, Politics

Everyone's got an opinion about skiing.

I had been reading with great amusement the debate on TetonAT over Stephen Koch’s snowmobile trip to Mount Moran, until the story reached its absurd conclusion last night.

I do not condone what Koch and friends did. One might surmise that karma was served when the group got the snowmobile stuck twice and, after climbing and skiing the mountain, was forced to drag it over the boggy lake surface in the dark. Lesson learned, perhaps.

Posting a video of the infraction sure was a boneheaded move. They deserved whatever ridicule was heaped upon them, and a fine from the park.

But to be fired from Exum Mountain Guides? By Jack Turner, the outlaw philosopher?

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Posted under Environment, Media, Sports

Proud to crawl home. Click to enlarge.

The Brew Pub celebrates Mardi Gras with a special Creole/Cajun menu featuring red beans and rice, etoufée, blackened catfish, pork belly and other New Orleans treats.

Tonight the pub throws down for what figures to be its biggest party besides St. Patrick’s Day.

Might as well tip back a pint, as it looks like the blizzard promised for today has fizzled faster than a Hand Grenade on Bourbon Street.

Raise a glass in honor of Snooks Eaglin.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Posted under Food, Holidays

Rockin' on Pearl again: Marc Hirschfield and his wife, Anise.

Couches? Check. Artwork? Yep. Turkey-cran-pesto and Chinese salad? Given!

It’s hard to believe, but after six years the original Betty Rock Cafe has returned to its home on the corner of Pearl and Jackson streets.

The landmark eatery quietly opened Saturday after a few weeks of renovation. Starting today, the cafe will serve lunch and coffee from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

“We tried to make it feel the same,” says Marc Hirschfield, who co-owns the coffee shop with his rockin’ betty wife, Anise Morrow.

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Posted under Economy, Food