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No need to wait until Aug. 21 to vote in the primary election — anyone may register and vote in advance right now, right up to the primary day.

Simply stop by the clerk’s office between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Teton County administration building, 220 S. Willow St. (the same building where you register a car or pick up stickers for license plates).

The only requirement is a photo ID. No proof of residency is necessary. While a Wyoming driver’s license is preferred, other states’ are accepted, too.

And as a sage man often reminds us, you need to have lived here only a minute to vote.

This way, come Aug. 21, you won’t be caught backpacking in the Winds or working a double shift without having cast a ballot.

The field for Town Council just got a little less crowded. Councilor Greg Miles is dropping out of the race, narrowing the field to eight candidates for two seats. (The top four will advance from the primary.)

Miles announced his intention at last night’s council meeting and also posted a message to friends on Facebook, saying he is stepping aside to “allow some new ideas to come forward.” Miles said he wants to support his wife, Melinda Binks, who is producing a TV show in Los Angeles, and looks forward to working in the private sector again as a housing developer.

Posted under County Government, Politics, Town Government, Wyoming Legislature

Tags: campaign 2012, greg miles

With little more than three days remaining in the filing period to run for local office, there’s no telling what sort of new candidates will emerge to shake things up.

Claire Fuller has set out to change the status quo with a second run for Teton County commissioner. In 2008, at only age 24, Claire came within a few hundred votes of unseating political veterans Andy Schwartz and Leland Christensen.

Now 28 and more seasoned with education and work experience, the Wilson Democrat is back in the ring. The timing feels right, she said, and her desire to serve hasn’t cooled.

“I want to provide a new sense of leadership in the community,” she said.

If she didn’t run now, it might be years before she’d have another chance, she explained. “I’m at the beginning of a career of any sort,” she said. “The farther you get into that, the harder it is to leave.”

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Posted under County Government, Democratic Party, Environment, Politics, Town Government

Tags: claire fuller, conservation, development

Around Christmas, as parties negotiated the final terms of a deal, I apprised venerable outdoors columnist and cult fishing legend Paul Bruun of efforts to create a park along the Snake River near Wilson.

“This is the biggest thing to happen for the river since …” I said, struggling to put the deal in perspective.

“Since forever,” Bruun finished the sentence for me.

The 40-acre property acquired by Rendezvous Lands Conservancy — located upstream of the Wilson bridge, on the northwest bank — will be a jewel for recreation, a place where the community can interact with the river in a setting likely nicer than the old Wilson Beach.

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Posted under County Government, Environment, Politics, Sports, Town Government

Tags: cycling, river running, snake river

Now that elected officials have opted to build the pathway bridge over the Snake River north of Highway 22, the community must decide what kind of bridge and how big it will be.

Also, with engineers planning how to reinforce the structure on the banks of the Snake, the opportunity may exist to accomplish some terracing or other riverside improvements at the same time, rather than just piling riprap.

Building a wider bridge with bump-outs — a sort of Pont des Arts for the Snake — likely will require additional fund-raising. But seeing as how the bridge, adjacent to the new Rendezvous Lands Conservancy park, is going to be a destination in itself — besides a vital link for transportation and even an emergency vehicle crossing — we might as well do it right.

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Posted under County Government, Environment, Politics, Sports

Tags: cycling, river running, snake river

As many commenters have pointed out, yesterday’s helicopter crash that killed Teton County Search and Rescue volunteer Ray Shriver serves as a painful reminder that rescuers risk their lives every time they go into the backcountry.

The Teton County Sheriff’s Office has released a few more details about the crash (see release after jump). Notably, the chopper never reached the scene of the snowmobile accident on Togwotee Pass. The helicopter was hovering, looking for a landing spot, when it suddenly lost altitude and crashed, authorities said.

This is the first fatality on the team since it formed in 1993; before that, it had operated for years as a loose-knit group of volunteers. Only once had a team member been seriously injured, the result of a fall in the Darby Canyon caves.

We’ve read about so many daring, and successful, rescues in the Tetons over the years — whether featuring GTNP rangers or TCSAR volunteers — that perhaps we had come to take helicopter missions for granted. Not anymore.

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Posted under County Government, Deaths, Environment, Sports

Tags: backcountry, climbing, cops, grand teton national park, national forest, skiing