In audio reporting, we have two main story types.
There’s our quick-hitting, minute-long reports you hear in KHOL’s daily newscast.
But sometimes we also take a step back from the headlines and dig deeper into this community’s trends and personalities. In four to eight minutes, using just the sound waves of voices and the environment, reporters try to capture the essence of a place, a mood, or a person. From KHOL’s newsroom and our colleagues at Wyoming Public Media, here are some year-defining features from 2024.
— Sophia Boyd-Fliegel, managing editor
Outrage over local comic highlights ski town tensions
Last winter, Ryan Stolp published a cartoon in the Jackson Hole Daily and on social media for Lift Lines, his long-running Jackson-based comic on the absurdities and wonder of ski towns. Stolp is used to controversy, but reactions to this post were different. In April, KHOL reporter Dante Filpula Ankney interviewed Stolp and others about how a drawing of a parking hack at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort accidentally exposed the rage that accumulates in a place with stark wealth inequality.
Ryan Stolp poses along his cartoon-covered skis at the top of Rendezvous Mountain at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. (Dante Filpula Ankney / KHOL)
Since this story aired, the Teton Village Association has fixed the parking payment loophole and maintained the same charges for parking after raising rates in 2023. In November, Teton County was, for the 19th year in a row, shown to have the nation’s highest per capita income, with five Rocky Mountain resort counties ranked in the nation’s top 12. Stolp’s comic continues to come out every week in the local newspaper.
The death — and alleged abuse — of a wolf south of Jackson
In March, hunter Cody Roberts ran over a gray wolf with his snowmobile and brought the animal into a bar in Daniel – about an hour south of Jackson. He was fined $250 by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for “possession of a live animal.” In April, KHOL reporter Dante Filpula Ankney sat down with KHOL’s Emily Cohen, who first reported the story, and Wyofile reporter Mike Koshmrl to talk about the role of wolves in Wyoming.
Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies are managed by states including Wyoming despite the species being listed as federally endangered in the rest of the lower 48 states. (Ronan Donovan / National Geographic)
After KHOL broke the story it soon became statewide, then international news. Since then, state legislators drafted a “wolf bill” with higher penalties for the prolonged suffering of predators. Lawmakers didn’t discuss making the act of running over animals illegal.
Cowboy State flocks to Jackson for first picks on elk sheds
2024 was the first year when only Wyoming residents could participate in the first few days of a long-running Western tradition, hunting for the antlers that have piled up over winter from elk. On May 1, KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney was on the scene with hunters to search for what had changed with the new law to benefit Wyoming residents.
Brady Rivenes scans the surrounding sage for the smallest glimpse of a shed. (Dante Filpula Ankney / KHOL)
The new rule this year limiting shed hunts to Wyomingites was received popularly by residents. Next year will be the second time residents can get a jump on the hunt.
Jackson receives its long-awaited climbing gym
After about 20 years of planning and two years of construction, Teton County Parks and Recreation completed an expansion of the recreation center. Many weren’t happy when a COVID rush of construction pushed the price tag up about $10 million. But county leaders forged ahead and a new gym is now up, running, and bustling. Back in June, KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney stood under new ropes and brightly colored plastic in one of the most hotly-anticipated pieces of the expansion: the climbing gym.
Steve Ashworth was the Director of Teton County Parks and Recreation. He had been thinking about the recreation center’s expansion since 2004 with Steve Foster, his former boss at Parks and Rec, who will step into the role in the interim. (Dante Filpula Ankney / KHOL)
Parks and Recreation Director Steve Ashworth resigned in December after 23 years working for the county. The Jackson Hole News&Guide reported he plans to move to Oregon and take over as deputy manager for the city of Redmond.
The 3-hour pass commute that was, then wasn’t
It was a worse-than-normal year for anyone who lives on the west side of the Tetons and commutes into Teton County, Wyoming, for work. Perhaps no image from this year better captured the struggles of Jackson Hole’s infamous wealth inequality better than the hours spent in traffic by those commuters after Teton Pass “catastrophically failed” in June. That’s when KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney took a seat on the bus.
M.E. Sorci said she misses the time she is typically able to spend in Teton Valley. She spent the mornings reading on the bus, instead. (Dante Filpula Ankney / KHOL)
The pass reopened three weeks after it collapsed in late June after around-the-clock work from the Wyoming Department of Transportation and contract crews. In September, WYDOT announced that the original timeline of the rebuild was ambitious. The road will be rebuilt in the same place it slid, this time fortified, by July 2025. Construction is paused due to winter and will pick back up next year. The road is being built to last 75 years.
The saga of the Kelly Parcel
On 640 acres adjacent to Grand Teton National Park, state land known as the “Kelly Parcel” saw its future transform in the past 13 months. It was back in October 2023 when state land managers put the wheels in motion for an open auction. That after years of failed attempts through legislation to arrange a sale. Some in the community panicked, wondering if a private developer would outbid the National Park Service. Others, like outfitters, wondered if they’d be barred from leading horse tours on the parcel if the Park Service took over. The issue was tabled until fall 2024. In July, KHOL’s Chris Clements saddled up to see what was at stake.
Rancher Jake Hutton’s horse herd race back to the corral in the shadow of the Grand Tetons on June 21, 2024. If the sale of the Kelly Parcel to Grand Teton National Park goes through, the park could bar him from doing tours on the parcel. (Reed Mattison / REED MATTISON)
The sale of the Kelly Parcel has since taken steps towards completion. The sale has been approved by the State Board of Land Commissioners and tentatively by Gov. Mark Gordon. Chiefly, the Bureau of Land Management issued a Record of Decision on Dec. 20 for its plan for managing millions of acres near Rock Springs before the New Year. Gordon said he’s also consulting the state attorney general to see if the plan meets conditions set by the Legislature to move forward with the sale of the Kelly Parcel to Grand Teton National Park.
How the right to make health care decisions led to abortion being allowed in Wyoming
Abortion access for all of Wyoming was protected by a Teton County judge this year. In November, Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Merzbach called people on all sides of the issue and captured the emotion of the moment and how a reaction against Obamacare backfired.
9th Judicial District Court Judge Melissa Owens heard nearly four hours of arguments last December in Jackson, Wyoming in the abortion case. She just released her decision, striking down the state’s abortion laws. (Kathryn Ziesig / Jackson Hole News&Guide)
As later reported by KHOL’s Chris Clements, abortion access is expected to be a central topic in the upcoming legislative session. Lawmakers meet in Cheyenne during the next legislative session starting Jan. 14, 2025.
An immigration lawyer tells clients to memorize their rights, phone numbers and childcare plans
When President-elect Donald Trump won reelection in November, some of the biggest questions for many in Jackson Hole, and resort towns throughout the Rocky Mountain West, were about immigration. In November, KHOL’s Jenna McMurtry reported that immigration attorney and public defender Elisabeth Trefonas was taking many of those questions — sometimes before the sun rises and sometimes before she’s out of her pajamas.
Elisabeth Trefonas has been a Wyoming immigration attorney for over 20 years. Since the election she has spent 16-hour days preparing clients for mass deportations pledged by president-elect Trump. (Sophia Boyd-Fliegel / KHOL)
Teton County is home to about 2,900 residents born outside the U.S., or 12.5% of the county’s population. Just under a third have become naturalized citizens, according to the state’s Chief Economist Wenlin Liu. Since November, KHOL has reported on other community leaders who are in a “wait and see” mode before reacting to potential policy changes. Trefonas has hired more help to assist with the phones. She has a waitlist for immigration clients, prioritizing those who are likely to face changes in the new administration or are facing deportation.
Grizzly 399 was a rarity, for advocates and wildlife managers
The day the “Queen of the Tetons” died was one everyone knew would come. But the car crash that killed Grizzly 399 in November was, for many, still heart-wrenching. KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney talked to experts in November to try to understand how the world-famous mama bear lived: uniquely close to the people who revered her — and ended up cutting her life short.
Grizzly 399’s death has made national headlines and triggered memorials and gatherings from the Snake River Canyon to Grand Teton National Park including at Jackson’s Town Square. (Dante Filpula Ankney / KHOL)
In the wake of Grizzly 399’s death, advocates have increased calls for the federal government to adopt measures to protect bears and humans from each other. About 70 grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem died this year, largely due to human causes, such as car crashes. On Dec. 8, a Wyoming Judge ordered federal wildlife officials to decide whether they will keep the bears on the endangered species list by Jan. 20, when the second Trump administration begins.
