If it snows, Luke Lancaster is on the clock. The Star Valley resident’s job revolves entirely around the weather.
“It’s difficult having near no visibility,” Lancaster said. “When snow is up here, it’s just tough. That’s for sure.”
But that snow is also what gives him work. He’s a plow driver for the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT).
Teton Pass is his assigned stretch of 12 miles to plow each storm, for up to 20 laps a day. Now in his second season working the two-lane mountain pass, he regularly drives one of the steepest highways in the continental U.S. with a start as early as 2:30 a.m. on the snowiest days. The road winds several switchbacks to reach the summit at 8,432 feet before plummeting back down to the Idaho stateline.
“In whiteout conditions, you can’t see anything,” Lancaster said. “You’re on a lawless road and you have a drop off on this side.”
Even during this lackluster winter, more than 6,000 drivers make the daily commute each ski season, according to data from WYDOT.
Lancaster’s route is surrounded by some of the most accessible backcountry skiing in the country. He snowboards, so he understands the draw of the pass, even if he’d rather ride a chairlift.
As nerve-wracking as his day-to-day at work can be, from navigating icy roads to full whiteout conditions, Lancaster said dodging skiers on powder quests is much scarier, especially while hoisted 20-feet above the road from the driver’s seat of his freightliner plow truck. Once full of sand and equipment, he estimates it weighs 65,000 pounds.
“You can’t go over 18 miles an hour,” Lancaster said. “You have to slam on the brakes or pick up your plow to try to avoid hitting [skiers] with a berm.”
If walking in the middle of the road or visibility is low, skiers can be hard to see. Though he added that the traffic and compaction they bring can help keep the roads in better condition on snowy days.
To make matters worse for plow drivers, parking is limited at the summit pull-out and sometimes skiers park where the plow has to go. That can make for a sketchy drive, complicating an otherwise mutually beneficial relationship between skiers and the plow drivers.
To keep the pass open for both recreation and drivers is where the Teton Backcountry Alliance comes in. Founded in 2017, the non-profit came about as a liaison between all those responsible with pass upkeep. That involves the Bridger-Teton National Forest and offshoots like Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center and Friends of Bridger-Teton.
Avid backcountry skier Jay Pistono founded the alliance after dedicating his life to keeping recreation on the pass accessible. This year is the first winter after his death in October 2025.
Tait Bjornsen now carries the torch he first lit. As the alliance’s program director, she leads this year’s 23 pass ambassadors, about half of whom are paid. The rest volunteer a day each week to answer questions, encourage beacon checks and overall good backcountry etiquette.
A lot of Bjornsen’s role also involves teaching skiers and drivers how to keep WYDOT happy.
The first thing she does when she shows up is paint “no parking” signs at the summit parking lot to keep the WYDOT and emergency first responders parking spaces clear.
Besides encouraging carpooling, the alliance also tackles limited parking during peak times through its free shuttle, now in its second year.
“We’ve had over 100 riders in one day alone,” Bjornesen said, a new record for the non-profit. “Imagine keeping 100 cars off of the pass in one day.”
The shuttle wrapped up its last day of the season on Sunday, but when it’s in full operation, it picks up on either side of the pass with summit drop offs twenty minutes before the top of the hour. This year, the alliance tallied 1,469 total skiers hitched a shuttle ride.
But the ambassadors stop short of just being parking lot support.
“Our role as ambassadors is to talk to [skiers],” Bjornesen said. “But when we see non-local plates, we really try to go out of our way to make sure they know where they’re going, that they know this is avalanche terrain and ask if they’ve been here before.”
For pass newcomers, Bjornesen said it can be easy to assume that all ski lines are on the table just because there might be tracks. When the avalanche forecast is in the red, pass ambassadors especially check in with those still itching to get out and ask if skiers have looked at maps and fully comprehend the avalanche forecast.
But one of the biggest ways the ambassadors indirectly help WYDOT is by asking skiers if they know which areas to avoid on days when avalanches are forecasted as likely. Most often, that includes Glory Bowl and Twin Slides, both north of the summit where they tower overhead.
“Those are two runs up historically when they do slide and hit the road and this is a day that is very likely,” Bjornesen will tell skiers.
This winter, the alliance waded into new territory, co-hosting free avalanche refresher workshops with guides at Yöstmark Backcountry Tours. The classes covered beacon parks and navigating a multiple-burial rescue scenario.
But at the same time, Bjornesen said it’s not the ambassadors’ job to tell anyone where to go or what terrain is in. They might clear the parking lot for snowed out cars and spots for emergency vehicles if there’s a search-and-rescue effort underway, but they’re never going to say what’s safe to ski.
“That’s just not our place,” Bjornesen said. “Nothing is safe. There’s always a risk that something will happen.”
She was on-site when a skier triggered a large slide during a January storm. The avalanche broke through Glory Bowl just below the summit lot, striking a moving car and instantly burying it.
“We spent the afternoon digging that car out,” Bjornsen said, another way ambassadors can help by being first on the scene. “Everybody was totally fine but it was enough snow that it fully lifted the car off the ground.”
In another storm, WYDOT triggered the same face for avalanche mitigation. One of the slope’s largest slides ever produced walls of snow over 30 feet high.
“That was the size of a RV,” Lancaster said, referencing the height of the snow and a boulder that came down in the slide. He was one of the plow drivers digging out the road in the middle of the night.
After that slide, WYDOT opened the road in 14 hours, a day ahead of what it first anticipated. Skiers and commuters were grateful to get the road back open and flooded social media the next morning with a show of gratitude.
Bjornesen hopes the partnership between skiers, drivers and road managers continues to honor the man who founded the alliance.
“Ski with kindness, ski with humility, know that there’s a lot to lose,” Bjornesen said. “Know your actions impact everybody else around you and impact the ability for this place to stay open.”
In a nod to her mentor, she calls it skiing the “Jay way.” Those words are now also embroidered on all the pass ambassadors’ jackets this year.
