CAMPFIRE Presents Bill Briggs
Sunday, May 11, 2025, 6:00 PM
CAMPFIRE presents: Bill Briggs | May 11, 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. at the Virginian Saloon
There’s something special about the Tetons. A drama and intensity hangs over these peaks. Towering over the valley floor, the “Cathedral Group” overwhelms the viewer — the hiker, the climber, the skier — with a simultaneous sense of beauty and of awe. With a little bit of terror: a type of grandeur Romantic poets named as The Sublime. The Grand Teton in particular kindles a sense of wonder in the hearts of those who gaze upon, photograph, or climb it. There are few peaks as legendary; and few local alpinists as legendary as those who pioneered ascents and descents of this Sublimest peak.
This month, CAMPFIRE welcomes one of our most legendary living alpinists, Bill Briggs, for a conversation about beauty, risk, and vision in a life lived on the high peaks of the Tetons.
Born in 1931, Bill Briggs is widely recognized as the Father of Extreme / Big Mountain Skiing. Having accomplished the first ski descent of the Grand Teton on June 16, 1971, he has also recorded first descents in the Bugaboos, Middle Teton, Mt. Moran, and Mt. Owen, and pioneered a 100-mile ski traverse from the Bugaboos to Rogers Pass.
After directing the ski schools at Sugarloaf, Maine, and Woodstock in Vermont, Bill became a mountain guide in the Tetons, purchased the Snow King Ski School, in Jackson, Wyoming in 1967, and introduced his revolutionary Certainty Training Method (CTM). Bill is a rare combination of climbing guide, formidable mountain skier, inventive instructor, country-western bandleader, and collector/performer of ski songs and alpine yodels. Briggs is also one of the founding members of the Hootenanny live concert series that gathers at Dornan’s Spur Bar in Moose, Wyoming, and around Teton County. A biography of Briggs, Avalanche Dreams, is forthcoming for publication.
