Jumping Through Hoops, Happily

Ryan Mertaugh wants you to smile, whether by hula hooping yourself or seeing him.

BY JULIE BUTLER

STANDING ATOP THE 13,775-foot Grand Teton at 11:30 a.m. early last August, the sun was out, warming Ryan Mertaugh and his girlfriend, Annie Tonoli. It was Mertaugh’s fourteenth time on the top of the highest peak in the Tetons. As usual, he was on the summit with a hula hoop twirling steadily around his waist. Tonoli, who stood across from him, had her own hoop spinning. This was business as usual for the couple: standing atop a mountain hula hooping.

But Mertaugh was about to deviate from business as usual. The twenty-eight-year-old let his hoop drop and handed his cellphone to a friend so that person could take photos. Mertaugh was about to propose to an unsuspecting Annie. “She was distracted with her hoop while I was getting into position to propose,” Mertaugh says. “It worked out perfectly.”

WHILE SEVERAL LOCAL couples get engaged atop Teton summits every summer, few couples do so while hula hooping. Mertaugh had a hula hoop as a child, but it wasn’t until he was a college student in Michigan that he got into hooping with a vengeance. He’d twirl one around his waist to and from classes, a two-mile route. The activity not only made him smile, but it also inspired smiles from people he encountered along the way.

“I have always been interested to try things that push my abilities to adapt to changing environments,” Mertaugh says. “This ‘urban hooping’ presented me with challenges, problems to solve, and friendly and amazing interactions with my fellow students.” It was during these commutes to and from class that he began thinking of the greater challenges—anything that pushed the limit of being able to maintain a consistent hoop while performing some sort of task or trick—one might devise for a hula hoop. “How far can one run while hula hooping?” he asks. “How narrow of a knife-edge ridge can I walk across while hooping?”

Today, Mertaugh incorporates a hoop in almost all of his outdoor activities, from slacklining to trail running, skiing, biking, and mountain climbing. “Hoop-skiing [downhill] is a skill I’m still perfecting, and by ‘perfecting’ I really mean failing miserably at,” he says. “But someday I will figure it out. Until then, I’ll just have fun.” He has, however, successfully hoop-telemarked parts of Glory Bowl and the Middle Teton.

He has even brought hooping to his work. An eighth-grade French teacher at Jackson Hole Middle School and a Spanish teacher at Summit High School, Mertaugh hopes to teach at least one French class this school year while the kids are hooping. “Physical activity has been proven to increase academic success. Why not apply physical activity by means of a hula hoop to a French lesson?” he asks. “It’s all about having fun and learning, and yes, these can be accomplished at the same time.”

But it’s high-elevation hooping that has made Mertaugh a movie star. Kind of. Over the past two years, he has summited all eight major Teton Range peaks—Nez Perce, Cloudveil Dome, South Teton, Middle Teton, Grand Teton, Mt. Owen, Teewinot, and Moran —and, at the top, hula hooped in celebration of his success. On each summit, either Utah State University film major graduate Madison Pope Bayles or Mertaugh himself captured the scene on film.

Last August, Bayles and Mertaugh submitted the seven-minute film, Teton Hooping Contingency, to the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The short film doesn’t just capture Mertaugh’s summit hooping, but those are the best parts—showing his unmitigated joy upon reaching the top of a mountain and sharing his hoop (or hoops) with fellow climbers.

When climbing the Middle Teton, he spent the night prior in the Garnet Canyon Meadows, a popular camping spot. Mertaugh had brought seven or so hoops with him. “Everyone—artists from Burning Man, a solo first-time climber headed toward the southwest couloir of the Middle, and a couple headed up the Grand for a birthday climb—came together and hooped into the evening,” he says. “This was an incredible experience for me due to the atmosphere it created around the camp.”

The experience, of course, also created lots of smiles.