Corbet’s Cabin

A place to retreat and gather.

// By Lila edythe

A STRUCTURE WAS first built near the summit of Rendezvous Mountain in the early 1960s; it was simple, and its purpose was to provide shelter and storage for the crews building JHMR’s original tram. When construction on the tram was finished in 1966 and Rendezvous Mountain opened to skiers, the building was still primarily utilitarian—ski patrol assembled the bombs it used for avalanche control in it, and, eventually, there was also a radio room—but it did have a small area skiers could come into to escape the elements and get a snack. For the first several years of its existence, the building, which was known as Mountain Station and didn’t have any foundation, was secured to the mountain with cables so it didn’t blow away. (The cables were removed after a few additions had been tacked onto it.)

The size and look of the small part of the building accessible to the public wasn’t substantially changed until the Kemmerer Family bought the resort in 1992. Connie Kemmerer had spent significant time skiing in Europe and saw the potential to turn it into something like the rifugios that dot the slopes of ski resorts in the Alps. “I wanted a place that you could retreat to and gather in,” she says. “Corbet’s Cabin as it existed before felt like a neglected shack.”

In the fall of 1994, Kemmerer worked with Herb Brooks, who had started working at JHMR (then the Jackson Hole Ski Corp.) in December 1974, and others to realize her vision. Bathrooms with composting toilets (flush toilets weren’t an option since the building doesn’t have any running water) were added, new windows were put in, benches were built, cabinets installed, and mountain-y décor purchased and installed. (To date, the bathrooms are the only part of the building with a foundation.) 

The improved building, renamed Corbet’s Cabin, opened at the beginning of the ’94–95 ski season and has been a place to gather, warm up, and calm down ever since. JH