Full Circle

Carl Pelletier is helping shape a new outdoor recreational management track for local high school students.

// By Molly Absolon

Carl Pelletier doesn’t like to talk about himself. He’d prefer to discuss the climbing gym at the Rec Center that he worked on during construction, or the people who’ve mentored him over the years during his varied career as a climber, educator, and outdoor brand rep. But behind that genuine, self-effacing modesty, Pelletier has a knack for getting things done. And now he’s using that skill to develop an outdoor recreation and management program at Jackson Hole High School.

“Our goal will be to take kids down a track to get into the field of recreational management. It’s a humongous field with tons of opportunities,”Pelletier says. “Kids can get hard skills pretty easily around here, but I see a lot of benefit in helping them develop soft skills, like how to work with clients, how to manage a budget, accounting, and so forth.”

Pelletier read a lot of textbooks this past summer to get up to speed for his new position as a career and technical education instructor in Foundations of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism. Those books covered everything from marketing and leadership to the economics of outdoor recreation, as well as camp cooking and map reading. This fall he taught foundational classes in outdoor management and leadership at the high school. He plans to build on these subjects as the program grows, just as his deep dive into textbooks added to what he’s learned working decades in the field. 

For Pelletier, this new job brings him full circle. After college, he got a masters degree from Clemson University in parks and recreation and then taught 7th through 12th graders at a small private Christian school in Colorado. While teaching everything from economics to comparative religion, world literature, and algebra, Pelletier says he was only about one day ahead of his students in most subjects, which did not fall into his areas of expertise. But his adaptability and willingness to tackle just about anything regardless of his credentials boded well for his future success, and he has tried a little bit of everything over the years. 

That first job also brought him to Colorado, where he fell in love with the West. He bounced around a bit before landing in the Tetons to lead trips for Wilderness Ventures. Following a woman, he spent a few years living in Utah, where he was the North American rep for Pieps avalanche beacons. Back in Jackson Hole, Pelletier found himself doing administrative work for Wilderness Ventures. When that job started to feel a bit like Groundhog Day, he jumped at the opportunity to fill in for a Town of Jackson employee on maternity leave. After that employee returned to work, Pelletier stayed on with the town, moving into special projects and personnel. 

More recently, he managed the completion of the Teton County Rec Center’s new 9,700-foot climbing gym (read more about the climbing gym on page 32). Then, this past spring, just as the gym opened, he heard about the CTE instructor position at Jackson Hole High School, creating the outdoor recreational management track for the school’s Career and Technical Education program. The CTE program already included courses for students in the automotive, computer, construction, culinary, engineering, architecture, and horticulture fields. Outdoor recreational management and leadership seemed like a natural addition for Jackson. 

“I think the main thing I’m excited about is getting as many different professionals from around the community into the class to talk to the students about what they do as I can,” Pelletier says. “The amount and depth of experience and professionalism in this town is mind-blowing. I hope to tap into that.” JH