For most of the last fifty years, if you weren't sleeping in a room at Snow King Resort Hotel, there wasn't much reason to walk through its doors. The building sat at the base of the mountain locals call the Town Hill, a few blocks off Town Square, mostly as a place where out-of-town skiers checked in and checked out. That building reopened on May 14, 2026, under a new name and a new operator, and the thing worth noticing isn't the renovation itself. It's who the new spaces were built for. Trailborn, the boutique hotel company that took over the property, designed its spa, its game room, and its all-day café specifically to pull in people who already live here, not just people paying for a room.
That's a real shift. The mountain hasn't changed. The gondola still runs the same route it always has, the hike to the summit is the same 1.8 miles it's always been, and the observatory still points the same telescopes at the same sky. What changed is the building at the bottom, and for the first time in a long while, there's a specific, stated reason for a Town of Jackson resident to walk into it on a random Tuesday without a reservation.
What actually closed, and what came back
The property started life in 1976 as the Ramada Snow King Inn and had operated as Snow King Resort Hotel for decades before Trailborn bought it. It closed its doors on March 18, 2026, for a full transformation, then reopened under the Trailborn name on May 14, according to reporting in the Jackson Hole News & Guide. The renovation was designed by Trailborn's in-house studio team working with Vida Design and DYNIA Architects, and the goal was preservation rather than replacement. The building's 1970s chalet lines stayed put. What got layered in was reclaimed wood, native stone, and blackened steel, plus a set of local touches: the hotel worked with the Jackson Hole History Museum to source archival photos, and indigenous beadwork shows up throughout the interior.
Most of the hotel's local staff stayed on through the transition, including Caralyn Ross, the director of sales and marketing, who told the News & Guide the renovation was a collective effort rather than a top-down makeover. Her framing was direct: it wasn't just the new ownership group and the old staff working things out between themselves. The town had a hand in it too.
The property is now part of Marriott Bonvoy's Outdoor Collection and carries 203 rooms, making it Trailborn's largest hotel and its first true ski-in, ski-out resort. None of that changes what happens at street level, though, which is where the actual local story sits.
Three rooms that were built for people who already live here
Three of the new spaces come with language, straight from the hotel and its own press materials, that specifically welcomes the neighborhood rather than just hotel guests:
- Ember Lily Spa, Trailborn's first full-service spa and one of the newest and largest wellness spaces in Jackson Hole, offers massages named Alpine Deep Recovery and Mother Nurture alongside facials called Stone Crop Hydration and Wildflower Renewal. It also has a halotherapy salt lounge, a co-ed infrared sauna, separate men's and women's lounges, and an outdoor deck with a hot tub and cold plunge. The spa is built for post-adventure recovery, and it's explicitly open to both overnight guests and locals looking for a restorative afternoon.
- Alley-Oop is the hotel's game room, with a two-lane duckpin bowling alley, shuffleboard, arcade and board games, and a television lounge. It anchors a run of family programming that includes live music, lawn movie nights, karaoke, and a daily Apres Hour.
- Mountainside Bar & Café runs from morning coffee through evening cocktails in the lobby and poolside areas, with indoor lounges and outdoor seating facing the mountain. It was designed, in the hotel's own words, to work as a meeting point for visitors and locals alike.
None of these require a room key. That's the operative fact here. A hotel spa that quietly excludes non-guests is a common thing in a resort town. One that names itself as a local option on purpose is not.
Old Timer, and the beer that only pours here
The hotel's signature restaurant, Old Timer Restaurant & Bar, leans into après-ski comfort food: steak frites, alpine cheese fondue, a roasted half chicken. The cocktail list runs through a Negroni, a Chocolate Old Fashioned, and something the hotel calls the Perfect Martini, apparently not a name they came up with themselves. The one detail that matters for a local drinker is the beer program. Old Timer worked out a collaboration with Grand Teton Brewery to pour a beer available exclusively at that bar.
It's worth keeping this separate in your head from Aurora Restaurant, which sits on the actual ski and activities side of Snow King and has been the mountain's dining option for years. Aurora is the summit-and-slopes side. Old Timer is the hotel side. They're now two distinct answers to "where do we eat at the base of the hill," which didn't used to be true.
The base of Snow King, before and after
| Before (Snow King Resort Hotel) | Now (Trailborn Jackson Hole) | |
|---|---|---|
| Spa | Not a defined local amenity | Ember Lily, stated as open to locals |
| Game space | None | Alley-Oop, duckpin bowling and arcade |
| All-day café | Limited | Mountainside Bar & Café, coffee through cocktails |
| Signature restaurant | Prior hotel dining | Old Timer, exclusive Grand Teton Brewery collaboration |
| Event lawn | Informal | Teton Meadow, fire pits and a kids' play area |
| Brand affiliation | Independent operation | Marriott Bonvoy's Outdoor Collection |
The hotel also added Teton Meadow, an event lawn with a kids' play area and fire pits, and now offers more than 22,000 square feet of flexible indoor and outdoor event space that can hold up to 500 people. That's a genuinely different scale of gathering space than the building had before, and it's already being booked for weddings and private events, not just corporate retreats passing through.
The mountain itself never closed
None of this touches the part of Snow King that residents actually use most, which is the mountain. The scenic chairlift and gondola still run their normal seasonal schedule. During the peak of summer, mid-June through mid-August, the gondola runs 10am to 9pm daily. Right now, in early September, it's running shoulder-season hours of 11am to 6pm, a detail worth knowing before you plan an evening ride up for the view, according to current scheduling posted by Jackson Hole reservations service AllTrips. Winter hours, once the ski season starts, run Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 4pm.
The 1.8-mile hiking trail to the summit is still free, and hikers still have the option to buy a discounted ride down instead of walking it. The Cowboy Coaster, the alpine coaster that opened in 2015 and can hit 25 miles per hour, is still running year-round. The zipline added in 2022 still tops out around 60 miles per hour. The Snow King Observatory and Planetarium, which opened at the summit in 2024 and drew a visit from Bill Nye at its debut, is still doing astronomy programming.
Snow King has been Jackson's mountain since 1936, when it was the state's first ski area. That history is the reason locals still call it the Town Hill rather than a resort. The renovation at the base didn't touch any of that. It just gave the building underneath it a reason for you to walk in without a suitcase.
What a September evening actually looks like now
If you live in town, this is what changed in practical terms. A weeknight can now include a massage at Ember Lily, a drink at Mountainside while the sun drops behind the Tetons, and a game of duckpin bowling at Alley-Oop, all within the same building, all a short walk or drive from Town Square. Pair that with a gondola ride up before 6pm while shoulder-season hours are still in effect, and you've got an evening that starts on the mountain and ends at its base without ever leaving the neighborhood. That's a genuinely new option for a town that's had the same mountain for ninety years and, until this spring, the same hotel sitting quietly at the bottom of it.
If you're weighing what a shift like this means for property near Snow King, or you're simply curious how local amenities like this tend to influence value over time, Jake Kilgrow is always glad to talk through it. Work with Jake.
