Wyoming
‘Carried by runner’ — Wyoming’s outsized role in the first American ascents on Everest – WyoFile
The American climbers sent the bad news the fastest way they could. In this instance 62 years ago today, it was “carried by runner.”
From Everest’s basecamp, where the mountaineers were preparing to climb the world’s highest peak, a Nepali courier set off at a trot. He carried a message as he wended his way across the fractured detritus below the Khumbu Glacier. His calloused feet padded down the shadowed valley where gravity and time wear the mountain’s granite, gneiss and limestone.
He ran down trails worn smooth by a million soles, following the Lobuche Kosi and Imja Kosi rivers that mill boulders into flour. He jogged by mani stones, past rope bridges, loped by the storied Sherpa villages of Lobuche, Pheriche and Dingboche.
In about 15 miles, the messenger climbed out of the shadows to the hillside hamlet of Tengboche, a holy crossroads between Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and Qomolangma, Sagarmatha — Everest. As the courier arrived, Jackson Hole alpinist David Dornan was inhaling the clear Himalayan air, perhaps scented by a Sherpa’s yak-dung fire or incense drifting from the Tengboche Monastery.
Dornan was on an expedition to the Sherpa homeland, an expedition separate from the American climbers’. He was building a school and waterworks with Sir Edmund Hillary who, with Tenzing Norgay, had been the first to climb Everest 10 years earlier in 1953.
But seven of the 19 Americans who were just up-valley from Tengboche had worked professionally in Wyoming’s Teton Range. That was Jackson Hole native Dornan’s back yard, and Dornan knew and had worked with a bunch of them.
“I instinctively knew that it was Jake.”
David Dornan
The messenger arrived apace at Tengboche, an ethereal world ornamented with Tibetan totems, a world almost touching the heavens. Here temple lions with the eyes of God guard the monastery entrance. A golden spire juts from a bedazzling white stupa. Dozens of prayer flags flutter in the breeze. Inside the lamasery, saffron-robed monks and devotees spin prayer wheels that hold scrolls of Tibetan-script mantras.
In this rare aura, Dornan scanned the top of the world.
“It was a clear, beautiful day, and I was just totally absorbed looking at the mountains and being where I was,” Dornan said. Then came the runner’s dispatch.
“An American had been killed.”
Which American?
But which American?
There were 19. Seven of them had climbed professionally in the Tetons, as had Dornan, a mountain guide with the Exum guide service.
Was it a Teton veteran? Was it Barry Corbet, the handsome Dartmouth dropout and skier; Willi Unsoeld, the gregarious Peace Corps volunteer who would sprout a national forest of a beard, or Jake Breitenbach, the tow-headed mountaineer who wore his alpine beanie at a rakish angle?
Could it be Dick Pownall, or David Dingman, two more of Dornan’s fellow Exum guides from the Tetons? It could be Richard Emerson, Grand Teton National Park’s chief climbing ranger. Or possibly Tom Hornbein, a Colorado climber, ranger and anesthesiologist who worked with search-and-rescue teams at Grand Teton one summer and had designed the expedition’s oxygen masks.
“I had a rare intuition,” Dornan said. “Jake did have some history of bad luck; he was never able to summit Mount Owen, for example. Once guiding the Grand Teton, he was hit by lightning, “actually knocked out,” Dornan said. “There were other stories where the mountain turned against him.”
“I instinctively knew,” Dornan said, “that it was Jake.”
John Edgar Breitenbach was only 27 when a tower of ice collapsed and entombed his body among the crevasses of the Khumbu Glacier on the first climbing day of the American’s 1963 expedition to Everest. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1935, he graduated from Oregon State College, as it was then known, majoring in mathematics.
Heaven in Jackson Hole
He moved to the climbing crucible of Jackson Hole in the mid 1950s and guided clients up the 13,775-foot high Grand Teton in the summer. There, he met and married Mary Louise McGraw, a transplant from the East Coast. She was Lou to those who knew her, Mary Louise McGraw Breitenbach, M.Ed., of Harvard, to the rest of the world.
“He was blonde and beautiful and adventuresome, and so [Lou] loved all those things about him,” said Joseph Piccoli, Lou Breitenbach’s second husband.
In the Jackson Hole winter, Breitenbach was one of a corps of young skiers and alpinists establishing a ski hub at the base of Snow King Mountain that they hoped would sustain a year-round life in the mountains. Corbet had built the A-frame Alphorn Lodge at the base of the “Town Hill” and ran it with his wife Muffy Moore. Lou Breitenbach ran a restaurant, the White Cupboard, next door. Jake Breitenbach bought and operated a ski shop nearby. “We were all pretty young and trying to find our way,” Moore said.
In a cowboy town, the alpinists with their sun glasses and ski sweaters stood out. “I was impressed with these guys,” said Rod Newcomb, who arrived in Jackson Hole around that time and eventually became a guide and co-owner of the Exum guide service. One of Breitenbach’s gang would walk around town in an overstuffed expedition jacket from a groundbreaking climb of Denali, Newcomb said, “and everybody knew who he was.”
Breitenbach himself “was humorous and inventive and had a gaiety of spirit,” said Corbet’s wife Moore. “He was just a delightful person to be around,” even as he fended off depression, something he did best by climbing a mountain.
The Jackson Hole cadre skied where nobody had skied, camped in the snow on extended alpine traverses and probed the corners of the Teton range in summer. “What a gift that was,” Moore said, “having your own personal paradise to spend the winter months in. “Jackson in those years really was just heaven. Young as we were, we even recognized that at the time.
“And then Everest came along,” she said, “and kind of ended it all.”
What Jake wanted
The American mountaineers regrouped on the Khumbu Glacier after Breitenbach died on March 23, 1963.
“These things happen instantaneously,” Corbet said in a taped message he made at the 18,000-foot base camp 10 days after Breitenbach’s death. “And while we were all stunned for a couple of days, we’ve all come back, and we’re doing battle with the mountain again.”
The team would forge on, “just as Jake would have wanted us to,” Corbet said.
Forge on they did, as plotted by expedition leader Norman Dyhrenfurth, a Swiss-American mountaineer who had assembled the team and its bankroll. Dyhrenfurth secured key National Geographic backing only after traveling to Jackson Hole to hand pick team members from the Tetons. At the time, the range was one of a handful of American climbing centers, a town with a mountaineering colony.
“There was a harmonic convergence between a Swiss-American climber [Dyhrenfurth], this sweet spot of climbing here [in the Tetons] and the possibility that America could actually head off to Everest,” said Brot Coburn, a Wilson resident, Nepal historian and author of “The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest.”
The peak had only been climbed once, perhaps twice before (a Chinese ascent was contested). Dyhrenfurth was bent on putting an American on top, whatever logistics it took.
“So Norman came to the Tetons and he saw the right stuff — Willi Unsoeld, Dick Pownall, Barry Corbet and Jake Breitenbach,” Coburn said, ticking off some of the Teton climbers who would join the team.
“These were scrappy, energetic, innovative climbers. They were more than ready and willing to take on challenges.”
Dyhrenfurth, however, knew where the butter was on his sliced American bread. Above all, he needed a photograph of an American on the top of the world, perhaps hoisting an ice axe with a flag, maybe even a National Geographic banner. That image was best secured by following Hillary and Tenzing’s 1953 line up Everest’s South Col route.
Although that route has little rock climbing, there’s a corniced ridge near the top and a stinger in the tail — the near vertical Hillary Step a snowball’s throw below the summit. Plus, it’s bitterly cold, there’s scant air to breathe and what oxygen is available rips past in the jet stream.
Towering Jim Whittaker, a Seattle volcano climber, was among the Dyhrenfurth contingent and with Sherpa Nawang Gombu became the leader’s choice for the first summit team. Despite the distinction an Everest ascent held, Teton climbers were decidedly unexcited about following Hillary and Norgay’s 10-year-old footsteps.
Beatnicks on belay
Here’s maybe why.
“The young Teton climbers were, perhaps as a function of their youth, their adventuresomeness and their audacity, also intrigued by some of the cultural changes that were just beginning to happen at that time,” Coburn said. “During that period, beatnik sensibilities and creativity was leading into anti-establishment types of thinking, and definitely, these Teton climbers had that.
“They knew that they were different from the rest of straight 1950s American culture,” Coburn said. “They knew they were outliers, almost outlaws in a way, and so they differed from the approach of the National Geographic and the volcanos climbers, rather fundamentally.”
The Teton group also had “mixed mountaineering” skills, Coburn said. They took on, professionally, steep rock bands and serrated ridges, snow gullies walled by granite faces, glaciers and their deadly crevasses. They handled rucksacks of gear — ropes, ice axes, carabiners, pitons, crampons.
Importantly, they hauled those loads to untrammeled places. “They were knocking off new routes like crazy,” Coburn said. They yearned to explore.
On the weeks-long hike into Everest’s base camp, rebellious chatter, especially among what Unsoeld called the Teton Tribe, began. As they approached Everest, one mountain feature looked strikingly familiar. Unsoeld saw the Grand Teton, Hornbein saw Colorado’s Longs Peak, albeit on a larger scale.
This rocky spine jutted above the expedition’s planned 21,350-foot-high advanced base camp. A combination of snowfields, ramps, a huge couloir and an unavoidable Yellow Band of rock — all unexplored mountain — rose 7,678 feet to the summit.
Unsoeld and Hornbein “just had this bug,” said Renny Jackson, Teton guidebook author and former Teton Park climbing ranger, “‘Let’s go check something else out.’”
“They were out for a new experience, and that’s definitely why they were up for the West Ridge,” former Exum owner Newcomb said. “It had never been climbed. It would be a first ascent.”
“We wanted to make America proud and [show we] were as good as the Europeans,” Dornan said of the expedition. “For the first time, they had to start respecting American climbers.”
The West Ridge was a plumb, albeit high on the tree. Nevermind that the climb would require trespassing into China during the heat of the Cold War. The Teton climbers were social bandits in any case. And who would be watching?
Wyoming’s outsized role
On May 1, the mismatched “big Jim and little Gombu,” made good on their Mutt-and-Jeff diversities and climbed Hillary and Tenzing’s South Col route to the 29,028-foot summit [Everest’s elevation is refined somewhat regularly]. Now the West Ridgers were able to claw supplies to their side of the mountain to support their audacious plot, an effort that had caused friction.
“They were denied the resources that they needed,” Dornan said, “not only in personnel, but supplies. It was nasty.”
They spent weeks ferrying loads to a high camp where two of them would climb the last of the West Ridge, meet a second American South Col team on the top, and descend that easier side of the mountain. It would be the first traverse of the peak.
Remarkably, the first ascent of Everest’s West Ridge would be an almost exclusive endeavor of climbers who had been Teton pros. Among those, Breitenbach was gone and Teton guide Pownall, “very beat up,” from the icefall collapse.
But Teton ranger Emerson hauled loads up the route. Exum guide Dingman was there, too, with Corbet, Unsoeld and Hornbein. Fifteen Sherpas lent heavy support. At Corbet’s insistence, Unsoeld and Hornbein would be the West Ridge summit team.
Corbet, perhaps the strongest of the lot, said later his hardest day in the mountains was when he humped a load up through the huge gash, later named the Hornbein Couloir, to Unsoeld and Hornbein’s high camp 5W at an elevation of 27,250 feet. The supply team left the tented summit pair to spend a night sleeping with oxygen.
On May 22, Unsoeld and Hornbein set off, abandoning their camp for a one-way journey. “The going was a wonderful pleasure,” Hornbein wrote in “Everest, The West Ridge,” “almost like a day in the Rockies.” They summited at 6:30 p.m. and found the footprints of Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad who had been there hours before. Lower down the South Col route, the four bivouacked for the night in the black void.
The groundbreaking effort cost. National Geographic photographer Bishop lost toes to frostbite. It’s said that Unsoeld also lost nine, but that’s inaccurate. After they came off, he preserved them in a jar and would show them off to his students.
Om mani padme hum
“When someone you know dies young, they remain frozen in time in your memory,” a climber with the social-media handle “rgold,” wrote about Breitenbach on a climbing thread. “He remains forever a golden-haired boy with a smile that could light up the countryside.”
To the world, Breitenbach would always be as the camera caught him, tossing what Coburn called “a mischievous shock of Dennis the Menace blond hair,” drawing elegantly on a cigarette, dashing around a mountain town in Teton toggery behind the wheel of a new Volvo.
Those images stop on May 23, 1963, when Breitenbach’s partners cut his rope where the twisted nylon disappeared under tons of ice. It was the end of a star-crossed affair with the mountains. From that time, the Khumbu Glacier ground unsentimentally on. Seven years later, in 1970, the Khumbu disgorged Breitenbach’s remains.
“There wasn’t much to speak of,” Piccoli said. “They identified him from his clothing.”
Bishop went to Nepal and buried Breitenbach above Tengboche.
Meantime, Lou Breitenbach packed a box of memorabilia including Jake’s letters, condolence notes from around Wyoming and other things and shipped them to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. More recently, the family of Breitenbach’s friend, Frank Ewing, pulled a cache of about 500 Breitenbach slides from a closet and revived tales of the golden years.
Forty years after Breitenbach’s death, Piccoli convinced Lou Breitenbach to leave Jackson Hole and visit Tengboche. It wasn’t an easy trek. Lou, 66 at the time, battled dysentery, but soldiered on. She passed paddy and pagoda, even a trailside mystic who told her she would live to 83, to arrive at the Buddhist friary.
“She made it all the way to a puja ceremony performed by the monks at the monastery,” Piccoli said. There, she heard the drone of long Tibetan horns, the auspicious ring of Tingsha cymbals, the lamas deep-throated incantations.
“They were burning incense and setting up rice cakes and all kinds of stuff and reading from the scriptures,” Piccoli said. “It was an amazing little ceremony.”
Lou Breitenbach strived to live to her 84th birthday but died in Jackson Hole in 2020, two weeks shy of it. Just as the trailside soothsayer said. But she had managed to visit Jake’s grave, just above the monastery and look down on the site where Jake penned his last letter to her.
“Thyanboche, March 14, 1963,” he scrawled.
He described the carefree path of an adventurous young man in an exotic milieu that the world would soon wash over. A few days before, down the trail at Namche Bazaar, “it turned into quite a night for three of us who ended up eating wild goat and drinking chang in some Sherpa’s house … lots and lots of very good chang.”
Breitenbach looked toward the mountain, too.
“We’ve been divided into two groups now – one for the South Col and the other for an attempt on the West Ridge,” Breitenbach wrote. “Barry [Corbet] and I are both on the West Ridge and happy about it.
“The fact that we’re going to try the West Ridge is definite, but is still not to be public knowledge,” the letter reads. “Attempting this route reduces our chance of climbing the mountain at all and makes it most unlikely that any of us going on the West Ridge will see the summit. Nevertheless, the opportunity of trying a new route cannot be passed up.”
He closed after five pages as the Himalaya became moody.
“The afternoon clouds are coming up now,” Breitenbach wrote. “I probably won’t have another chance to write until base camp. I miss you very much – Love, Jake.”
A standard 4 by 9 1/2 inch envelope, addressed to Mrs. J.E. Breitenbach and marked with red, white and blue airmail slashes around its edges carried the letter to the United States. A line drawing of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse graces the envelope’s bottom, right corner. “American Mount Everest Expedition 1963” is printed on the envelope in three places. “Hotel Royal, Kathmandu, Nepal” is the return address.
Another inscription is stamped at an angle.
“CARRIED BY RUNNER”
Sources: American Alpine Journal; Jackson Hole News&Guide; The Breitenbach Collection at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming; James Ramsey Ullman’s, “Americans on Everest,” and other historical material.
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Wyoming
Wyoming Ranchers Hoping Solar Can Lower Costs Say Utilities and the State Stand in Their Way – Inside Climate News
COKEVILLE, Wyo.—Tim Teichert and Jason Thornock want the sun to help them survive as ranchers in Cokeville, Wyoming. On an overcast May day, the two drove around the one-restaurant town, lamenting high electricity prices and restrictive Wyoming laws that they say have thrown an unnecessary burden onto their broad shoulders.
“I pay $90,000 in an electric bill,” Teichert said as he and Thornock made their way through fields of cattle, alfalfa and hay. “Jason’s about $150,000. If Jason had that $150,000 back, his kids could all come back to Cokeville, and work and live here, and you’d be able to raise kids here in Cokeville.”
In 2023, hoping to improve their margins, Teichert and Thornock each applied for Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grants, which the Biden administration had infused with $2 billion to help support farmers interested in renewable energy.
While neither man was thrilled about the prospect of applying for federal funds—they prefer smaller government—they were interested in using solar to cover their own electrical demand. Teichert and Thornock say this could have saved them five or six figures annually, and made their businesses more attractive to their kids.
Across Wyoming and the U.S., Americans increasingly face skyrocketing electricity bills. In 2023, Rocky Mountain Power, Teichert and Thornock’s utility and the largest in Wyoming, asked regulators at the state’s Public Service Commission to approve a nearly 30 percent rate increase; the next year, they asked to raise rates by close to 15 percent. Though both requests were ultimately granted at lower rates, affordability concerns have sent almost every corner of Wyoming scrambling for ways to defray rising electricity costs.
A fraction of homeowners already do this in the Equality State by using credits from their utility for generating their own electricity using solar panels and sending excess amounts back to the grid, an arrangement known as net metering. But Wyoming law caps net-metering systems at 25 kilowatts, large enough to include just about any homeowner’s rooftop solar system, but too small to provide enough credits to offset all the electricity larger properties, like ranches, draw from the grid.
Earlier this year, a coalition of environmentalists, businesses and ranchers, including Teichert and Thornock, unsuccessfully supported a bill that would have raised Wyoming’s net-metering cap to 250 kilowatts.
Teichert and Thornock were initially counting on changes to the law as they eyed REAP funds. Teichert, a sturdy man with pale blue eyes and a trim Fu Manchu mustache, eventually applied and was awarded a $440,000 grant to build a ranch shed supporting around 250 kilowatts of solar panels. Today, with no ability to net meter, he fears he may never recoup his investment, which was over $500,000. Thornock, whose wide, boyish grin sits atop a hefty build, was approved for $868,000 in REAP funding to build a 648-kilowatt solar system. Concerned that his project’s viability rested on the judgment of state lawmakers, he returned the money.
The Department of Agriculture has since stopped funding renewable energy projects on farmland. REAP was a “huge opportunity we all missed in Wyoming,” Thornock said.
The two men are not the only Wyoming ranchers interested in using solar to give their businesses more stability.
“A lot of ranchers really look to renewables to help diversify their revenue stream, keep the ranch whole, and keep their family on the ranch, keep the land together,” said Chris Brown, executive director of Powering Up Wyoming, a renewable energy advocacy group. Most of the ranchers he’s worked with are interested in leasing their lands to solar developers, rather than purchasing their own systems, and his organization is neutral on net-metering.
Rocky Mountain Power says it is open to changes in the state’s net-metering laws, and the utility did not take a position on net metering during last spring’s legislative session.
“It’s not a level playing field; you’re dealing with a monopoly—a government-subsidized monopoly, government-protected monopoly.”
— Jason Thornock
“We have worked diligently in recent decades with customers, municipalities, state legislatures, in order to facilitate particular regulatory and pricing changes to allow customers to meet their energy goals,” said David Eskelsen, a spokesperson for PacifiCorp, Rocky Mountain Power’s parent company and a subsidiary of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
If rate hikes keep coming and margins don’t improve, Teichert, who runs his ranch with his brother, fears he and Thornock will eventually have to sell their lands, which crisscross much of Cokeville. They find other utilities’ arguments against net-metering expansion dubious, and fume at the business model and regulatory environment that allows utilities to earn enormous profits but restricts their customers from making their own energy use more affordable. The two ranchers find it particularly ironic that Rocky Mountain Power could build power lines across their property to carry renewable energy to California, Oregon and Washington, while it is illegal for them to install enough solar panels to cover their own electrical bills.
“It’s not a level playing field; you’re dealing with a monopoly—a government-subsidized monopoly, government-protected monopoly,” Thornock said on his ride to see Teichert’s solar array. “It’s got all the power in the world. And, like Tim says, they want to sell renewable energy to California, [Washington] and Oregon. They won’t let us do it because they want the control.”
Reaping Few Rewards
Teichert pulled his truck through a gate and into a field of alfalfa and hay. Just beyond was a shed with 18 red steel legs that looked like an enormous centipede straddling bales of hay and some farming equipment. On top of the shed sat Teichert’s $1.1 million solar system, which was designed to cover the electrical costs of running all his irrigation system’s pivots and pumps.
If Teichert could net meter, he says he would be more competitive with ranchers just a few miles away in Idaho and Utah, where net-metering laws are much less restrictive than in Wyoming.
In Idaho, ranchers can install up to 100 kilowatts of solar, and that number jumps to 2 megawatts for ranchers in Utah, 80 times the limit in Wyoming.
Rocky Mountain Power charges irrigators different base electricity rates in each state, but regardless of the price of the power, any savings are helpful to big users like agricultural operations.
“Quite a few of the farmers [in Idaho and Utah] do it,” said Teichert, of net-metered solar.
In 2023, while Teichert was designing his system, Thornock was considering whether it was wise to spend his money on a solar array. He believed there was a good chance Wyoming wouldn’t change its law to increase the cap on net metering. Since his system would be more than 25 times the size that’s allowed to net meter, Thornock anticipated it would be extremely difficult for it to pay for itself if he wasn’t credited for sending excess electricity to the grid. He backed out of his REAP grant, and advised Teichert to do the same.
But Teichert forged ahead and installed his panels, believing it would be no big deal to convince Wyoming lawmakers to adjust the state’s net-metering law—especially given the more advantageous arrangement ranchers in Idaho and Utah enjoy with the same utility. “I thought I’d be ahead of everybody,” he said.
Once the bill to raise Wyoming’s net-metering cap failed, Teichert pivoted. He began exploring a power purchase agreement with Rocky Mountain Power, in which the utility would buy electricity from him like he was a power plant. He said he had been told by the company installing his panels that a power purchase agreement could net him a good deal.
But when he saw how much the utility would pay him, he laughed. The utility would give him less than 1 cent per kilowatt hour in winter periods of low demand, and about 4 cents in peak summer demand hours. He would get much more of a financial benefit from the electricity he sent to the grid if he was instead compensated through net metering, which Wyoming law typically requires be credited at Rocky Mountain Power’s retail rate of electricity. The utility charges him around 14 cents per kilowatt hour, he said.
Setting up to sell his excess electricity to the grid through a power purchase agreement could leave Teichert even deeper in the hole, he added, as the utility informed him it would need $43,000 just to look at connecting his system to its grid.
Originally, Teichert expected to pay off his solar shed in 10 years, but with the additional costs and the rates the utility offered, “I don’t know that I’ll ever come out on the deal,” he said.
And now, the federal support that incentivized him to pursue solar has been eliminated; in August the Department of Agriculture announced it would no longer fund solar or wind projects through REAP.
Teichert eventually decided to purchase a battery system to back up his panels. He does not plan on selling any of his electricity to Rocky Mountain Power.
“I should have listened to Jason,” he said.
Thornock feels he dodged a bullet.
Driving away from the solar shed, Teichert and Thornock said their history with Rocky Mountain Power contradicts other utilities’ arguments against net-metering.
Lines in the Valley
The biggest of the power lines crisscrossing the valley where Teichert and Thornock ranch belong to PacifiCorp, whose planned Gateway West project to deliver renewable energy to customers in California, Oregon and Washington would add even more lines. Some of those new lines could cross Teichert and Thornock’s properties, the men say.
They’ve got more experience with power lines than most utility customers, as they actually built some of the smaller lines coming off Rocky Mountain Power’s system.
Both men say the utility sent inflated estimates of the cost to install new lines to bring additional power to their growing ranching operations, leading them to seek help elsewhere.
In 2020, Teichert said he contracted a company to put in a power line for about $600,000 after the utility told him he would need to pay over $1 million for the same job, he said. Thornock has repeatedly testified to state lawmakers that Rocky Mountain Power nearly bankrupted him when he first began ranching in the late 2000s after going back and forth with him about whether they would deliver power on lines he had installed. Thornock wound up in court and lost, then had to cover the utility’s attorney fees.
The whole saga “was that close to breaking me,” he said, as Teichert drove by the poles he had installed.
Utilities warn that net-metering systems can allow those with rooftop solar to avoid paying fixed expenses for the grid they feed into, like system maintenance and construction costs, which, according to reporting by the New York Times, account for a growing share of utilities’ spending. “That in effect sets up a subsidy flowing from customers who don’t use net-metering systems to those who do,” said Eskelsen, PacifiCorp’s spokesperson. Any price issues rooftop solar customers cause are confined within their “rate class” of customers who use a similar amount of electricity, he added.
Determining how—or whether—to alter the rates for net-metering customers to make sure they’re paying their fair share for the infrastructure that takes their excess energy has been a sticking point between utilities and Wyoming’s net-metering supporters. Rooftop solar supporters say that subsidization likely occurs all over the grid regardless of whether a homeowner or business is net metering, and claim that avoiding transmission costs saves all ratepayers money.
Experts generally say that rooftop solar’s dependence on infrastructure that it isn’t paying for won’t create billing issues until 10 to 20 percent of a utility’s customer base is in the program. Less than two percent of all Wyoming homes have rooftop solar panels, according to estimates from the Solar Energy Industry Association.
Given all the work he’s paid for, Teichert finds utilities’ arguments about cost sharing disingenuous. “When they sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not paying our share,’ we’ve more than paid our share,” Teichert said. “That bugs me that they lie like that.”
Thornock said he would be happy to pay for any issues a net-metering solar system may cause—provided the new rate is fair, and preferably not suggested by a utility.
“We’re not asking for a handout. I don’t want Rocky Mountain Power subsidizing me,” he said. “I just want to be able to compete. I just want to be able to make a living.”
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When told of Teichert and Thornock’s experience building their own power lines, Eskelsen was surprised, but said it was possible in such a rural area. “That’s not something that we typically allow,” he said.
But what really bothers Teichert and Thornock is the utility business model. In Wyoming, as determined by the Public Service Commission in the company’s latest rate case hearing, Rocky Mountain Power is entitled to a 9.5 percent return on equity, around the national average, according to S&P estimates. In other words, if Rocky Mountain Power uses shareholder funds to build long-term assets, like power plants, it can recover up to an additional 9.5 percent of the total value of those assets from its customers and deliver that back to shareholders as profit.
This incentivizes Rocky Mountain Power to “explode [their] costs,” Thornock said. “Ten percent of 10 million is a lot more than [10] percent of a million,” he continued. “Even I can do that math.”
At least one former utility executive believes that the nationwide average of around 10 percent return on equity for utilities is too lucrative, and should be closer to 6 percent to more appropriately reflect the benefits and risks of investing in a utility.
“We’re not asking for a handout. I don’t want Rocky Mountain Power subsidizing me. I just want to be able to compete. I just want to be able to make a living.”
— Jason Thornock
A utility’s return on equity is misunderstood, Eskelsen said, and functions more like a ceiling than a guarantee. Because utilities must “open our books to utility commissions,” who judge whether the company has spent prudently, they have a “powerful incentive” not to exaggerate their costs, he said. A commission disallowing a utility’s costs cuts profits for utility shareholders, he added.
Back in Teichert’s truck, he and Thornock laughed at the fantasy of getting a guaranteed profit on cattle and crop purchases. “I think that’s why there’s such a huge blowback from these utilities on net metering,” Thornock said. “They can see that if we let these guys produce their own power, they’re going to see right through all the nonsense.”
“And I don’t blame them,” he continued. “If I was in their shoes, man, that’s crazy money—and they’re protected by the government to do it.”
Staying Alive
For their way of life to remain sustainable for themselves, their kids and grandkids, Wyoming needs to either increase the net-meeting cap or change how it regulates utilities “so we can have something fair,” Teichert said.
But he and Thornock see many of Wyoming’s representatives as too deferential to utilities, and neither of them has much faith that the state will overhaul the system.
While it is not unusual for politicians in Wyoming to accept donations from sectors they regulate, at least one member of the Wyoming Senate has close professional ties to a utility. Dan Dockstader, a state Senator representing Teton and Lincoln counties, which includes Cokeville, is a board member of Lower Valley Energy, an electric cooperative.
As last year’s net-metering bill came up for a vote in the Senate, Dockstader amended the bill to exempt electric utility co-ops from Public Service Commission oversight when it came to setting net-metering customers’ rates. The commission now has “limited jurisdiction over eighteen retail rural electric cooperatives,” according to its website.
The amendment didn’t sit well with Thornock. “[Dockstader is] representing Lower Valley Energy, he’s not representing the people who are using the power,” he said.
“I was representing the interests of the Wyoming Rural Electric Association (WREA) with 14 electric power distribution cooperates and another three generation and transmission cooperates,” Dockstader said, in an email. “All efforts to pass legislation should include a balanced approach with the rural cooperatives.”
Those who have been trying to find a way to raise Wyoming’s net-metering cap agree that utilities hold a lot of sway with lawmakers in Cheyenne.
“We watched numerous amendments chip away at the original intent of the bill, to the point where we realized if it passed it would actually be a step back for rooftop solar deployment in Wyoming,” said John Burrows, climate and energy director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
“Utilities have established, professional lobbyists,” he continued. “They lobbied quite aggressively on this issue and I suspect that that had an impact on where the bill went.”
Moving forward, net-metering supporters are trying to resolve their differences with utility companies through a third-party facilitator before introducing another bill, according to Burrows.
“Net metering still needs to happen,” Thornock said. Other energy sources, like small modular nuclear reactors that can generate power without emissions, but rely on unproven technologies, intrigue him—but he worries they’ll also be hobbled by the kinds of problems plaguing net metering. “If we don’t get this net-meeting stuff figured out we’re not going to be able to take advantage of the technology that’s coming,” he said.
Clouds shrouded the high sun over Cokeville when Teichert dropped Thornock off at his house around noon. Cruising around his hometown, where he once taught middle school English, Teichert pointed out about half a dozen homes sporting rooftop solar panels. As the cost of living goes up, his 91-year-old mother’s house may be next.
“At some point, my mom’s gonna have to choose between, do you turn on the power or do you buy groceries?” he said.
Rising costs, including for electricity, pose a similar dilemma to his business. “If it gets to the point where you can’t afford to ranch, our only option is to start selling 35-acre parcels,” he said.
Eventually, Teichert navigated toward the mountains. He slowed to admire the clarity of a creek, pulled over to gush over the ski slopes just outside of town and spoke eloquently about Cokeville’s history as an energy hub. But on his way home, he saw ranchland that had been carved up and sold to developers, and his eyes winced with angst. He kept driving.
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Jake Bolster reports on Wyoming and the West for Inside Climate News. Previously, he worked as a freelancer, covering climate change, energy, and the environment across the United States. He holds a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University.
Penn State beats Wyoming 40-7
12/13/2025 08:30:01 PM
Penn State won its 75th consecutive dual meet by beating Wyoming 40-7 on the road Saturday night. The Lions won eight of 10 bouts, including four victories by fall.
Penn State returns to the mat next Saturday in Nashville. The Lions wrestle North Dakota State and Stanford at the Collegiate Wrestling Duals. If they win both, they will pass Oklahoma State for the Division I record for most consecutive dual victories with 77.
Here are the full results from Saturday night:
125 pounds: No. 2 Luke Lilledahl (So.), Penn State TF Sefton Douglass, Wyoming, 18-3 (3:26) (PSU 5-0)
133 pounds: No. 10 Marcus Blaze (Fr.), PSU F Luke Willochell, Wyoming (3:39) (PSU 11-0)
141 pounds: Nate Desmond (Fr.) Penn State d. John Alden, Wyoming, 11-4 (PSU 15-0)
149 pounds: No. 1 Shayne Van Ness (Jr.), PSU F No. 30 30 Gabe Willochell, Wyoming, 2:54 (PSU 20-0)
157 pounds: No. 15 PJ Duke (Fr.), Penn State F No. 23 Jared Hill, Wyoming, 4:09 (PSU 26-0)
165 pounds: No. 1 Mitchell Mesenbrink (Jr.), PSU F Sloan Swan, Wyoming, 2:00 (35-0 PSU)
174 pounds: No. 1 Levi Haines (Sr.), Penn State TF No. 28 Riley Davis, Wyoming, 18-1 (4:50) (PSU 37-0)
184 pounds: No. 4 Rocco Welsh (So.), PSU d. No. 12 Eddie Neitenbach, Wyoming, 4-1 (PSU 40-0)
197 pounds: No. 2 Joey Novak, Wyoming md. Connor Mirasola, 10-2 (PSU 40-4)
285 pounds: No. 10 Christian Carroll, Wyoming d. No. 11 Cole Mirasola, 10-4 (PSU 40-7)
FINAL: PSU 40, Wyoming 7
Things to do in Fort Collins during winter break
Need to entertain your brood during the winter break from school? Here are 5 things to do in Fort Collins.
Weary of winter already?
Kick back in one of the many natural hot tubs our area has to offer.
Colorado and Wyoming are sprinkled with natural hot springs, with various resorts each offering something different — think untouched natural scenery, tropical plant-laden atriums and cold riverside plunge pools.
Virtually dip your toes in with this list and see if any stick out to you for a future winter getaway.
Hot springs to visit in Colorado, Wyoming
Strawberry Park Hot Springs
Where: 44200 County Road 36, Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Need to relax? Head to Strawberry Park Hot Springs where you’ll find thermal mineral water pools surrounded by Steamboat Springs’ natural beauty.
The pools are open to both its day visitors — admission costs $20 per person for a two-hour reservation — and overnight lodgers. It also offers up massage options and aqua therapy in private pools.
Located about 165 miles from Fort Collins, Strawberry Park Hot Springs is a roughly 3.5-hour drive away. From Nov. 1 through May 1, four-wheel drive with snow tires or chains are required to get to the hot springs. To avoid tough road conditions, Strawberry Park encourages contacting its shuttle partners to schedule drop off and pick up.
Pets, outside food, glass, alcohol and smoking are prohibited.
Minors are not permitted after dark, and clothing is optional after dark.
Hot Sulphur Springs
Where: 5609 Spring Road, Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado
Soak your worries away at Hot Sulphur Springs Resort & Spa. The resort — once used as a winter campground for Native Americans — is now home to 20 manmade pools supplied by a handful of natural hot springs that flow through the resort and into the Colorado River, according to its website. Located about 130 miles away, the springs are a roughly 3-hour drive from Fort Collins.
Its pools — which run from 98 to 112 degrees — are open yearround and welcome walk-ins. Adult day passes cost $30, senior day passes cost $23 and children’s passes (ages 4-11) cost $16. Towels and robes are also available for rent.
Pets (except trained service animals), outside food, glass containers, alcohol, smoking and vaping are prohibited.
Indian Hot Springs
Where: 302 Soda Creek Road, Idaho Springs, Colorado
Located the closest to Fort Collins on this list, Indian Hot Springs is a quick two-hour jaunt down Interstates 25 and 70. Once there, you’ll find a large indoor mineral water swimming pool and tropical plant-strewn atrium as well as private baths, outdoor tubs and geothermal caves.
Regular admission to the indoor swimming pool costs $30 per person Monday through Thursday and $35 per person Friday through Sunday. Caves are open to visitors 18 years old and older and can be accessed for $35 per person Monday through Thursday and $40 per person Friday through Sunday. Prices are different when “summit pricing” is in effect. Check the calendar on the Indian Hot Springs website for those dates.
Private baths and outdoor tubs can be reserved for varying rates. For more information, or to make a reservation, visit the Indian Hot Springs website.
Glenwood Hot Springs Resort
Where: 415 E. 6th St., Glenwood Springs, Colorado
At more than 200 miles away, Glenwood Springs is a bit of a hike — but that hike comes with beautiful scenery and, of course, hot springs. Try its Glenwood Hot Springs Resort, a fixture since 1888 that offers up a collection of hot springs pools, including its historic Grand Pool, an athletic club and other amenities.
Day passes range from $38 to $55 for adults and teenagers and $27 to $34 for children, with pricing varying based on off-peak and peak times. Reservations are not required. For more information, visit the resort website.
The Springs Resort
Where: 323 Hot Springs Blvd., Pagosa Springs, Colorado
Located more than 300 miles away in Pagosa Springs, The Springs Resort is a worthy weekend trip contender instead of a day drive. But despite its distance, it has plenty to offer — more than 50 hot springs pools, cold river plunges, a waterfall, steam grotto and more.
You can either stay at its resort or reserve a day pass to visit its pools, with general admission passes costing $69 for adults and $37 for children ages 3-12. For more information, or to make a reservation, visit the resort website.
Hot Springs State Park
Where: 51 US Highway 20 North, Thermopolis, Wyoming
Colorado can’t have all the fun. While located quite a ways away — 350 miles from Fort Collins — Wyoming has some impressive natural hot springs of its own in Thermopolis’ Hot Springs State Park. There are three soaking pools and a free and open-to-the-public Wyoming State Bath House. The bath house is open 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12-5:30 p.m. Sundays in the winter. For more information, call 307-864-2176.
Want more Fort Collins development news? Subscribe to The Buzz, the Coloradoan’s weekly dive into local business, development, real estate and restaurant news.
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