Remembering Jay Pistono

Jay Pistono, Who Made the Jackson Hole Backcountry Safer for Skiers, Dies at 67

The mountaineer taught tourists about the risks they faced on Teton Pass slopes and ensured access to the wilderness he treasured

Jay Pistono on Mount Glory in 2018. JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

When Matt Shriver was buried in a 1990 avalanche, Jay Pistono dug him out.

Shriver, then only 10 years old, had been skiing with his father and brother on Mount Glory, a 10,000-foot peak just north of Teton Pass in Western Wyoming, when the slope released beneath him, carrying him 1,200 feet. Both Shriver and his father were buried.

Pistono, an experienced mountaineer, had just skied the same run and was preparing to head back up to do it again. After the snow settled, he could see Shriver’s father, who was able to speak and breathe despite being mostly buried. But the younger Shriver had disappeared completely beneath the snow.

By Jennifer Latson Oct. 17, 2025 10:00 am ET

Pistono knew he had only minutes to get the boy out alive. He skied across dangerous, shifting debris to the spot where he had last seen him. Then he heard muffled crying and started to dig.

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” Shriver said.

For Pistono, who died Sept. 17 at the age of 67, it was his life’s mission to make the backcountry near Jackson Hole, Wyo., safer for people like Shriver. As the first Teton Pass ambassador—a self-appointed position that eventually became a paid role with the U.S. Forest Service, and which he held for more than two decades—Pistono educated skiers about the hazards they faced and ways to minimize risks to themselves and others.

He also helped ensure that Teton Pass, one of the nation’s premier destinations for backcountry recreation, remained open to the public. As the area became more popular over the years, leading to mounting tensions between skiers, commuters, snowplow drivers and highway-patrol officials, Pistono worked to keep the peace. Without his influence, officials might have restricted entry long ago, said Gary Kofinas, board chair for the nonprofit Teton Backcountry Alliance, of which Pistono was also a founding board member.

“Twenty-five years ago, Jay realized there were increasing concerns on Teton Pass, so he said, what the hell, I’m going to go up there and help,” said Kofinas.

Jay Pistono and his children in the 1990s. PISTONO FAMILY

Hazards abound

Teton Pass, on the stretch of Wyoming Highway 22 that links Jackson Hole to the Teton Valley of eastern Idaho, has always lured backcountry enthusiasts with its wild beauty, deep snowpack, and easy accessibility. Not everyone who skis here, though, recognizes its dangers.

The pass itself is perched 8,400 feet above sea level, with surrounding peaks rising even higher. At these altitudes, dangerous storms pop up quickly. Subzero temperatures and high winds in the winter mean hypothermia can set quickly if someone is lost or injured. And avalanches are always a risk. According to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center, 14 people have been killed over the past decade in Teton-area avalanches. Most of those were inadvertently unleashed by skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers.

In December 2000, a snowboarder died after triggering an avalanche from the top of Mount Glory that buried the highway below in 6 to 10 feet of snow. Because much of the Jackson Hole workforce lives across the pass, thousands of people commute back and forth every day. “No one could get to work in Jackson Hole, and people coming home were trapped away from their families,” said Linda Merigliano, who recently retired from her role as recreation program manager for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, which contains Teton Pass.

Pistono digging steps in 2011. JONATHAN SELKOWITZ

There were rumors that the Wyoming Department of Transportation would cut off access to the Teton Pass parking area.

So Pistono took it upon himself to start spending time at the top of the pass, encouraging people to ski safely and treat others with respect.

“Signs will do so much to spread information, but having people talk to you about what’s going on is really important, too,” he said in a 2017 video recorded by the Teton Backcountry Alliance. “And not so much in a righteous sense, but more just to spread the good word.”

It soon became clear that Pistono, more or less single-handedly, was making a huge improvement on the pass, Merigliano said. In 2006, the Jackson Hole nonprofit Friends of Pathways found the funding to pay him for his work, and in 2015, he became a seasonal employee of the U.S. Forest Service, where Merigliano was his supervisor.

“With Jay, ‘supervision’ is a very loose term. Basically my role was to find funding, get him hired, support him where needed and let him do his job,” she said. “Jay created the position. And he created the model of having educators out there as a friendly presence. He recognized that the most effective method for changing behavior is talking to people, person to person.”

‘Guru of mountain safety’

John Joseph Pistono was born Oct. 18, 1957, in La Salle, Ill., the second oldest of five siblings. His mother, Sylvia Pistono, worked at the Westclox manufacturing plant, and later drove a bus for the local high school. His father, John James Pistono, became head custodian at the high school.

Pistono started leading his own outdoor expeditions at a young age. “When Jay was 13 or 14 and I was 8 or 9, we would drag my dad’s boat to the Illinois River, which was not far from our house, to fish,” said his brother Jim Pistono. “We loved camping out, going mushroom hunting in the woods, and fishing as much as we could.”

Jay Pistono, right, and his brother Jim. PISTONO FAMILY

He was also a gifted athlete who became a star of his high-school football team. At Southern Illinois University, where he majored in outdoor recreation, Pistono discovered a passion for rock climbing. In 1978, he moved to the Jackson Hole area, with $11 in his pocket, according to his telling.

Like many outdoor professionals, Pistono pieced together a living through various seasonal jobs. He worked primarily as a mountain guide in the winters and as a fishing guide in the summers. He also trained as a carpenter and, along with some friends, built his family home on a plot of land along Fish Creek, a tributary of the Snake River, in the shadow of the Tetons.

Pistono was married to Patricia Read Pistono for more than three decades before they divorced. Together, they raised David Pistono, 35, and Maryelizabeth Pistono, 32, who joined their parents on backcountry skiing trips, in a specialized baby carrier, before they could walk.

As children, David and Maryelizabeth often accompanied their dad on the pass. “I don’t think we really knew that he was this guru of mountain safety,” David said. “Once he started getting ‘Teton Pass ambassador’ embroidered on his jackets, it kind of cemented it for me.”

Persuasive power

Near the end of his life, Pistono was struggling with a medical condition called AL amyloidosis, which weakened his heart, forcing him to cut back on some of his more strenuous activities. He planned to officially retire as Teton Pass ambassador this winter and transition to an advisory role with the Teton Backcountry Alliance. Over the years, he trained a cadre of volunteers for the nonprofit, which now has a roster of 20 ambassadors carrying on the work he began.

That work is more important now than ever, said Scott Kosiba, executive director of Friends of the Bridger-Teton, the nonprofit arm of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The backcountry gets busier every year; last winter, trail counters recorded an average of more than 500 people a day on the Teton Pass slopes, with more than 1,300 people on its busiest day.

“We’re seeing more and more people coming out without the skill set and the experience they need, and they’re getting into situations where they are over their heads—but they don’t even know it,” Kosiba said. One of his volunteers recently had to convince a hiker not to attempt to summit Wyoming’s highest mountain wearing only flip-flops, shorts and a T-shirt.

“The challenge for organizations like ours is to communicate the stakes in a way that feels like a learning opportunity instead of somebody with a finger in your face, threatening to give you a ticket,” he said. “That was Jay’s superpower: getting people to hear him and not feel like they were being lectured. And modifying their behavior before they get into a situation where search and rescue is called.”

Some of the people Pistono interacted with were changed forever, including Matt Shriver and his father, the late Ray Shriver. After Pistono rescued them from the 1990 avalanche, Ray began educating himself about backcountry safety, his son recalled.

The more Ray learned, the more he realized how heavily the odds had been stacked against their survival, and he came to feel he had been saved for a reason. He began volunteering for Teton County Search and Rescue, and devoted so many hours to it that it was almost a full-time job. He was killed in a helicopter crash

Pistono rock-climbing in the 1980s. PISTONO FAMILY

during a searchand-rescue mission in 2012. Matt now has the map on which Ray marked the locations of everyone he helped rescue, inspired by his own close call.

“We were so lucky, in a situation like that, that Jay was out there. He was the perfect person to keep you safe in the mountains—he knew exactly what to do,” said Shriver. “I just remember how calm he was when it happened. He didn’t panic, he just took care of it. Took care of us.”