MSS August Newsletter

It's wildflower season on the mountain! If you've ever wondered how the trail “Lupine Way’ got its name, just have a walk-about up there right now. So many lupine!

Summer is in high gear in Teton Village. Events are happening every weekend, including Music on the Commons on Sunday evenings. This is a great ‘friends-from-out-of-town’ event or a good place enjoy a sloshie after riding the Village trails.

The North Viewing platform is nearing completion. This project is in its second summer of construction and we are aiming for a Labor Day opening.

The big update for this newsletter is that instructor wages have been approved for the 2023-2024 season! If you remember back to the end of the 2022 season, we had four priorities for increasing instructor wages: base wages, private lesson incentives, seasonal program incentives, and training wage. Last winter, we focused our increases on base wages and private lesson incentives.

For the upcoming 2024 season, we are prioritizing three wage initiatives:

• Increasing base wages to ensure everyone on our staff receives a wage increase.

• Increasing seasonal program incentives to be more aligned with our class lesson student incentives, and to standardize the incentive across all seasonal programs.

• Increasing training wage to $15/hour to recognize the value of training for our staff, guests, and resort.

Please see a summary of wage increases below. You can see the approved points wage system for the 2023-2024 season here.

Base Wage Increase

Training Wage Increase

Seasonal Program Incentive

The decision to increase seasonal program incentives and training wages reflects the significance of these two programs within our school. It says a lot about our culture of supporting our community and fostering the growth of young skiers and riders, and our commitment to developing industry-leading instructors. Please recognize - with a huge cheer - the efforts that Matt and Ann put into these initiatives.

As we look ahead to the 2024-2025 winter season, we are planning to replace the PPP with a graduated base wage system for our instructors. Still in its early stages and subject to approval, this system would mean that instructor base wages increase at different hours thresholds throughout the season, allowing you to earn more wages in-season. Additionally, this change would result in your wages being taxed as regular earnings rather than supplemental earnings, leading to potential tax benefits. We’ll keep you in the loop as we move this plan forward.

Probooking is OPEN! Please start to enter your booking requests for the 2023-24 season. If you need a refresher on doing that, check out this short tutorial (LINK HERE). The Sales team will be checking for these requests and entering them onto schedules. This is also a good time to ensure/remind your guests to purchase their lift access.

All MSS products will be available for online purchase starting August 1. If you have guests that book a blend of products (group lessons for the kiddos, for instance), please let them know about this opportunity as well.

A quick reminder here- for those of you that were new to us last year- you DO NOT need to apply for a job again this season. You will automatically receive an offer when those go out in mid-September.

Lastly- we are pulling together a summer get-together. We are currently planning on a late August date - stay tuned for details!

Until then- enjoy the days and see you soon!

Mountain Sports School Management

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

P.O. Box 290

Teton Village, WY 83025