Vice President JD Vance hiked down a popular Jackson Hole trail on the Bridger-Teton National Forest on Wednesday, pausing for 20 minutes with his son, Ewan, to learn about the area’s natural history from a Forest Service ambassador.
Ambassador Randy Roberts was covered in dirt from pulling weeds near Crater Lake on the Old Pass Road above Wilson when Vance’s Secret Service entourage arrived and asked him to show them around. Bears frequent the area; one bit a hiker on the butt earlier this month and the gumshoes wanted a brief tour and a bit of advice.
When Roberts and the agents returned to the lake, Vance and his son were near the water enjoying the surroundings.
Vance’s 9-year-old son Ewan was inquisitive, Roberts said, asking whether there were fish in the pothole feature that’s about 40 yards in diameter.
There aren’t, but Roberts explained how one might tell by spotting a rise. They threw pebbles in the water to create their own concentric circles of ripples.
“That’s what the fish creates when he comes up to get an insect,” Roberts said he explained.
The nature talk on a bench went on for 20 minutes — about beavers, about the Scouts of America who built the bench and so on.
“We were talking so much we forgot to make introductions,” Roberts said. Then, the vice president said, “Hi, I’m JD,” Roberts said, and they shook hands.
The encounter wasn’t planned, Roberts said.
“He and his kid were just typical visitors to the area that had your typical visitor statements and appreciation for the beauty,” Roberts said.
“To me it was kind of great to see a father and son having a tremendous time on the Old Pass Road,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about up there — creating memories.”
Protesters gather
Local law enforcement, the Secret Service and the White House would not say why the vice president was in Jackson Hole or which members of his family might have been along. Vance visited the valley in 2025 to raise funds and reportedly was doing the same this year.
The FAA restricted aircraft Wednesday and Friday from the vicinity of Jackson Hole Airport and over a residential area during the vice president’s apparent three-day visit.
The idyllic forest setting contrasted with a protest at Teton Village where perhaps 20 demonstrators gathered to denounce Vance and Trump administration policies. Protesters believed the vice president would be at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort ski-area base, but Vance was hiking instead.
Jules Shelton, a server at a Jackson restaurant, said she was at the protest “to show JD Vance and all his friends they can’t fly under the radar.” She objected to, among other things, the Trump administration’s policies toward public lands.
“They can’t use our town as an ultra-wealthy playground and have us not blink an eye,” Shelton said.
Eva Dabill, a photographer, was at the village “in protest of JD Vance, his insane loser-y pedophilic friends, their politics and everything they stand for.”
Kent Spence celebrated his birthday at the protest, rallying for public lands and democracy, he said, “while Trump tries to steal our elections.”
Musician Phil Round was demonstrating against the administration’s public land and environmental policies, which he called “an abomination.”
Craig Logan, an organizer with the Indivisible network, said he was fighting against the MAGA agenda of stripping public lands, fighting illegal wars, oppressing the LGBTQ community and diminishing reproductive health care rights for women.
Fuzzy Bunny
Vance was at Crater Lake in the middle of the afternoon when he encountered Roberts, a seasonal employee of the nonprofit Friends of the Bridger Teton. A non-motorized trail network below Mount Glory weaves between stands of conifer forests and meadows and is used in the summer by mountain bikers, hikers and equestrians, and by backcountry and cross-country skiers in the winter.
The paths include the History Trail, an old wagon route into Jackson Hole where valley innkeepers used boulders as billboards to advertise their establishments. Mountain bikers shred Lithium, Fuzzy Bunny and Jimmy’s Mom, among other up- and downhill paths.
Another route, the Old Pass Road, is a paved one-laner that served for decades as a motor road over the Teton Range via 8,431-foot-high Teton Pass. The Bridger-Teton made the trail network area off-limits to motorized travel some decades back.
It is not clear how Vance got to Crater Lake, but several vehicles followed him on the hike down, a stroll of about a mile and a half dropping some 700 vertical feet.
After the hike, Vance and his entourage took off in a motorcade of more than a dozen vehicles, none of which flew the customary vice president’s white limousine flag.
Vance was stepping into his limousine when he paused, got back out and said “Hey, thanks, Randy,” Roberts said.
“He could have just gotten in the car and zoomed off,” Roberts said. “He was really polite and gracious.”
The ambassador had been burying a stinky moose carcass one day, rubbing elbows with the veep the next, he said. He relived the previous 24 hours while in bed that evening, thinking, “was that real?”
Tennessee Watson and Rebecca Huntington contributed to this story.
