The Wall Street Journal-20080201-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Travel -- The Finicky Traveler- Ski Luxury Beyond the Mangy Moose- Jackson Four Seasons Is A Find in Overbuilt Area- Lost on the Mountain

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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Travel -- The Finicky Traveler: Ski Luxury Beyond the Mangy Moose; Jackson Four Seasons Is A Find in Overbuilt Area; Lost on the Mountain

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Driving into the Teton Village ski resort near Jackson, Wyo., we circle around its seemingly endless parking lot, ringed by a pony corral, a dusty golf-course construction project and a big, funky bar called the Mangy Moose. This doesn't look like the place you'd find a luxury hotel.

Finally, on a side road, a discreet sign near a stand of evergreens marks the entrance to what we're looking for: the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole.

Just four years old, this 124-room luxury hotel offers something of an oasis in the ever-expanding jumble of condos, apres-ski bars and run-of-the-mill retail shops that comprise this Swiss-style village in the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, at the base of two mountains in the Grand Teton range. The Four Seasons offers a residence club, condominiums, a spacious spa, upscale restaurants and a heated outdoor pool. (This week, the hotel got Mobil's Five-Star award, one of only four new properties added to the list this year.) With direct access to Rendezvous Mountain, the steep slope known simply as "the big one," the Four Seasons is big enough to cater to large groups and business meetings, and as a result feels a bit institutional.

But what it lacks in intimacy it makes up in service, as we learned when we had a little mishap on the mountain that required extra help from the hotel concierge.

Though we stayed at the hotel before the ski season got under way, there's no better time for enthusiasts to visit than now, thanks to heavy snowfalls that have blanketed Jackson and other resorts in the West. And though the economy is slowing, the construction of high-end ski resorts shows no sign of doing so -- even in areas such as Teton Village better known for more rustic accommodations. A smaller luxury property, The Hotel Terra, just opened near the Four Seasons and bills itself as an "eco-boutique" with a rooftop spa and organic breakfast cafe.

In Mammoth, Calif., Starwood's Westin just opened the Monache resort with 230 luxury units, part of a new Village of Mammoth, and is also opening the Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa near Beaver Creek, Colo., in September. The Ritz-Carlton plans a new residence club in Mammoth for 2010 and a hotel, residence club and spa in North Lake Tahoe, Calif., next year. Back east, the Stowe Mountain Lodge in Vermont will open this spring in an area that hasn't seen a new high-end resort in decades.

The Jackson Four Seasons' 57 condos within the main building range from two to five bedrooms -- 12 of them part of a fractional-ownership rental program, and the rest privately owned but often available for rent through the hotel. A "slopeside" section of the hotel with eight large condo units has a separate entrance.

We booked an executive suite, asking for a mountain view, but instead found ourselves facing directly over the hotel's driveway and entrance portal with a distant view of the pastures across the road from Teton Village. The bedroom was small and windowless and had doors with clear glass panes closing it off from the living area, and for $985 a night, we felt we should do better. So we asked if we could get a room with more separation between bedroom and living room and a mountain view. While staffers had nothing available facing the mountain, they did offer to show us a larger suite farther away from the entrance.

The new room, as it turned out, was actually one of the condo units, a two-bedroom suite with a full kitchen and dining room and a big living room. Despite its size, it felt kind of boxy and cold, its living-room area halved by a wide empty corridor-like space leading to sliding doors and a small outdoor patio. (The hotel says it furnishes all the hotel rooms and residence club rooms to have a cozy, Western feel, and while condo owners can furnish their own, they have to adhere to the hotel's general standards.)

But we liked the idea of spreading out with two full bathrooms and more natural light. Though we heard construction sounds from the golf course early in the morning, the hotel thoughtfully provided earplugs. (The snowfall has silenced the project for now.)

The Four Seasons is very family-friendly, offering toys and pint- size bathrobes for kids, and serving hot chocolate and s'mores by its outdoor pool and fire pit. I did laps in the pool while my husband used the well-equipped fitness center. In the spa, I had a Swedish alpine massage with lavender and eucalyptus essential oils, while my husband enjoyed a deep-tissue version. I also had a manicure and a shampoo and blow-dry in the adjacent salon, where the lone stylist on duty worked feverishly to revive my sadly flattened hair, which seemed to be having its own form of altitude sickness.

At Teton Village, the shops were disappointingly low-rent, and the village itself reminded me of the song about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. The Four Seasons has a small boutique with attractive Western wear (I found myself buying completely impractical but fabulous cowboy boots by Lucchese.) There's also a ski concierge to help arrange lift tickets, rent equipment and book private lessons.

We had a drink in the lobby, a cavernous space with lots of comfortable seating and a big fireplace, as well as a small sushi bar that seemed a little out of place with all of the Western motifs, and didn't seem to have many takers. At the Four Seasons' Westbank Grill, we enjoyed a big buffet with fresh fruit and granola in the morning and a creamy corn soup and a seafood and avocado salad for lunch. The hotel recently transformed its ski-in, ski-out cafe into a steak house, The Peak, offering hearty lunch and apres-ski food.

For dinner, we went out to some of our favorite restaurants in town, including the dining room at the Amangani resort. In summer or fall, I'd rather stay at the much smaller Amangani, for its exclusive, romantic feel and its good base to explore the area for hiking and rafting. But it's miles from the mountain, and for winter sports and family vacations, the Four Seasons is more convenient.

Our mountain mishap came one sunny afternoon when we decided to take a long, scenic gondola ride up the mountain, and then hike down. But halfway, we found the main trail closed, missed the right detour and found ourselves more or less lost. Convinced we would soon be eaten by bears -- despite my husband's assurances that this was unlikely -- I called the hotel on my cellphone. Before long, a young woman at the concierge desk had me on with a staffer at the mountain-resort office who helped guide us back to civilization.

Though it was a tad embarrassing, we made it back to our massage appointments in the nick of time.