TWO MONTHS LATER, ON A THURSDAY in early January, the snowpack is still thin, but the SKI House is coming along. Taped on the beer fridge is a Sunday-school tract uncovered behind the paneling: WHY GOD MADE LITTLE BOYS. Some trim work still needs to happen—always—but the drywall has been taped and painted, the light sconces are wired, and if the varnish on thenew wood floor dries in time for the band to set up, there is going to be one helluva housewarming party here Saturday night.

The house has filled up since I was here last. Spencer Morton, 29, another Vermont expat and a forward for the Jackson Hole Moose Senior A hockey club, has moved into the basement. Alden Wood, 29, an L.A. TV producer turned ski-film producer, has parked her Beemer in the gravel lot out front and moved in across from Charlotte's room. Ski patroller Chessa Jones, 29, is living in the room next to Jeff's. Mark Longfield has returned from his exile back east. And Patrick is back! On-again, off-again resident Patrick Heaney, 29, is taking an extended holiday from his Ph.D. work in material science at the University of Wisconsin, bringing with him a pimped-out Ski-Doo snowmobile and a party vibe. Already the patent holder for a ski-mounted bottle opener, he's convinced the bartenders at the Village Café to mix up a cocktail he calls the Trendy Bitch—Orange Crush and Crown Royal, served over ice in a pint glass with a little black straw. Everyone who's anyone has been tottering around the Café in ski boots holding a bright-orange Bitch.

Charlotte is on edge. There's an issue that's been weighing on her, and this morning she has a meeting at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. She had a good year exposurewise, including a nationwide tour with Off the Grid and TV spots like VH1's Lift Ticket to Ride and Dan Egan's Wild World of Winter. She figured that making the resort's team of sponsored athletes—essentially getting her lift pass comped—would be automatic, but it's turning out to be about as simple as ordering commodes.

The publicists have told Charlotte that they won't be sponsoring her this year—they're going "in a different direction." This puzzles her. She's a great media face for this adult amusement park, and all she wants is to be able to ski. In addition to mountain ambassador Tommy Moe, the resort has signed up six local skiers, including Teton Gravity Research regular Micah Black, 37, and two women: fellow Warren Miller star Lynsey Dyer, 25, and Jess McMillan, 29, winner of the 2007 Freeskiing World Tour.

"We try and focus on young athletes who are up and coming," resort spokeswoman Anna Olson explains to me later by phone.

Charlotte is the first to admit that she's not the most aggressive skier in town. "There are girls here who can stomp me on the mountain," she says. "There will always be someone better than you—this is Jackson. You can't talk in a bar, because your plumber can set world records." Like Whistler, Jackson has become a proving ground; every day a new skier moves here, trying to make it for the cameras of the TGR guys.

"It's funny because I am still younger than most of the 'up-and-comers,' " Charlotte says. "But I can't be an 'up-and-comer' anymore because I started when I was so young. So it's true, I have to constantly keep proving myself."

Charlotte is still invested in her career. "I figure I've got another decade or so," she says. "Assuming of course that you succeed in constantly reinventing yourself along the way." This winter she plans to ski in an all-women's movie from Rage Films, as well as another for Warren Miller. There are more competitions, including the Jackson Hole Freeskiing Open. Of course, she also wants to get involved in an affordable-housing development. She wants to go green, throw grand parties, and have a bigger garden. Still, no pro should have to buy her own lift ticket.

"Maybe I'll move to Whistler for the season," she says.

"What, and leave Jackson?" Jeff says.

While Charlotte heads off to try to straighten things out, the boys are going skiing. There's not much snow—maybe 50 inches, a drought for the Tetons in January—and wind has created some sketchy layers in the snowpack. Caution is king.

Jeff, Matt, Patrick, and I suit up and hit the mountain. Even on a powder day, Jackson's elite skiers spend nearly all of their time out of bounds. Jeff and Matt drop big, confident lines; they know this mountain blindfolded and squeeze every bit of thrill out of the terrain. Genuflecting on his telemark skis in a hunter-orange jacket, Patrick shoots into the trees and squirts back onto the line. This is hard, graceful play, every day, with melon grins under goggles and brotherly punches in the arm.

Around noon, we exit the resort through the lower Rock Springs gate and stop below Fat Bastard, an infamous 50-foot cliff band, to start the 20-minute bootpack up to Rock Springs Bowl. A few other locals are gearing up too, all of us intently watching three skiers on the snowfield above Fat Bastard. A popular traverse runs beneath the cliff, and a slide could bury skiers commuting between the Green River and Rock Springs bowls. Jeff set one off near here in 2001, in fact, when he first moved to the Hole. Luckily no one was hurt.

"They're not gonna drop that with this snowpack, are they?" Jeff says now.

"Dude, that's just stupid," someone says.

One snowboarder, Mott Gatehouse, a friend of the guys, points his video camera up at the three figures, in case one decides to drop. Then, just when it looks like the would-be huckers think better of the situation and start to retreat, there is a thunderous crack, and the run-in fractures and breaks loose. We watch horrified as the first skier points his skis downhill—his only option—and goes over the cliff. The avalanche sucks the other two with it as it cascades onto the traverse below.

There's a collective "Oh, fuck." We're a football field away, and we click into our skis and sidestep toward the slide while Jeff draws his cell phone and calls Valley Dispatch. But before we reach the debris field, we get waved off. Another group, including a doctor, is already digging. Two of the skiers have uncovered themselves.

When Matt, Patrick, and I get back to the resort, we find Jeff, who waited for the ski patrol, standing outside the Village Café talking with sheriff's deputies. "The guy died," he says. His name was Justin Kuntz, we'll learn the next morning. Charlotte doesn't remember it at first, but she skied with the 25-year-old at Whaleback Mountain, New Hampshire, when they were little kids.

The SKI House crew is sobered and saddened, yet no one is surprised. They've all skied stuff just as stupid—hasn't everybody here? It's sometimes easy to forget that life is not a Warren Miller movie—that Neverland is all play, but the consequences can be fatal.