By Christina MacIntosh 
Jackson Hole News&Guide
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

JACKSON — After a suspected bat colony was discovered above eight guest rooms in Jackson Lake Lodge, health officials are tracking down hundreds of guests to evaluate their risk of rabies exposure.

Since June 2, Grand Teton Lodge Company has received eight reports of overnight guests who may have been exposed to bats in those rooms. The Lodge Company operates Jackson Lake Lodge, as well as Jenny Lake Lodge and facilities in the Colter Bay area.

The Vail Resorts-owned firm received enough reports from guests that health officials determined that it was “not individual bats flying into rooms,” said Dr. Alexia Harrist, Wyoming’s state health officer.

Bats may have been in the area since the rooms opened on May 15, Harrist said. The state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are reaching out to any guests who stayed in the rooms since that time to conduct a rabies risk assessment. More than 200 guests have stayed in the rooms since the beginning of the season, with public health officials still working on compiling the list of potential exposures.

Alex Klein, vice president of the Grand Teton Lodge Company, deferred questions about the matter to Teton Park. In a prepared statement, the park said it is working with the National Park Service, the Lodge Company and state and federal health officials to address potential guest exposures. 

“There is no immediate threat to the public,” the park wrote on an online webpage about rabies and the incident. The webpage may be found at TinyURL.com/GTNPbats. 

The Wyoming Department of Health is leading the response.

The room block has been closed, and officials are working to get a mitigation team into the lodge to deal with the situation. When that will happen is unclear. 

The incident was announced only weeks before this year’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, which is set for Aug. 21 to 23. That’s an annual economic forum where Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and other top economists and financiers meet to discuss international fiscal policy.

Guests between May 15 and July 27 who have questions about their stay can contact Jackson Lake Lodge’s room management team at 307-543-3044 or RoomsGTLC@vailresorts.com. The impacted rooms are 516, 518, 520, 522, 524, 526, 528 and 530.

A potential sleepover with a bat is concerning because they can transmit rabies, if infected, through bites or scratches, and bat bites can be invisible. 

Though it can be treated with post-exposure vaccines, rabies is always fatal once symptoms appear. Though healthy bats are not interested in biting humans, “animals with rabies don’t act normally,” Harrist said.

Health officials are reaching out to any guests who stayed in those rooms out of an abundance of caution, Harrist said. It’s unlikely that guests who did not see bats during their stay would have shared a room with a bat. But people who cannot communicate potential exposure, like children or deep sleepers, would be considered at-risk. The Wyoming Department of Health is working with state health agencies in visitors’ home states to conduct assessments.

The National Park Service owns Jackson Lake Lodge, but the Lodge Company operates it via a concessions contract.

Built by the financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the late 1950s, the hotel is one of the most iconic buildings in Teton Park, and designated as a National Historic Landmark. It has international, historical significance as a former meeting site of U.S. and Soviet leaders towards the end of the Cold War. The world’s top financiers meet there every August. Its modern architecture heralded a National Park Service-wide shift in how buildings were constructed.

The building has also seen challenges. 

In January 2023, a sprinkler pipe burst, sending water onto the building’s third floor during the winter, when the lodge was closed. Teton Park and the Lodge Company said the leak didn’t do much damage.

Guests in Grand Teton National Park — and people in Teton County, as a whole — are also no strangers to bat encounters. 

In 2017, over a dozen college students were treated after spending the night in a building at the AMK Ranch with bats. Two years later, a rabid bat bit a Teton Park guest near Jenny Lake. That person was also treated. In 2022, the park again warned of a possible rabid bat on the Cascade Canyon Trail.

Rabies has caused no recorded deaths in Teton County in recent memory.