Amangani

From the crest of East Gros Ventre Butte, a few miles outside Jackson in Wyoming, the Snake River valley spreads west to the wall of the Teton Range. Amangani opened on that ridge in 1998, the first resort Aman built in the United States, and every main room in it is turned to face the mountains.

History

Adrian Zecha founded Aman with the opening of Amanpuri in Phuket in 1988, and within a decade the group had built its name across Asia with small resorts of great restraint. Jackson Hole was its choice for a first American house. The name joins the Sanskrit aman, peace, with a word for home, and the site, on the butte between the town and the Snake River, gave the resort a view across the whole valley. Amangani opened in 1998. A second American Aman, Amangiri, followed in the desert of southern Utah in 2009, and the two remain the group's best-known houses in the American West.

Architecture and design

Edward Tuttle, the American designer behind Amanpuri and many of the early Aman resorts, designed the building. He worked in Oklahoma sandstone, redwood and cedar, with tall windows and a long, low profile that follows the line of the ridge. The great room rises to a double height, with stone fireplaces and windows onto the Tetons. The interiors are spare: wood, leather and stone, with the American West present in the materials rather than in decoration, and very little to distract from the view.

Rooms and suites

The suites are large and simple, each with a fireplace, a wide window facing the valley and a deep soaking tub placed so that bathers look out over the landscape. Platform beds and built-in seating in wood keep the rooms uncluttered, and the larger suites add separate living rooms and balconies.

Dining

The Grill serves breakfast, lunch and dinner with the valley below its windows, and its cooking leans on American mountain fare, with game, beef and fish from the region. A terrace is used for meals in the warmer months, and the lounge by the fire serves drinks through the evening.

Wellness

The heated outdoor pool is the resort's best-known feature: an infinity pool of about 35 metres, open through the winter, with a hot tub alongside and the Tetons beyond. Swimming in steaming water with snow on the deck is what most guests remember. The spa offers treatments, and there is a fitness room with views over the valley.

Weddings and events

The resort's small size suits weddings and gatherings of family and close friends rather than large celebrations, held in the great room, on the terraces or by the pool, with the mountains as backdrop.

Location

Jackson's town square, with its arches of shed elk antlers at each corner, is about ten minutes away by car. Jackson Hole Airport lies to the north, inside Grand Teton National Park, about 20 minutes by road. Teton Village and the ski slopes of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort are about half an hour away, and the hotel arranges transport in winter. Just north of town, the National Elk Refuge holds thousands of elk on its flats each winter, and horse-drawn sleighs carry visitors out among them. Yellowstone lies beyond Grand Teton to the north. As a luxury hotel in Jackson, its strength is the view across the valley and the quiet of the butte rather than ski access.