Jackson Knoll built Jackson’s Hideaway in 2019 as an extension of his ski shop, Jackson’s Base Camp, to further his goal of making skiing feel more approachable.
He wants customers and members to feel like they have an inside track in a sport that can feel costly and frustrating — to feel like they have someone in their corner in a complicated sport.
“There’s a lot of reasons to not get out and go skiing,” he said. “But if you have that passion, that drive and want, we want to just strip those excuses out and remove them. We’re always thinking, ‘How do we make it easy?'”
Knoll said the idea came from years of watching small problems pile up into reasons people stay home — when your boots are in one place, skis in another, the kids have outgrown last year’s gear, untuned skis and socks and mittens that lost their pairs months ago.
Jackson’s Hideaway sits at the base of Park City Mountain, beneath the ski shop Knoll opened in 2013 after signing a lease on a small 1,300 square-foot space and launching Jackson’s Base Camp just in time for ski season.
Knoll grew up outside Detroit, skiing at Mt Brighton Resort, where his love of the sport started on a hill with just 230 vertical feet.
“I worked in the local shop when I was 14 years old with a broom and a rag, and I worked for gear,” he said.
He swept wax, cleaned helmets and gradually moved into rentals and retail. By college, he was running the ski program at college in Michigan while working at a local ski shop. After graduating with a business degree, Knoll worked briefly for Arbor Snowboards in Venice Beach, California, helping design and engineer snowboards. Then in 2008, he came to Utah on a ski trip and never left.
At Jackson’s Base Camp, Knoll said he wanted to change how ski rentals were typically done. The shop rents retail quality equipment and replaces it frequently, rather than cycling through older gear year after year.
“We only carried retail-quality product,” he said. “We get new gear every year — the same gear I own and my managers own.”
He also wanted to remove barriers for families. One of the shop’s most popular programs offers season rentals for children 12 and under for about $100 for the entire year, with free swaps all season for when kids grow or progress.
“Kids 12 and under get skis, boots and poles for 100 bucks for the whole year,” he said. “If your kid grows in the middle of the year, we’ll size him up.”
In 2017, Knoll expanded into a neighboring space, increasing the footprint from 1,300 square feet to more than 7,000 square feet. The expansion allowed for a full-service tuning facility, a larger demo ski fleet and expanded boot fitting. It also allowed Knoll to lean further into the idea behind the name “Base Camp.”
“This is where you start your adventure,” he said. “It’s where you call if you need support, and it’s where you end with high fives.”
Around the same time, Knoll said he began noticing a shift in ski culture. When he first arrived in Utah, he said skiing often centered on performance and athleticism — longer skis, bigger terrain and how hard someone could charge down the mountain.
“It was always like, if you’re not skiing the longest ski on the wall, are you even a skier?” he said.
Today, he said, skiing feels a lot more social. People meet friends, grab lunch, take a few laps and spend time talking rather than skiing bell to bell. Hideaway was Knoll’s response to that shift. The private club opened in 2019 with membership to the ski-in, ski-out clubhouse including lockers, a pool, hot tubs, a sauna, a steam room and free ski demos and tuning, including race tuning.
The membership structure offers options for couples, families and weekday skiers. The weekday membership runs Monday through Thursday, aimed at retirees or locals who avoid weekend crowds.
Members also have access to additional club spaces tied to Park City Mountain Village and Canyons Village, as well as a shop and location at Alta Ski Area that he opened two years ago.
Knoll said another piece of the club’s role is helping members expand their skiing beyond one resort. Utah has more than a dozen ski areas within a few hours of Park City, but, he said, many skiers still spend the season lapping the same terrain simply because trying somewhere new feels intimidating.
“Some of our members say that the best thing to do when you go to a new resort is try to find the U14 ski team,” he said. “Because those kids know where to go. And so do we.”
Hideaway tries to remove that barrier to entry by organizing trips and transportation so members can explore other mountains without worrying about the logistics. The club works with Sunpeak Transportation to bring members on day trips to resorts like Snowbasin, and Knoll said the team often encourages people to branch out to other Utah mountains as well, operating on the idea that if the logistics are handled, people are far more likely to try something new.
Knoll said Hideaway hosts regular events designed to give members a reason to gather, talk and meet people with whom they might otherwise never ski. From trivia nights and wine tastings to women’s social events, vendor demo days and casual gatherings where members can test next season’s skis, Hideaway hosts a steady lineup of programming aimed at building new connections around the sport.
The club holds annual traditions to connect people across town, such as its annual scavenger hunt race at Park City Mountain. Teams receive clue sheets and spend hours racing between lifts, solving challenges and completing tasks scattered around the resort. Members spend days preparing for it, mapping routes and recruiting teammates.
“It’s aggressive,” Knoll said. “They will hide skis in different zones because they’re like, I can save 13 minutes if I run and click in over there.”
For Knoll, the scavenger hunt represents the kind of environment he hoped the club would create: a place where members begin organizing their own traditions, such as the Super Bowl party that members stole from the club once they grew close enough that they started hosting the event themselves.
“We lost our Super Bowl party because our members took it over at their house,” he said. “So now we close the shop and we go party at their house instead.”
Instead of relying on long days of skiing to keep members engaged, the club shifted its focus toward what happens after the lifts stop spinning. Knoll said the team leaned more heavily into afternoon programming, building activities that give people a reason to stick around even when conditions aren’t ideal, particularly this season.
“We had three fantastic days of winter this year,” he joked. “It’s not a memorable day every day, but everybody’s coming in smiling.”
The internal structure of the business plays a large role in that experience as well. Jackson’s Base Camp and Hideaway employ roughly 25 people, all of whom are year-round, salaried staff rather than seasonal employees.
“It’s super important that we have that recognizable face coming back,” he said.
For many members, he said, the staff are part of the reason they return. They know who tunes their skis, who fits their boots and who greets them when they walk through the door. His staff work long weeks during the winter season, but summer schedules drop significantly. Employees receive health, dental and vision benefits along with extended vacation time during the offseason.
Knoll said the approach reflects lessons he learned earlier in his career when he felt undervalued working in the industry.
“We’re also there for the tourists. We know that they’re kind of the life vein for Park City,” said Knoll. “But we want to be the local shop. We’re here for you. You’ve got a guy.”