Other than writing and photography, Jeff's favorite job out of all that he has worked in Yellowstone has been that of winter caretaker. Jeff currently contracts to winter caretake 23 buildings operated park wide by Yellowstone General Stores. With this contract Jeff is responsible for looking after all these buildings through the winter season, with an eye out for vandalism and other sorts of damage, as well as for maintenance problems such as natural gas leaks, downed electrical wires, and the like. Principally, however, Jeff's care taking job involves removing huge amounts of snow from the roofs of the buildings in his charge to prevent their collapse under the tremendous weight.
Winterkeeping is a great tradition in Yellowstone, going back to the winter of 1880-81 when George and Sarah Marshall and their three kids spent the winter looking after their own Marshall Hotel at the mouth of Nez Perce Creek. That winter dates 36 years before the creation of the National Park Service, so the tradition of winterkeeping in Yellowstone predates the NPS by that many years. Winterkeeping tradition includes many decades of isolated work and living in the interior of the park when people so engaged had to be self reliant in the extreme, and that is, of course, a situation and a circumstance that appeals greatly to Jeff! One of his favorite descriptions of winterkeeping comes from a woman named Beulah Brown, whom the winterkeepers at Old Faithful hired to tutor their kids during the winter of 1922-23. After watching a winterkeeper named Musser at work on the roof of the Old Faithful Inn, Beulah Brown returned to the winterkeeper house behind the Inn and wrote in her diary "There is a great deal of work to that, as well as an art."
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