Jerry Balint AKA ‘Cool Breeze’
Jerry led a full and active life. After serving four years in the U.S. Air Force, he settled in San Diego, California, in 1957. He took up sky diving, making more than 300 jumps over the next few years. He became an avid surfer while living in San Diego. On a hunting trip to Wyoming he fell in love with the Old West atmosphere. He chose to live in Jackson Hole permanently in the later 1960s because of the rugged outdoor lifestyle and the world-class skiing.
He was hired on the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort ski patrol in 1976, where he worked for nearly 35 years. Along with Peter MacKay, he was instrumental in starting the avalanche dog program during the 1980s. During more than two decades, he had three dogs in the program. Jerry and his avalanche dogs also assisted Teton County Search and Rescue in numerous avalanche incidents.
In 1992, Jerry with his dog, Coup, found the first skier buried in an avalanche who was rescued alive in North America. For a number of years, Jerry, along with his avalanche dog, worked with search and rescue teams in Alaska on the Extreme Ski Contest. During the summer months until about 2012, Jerry was employed in the recreational division of the U.S. Forest Service in Jackson.
Jerry loved upland bird hunting with his dogs, spending many weeks in the fall hunting birds in Idaho and Montana, as well as Wyoming. Other activities that drew him to the Wyoming outdoors included big game hunting, fishing and his beloved horses. Jerry would spend weeks at a time on horse pack trips in the Wind River, Absaroka and Gros Ventre mountain ranges.
Jerry loved his motorcycles. He and his wife, Jeanni, got married in Sturgis, South Dakota, during the annual motorcycle rally in 2000. On summer Saturday nights in Jackson he was a regular at the Grand Teton Music Festival symphony.
Having grown tired of the long Jackson Hole winters, Jerry and Jeanni spent the last 15 winters in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. There, Jerry enjoyed spending time with his dog at the lake, taking his small boat out fishing and going to the gun range.
Former ski patrol leader Corky Ward, quoted in David Gonzales’ book “Jackson Hole: On a Grand Scale” (2001), said of Jerry, “A boss’s nightmare. He’s a prankster. He’s got the world by the tail. … And when things go bad, when I need somebody very professional who has total grasp of rescues, he’s one of the first people I look to.” Gonzales mentions that Jerry’s fellow workers nicknamed him “Cool Breeze,” a reference to Jerry’s affable and adventuresome personality.