Planes were an option. Buses, too. But Mark Bradley was all set, thank you very much.

He had a thumb and, more importantly, he had an adventurous, 19-year-old hippie spirit. So, 50 years ago he hitchhiked his way to Jackson Hole, Wyo.

“My mother told everyone, ‘You know he’ll never come back.’ ”

Kathleen (Kay) Bradley, who passed away last May at 98, was spot on. She had six sons and a future World Golf Hall of Fame daughter (Pat Bradley), so Kay Bradley knew feisty children and could recognize the indomitable spirit that burned within Mark. “Go,” she had said, and so he did.

Which makes Mark Bradley the perfect person to ask about this sensation that can envelope you on a quintessential winter day in the mountains. With snow steadily falling and powder spraying and tree branches encased in a frozen white glaze glistening in the sun, there is a sense that the late Warren Miller surely knew of what he spoke when he said, “A pair of skis are the ultimate transportation to freedom.”

So, where does this connect to golf? Easy.

Golf has been written about in equally eloquent ways, perhaps even more abundantly. Just as a mountain is a skier’s sanctuary, golfers feel similarly about their favorite courses. The late Billy Graham, in fact, was on record as saying: “A golf course is an island of peace in a world often full of confusion and turmoil.”

In so many ways – weather conditions notwithstanding – golf and skiing generate similar levels of passion and are lifestyles that invite serious commitments. Individual challenges, each of them, as you measure yourself against a golf course or a mountain and must deal with whatever Mother Nature throws at you.

But at a time of year when there is a rush by many to get warm and chase golf, the harshness of winter can generate news reports of numbing cold that prompt some to exclaim, “how can you live in that weather?”

From Jackson Hole, Wyo., Mark Bradley, now 69, would answer that question with a smile and an emphatic tone. “I live an Alpine life. I love it. This is my 65th year on skis and skiing still gives me a rush.”

Much of Mark Bradley’s persona is attached to golf. It comes with being the father of a major champion and PGA Tour stalwart for 12 seasons (Keegan Bradley) and the brother of an LPGA legend (Pat won 31 times, six of them majors).

But it’s owed, also, to his status as a PGA professional, having decided years earlier to pursue his Class A status. Unlike his son and his sister, both of whom stopped skiing as young teenagers to focus solely on golf, Mark Bradley always felt he had the best of both worlds so he wasn’t going to let go of golf or skiing.

The skeptical looks dished his way by fellow club pros when Bradley did not do the winter escape to warmer climates only made him laugh. To their bewilderment, he would tell them this about bone-chattering cold: “You have no such thing as bad weather. You just have inappropriate clothing.”

The Bradley family’s ski shop in Westford, Mass., was near Nashoba Valley but once Mark Bradley got a taste of Jackson Hole on a school vacation in 1970, he was hooked. Posters of the Rockies went up on his bedroom walls. “I’m a mountain guy,” he said. “Skiing lets you create your own environment.”

There is an expression in Bradley’s circles – “Skiing is a dance and the mountain always leads the way.”

He’s been dancing with the mountains forever. He met Kaye, a free spirit from Maine, during his first stretch in Jackson Hole (1973-83) and fate took a wonderful turn when she urged that they return to New England to get married and raise a family.

Woodstock, Vt., was home and it’s where their children, Keegan and Madison, learned to ski race with the Woodstock Ski Runners – the oldest ski club in the Eastern U.S. – and when the snow melted, this is where Keegan first played golf.

An outdoorsman for all seasons – golf pro, ski instructor, fly-fishing guide – Mark Bradley was true to his spirit even when he settled in Massachusetts to allow Keegan to play golf and graduate from Hopkinton High School. He and Kaye divorced, but their relationship and the family structure was harmonious and remains so to this day.

With Keegan at St. John’s for his freshman year, Mark Bradley in 2005 felt the pull of Jackson Hole. Only this time, unlike 32 years earlier, he would drive, not hitchhike. It was going to be a vacation, until a phone call changed everything in his world.

“It wasn’t serendipity,” said Bradley. “It was God’s will.”

The Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club was being sold and the new owners wanted a head professional. In Mark Bradley, they had their man. Down the road, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort owners had their man, too, to run the junior ski programs. Mark Bradley: A man for all seasons.

“We called him Euell Gibbons,” Pat Bradley once said of her brother. “He loved the outdoors and wanted to go off into the wilderness.”

This second go-round with Jackson Hole is 17 years long, meaning Mark Bradley has spent nearly half his life in “The Hole.” That is where he was Sunday night when a friend from New England called to tell of his spectacular weekend of skiing at Bretton Woods.

Their conversation revolved around the glories of both golf and skiing, how both resonated because you were outside and in awe of your surroundings. “You stand out there and soak it in,” said Bradley.

It matters only that you have both these glorious outdoor sports in your life. Bradley and his friend agreed on that. But if pushed, Bradley conceded he would choose skiing. “It’s been the central focus in my life,” he said.

“For me, it’s the Alpine life. I just love it. I enjoy the whole thing, right down to the yodeling.”