Long shunned by the prepubescent action sports marketing machine that drives the industry, big mountain-style is finally primed to explode by Paul Tolmé profile photography —if Jeremy Jones has anything to do with it. by Michael Darter action photography by Seth Lightcap

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“You probably shouldn’t follow me,” Jeremy Jones says, as I peer down a steep, rocky chute at California’s Squaw Valley resort, wondering how I’ll get down without killing myself. Dressed in a sky-blue jacket and white hat, the greatest living big mountain snowboarder points out an easier way down for me before heading toward a rocky precipice. I gladly heed his advice. I drop down the center of the narrow, double-black-diamond line, jumping methodically from heel-side to toe-side, edges biting hard to control my speed and avoid a headlong tumble into rock. As I stop to suck wind, a blue streak flashes into my peripheral vision, and I watch as Jones, crouched low, rides the high side of the chute, fully 20 feet above my head. He airs over some protruding granite, cranks a quick bottom turn picking up speed, and slashes a high-side arc inches from a jagged rock wall. Then he points his board down the fall line and rockets away. Gone. All that remains is a singular line in the snow where no one else has dared venture. “Sick,” says a young skier who has stopped beside me. “Jeremy Jones,” I respond. When the history of big mountain snowboarding is written, Jones will have a chapter alongside legends like Tom Burt and the late Craig Kelly. He’s an eight-time Big Mountain Rider of the Year and the younger brother of Todd and Steve Jones, founders of Teton Gravity Research (TGR), a leading producer of big mountain and films. Jones’ daring, helicopter-assisted runs down insanely steep spines in Alaska have defined big mountain snowboarding. His highlight reel includes some of the most audacious descents ever filmed. And in what may be the ultimate compliment a snowboarder can receive, the world’s best big mountain skiers even credit Jones with forcing them to up their game and ski steeper, gnarlier lines faster. Now 35 and approaching an age when action sports stars ease off the throttle, Jones is taking on the most difficult challenge of his snowboarding career. His goal: Help the sport of snowboarding stop alienating the powder-seeking riders who don’t give a lick about halfpipes or or the skateboard vibe that permeates the sport. How does he plan to do this? By not only improving the way snowboarders get down mountains, but also by His highlight reel changing how they get up. includes some of There are two principal types of snowboarding: freestyle and freeride. Freestyle is skateboard-influenced and defined by kids in saggy pants hucking, flipping, and the most audacious spinning in half pipes and terrain parks. It’s the mass-market face of the sport that the age- descents ever filmed. phobic snowboard companies embrace. But freeriding, the kind of riding Jones does, draws its ethos from big mountain and big wave surfing. Whether the snowboarder lives And in what may in Vermont or Colorado, California or Alaska, the goal is to ride the mountain from top to bottom in soft snow. Despite lackluster sales of during the 2009–2010 season, be the ultimate one of the few categories to show growth was powder boards. But the snowboarding compliment a business virtually ignores the movement. “The snowboard industry has spent too long emulating skateboarding,” Jones says as we snowboarder can ride a back up Squaw. Fit and trim, he is of average height, with long hair and a scar on his cheek from a face-plant into glacial debris. In a sport full of huge egos, Jones is receive, the world’s personable and easygoing, with a trace of surfer drawl to his speech and a raucous laugh. best big mountain “I have a lot of friends who don’t snowboard anymore. They are on or at the beach surfing. That bums me out.” skiers even credit The ski industry, on the other hand, has embraced the desire of skiers to chase powder Jones with forcing both inside and outside of the resorts. Sales of fat alpine touring (AT) skis were up 57 percent last winter, according to SnowSports Industries America. And companies like Black them to up their Diamond and Backcountry.com have capitalized on the movement—selling skis, boots, and bindings that let you go uphill as efficiently as you go down. Meanwhile, snowboarders game and ski post-hole like never-ever tourists, or trudge on snowshoes, or, worse, if you care about steeper, gnarlier the environment, employ snowmobiles to get into the woods. “I know boarders who, when they go into the backcountry, bust out the AT gear,” says Chris Sword, president lines faster. of Dynafit North America, which makes AT skis and gear. “What’s holding snowboarders back is the gear.” In 2009, Jones approached all the major snowboard brands to pitch them on the idea of producing a signature line of Jeremy Jones big mountain powder boards. None were interested. “They all told me, ‘We love what you do but free riding is a niche and we don’t sell many boards there.’” Opposite page: Snubbed by the industry, Jones founded his own snowboard brand. Available to the Jones burns a sunset run in the public for the first time this winter, Jones Snowboards offers four freeride boards designed Lake Tahoe backcountry. for backcountry riding and powder surfing. Jones found a partner in Nidecker, a 123-year-

88 mountain sports+living MTNaccess.com mountain sports+living 89 old, family-owned Swiss company famous for its high-end boards. Nidecker manufactures and distributes the line while Jones designs, tests, and uses his celebrity to market it. Every detail is designed to better handle deep powder and the variable snow conditions that This page: backcountry riders encounter. The boards feature blunt noses, more volume, and rockered The Deeper tips and tails with camber underfoot—all beneficial for keeping the tip up and flying crew navigates through powder and over crust. He even incorporated serrated knife-style magne-traction a spine in Alaska’s Fairweather Range. edges for extra bite on steep terrain. Many of the innovations, Jones notes, were borrowed Opposite page: from the latest big mountain skis. “There has always been this bounce between skiing and Jones digs out: snowboarding,” says Jones. Eight feet of new snow kept the production at Jones was born in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and grew up surfing and skateboarding bay for 10 days. in the town of Centerville. He took his first snowboard run on a Cape Cod golf course in 1982. His grandfather lived in Stowe, Vermont, and the Jones family took frequent ski trips, but at the time, Stowe, like nearly all resorts of the day, forbade snowboards. Jones skied in-bounds in the morning and snowboarded out-of-bounds in the afternoon. When Stowe ended its boycott in 1987, he was the first boarder to get certified to ride the resort. That’s right, certified, as in passing a test. “The mountain was full of snowboard haters back then,” Jones says. “If you saw another boarder you’d stop and talk with them and ride together. It was a brotherhood.” When he was 16, he entered his first pro race event—placing third and winning some cash. Shortly thereafter, he won the North American Championships. Still a teenager he traveled across North America and Europe to compete. When halfpipes started showing up, he dabbled in freestyle, but he preferred the adventure of charging around the mountain, riding fast top-to-bottom runs, hot on the tail of his older brothers, both pro skiers for a time. He survived the pro circuit on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sleeping in cars or crashing on couches, and borrowing money for plane tickets and coaching fees. By the time he graduated from high school he was $10,000 in debt—a financial hole that took five years to dig out of. Foregoing college, he moved to Jackson Hole, where he worked as a prep cook. Soon he was blowing off races to freeride. In the early 90s, Jones scraped together some money to

90 mountain sports+living snowboard Haines, Alaska—rubbing elbows with videographers, directors, and helicopter pilots. Then, in 1994, he appeared in his first snowboard film, Exposed, starring Craig Kelly, All told, Jones has snowboarding’s big mountain pioneer and early film star. Kelly (who later died while guiding in a Canadian avalanche) took Jones under his wing. “I learned a lot from Craig’s appeared in 45 work ethic and the way he studied and picked his lines,” says Jones. When the news broke that snowboarding would be allowed in the 1998 Winter snowboard action Olympics, Jones went to the trials but narrowly missed the cut. “I never put on hard boots again,” he says. It worked out. His brothers had recently founded TGR, providing films. “You watch him him with a vehicle to showcase his exploits. He went on to appear in Harvest, Mind the Addiction, High Life, Soul Purpose, and more than a dozen more TGR releases. Standard ride those extremely Films, based out of Tahoe, enlisted Jones to ride as well. All told, Jones has appeared in 45 snowboard action films. Mind the Addiction, which captured him screaming down steep spines and he impossibly steep, Alaskan-style, fluted spine runs, set the tone for his career. “You watch him ride those extremely steep spines and he has to be going 40 miles an hour,” says has to be going 40 retired big mountain snowboarder Andy Hetzel. “He doesn’t just ride insanely technical stuff, he charges it.” miles an hour,” says “His goal isn’t to show that he’s the best,” says Jeremy Nobis, a former U.S. Ski Team racer who appeared in multiple TGR films with Jones. “He’s doing it for himself. He retired big mountain brings a calm mentality and focus to his riding that I’ve never seen in anyone, whether skier or boarder.” Nobis credits Jones with inspiring him to ski big lines faster. He recalls snowboarder Andy standing atop a peak with Jones in Alaska while filming Mind the Addiction. Jones asked Nobis what he planned to do. “I’m gonna straight-line it,” Nobis said, half kidding. Jones Hetzel. laughed and said he thought he would too. “Then I was like, ‘Shit, now I’ve got to do it.’” Nobis did straight-line it, beginning a trend toward ever more aggressive rides by big mountain skiers. But from the moment he began making films Jones knew his days as a pro snowboarder were numbered. “Making money from snowboarding has been a slow, steady climb,” says Jones. “Guys like Shaun White make baseball player money. I don’t.” After 15 years of starring in heli-assisted films, though, Jones found himself getting complacent. “I could practically draw a ski map of that terrain in Alaska.”

MTNaccess.com mountain sports+living 91 It was the winter of 2007–2008 and Jones was working on five films including the Red Bull blockbuster That’s It, That’s All, starring Travis Rice. He was exhausted. So when filmmaker Chris Edmands left several voicemails asking him to appear in his new production, Jones hesitated to return his call, hoping to get his voicemail so he could bow out gracefully, but Edmands answered, and within 30 seconds Jones was hooked on the low-budget project dubbed My Own Two Feet. Instead of heli trips in Alaska, they would climb and ride in the Sierra on splitboards. The film would cost less to make than one day of heli filming in Alaska. More than that, Jones liked the film’s environmental aesthetic. When My Own Two Feet wrapped, he enlisted Edmands and an all-star cast of boarders to produce a bigger film about splitboarding. Filmed over the past two years from Alaska to the French Alps to Antarctica, Deeper will be released this winter. “It’s about the evolution of snowboarding,” says Jones. “We’re showing people that world-class freeriding can be done on foot.” To film Deeper, Jones and his crew set up base camps deep in the mountains. During a 27-day expedition to Alaska in 2009, the Deeper team endured a 10-day storm cycle that forced them to hunker down—nearly running out of food. On another trip Jones and his team camped for 21 days in Glacier Bay National Park. Wakeup calls came at 3 a.m. so the riders could summit before dawn. Jones honed his skills so he could scale the Alps and peaks in Antarctica. Before ascending one treacherous climb in the French Alps he was so nervous he almost threw up. “A helicopter is an ambulance. If you hurt yourself on Deeper, you’d be in deep shit,” says Jones. Without helicopters, Edmands and the other principal videographer had to scale many of the peaks alongside Jones and his riders, lugging 50-plus pounds of gear on their backs all day and never knowing whether they would get any useable footage due to the variable weather. “Filming Deeper was a ton of work, both mentally and physically,” says Tom Burt, who traveled to Alaska to guide for the Deeper film crew. “You spend way more time exposed when you’re ascending—and by exposure I mean stuff that can kill you.” Many of the I rendezvous at a backcountry trailhead with Jones for a day of splitboarding. A freeze-thaw cycle has turned last week’s powder to blue steel. “Don’t worry,” he says, sensing innovations, Jones my apprehension. “We’ll find a smooth edge-able surface.” Edmands joins us, and we buckle into our splitboards and head into the woods with collapsible ski poles extended. Splitboards notes, were borrowed are snowboards that bisect lengthwise, allowing boarders to free heel uphill like AT skiers. from the latest big skins attach to the bottom for grip. It’s not new technology—splitboards have been around for more than a decade—but early versions were heavy and slow to convert from mountain skis. uphill to downhill mode. The ride quality was inferior. Now, better bindings and a flurry of new board designs from Jones, Atomic, Voile, Venture, and others have made splitboards “There has always nearly as easy to use as AT gear. Jones Snowboards’ version is called the Solution. He been this bounce does about 80 percent of his riding on it these days. “Skiing is a lifelong sport,” says Jones. “Surfing is a lifelong sport. I don’t know if riding the terrain park is a lifelong sport,” Jones between skiing and says. “But you can sure splitboard your whole life.” “Having a legend like Jeremy Jones acting as an ambassador could create a surge snowboarding,” of interest in splitboarding,” says Lisa Branner, co-founder of Venture Snowboards, a Silverton, Colorado company that specializes in backcountry boards. “It will follow a similar trajectory as AT, but we’re just at the beginning of the growth curve.” “A splitboard is a tool to get deep into nature,” Jones says as we march uphill. “That sounds cheesy, but it’s true. These days I enjoy the up as much as the down.” I huff and puff to keep up with Jones and Edmands as we work our way higher. Jones used to feel like a banged-up football player by the end of the film season, but splitboarding has made him fitter than at any point in his career. After a two-hour ascent we reach our summit and pause to enjoy the view of Lake Tahoe. We remove our climbing skins, reassemble our boards, rotate the bindings, and click in. Jones rides off down the ridgeline first, scouting for a north-facing slope with soft snow. “We better go after him,” Edmands says, “or he’ll be gone.” I take off in pursuit, dodging scraggly pines and jumping over wind lips until I catch up with Jones several hundred yards away. He has stopped above a steep, powder-filled pitch. Jones drops in first, letting out a whoop and surfing S-turns through the trees. This page: Reconning a “People ask me when I plan to retire from snowboarding,” he told me earlier. “My base camp in Alaska. answer is: ‘Never.’ Sure, there will be a time when I’m no longer the flavor of the month Opposite page: Jones and people won’t see me in movies and magazines. But they will always see me in the outruns his own sluff in Lake Tahoe. mountains. Snowboarding is what I do. It’s who I am. It’s what gives me the juice. I will be snowboarding until the day I die.”

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