THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Jeremy Jones Feature

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323807004578286253867148578.html 

 

 

Snowboarder Jeremy Jones roams the world looking for wild hills that offer the best runs.

A version of this article appeared February 9, 2013, on page C14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Boarder's Search For Secret Snow.

By STEVE KNOPPER

Dan Milner

On the mountain, Jeremy Jones stays on the lookout for the best snow: 'You kind of throw the maps out the window, and it all comes from spotting it with your own eyes.' Above, Mr. Jones in Austria.

In Jeremy Jones' "Further Unplugged", the Teton Gravity Research camera crew reveals how far they go beyond their comfort zones to film TGR's extreme snowboarding movies. Video courtesy of Teton Gravity Research.

After days of snowshoeing to the tops of impossibly tall Alaskan peaks, then snowboarding down terrifying vertical cliffs, Jeremy Jones spots something in the distance. It's a vision nobody in the rest of his group can see—a sliver of snow amid a cluster of jagged rocks he calls "no man's land." The 38-year-old veteran pro snowboarder slogs to the top in a jacket and snowpants, board on his back, then plunges into a series of graceful "S"-shapes.
"You kind of throw the maps out the window, and it all comes from spotting it with your own eyes," says Mr. Jones. "I'm not looking for what is in the sun and glistening—for what's beautiful—because that means that face is getting a lot of sun and is not going to have good snow. I'm looking for dark slopes that are all white."

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Jeff Hawe

Filming on remote slopes is a complex operation. Jeremy Jones and crew study maps of the terrain, here, and camp in frigid temperatures

Mr. Jones is a "free-rider" snowboarder who roams the world looking for wild hills that offer the best runs. His adventures are at the center of a complex operation involving two monthlong trips per year to remote, dangerous locations in order to film a three-documentary trilogy—"Deeper," "Further" and, in roughly two years, "Higher." The trips have included Alaska's Wrangell Mountains, the Japanese Alps and Austria's Karwendel Range. His rotating travel group of roughly a dozen includes colleagues such as Norwegian champion Terje Haakonsen and backcountry expert Lucas Debari, as well as a film crew. (The films are produced by Teton Gravity Research, started by Mr. Jones's older brothers, Todd and Steve, in 1996.)
The epic journeys begin with simple ideas—"just my love for the mountains and snowboarding down 'em," Mr. Jones says, from his home in Truckee, Calif.
He'll research a location with specific criteria in mind: The mountains must be steep, preferably near a body of water, to make the snow moist and sticky, and easy to read for avalanche habits. Two full-time employees spent two years coordinating logistics for "Further" alone. The brothers had to negotiate with Alaskan native tribal elders over park permits, and Todd takes a particular interest in packing the high-tech gear.

Jeremy Jones

Mr. Jones keeps notes of the trips; above, a journal entry about a sleepless, stormy night in a tent, listening to the sounds of avalanches echoing in the mountains.

"It's pretty intense," says Todd, 41. "Our camera guys are sleeping with their batteries and laptops to keep their screens from freezing."
Mr. Jones and his crew spend their prep time scouring Google GOOG -0.06% Earth and topography maps. Often, for all the advance work, they can't get real information until they show up in a nearby town and work with local guides. "When we went up near the North Pole, there was very little knowledge," says Jeremy. "It was largely a roll of the dice."
On film, the trips have a regular rhythm: The boarders begin with fresh-faced excitement, packing up their snacks, camp stoves and tents into elaborate parcels, which they drag uphill on sleds. As the journey begins, they settle into a sort of hardy discomfort, emphasizing their happiness to be away from distracting things like email and cellphones. They set up base camp, often in absurdly frigid temperatures, and step carefully into waist-high snow. Some of the journeys involve snowmobiles and, particularly in Alaska, small planes.
Then comes the moment of catharsis—when Jeremy Jones and his fellow stars drop off the peak for the first time. The camera invariably begins with an almost entirely snow-filled screen, then dramatically zooms in on a slaloming blip causing its own harmless avalanche. Sometimes boarders will leap over a huge rock, then roll and disappear under the snowpack—but they always get up.
The Jones brothers, from Cape Cod, began skiing on family trips to Vermont. In the days when nobody had ever heard of a snowboard, he spotted one at a general store, requested and received it for Christmas, and began a series of family trips involving backcountry camping.
At 16, he entered his first professional contest and attracted a reputation as a fearless conqueror of big mountains. He fondly recalls those days, "sleeping in cars and living on peanut butter and jelly," he says. "Just the full dirtbag lifestyle."
Mr. Jones barely missed qualifying for the 1998 Winter Olympics as a snowboarder and then gave up racing to become a mountain free-rider. "The further I get up there, the more I like getting away from society," he says.
Mr. Jones is married, with two small children, and his deep voice contains both the stereotypical "dude!" inflection of the lifelong snowboarder and the soothing tone of someone who can talk a friend out of fear. In addition to adventures and films, his Jones Snowboards specializes in splitboards, hybrid devices that split in half and convert from snowboards into cross-country skis. He's also founder of Protect Our Winters, an anti-global-warming group for which he dons a tie and lobbies Congress.
Between the films, boards and sponsors such as Clif Bar and Swatch, Mr. Jones and his brothers are able to cover the $60,000 to $140,000 in expenses for each trip and take home a bit of profit. "It's for sure a decent living," he says. "But I'm not retiring at 40."