Located above the Arctic Circle, Svalbard is home to the northernmost shred-able mountains in the world. Jones and his crew spent one month on the Norwegian island last spring, 700 miles from the North Pole, a trip that required an ass-numbing 17-hour trip across fjords, glaciers and desolate expanses of ice on beefy, tracked snow machines. Operating from a base camp on a glacier, Jones and his riding partner, Norwegian superstar Terje Haakonsen, assaulted the island’s 5,000-foot peaks. Jones describes the trip as “dream-like.” The sun never set. The weather was mild. His favorite memory is of a high-speed descent in rosy pink light at 2 a.m. “Every aspect all around us had good snow so everything was in play and you never had to go to bed.” Thankfully, Jones never had to face off with one of Svalbard’s greatest hazards: hungry polar bears. When venturing outside the protective fence around the base camp, Jones traveled with a heavily armed polar bear guide. “Polar bears can really shut down your scene up there. We were happy to not get hunted.”
Jones’ month-long trip to Japan’s high Alps, by contrast, was unexpectedly humbling. The “Further” team endured fierce winds and huge snowstorms while winter camping. “It was definitely not the typical tree-pow cruising that you see in a lot of films from Japan,” Jones says. “We were dealing with 5,000 feet of vertical climbing from the valley floor to the highest peaks, low temperatures, big winds and really tricky snow evaluation conditions. We couldn’t even get on some of the peaks because of the weather, and we got turned back a lot.” Despite the adverse conditions, Jones and his crew bagged incredible footage, including a blind roll-over from a cornice that rivals anything Jones has ridden in Alaska.
Working without helicopters is equally challenging for Jones’ cameramen, who must risk their lives climbing alongside him to get footage. Principal shooter Chris Edmands has worked on both “Deeper” and “Further” and calls Jones a machine. “It gets harder and harder to keep up with Jeremy. He is so fast and efficient on ascents.” In Svalbard, Edmands lugged a 10-foot metal arm to the summit of an adjacent mountain so he could mount his camera and capture a sweeping panoramic shot. On another occasion, Edmands summited a peak whose top 30 feet were nearly vertical glare ice and rocks. A skilled boarder, Edmands got the shot but then realized he had to snowboard down the no-fall zone after an alternate escape route proved to be even more sketchy. An ice axe in each hand, Edmands slowly scraped and picked his way down. “It was the most gripping 30 feet of snowboarding I’ve had. There was absolutely no room for error.”
Jones returned from his travels to enjoy one of Lake Tahoe’s snowiest springs in years. Married with two young children, Jones has lived in Tahoe for 16 years. Despite having the opportunity to board around the globe, he most looks forward to exploring his backyard in the Sierra Nevada. The much-derided “Sierra cement” is infinitely safer than Rocky Mountain blower powder, allowing him to explore far and wide on his splitboard, bivouacking in the snow and assaulting peaks that may have never been ridden or skied. “My splitboard is a tool to get deep into nature,” he says. “That sounds cheesy but it’s true. These days, I enjoy the up as much as the down.”
The Solution
Jones now does about 80 percent of his riding on a splitboard, and he is in the best shape of his life. For the uninitiated, splitboards separate lengthwise into two skis for ascending. Upon reaching the top, a rider clicks the two pieces back together, rotates the bindings and cruises downhill. “Splitboards are an awesome tool to penetrate deep into the mountains. They give snowboarders legs,” Jones says. In the past, snowboarders had to post-hole on snowshoes or use snowmobiles—as AT (alpine touring) and telemark skiers quietly and efficiently skinned into the backcountry to enjoy the wild powder.
Jones rides a split called “The Solution” from Jones Snowboards. He founded the company in 2009 after growing frustrated with the lack of interest from all the major brands for a line of big mountain free ride boards. Jones Snowboards, first offered in 2010, has four boards, all featuring rocker for float, magne traction edges for bite and other design features tailored specifically for control and flotation in the unruly backcountry. Jones has grown tired of the snowboard industry’s near singular focus on park-centric, skateboard style riding that has turned off many long-time boarders—and converted some to skiers. Jones, an avid surfer, wants to bring the surf ethic back to boarding.
Skiing is a lifelong activity. Surfing is a lifelong activity. But skateboarding and park riding are injury-prone sports and thus a young person’s game. By pushing splitboarding and backcountry exploration, Jones not only wants to change the way boarders get up the hill; he also wants to help the sport grow up and offer more options for longtime riders “A lot of us riders are now in our late 30s and 40s, some in our 50s,” says Chad Perrin, sales manager for Jones Snowboards. “We grew up and matured with snowboarding and we don’t necessarily care about cool graphics and throwing tricks in the park. We [Jones Snowboards] provide a solution for those riders.”
