For this coming winter, Jones has added women’s sizes to its board line and added split versions of its Flagship, Hovercraft (see page 23) and Mountain Twin boards. Splits comprise about 30 percent of sales of Jones Snowboards, a trend that the rest of the industry is watching. A growing number of companies are offering splitboards: Jones, Venture, Burton, Voile, Never Summer and Prior, to name a few, and sales were up about 50 percent last winter.
“That certainly indicates a trend, but the numbers are rather small so we will see if it really breaks out next season,” says Kelly Davis, research director for the trade group SnowSports Industries America. Davis expects to see splitboard sales rise another 20 percent to 50 percent in the 2011/2012 season.
“This is the way I saw rocker start, by the way.” Indeed, rocker, board sales were up 42 percent last winter, indicating riders are more concerned with powder than the park.
And Even Further
Back at Squaw, Jones prepares for his pond skimming run. He is last in line—appropriately so—and is preceded by a motley circus of competitors dressed in Borat-style banana hammock swimsuits and other ludicrous outfits. Trim, fit and handsome, and bearing a scar on his cheek from a big mountain wipeout, Jones shares a laugh with other competitors. Having down time away from cameras is increasingly important to Jones, whose head is already swimming with ideas for next season’s “Further” film locations. His team is eyeing an expedition to an even more remote Alaska range, and Jones wants to mount a larger expedition into his beloved California High Sierra. Thanks to the success of “Deeper,” which Jones partially financed out of pocket, “Further” was awarded a bigger budget. That means fans of “Deeper” will see even greater production value.
But none of that business matters at this moment, as Jones focuses on the task at hand—splashing the raucous Squaw crowd. After clicking into his Hovercraft board (it floats on pow, so why not water!), he rockets downhill, hitting the pond at full tilt, goofy footed. He skims halfway across and then abruptly changes course, arcing a huge wakeboard turn that throws a wave of water into the front row. Jeremy Jones, one of the era’s most vital snowboarders, is down. Mission accomplished.
Paul Tolme is a journalist based in South Lake Tahoe, which, the former Ned resident says, “is like Colorado but with a big-ass beautiful lake and deeper snow.”
