Kai Jones was already a professional skier at his age. His goal then, apart from seventh grade, was to train for his first leap down a threatening, craggy, 35-foot mountain cliff.
“I had butterflies in my stomach — looking over the edge was intimidating,” Kai said last month.
Three seconds airborne, Kai nailed the jump, landing in a splash of snow that enveloped his four-foot-plus frame momentarily. He emerged from the powdery plume as cameras rolled, to carve deft, buttery turns under the famous rocky precipice in the ultra-steep terrain.
The video was made into Kai’s action movie debut, which found its way to YouTube, rapidly gaining more than three million views. A winter sports prodigy was born, unbroken in expanses of dangerous out-of-bounds territory.
A few months later, Kai, who started skiing when he was 2, won the North American Championship of the International Freeskiers Association for skiers younger than 12.
Kai went pro, becoming a preteen star who regularly stops for autographs and rubs elbows with adults in the pantheon of major mountain ski celebrities, even though he mostly plays with Legos, as endorsement deals with Red Bull and Atomic skis rolled in.
“Being famous is cool, for sure,” Kai said with a laugh last month, sitting on a high-back barstool chair that left his feet dangling well above the floor. “But you have to be humble and a good mentor.”
Though unconventional, Kai’s incandescent career arc in the ski culture is however familiar.
Kai can be captured vaulting off the sheer face of a rock outcropping as he does a double back-flip shortly after the sun comes up, one of his specialties, and his 45,000 Instagram followers are forwarding the clip around the world by midday.
“The internet has changed everything, maybe because it’s now kids inspiring kids,” said Todd Jones, Kai’s father.
“And the training capabilities for them are so much more advanced — they’ve spent years trying out their moves over airbags, foam pits and trampolines. No more waiting for it to snow in the backyard.”
With a foot rooted in eras past and current, Todd Jones is well placed to examine the demographic changes. He co-founded Teton Gravity Research in 1995 as a former pro skier, and it exploded into an action-sports entertainment powerhouse that produced nearly 60 films.
The older of the two sons of the Joneses, Kai, was raised to play a leading role in the family business. When a seven-year-old, as he followed his dad on lonely, stunning shoots across North America, he sliced incredible lines in the snow.
Not unexpectedly, as Kai’s popularity increased, he became acquainted with the suggestion that his successes were made on the back of his father’s influential snow sports business.
“I’ve had friends say: ‘You only have what you have because of your dad,’” he said. “I credit my dad with everything and he gave me this door to walk through, but I also worked my butt off every single day. I get up before the sun rises to head to the mountain, and I train year-round. I’ve probably done 5,000 backflips.
“These days, that conversation has ended because I’m skiing lines that pros are skiing and doing the same tricks as them.”
Seated next to his son, Todd Jones smiled as he said: “Of course I’ve helped his trajectory. But the kid has put in the work. The proof is in the pudding.”
Not unexpectedly, as Kai’s popularity increased, he became acquainted with the suggestion that his successes were made on the back of his father’s influential snow sports business.
Shelly Jones, who started skiing when she was 10, was philosophical about the risk of his son facing serious injuries while practicing.
“Of course, any mom seeing their child going off a cliff is going to be a little nervous,” she said. “But there’s a lot of prep that goes into it first — way before anything happens. We really are safety conscious and that’s been ingrained in Kai’s head.”
Kai had a few significant accidents, many of which were unrelated to skiing, though some of which were more likely to be 14. He injured his foot doing a backflip off a pool table. “In front of a girl,” said Todd.
Kai fractured the same foot and some ribs during mountain biking, another of his professional activities.
“I’m really bad at just sitting around,” he said.
Source: Kaijonesski, Teton Gravity Research, New York Times