Backcountry trailblazer Jeremy Jones returns with his latest epic, Higher

When Jeremy Jones blazed a lone trail into the backcountry, he took pro snowboarding back to its roots. His new film Higher completes a trilogy that has pushed the limits of mountain exploration with each chapter and shown that leaving the heli or snowmobile at home makes for a purer and more transcendental experience.

Higher takes Jeremy and his crew of big mountain specialists Bryan Iguchi, Luca Pandolfi, Lucas Merli and Ryland Bell, from Alaska to the Tetons and the Himalayas. Following on from Deeper in 2010 and Further in 2012, Higher is the most personal of the trilogy and rounds out a groundbreaking career that has seen the ten-time Big Mountain Rider of the Year revolutionise his sport.

When Jeremy skated into Huck’s Shoreditch HQ, we asked him about his environmental activism, experiencing new cultures and managing fear.

Discovery

I love riding new terrain. By going on foot I have 90% more terrain to chose from. There’s no one out there. I love the experience of being on these lines for hours, hiking up, camping and the whole process of living in the mountains for weeks on end, disconnected from society. That’s super fulfilling. If you call yourself a pro snowboarder you need to be breaking new ground. There’s a lot of different ways to do that, but by going on foot I have so much terrain to chose from and so much room for progression as a snowboarder because it’s so out of my realm. Evolving, exploring and learning new things on a regular basis have always been my goals as a snowboarder.

Skating

If I’m going to a city I travel with my little skateboard. It’s the only way to get my fix in town. I’m not that into jogging or anything. I don’t skate a ton but just five minutes here, ten minutes there kind of resets your mind. It’s a great way to explore a new place and it just adds a nice dimension to the travel. I’m a total sidewalk surfer: I just like cruising, hitting banks and stuff.

Fear

The fear factor has always been there, it’s still there today. I’ve made thousands of good calls in the mountains but one bad call can erase that. I’m always learning more, taking courses and getting educated. I really make sure I’m in the right headspace going into the mountains, making the right calls and reading the mountains properly. There’s fear but if the fear doesn’t turn into confidence then I turn around. Most of that fear is before I step into the mountains and then once I’m there, I’m only moving forward if it’s feeling really good. You can’t ever be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to push through my fear’. It’s more like, if I can’t figure out what’s scaring me and I can change that, then I turn around.

Margin For Error

I ask myself all the time in the mountains, ‘What happens if I fall here and what happens if there’s an avalanche here’. If the answers is you die, then I don’t push it at all. When I’m locked in, snowboarding good and I might be in some, say steep terrain, but I’m not dealing with a huge cliff underneath me, then I’ll go real close to the line. If the end result is me crashing and having a sore neck, then I’ll take that chance. That’s where you see that real edge of your seat snowboarding.

Climate

My goal with Protect Our Winters is to unite the winter sports community to come together to slow down climate change. To do that, it’s super important that we come together to say enough is enough. The status quo and business as usual is not working. We need to embrace the new options out there.

The Himalayas

The culture of the Himalayas was just amazing. Interacting and becoming close with the locals was such a different way of living that I’ve never been a part of. So to see that had a huge impact. They live a super simple life but they are really happy. They have big families that are very close and so seeing their happiness had a huge impact.

The Decline of Snowboarding

It has got rid of the companies who are just in it for profits. Snowboarding doesn’t make sense on Wall Street anymore, it’s not the cool new fad that’s going to net tons of money for these companies. They’ve probably moved on to making iPhone cases or what have you. It’s a bummer again to see the dollars and cents decline, but what’s happening on the hill is a very pure, positive thing. I think the culture right now is as rootsy and as authentic as it’s ever been. It hasn’t been at this level since the early 90’s.

Higher is available now. The UK premiere at Union Chapel was presented by O’Neill UK.

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