Adventurer Update - Jeremy Jones

ASC interviews Pro Snowboarder Jeremy Jones About Nepal and Collecting Data for ASC

Jeremy Jones at the office. Photo by Clark Fyans

Recently ASC was connected with professional snowboarder and environmental advocate Jeremy Jones through our incredible friends at Clif Bar who are sponsors of both Jeremy and ASC. Jeremy was literally on his way out the door to cross the globe when we got ahold of him in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Jones was headed to Nepal with his sights set on some untouched, unvisited lines high in the Himalaya. There he was joined by a crew of professional snowboard mountaineers and a film crew from Teton Gravity Research who were filming for his next movie "Higher", the final installation in his "Deeper, Further, Higher" trilogy. 

Jones and the tools of his trade.

Jones is known as one of the best big mountain riders to have ever touched a snowboard but more recently has made his name a household fixture for his dedication to climate change advocacy. Jeremy started a non-profit organization, Protect Our Winters, to mobilize the winter sports community to make changes in response to the threat of climate change. He has changed the way he plays outside, now relying primarily on human power to access his turns using a splitboard rather than helicopters. He even started his own snowboard manufacturing company, Jones Snowboards, that focuses on building high quality and performance snowboards and splitboards with minimal environmental impact. Slowing down and using his own power to climb mountains has given Jeremy a closer connection to the mountains and has led to a revolution in the snowboarding world for which he was named National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year in 2013.

Jeremy Jones collecting samples in Nepal. Photo credit Teton Gravity Research.

Because of Jeremy's passion for the environment and particularly the effects of climate change on mountainous environments we connected him with our glacier snow and ice sampling project. For this project he collected snow and ice samples to help researchers understand the extent of glacier thinning and his samples from such a remote corner of Nepal are a valuable addition to the dataset.

We recently sat down with Jeremy and asked him about the trip and what its like to be an adventure-scientists. Here are some of the highlights:

Thanks again to Clif Bar for their support of ASC and connecting us with Jeremy. Be on the lookout for more about Jeremy from ASC and Clif Bar soon! In the meantime check out the trailer to "Higher" and keep an eye out for its release next year. You never know, you may see ASC in there.

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