Kai Jones is one of the most talented young backcountry skiers in the U.S., turning professional at just 13 years old. In early 2023, he broke both of his legs in a backcountry skiing accident, spending months in a wheelchair and questioning whether he’d ever return to the sport. Last season marked a major comeback, as Kai became the youngest skier to descend the Otter Body route on Grand Teton and released multiple ski films that document his evolution as a big‑mountain skier.
Kai Jones is one of the most talented young backcountry skiers in the U.S., turning professional at just 13 years old. In early 2023, he broke both of his legs in a backcountry skiing accident, spending months in a wheelchair and questioning whether he’d ever return to the sport. Last season marked a major comeback, as Kai became the youngest skier to descend the Otter Body route on Grand Teton and released multiple ski films that document his evolution as a big‑mountain skier.
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Shelby Stanger:
Kai Jones is one of the most talented backcountry skiers in the U.S. At just 19 years old, he's already skied some of the world's most impressive lines. For Kai, free skiing is in his blood. His dad and his uncles are dedicated snow athletes and filmmakers, and he's been adventuring in the mountains for as long as he can remember. When he was 13, Kai became a sponsored professional athlete, but even though he experienced a ton of success throughout his adolescence, Kai has also encountered some serious setbacks.
In early 2023, he broke both of his legs skiing off a vertical drop in the backcountry. The accident forced him into a wheelchair for several months and he wondered if he'd ever have a ski career again.
Kai Jones:
The outcome was definitely undetermined. The home help doctor came in and said I'd never ski at the same level again. So there's definitely some low points, but I knew in my heart that I was going to do everything to get back to my sport.
Shelby Stanger:
Today is back to skiing and he's breaking the mold of what's possible in the mountains. Last year he came out with some incredible films that highlight the direction his skiing has taken, more remote, more ambitious, and more intentional. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
Kai Jones, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm really excited to chat with you. Where are you right now?
Kai Jones:
Right now I'm back home in Teton Valley. We're like 30 minutes from Grand Targhee and about 40 minutes from Jackson Hole. And Jackson Hole is known as one of the best locations for big mountain skiing.
Shelby Stanger:
What makes the skiing there so great?
Kai Jones:
The terrain starts very flat, and then as you get higher and higher up the mountain, it gets steep and it gets rockier and you basically work your way up when you're a kid to the tram to get to the top of the mountain to ski the most technical terrain, and then outside of the resort boundaries, there is tons of incredible terrain in the backcountry there, and that definitely helped make me the skier I am today, and it's been incredible to grow up and be around all that terrain.
Shelby Stanger:
What do you love about skiing? I mean, you do it probably over half the year, right?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much because we have a long winter here in Jackson and I end up doing a couple trips in the summer, so we get a lot of time on snow for sure. But yeah, it's hard to say. There's so many things I love about it. First and foremost, it's just that free spirited out in the mountains. It's the most connected and grounded I feel.
And then I also love the lessons it teaches you about like hardship, getting up when you fall down and trying again. It's the whole process. It's everything. It's those nerves and jitters at the top before you're about to drop in to the relief and excitement when you accomplish it. I think those are things that have been instilled in me that skiing's taught me, and I think that's what I love about it and that's what keeps me coming back. The whole process is just so inspiring and so much fun.
Shelby Stanger:
That's incredible. So when I saw you this summer, we were at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival and there was a line wrapped around the theater to see you, shake your hand, to say hi. It was absolutely wild. You had the most fans out of anybody at that whole film festival. It was incredible.
Kai Jones:
That actually was a crazy experience. I was like one of the coolest interactions I've ever had with any of my fans. Telluride Mountain Film is one of the more prestigious film festivals out there, and we were super thankful to get our film in there falling into place.
Yeah. So we ended up showing the film at the high school. All the kids showed up for it, and I think everyone was just so stoked on the film, the message, like what it meant. And I remember we did this little Q&A and people were getting pretty fired up. And then the principal went up on stage and was like, "Hey, if you want to meet Kai or get something signed, come to the front door." And I was like, "Oh, this could be crazy."
So we roll around the backstage and then the security people at the school were like, "This is mayhem. I don't know how we're even going to get you to the table." So then they brought in their backup and two cops escorted me to the front door, and then I sat there for probably an hour to two hours signing everything from phone cases to skateboards to foreheads and arms. It was just the most ridiculous thing I'd ever witnessed and been a part of and I was like, "Wow. This is amazing."
Shelby Stanger:
Kai was thrilled to see so many people connect with his work. A lot of these kids idolize him. He's only 19, but Kai's already had the kind of skiing career that people dream about. For Kai, that dream began at an incredibly young age.
Do you remember when you were going to make skiing more than a hobby?
Kai Jones:
Oh, I honestly have no idea. I might've been around seven.
Shelby Stanger:
That's younger than my nephews. That's a really young age to sort of be so inspired that you're like, "Yeah. I'm going to be this when I grow up."
Kai Jones:
Yeah. I definitely was really young, but I think one of the biggest things my parents instilled in me was to just be a dreamer and shoot for the stars. And looking back at it now, being seven and being like, "I'm going to be a pro skier," is kind of crazy, but at the time it just made sense and skiing was my everything and have opportunity to get at it pretty young, but I think all that is relative. The biggest thing is just having that passion and I knew I had that passion at a young age and that's what drove it more than anything, more than any of the wants or getting in these films or anything. I'd be doing the same stuff I'm doing today without cameras and without social media or any fame or money per se. I love skiing and I'm a skier at heart and that's never changed since the first day I ever got on snow.
Shelby Stanger:
Your family was also very involved in winter sports?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. My dad and my uncle Steve started Teton Gravity Research, which is a production company that aims to showcase the best really action sports riders in the world, going to the farthest edges of the world, doing crazy things. And then my uncle, Jeremy, was one of the best pro snowboarders of all time, and he started Jones Snowboards as well, which is super successful and protect our winners. So he's been a huge inspiration and growing up in that was just incredibly inspiring. I was around a lot of the best athletes in the world and got to see how they operated and how they worked to maintain themselves and get to where they are now. So it really inspired me and showed me that there could be something more with skiing.
Shelby Stanger:
Was there ever any pressure just because of who your parents were, who your family was, who your uncle was?
Kai Jones:
I would say, for me, I kind of talked about earlier. I just love skiing and I was going to go down that road no matter what, and my parents never forced skiing on me. They never told me I had to go skiing. They just shared their passion with me and I fell in love with it real quick.
Shelby Stanger:
When Kai was just 11 years old, he was featured in Far Out a ski film produced by Teton Gravity Research, also known as TGR. In the film, Kai skis a legendary double black diamond run in Jackson Hole called Corbet's Couloir. If you're not a skier, here's the quick translation. Corbet's is basically Jackson Holes rite of passage. It's the line people travel to see, stand above, and maybe eventually ski down. It's a steep, narrow chute that starts with a drop that can be around 10 to 20 feet depending on conditions. And once you're in, you're locked into an extremely steep pitch with no real easy exit. That clip of 11-year-old Kai skiing Corbet's took off on YouTube and it became a breakout moment for him.
I want to talk about that movie. You were 11 years old. Was that the first big riskiest line you'd skied at that point?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. So TGR was planning to do this big shoot and they had a contract with Jackson to make a project at the resort, and they were spinning a couple ideas around, and one of them was this Kai Jones, Tim Durtschi segment, and the whole crew was really stoked on that because they'd seen what I had been up to that whole season and had some good comp results to back it up.
And then over spring break, which is a pretty short window, me and Tim just skied all around Jackson and Tim towed me into a bunch of famous lines out there. The most memorable being Smart Bastard, which was like a 40-foot cliff, by far the biggest cliff I'd ever hit. And we had just had a cool concept and a good vibe, and it ended up doing super well when we released it digitally. And that was the start of my entire career.
And I think, yeah, if anything would've happened differently with that segment, who knows where I'd be at today? That really set things off and it going so big really helped me stay in the mix and be able to get sponsors and film another year and then film the next year.
Shelby Stanger:
You just said you got towed into a 40-foot cliff. What does that mean?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. So when I talk about towing in, it's more like in a mentorship role. So that year I was skiing with Tim Durtschi who's one of the best skiers to do it, and I was lucky enough to have him really take me under his wing. And when we went and hit this big 40-foot cliff, he just talked me through it. He showed me where to turn, where to take off, and really just mentored me and gave me all the tools to be successful on the line, and it was a really good experience to do that with him. And yeah, that was the start of it all.
Shelby Stanger:
A couple of years after Kai Jones exploded onto the ski scene, he signed with Red Bull. He was 13 years old at the time, which was extremely young to become a professional freeskier, but it was clear that Kai had the grit and dedication necessary for the sport. These qualities came in handy a few years later when Kai suffered a serious injury in the backcountry.
Not long ago, it was really not long ago, you had this major in Wyoming. Are you okay telling us what happened?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. So January 1st, 2023. I'll never forget that day because it was one of the best days of my skiing career. It was really good conditions, and I just remember it was the first day of filming. I just felt so on and ready to go for the winter, and that set the pace for the whole season.
And then we ended up exploring pretty deep south Wyoming and we found this insane zone called the Cathedral. And to this day, the line that I skied there was the highlight of my entire career. I skied this thousand foot straight line shoot. It was at the widest 10 feet and at the skinniest probably four feet wide, by far the gnarliest thing it ever done. And I can't even describe the feelings I had after it. I just felt invincible, felt like a superhero.
And then I went back up to go hit this other little shoot. I rappelled into it, skied the shoot, it had a mandatory air at the bottom of it, and I took too much speed off of it, probably overshot it by 10, 15 feet and then I subluxed my shoulder. A sublux is when you dislocate your shoulder, but it naturally pops back into place when you readjust your body.
And I ended up having to take two weeks off, not really doing any PT for it, I just stayed home and worked on school, and I definitely let my legs atrophy because I spent two weeks sitting on the couch doing homework and just not maintaining. And then, yeah, first day on March 7th, I was back on snow. We went out to the zone that I had skied a bunch and I skied this one line. It felt pretty good. I was having a little bit of knee pain, but nothing too concerning. I was still going to go ski.
And then earlier that year, I'd skied this line in the same zone and I wanted to go get redemption on it, so I'm getting ready for the line. And I was weirdly not nervous for this line, which I think is a super bad thing. Your nerves and your fear are your body's way of checking in and reminding you that what you're doing has consequences. And there's actually some cool studies about having fear and responding to fear increases your odds of success in sport because your body understands the risk.
And again, yeah, I was weirdly not scared of this line and really didn't think twice about it, called my 10 count, 10 seconds, three, two, one dropping. I hit the cliff. And then instantly on the landing, both my legs just completely break, and I ended up tumbling another 300 feet, tearing my medial and my lateral meniscus. And I was so done that I could not move.
We called search and rescue because there was no getting me out without a helicopter because we were deep in the backcountry. So search and rescue came and airlifted me to the parking lot where an ambulance met me. Got ripped to the Jackson Hole Hospital, got a surgery that night. They put four screws in each of my legs and my tibia tubercle.
And after that, I'm waking up from the surgery and I'm just like, "Wow. My life just changed like that." I never could have seen that coming or I didn't even know I could get hurt like that. And in the hospital, they were like, "All right. You'll probably be here for five days and we'll get you home." Five days go by and my condition only worsens. And we realized that I hadn't got a blood draw since my surgery, which is pretty concerning.
So we do the blood draw and then the calvary showed up. They were like, "You're nearly critical anemic." Critical anemic is when you're dying, your body starts shutting down and I was right on that brink. So they loaded me up into all these machines and did all these scans and stuck tubes down my throat to see if I had any stomach thing.
And then they checked some boxes and made sure everything was looking good. And luckily there was no internal bleeding, but I still was really low on my blood count, so I had to do a blood transfusion. And after that, that really helped me get back up and get back to life. And after another five days after the blood transfusion, 10 days into my stay at the hospital, I was able to get out.
And that was just the craziest whirlwind, and it literally was out of a movie. All the stuff that was happening was just so ridiculous, and it was just so heartbreaking. And got back home, got the call that my meniscus were torn. So then later that month had to get meniscus surgery. And then I spent three months in a wheelchair, was able to get back up on my feet and start walking, but I was barely able to move, barely able to be myself.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get through that time in the hospital? Was there a time where you were like, "I don't know if I'm going to be able to ski again?" Or did you kind of know, like, "I'm going to recover?"
Kai Jones:
Well, yeah, I mean, I was obviously pretty motivated, but at that point in the hospital, and especially being critical anemic, I could barely get thoughts out. I just was trying to get through the day and eat food and sleep, and I was all juiced up on crazy pain medication. So that period was kind of a blur.
I got home and that was honestly the lowest point. My friends had all moved my bed downstairs because I obviously couldn't go up the stairs, and it just finally sunk in on me that this was going to be a big deal, and the outcome was definitely undetermined. And then the home help doctor came in and said I'd never ski at the same level again. And there was all these things coming at me. So there was definitely some low points, but I knew in my heart that I was going to do everything to get back to my sport, and I feel so thankful to have done so.
And I think in hindsight, the whole experience was so good for me to show me how to recover and pace my body, because I want to be skiing for a long time, and I obviously love sending cliffs, but I now know and have the experience that I need to pace myself and make sure that I'm making smart decisions out there. And it's good that that happened at that age, and now I can start preserving myself and keeping it going for as long as I can.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the tools you used to get you through your recovery? And I'm curious about the mental tools you used and the physical tools.
Kai Jones:
It took months of recovery. I moved to LA and worked with the Red Bull trainers. And then on the mental side of things, I was working with a sports psychologist, and she was incredible. She worked for Red Bull, and I think that was the most valuable resource for the mental component of my recovery because it allowed me to avoid PTSD because I was working through my problems on a week-to-week basis. I wasn't letting things boil up and stay inside of me. I was just getting it out, working through those problems in real time. And I think without that I would've had a much harder time returning to sport.
Shelby Stanger:
Is there anything you could share with us that maybe would help an everyday athlete that you used that she taught you?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. Let me think. Again, the biggest thing is just using your network and the people around you to help you get through a hard experience. People want to be there for you. And that took me a second to realize and really leaning on my friends and my family and my PTs and trainers and everyone in the whole process helped me get through it, and I would've not came back if it wasn't for every one of them.
So if you're struggling to have a motivation to go to the gym, go hit up your friend and be like, "Hey, will you go to the gym with me?" I guarantee you they're going to say yes and help you through it. And I definitely tapped into that pretty hard, and that's what helped me a lot.
I just had a good group of people around me that would come over and visit and play cards and board games with me. If it wasn't for those guys, it would've been a much harder experience. So really thankful for everyone that and visited me at my house and brought me Legos or played chess with me or anything along the way.
Shelby Stanger:
You're such a happy, positive guy. It's really cool. What was that like the first time you put skis back on after your accident?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. It's a funny thing because I think a lot of people would think that was the moment, that was the relief, but that was another one of those lower points in my recovery because I got back on snow and I didn't feel as good as I wanted to. So it was kind of like this big reality shock. Like, "Oh, I've got a lot more gym work to do. And that just put it into perspective and made the situation a lot harder to grasp. But again, all the things that happened to me over the past two years to get me to where I was last year and going into this year, they happened for a reason and it made me who I am today, so I don't take any of that for granted and it just was a reality of my situation.
And obviously, I would've loved for my day one on snow to be like, "Oh, we're back. It's sick." But that wasn't the case, and it took a lot longer than that, but made the end outcome of my winter last year that much more rewarding.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2024, about a year after his injury, Kai took a trip to Alaska where he skied some of the most exhilarating lines of his life. The steep exposed terrain demanded full commitment from the first term, even though Kai wasn't back to 100%, he was just happy to be skiing big mountains again. He even threw a backflip midline like it was second nature. Luckily, the moment was captured on camera for a new film with Red Bull titled Origin.
So a year later, you skied one of the best lines you've skied in Alaska. Tell me about that line, what it was like, what it felt like.
Kai Jones:
Yeah. So that year, even though I was having a tough year, we went up to Girdwood Alaska and we actually scored incredible conditions. And because the terrain was steep and the powder was super good, my knees felt pretty good in that terrain because all the cliffs that we're hitting had low impact landings and the snow was just so stellar.
And up in Alaska, you're kind of controlling free fall so there wasn't a lot of pressure on my knees, like I was experiencing back home at the resorts. And a year to the day after I found this really sick line, and it was this pyramid looking peak, and it had two cliff bands below it.
And I remember having a little bit of anxiety that it had been a year, and I was like, "All right. Let's not mess up again." And it was a taste because, yeah, I still obviously had to hit recovery and stuff after that, but that was the first moment where I tasted where I want to be going with my skiing and also just being back and being myself again.
Shelby Stanger:
These lines are huge, and it's not like you can practice them before you actually go ski them. So do you have a sense before you drop in that you'll be able to actually ski them?
Kai Jones:
Yeah. I mean, I'd say there's a bit of a mix, but I'd say my internal compass is I'll get to a zone, and you don't know what the zone is until you're there. So when we get to an area, I'll see a line that inspires me, and for the most part, I'll study it. I'll get to the top, I'll be able to understand it and read it and then go for it.
And there's nerves associated with that, but I know I can do it because of all my training. But there are times where I will get to the top of a line and I won't feel comfortable, and instead of being nervous, I'll be scared. And the second you're scared, that's when I know, like, "Okay. This isn't worth it. Let's come back another day." So that's how I make decisions out in the mountains, and just really listening to your body and your mind.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the difference between feeling nervous and feeling scared?
Kai Jones:
Being nervous is just those natural butterflies where you're breathing and you're like, "Oh, this is going to be crazy." And then being scared is one of those thoughts of the consequences and things going wrong could occur, and that's when I usually will pull back from a line.
Shelby Stanger:
Last year, Kai had one of his best seasons yet. He became the youngest person to ski the Otter Body route in the Grand Teton's. He was awarded a wild card for the FIS Freeride World Championships, and he filmed multiple ski movies.
To check out videos of his backcountry adventures and to see what he's up to next, check out Kai on Instagram @KaiJonesski. That's K-A-I-J-O-N-E-S-S-K-I.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Pierce-Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby.
Thanks again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show. Take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.