At the age of 18, Kai Jones already knows what it means to rise, fall, and get back up again.
The freeskier, a pro since he was 12, details his rise to fame and the dramatic ski accident that altered his life in the new Teton Gravity Research documentary Falling Into Place.
“I’ve grown up in the Teton Valley for my entire life, the mecca of skiing, so naturally it has been a huge part of my life,” Jones tells PEOPLE about what drew him to the sport. “I grew up on the ski team riding with my friends, and every chance I got I was watching ski videos and looking out of the window in school waiting for snow.”
Growing up with his dad, Todd Jones, and uncle Steve Jones, the co-founders of Teton Gravity Research — an extreme sports media and apparel company — offered him “unique insight into the industry.”
“I’ve grown up around some of the best skiers in the world and I always took so much inspiration from those guys and grew up watching them in the TGR movies,” he says. “I was mesmerized from a pretty young age and I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
It didn’t take long for him to actualize his childhood dream. At 11, Jones filmed his first segment for TGR, what he refers to as “the start of it all.”
“We put it on YouTube and it got 5 million views and just skyrocketed,” he says. “That changed everything. Sponsors started to call, I did more videos, and that was the catalyst for me going pro at 12 years old.”
Going pro required missing a lot of school — “I started doing online school in seventh grade,” he says — and pushing himself at a young age, all of which Jones says was worth it. “That’s what it took to stand out. I was starting to ski not just good for a 12-year-old, but good for a pro skier.”
Jones was riding a high for the few years following going pro, which included being sponsored by Red Bull, being nominated for Rider of the Year three years in a row and skiing the “gnarliest line” of his career, but it all came to a crashing halt on March 7, 2023.
“I went to go ski a line I’d skied before, and I was actually less nervous than I normally remember being,” he tells PEOPLE. “Right when I hit this cliff on the landing, both of my tibia tubercles broke and I tore both my meniscuses.”
The then-16-year-old, who was shooting a video with his dad and two other crew members, was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he went into emergency surgery. “I was in the hospital for 10 days and went critically anemic,” Jones shares. “I later had to go back for another surgery and at this point, mentally, I was just wrecked. I am a skier, that’s my identity. It’s everything to me.”
Ultimately, after weeks of immobility, Jones had a decision to make.
“I knew that I could lie there and feel bad for myself and nobody would be angry at me for that, or I could move on and try and become a better person and become stronger from this,” he says. “This is going to depict what my life is going to look like. It’s life-defining.”
Jones began physical therapy two times a day in bed and started getting on top of his schoolwork again.
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“I started to get my confidence back,” he says. “Skiing was always in the back of my head. I was doing everything I could to get strong enough to walk again.”
Almost one year later, Jones made it back to the mountain.
“I was hardly skiing, and it was a shock for me,” he tells PEOPLE. “I didn’t realize how much work I still needed to put in.”
Throughout the 2023-2024 ski season, Jones fought his way back to where he once was, and exactly one year after his accident, he had what he says was “one of the most memorable lines of my ski career.”
With the help of his dad, who documented it all, Jones pitched Red Bull to make a film what he had overcome.
“I went through something wild and traumatic and I knew that when I was down, I would’ve done anything to be able to watch a film that inspired me and got me back up on my feet,” he says. “The goal is to always give back, especially if you have a voice. And this film was my way of doing that.”
Following the film’s release in December, Jones has set his sights on his next adventure.
“I’ve gained so much gratitude for life after going through all that and losing what I loved and to now having it again,” he says. “I’m pretty stoked to just travel, ski, film and yeah, we’ll see where the ride takes me.”
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