>>00:00:00 The view alone is lethal. So Jeremy Jones keeps his eyes fixed on the snow, just one step ahead, as he stabs his snowboard into the powder to hoist himself toward this Chilkat Mountain peak. The crater left by the helicopter that dropped him off minutes earlier shrinks into the distance. The only other sign of life is the trail of a snowbird. Arctic winds burn Jones' cheeks. Adrenaline rasps through his veins. He pokes the snow gingerly before each step, ever vigilant for false footholds and hidden crevasses. As Jones cleaves to this serrated ridge thousands of feet above the town of Haines in southeastern Alaska, the thin April air seems to shudder with one simple truth: Tilt backward and die.

Jeremy Jones slams the Ping-Pong ball across the eroded green tabletop as the scent of fried halibut wafts from the kitchen of the Fort Seward Lodge in Haines. "Point," says Jones with a loose grin and a California twang after the ball knocks against a wood-paneled wall. Jones, one of the stars of big-mountain snowboarding, is clearly enjoying this break from filming the latest Teton Gravity Research movie, The Prophecy. Standing a slight 5'8" and sporting metal-rimmed glasses, a chin-length mop and a surfer tan, Jones, 26, projects a disarmingly mellow demeanor. But the ease with which he's dismantling his opponent -- Jeremy Nobis, a redheaded skier in a Viking's body -- reveals Jones' edge. Even several Jack-and-Cokes can't erase years of tennis lessons, killer reflexes and a well-disguised competitive ferocity.

Not too long ago, Jones was just the kid-brother snowboarder, the local grom scrapping to keep up with ski-obsessed older sibs Todd and Steve. The Jones brood grew up on Cape Cod, where 12-year-old Todd and 15-year-old Steve cut their filmmaking chops directing Jeremy in a Sixteen Candles-style party flick, complete with kids asleep beneath beer-stained glass tables. Jeremy was 9. "We started partying young," he says.

But the mountains always came first. Jeremy, known as Chip to big brothers and close friends, honed his snowboard racing skills at Carrabassett Valley Academy in Maine, and barely missed qualifying for the 1998 U.S. Olympic giant slalom squad. Freeriding became his passion when he followed Todd and Steve into Alaska's intoxicating maze of monster terrain to shoot movies with TGR, the film company the older Jones bros founded in 1995 with pals Dirk Collins and Corey Gavitt. TGR's first flick, The Continuum, won Best New Film and Best Cinematography at the 1996 International Ski & Snowboard Film Awards.

Chip has built his rep on mind-altering drops -- including countless first descents of steep, remote mountain faces -- in seven TGR flicks. The readers of Transworld Snowboarding have voted him Best Big Mountain Rider two years running, and he was Vin Diesel's snowboarding stunt double in XXX. But simply tackling the sketchiest lines on the planet's gnarliest steeps wasn't enough for the youngest Jones brother. Last winter, he streamlined spins and grabs in the snowboard parks of Lake Tahoe near his home in Truckee, Calif. As a result, The Prophecy will showcase tricks on big-mountain terrain. Called "fusion," it's the next big thing in riding, and Jones is one of the few who can handle this script.

Because of Haines' proximity to the couloirs and cliffs marking the Chilkats, film crews are starting to make the area an annual stop. Rival company Mack Dawg has already come and gone, but Matchstick Productions is holed up right now at the Captain's Choice Motel, one flight down from the TGR crew. Both sides heed the same rule: Find good snow -- keep mouths shut. "Everyone's probably getting good stuff and lying about it," Chip says.

Across town, at the Fort Seward Lodge hangout, it's Nobis' serve. Whack ... net ... game. Chip smiles, shrugs genially and heads to the bar for a refill. Within seconds, he's already forgotten that he won.

***

>>09:04:04 Doubt can't exist up here. From this snow-crusted Chilkat peak, the drop looks pure vertical, a half-mile or more to the valley below. Jones searches for the hero line, the run that will make his heart burst with fear and freedom. He's studied this steep couloir known as Shadow Ramp before -- on a Polaroid shot from a copter -- but from this perspective, staring down its throat, the run looks very different from the line he saw on the 2-D photo. The drop-in is so steep that Jones can't see 10 yards past his feet. One wrong turn can kill.

***

The brutal climate and topography of southeastern Alaska usually transform the area surrounding Haines into an infinite playground of billowy fluff, steep pitches and rock-filled terrain. AK (or "ay-kay," as Alaskans call their state) will get premier billing in The Prophecy, though runs in Slovakia, Jackson Hole and Andorra will share the screen. But southeastern AK is a co-star that demands expert wrangling. Everyone up here has at least a decade of big-mountain experience. Collins grew up skiing in southern AK's Chugach Range; Todd and Steve were heli-ski guides in Valdez; and TGR's lead guide, Jim "Sarge" Conway, has lectured on avalanche prevention. No one boards a heli without an electronic beacon that can transmit directional pulses through icy slabs of snow as thick as 120 feet. Sarge's first-aid kit includes portable traction splints, waterproof matches and ice axes, and he wears a Black Diamond Avalung vest so he can breathe if he gets buried.

In recent years, vicious snowstorms have grounded crews for days -- even weeks -- at a time. This year, Haines pitches a bizarre curveball: The weather's been too nice. Clear skies may be perfect for flying and filming, but bluebird conditions are useless without good snow. The drought leaves the slopes crusty and wind-scoured, so TGR must scavenge for runs. At 6:30 one April morning, a TGR crew of 10 convenes at a private landing strip 17 miles from town to mount an aerial search for a pocket of ridable fresh. The Prophecy will feature more than 10 skiers and boarders, four of whom -- Jones, Nobis, and snowboarders Victoria Jealouse and Jonaven Moore -- are here this morning. All are frustrated: too much recon, too little riding.

The pilot readies the ship and the acrid smell of jet fuel taints the breakfast coffee and Cup-A-Soups. Nobis adjusts the safety harness, which he wears on the mountain and which will come in handy if he falls into a crevasse. Jealouse, the only woman rider in the film, tugs at her boots. Bald eagles stand sentry on the uppermost branches of leafless cottonwood trees, unblinking even as the heli engine snorts awake.

Flying ain't cheap. The rental heli eats up $1,500 per hour at a guaranteed minimum of 40 hours. TGR shares the cost -- as much as $10,000 per seat -- with the riders, who are paid by sponsors such as Rossignol, Red Bull and Northface to rock their gear while ripping the video's highlight runs. "Kids know exactly what jacket I wear and what board I ride in these movies," says Jones.

The heli seats just five, so the crew splits up, with Conway, Chip and Steve heading up to recon first. The others blearily shield their faces from the 50-knot winds when the chopper lifts off. Writing in a fat binder perched on his lap, Sarge tracks the global position coordinates of anything that looks vaguely filmable, while the pilot suggests drop zones for promising faces. Landings are often as sketchy as runs. Knife-edge peaks force the pilot to balance the tips of the heli's skis on a ridge while keeping the rear of the bird aloft by firing the engine full-throttle. The riders then hang from the skis to lower themselves to the snow. No wonder the Jones boys adopt the Private Ryan Rule: The three never fly at the same time.

Scanning the landscape, riders and crew alike are taunted by peaks that would be killer to ride ... if only there were more snow. Rushing into view is one such tease, an icy-rock cliff jump at the top of a 1,000-foot face called The Haunting. Chip presses his nose against the window, soaking in the potential. Launching off the 70-foot cliff would require a near-vertical landing. Chip snaps a Polaroid. "That'll keep you up nights," Steve yells into his headset above the heli's roar. Chip tucks the photo into his jacket and shouts back, "Yeah, I'll lose sleep over this."

Later on the tarmac, The Haunting still has Steve nervous. "I might not let Chip try it," he confides. "I've never pulled him off a run before." Sarge finds the line equally daunting. "If Chip hits The Haunting," he says, "it would be all-time." But Jones needs to build up to this run, first riding other steep, twisted terrain to bolster nerves and reflexes. Lack of snow on the hairier slopes, let alone on The Haunting, means this hero line will exists only in dreams. For now.

***

>>13:54:17 Atop Shadow Ramp, Jones tosses fistfuls of white clumps to test the slope's stability, watching intently as the snowballs roll out of sight. "How's it look below?" he calls into his handheld. Jones lost a friend to a snowslide a couple of weeks ago, so he's extra wary. At the bottom of the slope, with a clear view of the line, Sarge radios back: "The snow is holding." Jones locks his boots into his bindings. A digital video camera is mounted on his helmet to capture his tweaked POV. Jones is ready, but must wait several minutes as the crew below assembles tripods, adjusts lenses and choreographs heli shots. Jones visualizes how he'll negotiate the mini-avalanche he'll set off after he drops in. Failure is not an option. Jones trusts his instincts.

***

Sunlight is fading, so TGR scrambles to film Chip before Shadow Ramp is shrouded in gray. On an opposing peak about 1,000 feet away, Steve screws one of three Arriflex 16mm cameras onto a tripod. From this "barbie" angle (short for barbecue, because Steve is so far from the rider he may as well be flipping burgers), Chip looks like a period on the upper corner of a blank white sheet. To avoid dots-drifting-downhill monotony, Todd and his camera will follow Chip in a dive-bombing copter. He sits on the floor of the now-doorless heli whomp-whomping above Shadow Ramp, legs dangling in the frigid air, tethered by two seat belts hooked to the harness around his belly, ready to shoot.

The steady chop of the rotors lends a warlike urgency to the moment. One by one, crew members call "Ready" into their radios. Todd presses an eye to his Arriflex. "We're live," he says.



>>18:01:39 Jones nods. "Over this hump and I'm home free," he mutters to himself, and drops in. The mountain, once a foam candyland, begins to shape-shift. Snow cascades in a waterfall. Jones slides in and out of the surging waves like a surfer toying with raging whitewater. He slips into the narrow couloir, making it look easy. Perhaps it's too easy: Jones is in the zone, but not the grip. The drought is robbing him of the killer run he lives for -- when his breath squeezes out in spasms, when the snow rises up in 30-foot-tall clouds and he yelps uncontrollably, adrenaline viscous in his veins. At the bottom, Jones can't help but wonder: Felt great, but was it good enough?

***

August now, and the crew hunkers down in TGR's Jackson Hole headquarters. Outside is the craggy expanse of the Teton Mountains, TGR's backyard winter playland. With a propulsive soundtrack that includes N.E.R.D., Grand Agent and Nappy Roots, The Prophecy will premiere here on Sept. 21, followed by a 150-city U.S. tour and a smaller European run. The budget for the film is $1 million, on par with TGR's last four flicks, and TGR hopes to sell at least 60,000 copies of The Prophecy on VHS ($27) and DVD ($30), matching last year's yield for Mind: The Addiction.

TGR has logged and graded all the footage from four months of shooting. Scenes graded B+ or better have been transferred to digital, and editors must pare 100 hours to one. Punching on a Mac loaded with Final Cut 3, TGR editors work 24/7 for two months, watching each frame more than 1,000 times. Play. Pause. Cut. Paste. Cue. Replay. "It's short-attention-span theater," says supervising producer Jon Klaczkiewicz. Maybe too short. Says Chip: "Everything flies by so quick that the audience rarely gets a sense of the huge risks we take."

Jones' Shadow Ramp run survives the final cut. But Polaroids of untouched territory still flash in his mind. The sky will dump on Haines this winter. TGR wants it, needs it and will stake another month of blood and sweat to chase it. The Prophecy is in the can. But The Haunting awaits.

Click here to go to the Teton Gravity Research website. This article appears in the September 16 issue of ESPN The Magazine.