Jamie Pierre surveys his world record cliff drop

I remember seeing a tweet from an alleged “eye witness” who was at Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah which mentioned that an avalanche had claimed the life of extreme skier Jamie Pierre. Being on twitter, you always wonder whether or not these stories are true. I mean, I think I’ve seen just about every celebrity be reported dead at least once a month only to be proved a hoax shortly after.

I thought Jamie Pierre would live forever. Though the point blank truth is that no one does.

It is alleged that at the time, Pierre was located in an area that technically would have been inbounds at the resort had it have been open, though is yet to start turning lifts. As the resort has not yet kicked off its season, no avalanche control has been done in the area and the recent snowfall had made the snowpack extremely unstable.

Pierre would probably be best known to the masses for holding the world record for jumping off a 255 foot cliff only a few years ago. At that stage, I was familiar with Jamie’s work, though when I saw the video, I did not know what it was about, only that it was a “must see” cliff drop.

Pierre begins with a word about God as he believed one of his purposes in life was to spread the word of the bible through his God-given skiing ability. I thought it was a suicide message. As it turns out, as you have probably now seen from the video, Pierre rotates on the drop that is higher than the golden gate bridge and ends up landing on his head. If 100 people did this drop, you would be lucky to see a handful survive. The fact that Pierre landed on his head and survived is nothing short of a miracle.

As it turns out, Pierre’s time wasn’t up and I was lucky enough to meet him in Australia as he toured around with the public showings of the Warren Miller movie franchise. He was a well spoken, humble man, who deeply loved his family and sharing his talents with the world so as to spread his message.

You can’t help but think he is a little crazy, though as it turns out, we are all reminded that in life, to really feel alive, you have to live a little. In this case, the consequences were fatal, though as I’m sure Pierre himself would say, the man upstairs has a plan and you might as well squeeze every last drop out of life rather than growing old with a head full of regret for the things you always wanted to do but never try.

Jamie Pierre is survived by his wife Aimee and two children and our deepest thoughts, prayers and sympathies go out to them in what must be a terribly difficult time.