The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3
PERFECTLY STRANGE: At Home with Irie Jefferson
Words: Ben Shanks Kindlon 2023-12-06 11:15:29
Irie Jefferson and photographer Mike Yoshida goofing around at Halo-Halo, a 2022 event hosted by Snowboy Productions at Mt. Hood, OR that served as a gathering of BIPOC snowboarders, filmers, photographers and more. “Irie and I have the same Supreme goggles, so we always kid and complement each other on our goggles,” Yosh says. “This photo was kind of a joke, as I asked him to turn the label front and center.” Photo: Mike Yoshida
Living near the top of the Blue Mountains, the largest range in Jamaica, Irie Jefferson likens his childhood to that of Mowgli’s in The Jungle Book. Damming rivers to hunt for crayfish (or janga as they’re known in Jamaica), cliff jumping and thieving pineapples from local farms were all part of young Irie’s life. From Jamaica he moved to Chicago, then onto Samoa, a small Polynesian island in the South Pacific. Next was Armenia, a country in eastern Europe where Irie lived for a few years before eventually coming back to the States. His early trajectory is rather uncommon for any snowboarder, let alone one who rides at Irie’s level. Having recently joined The North Face’s Athlete Development Program, the 25-year-old’s successful jump from the Caribbean to wintry locales is sort of like the snowboarding version of Cool Runnings, but perhaps even cooler.
To clarify: there is no snow in Jamaica, not even at the tippy top of 7,402-foot Blue Mountain Peak. “It does get permafrost, occasionally,” Irie says. Growing up, he was one of only 15 kids in his village who climbed to the highest point in the country. Apparently, most locals have little interest in hiking up there, but something drew Irie to the top. His village, Hagley Gap, is next to Blue Mountain Peak, roughly 10 miles north of Jamaica’s capital city, Kingston. Hagley Gap is where Irie’s mom, Denise, founded and directed The Blue Mountain Project, a grassroots non-profit organization that serves rural communities in the Blue Mountains. “It started with providing healthcare and education then sprawled into all types of stuff,” Irie says, proudly describing his mom’s positive influence in the area. “She works with the Jamaica Aids Foundation, helping with testing, and with business development inside the village. Now we have two different computer labs there for people to use for free. It services the 3,000 people living in that region that can’t always make it to Kingston, or Morant Bay on the other side of the mountain, because it’s difficult and expensive for them to get there. It’s come a long way and is still developing now.”
Hagley Gap, despite its limited infrastructure and lack of paved roads, is also where Irie’s dad, Otis, gave Irie his first skateboard. “I would skate on patches of cement that I could find in my village,” he says. “We used to go to this coffee shop in Kingston for my mom to do her business, and I had this little [PlayStation Portable] that I would use to go on YouTube and watch skate videos while we were there. So, I was tapped into skating a little bit, and as soon as I was back in the US, I was going to skateparks. Pretty quickly I started kick flipping stairsets. Once I saw everything in person, it all kind of clicked.”
When Irie neared sixth grade, his parents decided they wanted him in school in the States. Although Irie was raised in Jamaica from the time he was 10 months old, his mom is from Waterloo, IA, his dad is from Cabrini-Green, IL, and Irie was born in Corpus Christi, TX. “My mom wanted me to have a US transcript here, for high school and college,” Irie says. “But I was only in Chicago for six or seven months. One day my mom came in like, ‘I got a job with Peace Corps, we’re moving to Samoa.’” For the two years he spent in Samoa, Irie could only skate the carport at their house. Despite the beauty of the South Pacific, island life didn’t exactly float his boat, and he was happy when he heard that they were packing up and moving to Armenia.
Armenia is where Irie’s skateboarding flourished. “The infrastructure there is super fire, got kind of an ex-Soviet vibe,” he says. “I was skating around old Soviet statues, on granite ledges, stair sets, and gaps. I was never getting kicked out of spots. All the old ads—that’s the Armenian word for brother—would be down with it. I used to skate right in front of the Gucci store on 11th Ave and the security guards would come out, give me Sprites and just be super curious, watching it and thinking it was sick.” Armenia is also where Irie got his first sense of naturally falling into a crew of rippers. He skated with them almost daily from 14 to 16, when his mom’s job brought them back to the States. Next stop: Washington, DC.
“So, basically, I got back to the States and worked at a Zumiez that was lowkey in the hood,” Irie says. “The mall went under because most of the employees were just getting over on the companies that they worked for there, with product going dry mysteriously. My boss was a core skater, and he wanted someone to snowboard with. He got me a discounted setup and I would pull up to the mountains on weekends with him. My dad was a boarder when he lived in Colorado back in the day. I had snowboarded once when I was in sixth grade, on a vacation in Wisconsin. On my first day, my dad taught me how to turn and stop and we went to the park where I jibbed a box. I also rode a handful of times in Armenia, they have some badass mountains there. In my senior year of high school, I did the snowboarding club thing, getting driven out on a bus to Pennsylvania to ride Liberty Mountain and White Tail. But I didn’t start really snowboarding regularly until I was in college.”
In McHenry, MD, Irie attended Garrett College and started working park crew at Wisp Resort. He progressed quickly and yearned for bigger mountains. Following his final year at school in 2019 Irie moved to northern California where he hoped he could bring his riding to the next level.
“Big snow and big mountains brought me to Tahoe and once I came out west, I felt at home for the first time in a long time,” Irie says. “I was always traveling growing up. I felt like I found my community. The local crew Free Dawgers took me under their wing. It was so sick to find a crew who was killing it and accepted me. I was getting much better so quickly with bigger mountains, rails, jumps, more snow than I’ve ever seen, a half pipe, all those sorts of things. Then, it just started snowballing.”
Irie’s video clips became standouts, sponsorships rolled in, and his presence at events grew. In 2022 Irie was kicking it with filmer Luis Medearis who informed Irie about The North Face’s Athlete Development Program. The program offers athletes a two-year contract for the funding, gear and mentorship they require to realize their potential. Despite Lu seeing the fit, initially Irie had a hard time viewing himself as a good candidate for the program. “We all have our own mental battles with feeling confident in our own shoes,” he says. Nevertheless, Lu pushed for him to apply. “So, I did,” Irie says. “Then a few months go by, and I get an email saying I was one of the finalists. I was like, ‘Whoa, what the heck?’ Next thing you know, I was at Mt. Hood [OR] hiding from the wind behind some rocks on the phone with Erik Leon and the rest of the headquarters at The North Face. It was a perfect moment.”
Soon after joining The North Face’s Athlete Development Program, Irie received an invitation to Low Maintenance, an event hosted by Estelle Pensiero at Baldface Lodge, BC. The premise of the event was to have 12 established pros each invite an amateur of their choosing and create a space for them to pass on knowledge on riding the backcountry as well as how to navigate life as a professional snowboarder. The gathering gave Irie the chance to ride Baldface’s iconic tenure alongside other up-and-coming talent including Estelle, Cannon Cummins and Brayden Charette, and veteran mentors like Jamie Lynn, Curtis Ciszek and Austin Smith. Austin was the pro who invited Irie to Low Maintenance, and he was impressed by his protégé’s adaptability in powder. “He’s like an onion,” Austin says. “The more layers you pull back, the more interesting he gets. His snowboarding is like an onion, too. I thought he was more of a rail kid and would be a little out of his element at Baldface, but he excelled. Everything he wanted to ride and the tricks he wanted to do were not the obvious ones, which is really refreshing. He’s got his own juice coming out of his brain. He’s going to contribute a new approach to snowboarding in the streets and backcountry. Big mountain Irie is going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
Indeed, Irie is continually progressing, expanding his network, his knowledge, and more. He’s also received support for his upcoming video project, Interspace. Exhibiting a cool, humble head, Irie is staying realistic about his current trajectory, but nevertheless striving to make the absolute most of his already impactful presence.
“I’m not going to the X Games to throw down with Sparky [Mark McMorris], that would be outrageous,” Irie says with a laugh. “I’m learning how to cultivate things for the culture and the community that I’m in, and how to give back. A major key to the [Athlete Development] program is about doing stuff that’s bigger than yourself. I’m trying to figure out how to reduce the barrier to entry for snowboarding, because to be honest I’ve had very random and ‘right place, right time’ circumstances with snowboarding that’s allowed me to do it, especially at the level I’m doing it now. It’s generally a hard sport to get into if you don’t have a well-off family to support you. I want to be able to cater experiences for people in lower income brackets, because most of society can’t partake, or don’t find these opportunities in their life. I couldn’t imagine what my life would be without skateboarding or snowboarding. And, so, I want to help people find it. I want everybody to tap into their deepest, truest forms of themselves and chase their wildest dreams, because you never know what could happen.”
Austin may have put it best when he wrote in an Instagram post that Irie “might be the most interesting man in snowboarding.” At 25 he’s already lived in several contrasting countries, speaks multiple languages, and continually adapts to new environments as smoothly as he transitions diverse terrain in the mountains. His story continues to unfold in ways that affirm the feeling he’s found his home with the snowboarding community. Recently, it led him to meeting Ahmon Stamps, a retired Northwest shredder who used to roll with Salomon and Grenade Gloves. It turns out that Ahmon is his Irie’s second uncle removed. More serendipitous proof that Irie’s family was here all along, simply waiting for him to show up.
“It’s wild,” Irie says. “The universe is wild… It’s been so perfectly strange.”
“He’s like an onion. The more layers you pull back, the more interesting he gets.” —Austin Smith
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