After breaking both legs and shattering his ‘invincibility complex’ in a crash, freeskier Kai Jones returned to ‘ground zero’

The pain was like nothing Kai Jones had experienced before, so overwhelming that he felt on the cusp of passing out.

The pain was like nothing Kai Jones had experienced before, so intense and overwhelming that he felt on the cusp of passing out. Stuck on a 30-degree slope in the Wyoming backcountry, he had little option but to bide his time and wait for search and rescue. All the while, his legs throbbed with agony. “So much more than I ever imagined the human body could even feel,” Jones recalls. The American freeskier is now almost two years removed from the accident that threatened to derail his career and stop him from walking again, but he can still remember precisely how that day unfolded. The sun was shining and the sky a shock of blue – dream-like conditions for any skier looking to carve down a powder-coated mountain in front of the camera. Jones had skied the line in question before, and he felt more calm than usual as he slipped off the cliff edge and made his first turn. But it was after dropping through the air that things started to go wrong – and fast. Jones missed his landing and tumbled several meters down the slope, a ball of string unraveling. As a dusting of snow half-concealed his stricken body, he clung to his knees and let out a piercing scream, pain flooding through his body. “In the past when I’ve crashed and hurt myself, it’s always been, ‘Oh, when can I ski next?’ the 18-year-old Jones tells CNN Sport. “But in this scenario, I was definitely more concerned for some bigger things, like being able to walk and move again. I had no idea what had happened to me.”