Words: Ryan Waterfield 2017-10-31 17:15:42
But in the beginning, it was all about fire.
Fast-forward two centuries, eight generations and 2,400 miles west and you’ll arrive in Sun Valley, ID, where you’ll find another DuPont. I’ve known Lexi—officially “Alexis”—and her family for the better part of 20 years, both as a teacher and friend. I remember elementary-school Lexi, tiny and wild-haired and chasing the bigger kids around the hill. I remember middle-school Lexi, still small in stature but extra-large in spirit, setting her alarm at criminally early hours so she could ski in criminally cold temperatures. And I remember high-school Lexi, working hard at school and skiing and finding her way in the world.
While the 28-year-old Lexi has changed over that time, some things have remained constant: Her immovable drive and her commitment to social justice. Maybe it’s being the middle child and having to prove herself. Maybe it’s the work ethic and compassion instilled by her parents in all three DuPont girls. Or maybe it’s the fact that—whether it’s skiing big-mountain lines in Alaska, flying planes, or teaching girls to ski in Kyrgyzstan—for Lexi, the biggest type of failure is not trying.
Lexi and her two sisters might as well have been born with skis strapped to their feet. That’s partly because they grew up in Sun Valley, ID, two minutes from the site of the world’s first chairlift, and partly because skiing is simply in her blood. “My grandfather on my mom’s side, Wes Diest, lived for skiing and for coaching,” Lexi says. “There is a memorial race named after him now at Kelly Canyon [a small ski resort east of Idaho Falls], and most of my coaches in Sun Valley were coached by my grandfather at one point or another.”
With that passion for snow came a penchant for daring as well. Lexi’s mom, Holley, was one of the first women to do a backflip in competition when she skied for the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team. Growing up DuPont, it seems, means growing up in a world where skiing is a way of life.
But for Lexi, that didn’t necessarily translate into fame. As a racer on the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation team, Lexi wasn’t a star; she was diligent about the training, but in her years on the circuit, she never once podiumed. For the young DuPont, however, it was more motivation than discouragement. Instead, watching her friends take home medals gave her perspective. “My ski racing gave me a foundation,” she says. “It wasn’t about winning for me. I learned how to suffer, to work hard, to be a part of a team and to set my sights on things just out of my reach.”
Having spent her winters on snow since childhood, Lexi also spent every summer learning to sail on Cape Cod, MA, a skill that earned her a full-ride sailing scholarship to Endicott College in Boston. But the mountains eventually called her home, and a year later she transferred to University of Colorado Denver. During a study abroad program in 2010, Lexi circumnavigated the globe with retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a renowned opponent of apartheid in South Africa. She ended up earning a degree in fine art in 2014, and in the years since her work has even been featured by the American Indian College Fund.
Yet Lexi remained compelled by powder, and when friend and classmate McKenna Peterson suggested she enter a freeride event in Telluride, CO, Lexi went for it. She told her mom about her plans, and Holley dug out her old freeskiing pants—“skintight, bright orange with stars on the butt and white stripes down the side,” according to Lexi—and gave her middle daughter some words of advice. “Wear these so the judges can see you,” Holley said. “But before you go, make sure you introduce yourself to the judges, look them in the eye, tell them your name, and then show them what you can do.”
The day of the competition, she followed her mom’s instructions and introduced herself to the judges. As she turned to leave, one of the judges said, “OK, Little Miss Hotpants!” The moniker would follow her on the freeride circuit, but at that first event she proved she could back up her flashy attire with a third-place finish. Lexi had a new nickname and new direction, but still wasn’t sure she could make a career out of the sport she loved.
In the Sun Valley area, a few names stand out as skiing royalty, and the Crist siblings are definitely among them. The brothers, Reggie and Zach, have played a pivotal role in Lexi’s path. For her dad’s 60th birthday, her family headed north to Haines, AK, where Reggie [a former U.S. Olympic ski racer, X Games gold medalist, and eldest of the Crist brothers] was working as a heli ski guide. At that point, Reggie—20 years her senior—hadn’t seen Lexi ski. Once he did, he pulled her parents aside and said Lexi should stay on in Haines for a bit. Photographer Will Wissman was working with Reggie, and he wanted to get Lexi more time in the Alaskan mountains and in front of a camera.
It came at a cost, though; Lexi had to make a few promises to her parents. “My mom and dad said if I got a job teaching sailing the next summer to pay them back for my time in Haines, I could stay,” she says. “For the next week, I slept in Reggie’s closet, underneath his stinky clothes. I was the only girl around, 19 years old and taking any seat in the helicopter that was available.”
After a week of shooting, Lexi had an impressive portfolio. Little Miss Hot Pants was suddenly living her dream as a professional skier, with a reputation as one of the most promising up-and-comers on the scene. But for Lexi, this success was an opportunity to do far more than just ski.
While the DuPont sisters were growing up, the family had a strange tradition: Their father, Chris, would give them cash for each birthday, the amount equal to the age they were turning. It wasn’t much for the young girls, but they quickly learned that a few dollars—spent in the right way—can do large things. “We were allowed to spend half of it on whatever we wanted,” Lexi says. “Usually candy at the movie theater, but the rest we had to save. When there was enough to make a difference, we were to give it away to someone who needed it more than we did.”
This small gesture took deep root. Lexi’s younger sister, Madi, has traveled extensively with organizations in the developing world, working to give young people better chances at survival and success. Her older sister, Emilie—who married Zach, the youngest of the Crist clan—works for an organization called the Flourish Foundation, whose mission is to “Inspire systemic change through cultivation of healthy habits of mind that promote personal well-being, benevolent social action and environmental stewardship.” And Holley works with Sun Valley-based Higher Ground, an organization that takes struggling community members—including military vets dealing with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder—skiing to give them a way to find some freedom from their ailments.
Even in high school, Lexi was committed to helping others. For her senior project in 2007, Lexi went to Cambodia to volunteer at a center that worked with street children and fought to keep children out of the sex trade. “I was 17 years old, and working with kids near my age,” she says. “I had always been grateful for my life and my community, and this experience helped me understand that we have the power to do something about the things we see as unfair or tragic in the world.”
A year later, in 2008, Lexi had another such experience when she climbed Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro with the Sun Valley-based Make A Difference Foundation, in order to raise funds for children in Tanzania. It’s been a trend that has continued ever since.
Most recently, in 2016, it took her to Kyrgyzstan, where she and filmmaker Nyla Tawa spent three weeks teaching young girls how to ski. “In their culture, girls just don’t participate in the physical activities,” Lexi says. “Those are just for the brothers, the dads, the uncles and the grandfathers. So Nyla and I first went to the families and explained our hope to take their daughters skiing with us. We had to get the dads, the brothers and the grandfathers on board.
“Their families came out to watch them. Once we practiced getting the gear on—and their boots were one, two sometimes three sizes too big—and maneuvering around in the skis, we conquered side-stepping and other fundamentals. And they didn’t bat an eye when we told them they’d have to climb 1,500 feet to ski down, and keep climbing if they wanted to keep skiing.”
Which they did, of course.
Lexi and Nyla are nearly finished with a documentary about the experience. It’s different sort of film for a professional skier; rather than focusing on who can take the biggest line, it captures the impact the sport can have on others.
“The first time these young women put on skis, they cried,” Lexi says. “It was so far outside of the realm of what they thought was possible.”
While less distant, Lexi’s trip to South Dakota’s Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 2016 was equally as formative. After seeing the protests against the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, Lexi put together “Water Worshippers,” a four-part film series documenting her experience.
While less humanitarian in nature, there’s another DuPont legacy that Lexi is carrying on. Lexi’s dad has long owned and piloted his own small plane, from which he’s rumored to have dropped candy on his daughters while they were camping in the mountains around Sun Valley. Before that, her namesake—Alexis Felix DuPont—was the first to land a plane in the small, WWII-era town of Telefomen in New Guinea. One of her aunts and an uncle were the first to fly a plane down the Amazon (to deliver an eye to a remote village); then there’s the pair of aunts, who in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby became some of the first women to fly across the United States.
In that same vein, Lexi is currently earning her pilot’s license, with plans to retrace the flights of her ancestors. And who knows—maybe she’ll drop some candy on lucky middle-school campers from her alma mater.
The adventurers and the boundary busters of the DuPont family are an inspiring bunch, but the name also has a more controversial heritage. As an environmentalist and humanitarian, Lexi has struggled with the legacy of the DuPont chemical company, with E.I. DuPont’s role in bringing gunpowder to the United States and the destruction that followed, and with the impact a company like DuPont has had on the country’s natural places. But Lexi is battling her surname’s darker connotations, trying to balance the realities of the past by trying to live intentionally and sustainably today. Besides her efforts in Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan and Standing Rock, Lexi recently bought a house: A 500-square-foot, off-grid geodesic dome, tucked into the woods outside of Ketchum, ID, into which she recently moved.
And that’s just the beginning. Lexi sees her success in the ski world as a platform for larger endeavors, aimed at things beyond what is, in the end, a sport.
“I’m living and working in a world that is always about going bigger,” Lexi says. “Ski a bigger peak. Jump a bigger cliff. I want to go bigger too, but not just as a skier. I want the work I do in this world to be about so much more than me and the sport I love. I want to use my voice, my talents, my skills to amplify what is possible. My mom and dad always told us that the only way to fail was not to try. So this is me trying.”
Not bad for Little Miss Hotpants.
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