“I usually don’t like to credit luck as a factor in exceptional situations, but Tatum Monod, Tanner Hall and Michelle Parker got super lucky on this trip Haines, AK. Stormy weather had kept everyone in town for months, but when we showed up the clouds parted for a week of sunshine and perfect conditions, and we were all pushing each other to higher levels and steeper lines. It was the best session of my life.”— Lexi DuPont Photo: Will Wissman hile 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 devel-oping 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 trau-matic 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 volun-teer at a center that worked with street children and fought to keep children out of the sex trade. “I was 17 years old, and work-ing 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 W 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 prac-ticed 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 profes-sional 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. Lexi Dupont 063
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Two: Page 63
