Jamie Pierre

Jamie Pierre, who has died aged 38, was known as “skiing’s most dangerous man”, “the Gravity Research Skier” or “The King of Big Air” for his delight in skiing off clifftops; his most lunatic escapade saw him fall 255ft, the height of a 24-storey office block.

It was, he admitted, an all-too literally death-defying stunt. Having skied towards the precipice, at Grand Targhee Resort in the Teton mountains of Wyoming, Pierre tucked his skis underneath him in an attempt to remain upright. “I prefer to land in the slouch position so you spread out the impact,” he said afterwards. But about half way through his four-second freefall he lost control, and footage of the jump shows him plunging headfirst into the powder snow at the cliff’s base.

As his support crew rushed to extricate him from the 10ft impact crater, it was unclear whether he was still alive. Then a voice crackled over the radio: Pierre was unscathed but for a cut lip. It had, he admitted, been “way scary landing on my back”, but moments later he was celebrating a world-record breaking feat that – even in the adrenalin-soaked world of extreme sports – won him plaudits for unparalleled daring. His wife Amee, at home with their baby daughter, took a dimmer view, and refused to speak to him for several days.

Matthew Jamison Fredric Marie Pierre was born at Minnetonka, Minnesota, on February 22 1973, the third of eight children of Gerard Pierre, a Frenchman from Aix-en-Provence, and his wife Pam. Always known as Jamie, the boy stared skiing at the age of 10, and immediately displayed a zest for speed and jumping. According to his mother he was “fearless” and, after leaving High School, Pierre pursued life as a “ski-bum” – working casual jobs at resorts in order to fund his increasingly risky adventures on the slopes.

He entered his first extreme skiing competition in 1995, but it was his willingness to throw himself off precipices that marked him out. In 1997 he jumped 50ft. As the drops grew bigger, and Pierre flipped head over heels in front of ever larger cliffs, photographers and sponsors began to take notice. On many occasions he landed on his skis and continued down the mountain as though descending a well-groomed piste.

In 2003 he launched himself off a 165ft cliff in Utah’s Wolverine Cirque. Then, the following year, he took on a 185ft fall in Switzerland. “People thought he was a little unhinged,” said the skiing writer Sam Moulton.

In 2005 Pierre married and this, combined with a new-found Christian faith, inclined him to limit his stunts. But there was still one jump he wanted to make. So, at dawn on January 25 2006, he caught the first chairlift of the day at Grand Targhee, and made his way off-piste. “Everyone’s looking at me like I’m a nut job,” he said, no doubt with some justice, before propelling himself into the void.
With the record under his belt, Pierre settled down a little. “The plan is to ski more, fall out of the sky less,” he said. This did not prevent his taking risks, however, and he was snowboarding off-piste on early season snow on November 13 when he apparently triggered an avalanche. This dragged him across rocks and a small cliff – precisely the kind of dangers over which he had so often soared clear.
Jamie Pierre is survived by his wife and their two daughters.

Jamie Pierre, born February 22 1973, died November 13, 2011