JACKSON, Wyo. — Jackson-based raft guides and climbing partners Oliver Dev and Corry Jones went on the adventure of a lifetime when they competed as a team on season two of “Race to Survive: New Zealand,” which premiered on USA Network May 20.
With $500,000 on the line, Dev and Jones were one of nine teams that competed in the show, racing across 150 miles on the south island of New Zealand. They had to source their own food and water, navigate the terrain and beat the other teams in each leg to avoid elimination.
“I think a lot of the terrain in New Zealand is very similar to the terrain in Jackson,” Dev explained. “There’s a lot of loose rock scrambling and boulder-hopping all over the place and I think running around in the Tetons really helped us be comfortable in that terrain and move relatively quickly.”
Jones found his way to Jackson after visiting with his family and going on a whitewater rafting trip down the Snake River. He said his guide opened his eyes to the job and that it afforded him to travel the world.
“I was back in guide school that next summer at 18 years old and I haven’t missed a summer since,” Jones said.
The duo met on Maui in 2017 while working as sea kayak guides and have been friends and climbing partners since.
“I initially moved out there [to Maui] with the plan to stay indefinitely but I realized I missed the mountains and climbing, and Corry was like, ‘Well, I know a place that has all of that; you should come check out the rafting scene,’” Dev said.
Five summers on the river and three winters later, Dev says the Teton region is now home and took all of his interests in the outdoors to the next level.
“After this entire experience and realizing what this place has done for me and turned me into, in terms of athleticism, it’s a place I want to be and want to stay,” Dev said.
Dev said the competition felt like a “culmination of all these experiences I’ve had in my 20s.”
While neither would classify themselves as survivalists, they said they felt well-rounded against the other teams of “incredible athletes.”
“Jackson through and through fueled the lead-up to this and the desire to do something like this,” Jones said. “We have had incredible mentors here in the Tetons through rafting, mountaineering and climbing.”
“We went out there and had the skillset to stay moving fast, good [navigation], then get in a boat and paddle better than most people, and get on ropes and move through faster than other teams,” Jones said. “[The challenges] played right to our hand.”
Dev and Jones dominated challenges throughout the show and said their favorite was the alpine snow challenge, which gave competitors a 2-hour time limit to complete the ropes course—they completed it in 18 minutes; and the canyoneering challenge, where they outpaced the guide and had to stop for the production crew to catch up.
“Being able to outrun the canyoneering guide who works in there was pretty sleek,” Dev said. Jones added, “It was just an awesome, awesome moment to be running through that canyon and get stopped.”
The two did not have a shortage of fun on the show, and while they were front-runners, they were unfortunately eliminated in Monday night’s episode, after Jones hunted an animal that was outside of the show’s rules, in a moment of dire hunger.
When asked what they would have done with the grand prize, Jones said, “This is a really privileged answer and an amazing thing to be able to say but I don’t think that there would be a ton of difference. I think I would still be guiding for Jackson Hole Whitewater, I’d be teaching swift water; maybe I’d have a cushy little brokerage account, maybe I’d have a nice raft and trailer, but really not a lot would change, and it’s a really cool introspective moment to think about that and say, lucky me.”
Dev has a slightly different answer, prefacing his wish list of items saying, “We lost out on the money, but we still have everything we need.”
He said along with starting a savings account, he would have used some of the money to get into paragliding and take a motorcycle trip in India, but those things will still happen.
Their biggest unrealized dream after being eliminated: “We really wanted to enter a car in the Figure 8 races during the fair, but maybe next year,” Dev said with a chuckle.
