Thanksgiving in Oregon

Went down to Portland and the Oregon Coast for Thanksgiving. It sure was a jolly time!

Thanksgiving on the Oregon Coast from luke tanaka on Vimeo.

First Freshies

Its been dumping in Bozeman all week! We went up to Bear Canyon and took our first runs of the season....knee deep in early October ain't bad....

Me, Austin(Hobit), Shae-balls, Jorday(Bear Jew)

Alaska: The Lost Adventures

I finally got my hands on some pictures from last winter in Alaska around January. Cody and I went sledding in Placer valley and found some reaaaallll sweet terrain. From spine lines to pillow bonkers, Placer river is the shit....

Epic

I love AK

Avy terrain

Choice view of the inlet

Cool reflections in the ice

Cody and the infamous Ice-Noodle

Im about to go spelunking

Foreboding

The usual January grey-out

Skookum Glacier

2008-2009 Promo

Frontswaps n Faceshots

Frontswaps n' Faceshots- Luke Tanaka 08/09 from luke tanaka on Vimeo.

Alaska II

Funny story really....

I was riding the chairlift at Big Sky and my phone started ringing. I answer it to find out that it is none other than Joshua Randich. The conversation went something like this:

J: "When are you coming up to Alaska?"

L: " Uhhh, I'm broke, probably next year."

J: "What if i told you I had cancer? Would you come up then?"

L: "Uhhh, yeahhhh probably not still...."

J: "Oh yeah?.....What if I told you that I can take you heli skiing for free?"

L: "I'll be there in a week, see you at the airport."

and so with that, I headed off to Alaska for my first ever heli experience. The trip ended up being a success. We got our one heli day but the avalanche danger was high due to the layer of volcanic ash. This limited us to the mellow terrain, but was still a great experience nonetheless. We flew behind Alyeska and shredded Winner Creek which I must say has some incredible terrain possibilities. I also got epic pow all week at Alyeska and Turnagain Pass. Even though I was only there for a week, I managed to get in a ton of pow!

Beautiful Alyeska

Little flat 3 on a windlip

Full extension

Dave and I riding chair 6...headwall in the background

Backy

Layback on picnic rock over the volcanic ash

Good to be home......

View from the Heli

Stoked!!!

I got off the heli and saw Mike Douglas and Mark Abma standing in the parking lot......crazy

Super Stoked

The crew Josh, Me, Nick, and Bacon (who got cut out of the frame)

oh lawd

Chugach Powder Guides

This is our Guides back, its quite red

I spy a straight line...

Gettin another lap

Poorboyz Amateur Hour 3 Webisode-Grizzly Gulch

Poorboyz Amateur Hour 3

Whitefish Round 2

My buddy D-Wall is a choice filmer and invited me up to Whitefish this last weekend for a little park shoot. I ended up staying for three days with one day of pow pow and two days of park. Big Mountain is sooo sick on a pow day because there are hundred of cliffs to throw yourself off of. Their park is also surprisingly good . Troy and Iain took some sweet pics....

Switch 5 trucker

Switch 7 nose

Switch 9 nose mute

Switch 7 mute

Switch 7 nose

Rodeo 5 critical

Rodeo 5 Nippon

Wall Stall

Another rodeo 5 japan

Idaho

So after a couple weeks of hangin with Durtschi in Bozeman, we headed down to Brundage Idaho to get some more shots. Ross and I stayed at the Becker residence for a couple of days. They were very hospitable and I had a grand ol' time staying there! Brandon took us out on the sleds near Brundage, and I must say...this place is awesome! Its fun in a different sense because they dont have huge mountains, but rather super playful zones. After Brundage we made our way up to Silver Mountain for an event called Silver Sessions. Once again I met up with Collins and the rest of the 4bi9 homies. The event itself turned out to be the biggest joke ever. The features were below sub-par and everything in general was unorganized. On the plus side however, we got put up in one of the nicest hotels ive ever stayed at that included a full on indoor water park. After about a day, everyone ended up leaving and i caught a ride with Sir. Blake Nyman back to Bozeman. Lesson learned.....

Road Gap in Brundage

I did a helicopter

My new hair-do a.k.a the mushroom

Rimeazine

Open publication - Free publishing - More hat

Jackson Hole

At the beginning of the year MSU has a one day deal for a 6 day pass at Jackson Hole. I bought one last year and it was very much worth it. While I was in NZ I called and reminded Alannah to pick me up one also. Its a good thing I remembered to do that because Lonna and I had an excellent time in Jackson this season. Jackson itself is only about 4 hours away from Bozeman so its rather easy to get down there for a weekend of shred. We went down three separate weekends with the last weekend being the deepest. Jackson is easily one of my favorite spots in the world :)

Jackson Hole slackcountry in the backgound....epic

Lonna, ain't she adorable??

Warm up line on Cody Peak

3rd try, finally got it...I was getting sick of hiking...

Little shifty on the warm up line

I think Lonna shredded this harder than a lot of the dudes

Utah

So we left Montana to Salt Lake City to film another webisode. We stayed at the 4bi9 house and skied Grizzly Gulch the entire week. We ended up meeting up with Timmy Durtschi to hit some jumps. We spent a few days hitting random features and eventually got talked into building up Pyramid Gap by Tim. The build for this gap takes an incredible amount of work, it took us two days to build the jump and inrun. Collins and I ended up not hitting it because the inrun is so gnarly. Tim however decided to throw a double rodeo 9 over it....buhhhhhh. 

Tim claimin it. As you can see, this jump is somewhat large

Shot from across the valley. The black spec next to the jump is a person

Dig Dig Dig

The crew Collins, Witt, Ross, and Paul

This zone was fun......yayyyyy

Little jump carved out of a windlip

Top of Grizzly Gulch

Are you beeping??

Really fun zone on the backside of Grizzly Gulch

Switch 5

Artsyshred

 

Timothy and I

View from the top....yikes