A Conversation with Tanner: Part Two

Red Bull Skiing recently had the chance to sit down with Tanner, in his Park City home, and talk with him about the season thus far. Tanner can talk for hours about skiing with little prompting, so the standard interview format doesn't always work out. Fortunately what we are left with is the man himself, uncut and uncensored.

In the second installment, Tanner discusses dealing with injury, the reality of making ski movies, the Provo brothers (Ian and Neil), and the Pettit brothers (Callum and Sean). Enjoy.

This week I’ve been seeing everyone getting up at 6:00 a.m. and getting out of the house at 6:30 a.m., to go out on sleds and just kill it the whole time. It’s tough, man. Like I said back in “Teddy Bear Crisis”, I’m one of the most active kids in the world and once you take that away from me it’s like taking medicine from a dying person. One of the toughest things you can deal with in this job is an injury. But just being off my skis for the last little bit and going up yesterday—knowing my ankle’s not ready—and knowing what I have to do to get to a full recovery, just makes me that much more stoked to get back on my skis. Once I get back on it the murder mission will definitely continue and I’ll be that much more ready to put a hurtin’ on the mountains, because I’ve been off my skis for a little bit and it’ll be time to get back on it.

The whole month of February was kind of botch for us, because we’re used to going to a lot of places where the pow’s always nice—getting work done—but this is the first year we’ve kind of had to deal with getting botched out on snow everywhere we’ve gone. It’s almost been a full month of not getting super banger shots. Then all of sudden the boys came out here and the first day coming back from skiing they were grinning ear to ear and I knew something good had happened. CP came in and said it’s back on and just to hear those words was super comforting to me. Even I was getting nervous from not getting shots for a month and the pow staying away. You start to think everything is working against you, but like I said you can’t play with Mother Nature. It’s just on of the things in our sport we have to deal with and you take it as it comes. The more you respect the mountains the more they’ll respect you back and they’ll love you just as much as you love them. So, that’s what we’re doing right now: positive vibes. I knew we come back 180 degrees going from negative to positive and it’s all good. We needed these couple days of the boys going out and getting good snow and getting banger shots.

The Provo brothers, I’m super stoked on these brothers. They’re probably the coolest pair of brothers I’ve seen in a while, next to the Pettit brothers. The Provo brothers are out there. They’re the most mountainous type of kids you’ll meet. In the summer they’re fly fishing all the time and rock climbing, just being out in nature. These kids just love the life that they’re living and the vibe they live is all about righteousness. They are all about positive. That’s the word of the winter. It’s just that much easier to do your thing and hang out with these kids. When you’re out there doing what we are doing—watching people get sick—it’s so cool to see kids that are so level headed. They are my neighbors and they are two of my best friends in my life right now. Seeing them work together, they are best friends, they do everything together. One snowboards and one skis. Neil kills it really hard, you’ve probably seen him in Technine movies throughout the years. He’s really trying to progress his skills and he’s really focused on the backcountry like his brother. It’s a lot harder to go out and ride the mountains than it is to go in the city and hit a rail and those kids realize that and that’s what they are trying to push now. No taking away from sliding rails, because we all like to do it. It’s so fun to go in the city and slide some rails, but the real adventure of what we are doing is them getting out on their snowmobiles and waking up at 4:30 in the morning and getting to the trailhead at 6:30. Getting that morning light and being up there until 5 at night. Working, hiking, skinning, building jumps, finding lines; they are all about it. That draws me to those kids a lot more. We’re all into reggae music, we’re all into a positive lifestyle, and I feel like I’m blessed everyday to have two kids like that in my corner.

The Pettit brothers, just like I said about the Provo brothers, just two of the coolest brothers I’ve ever met in my life. They are still pretty young. You know the Provo brothers went through it when they were younger too. Always fighting all the time, always bickering at each other, but in the end the love is always there. They might not know it, but they are best friends. They do a lot of stuff together and spend a lot to time together. I can see Callum is the older brother, trying to look out of Sean and stuff. In certain situations sure they are going to have their fights and tiffs and quarrels, but that’s like every brothers. Me and Tyson did that at that age. Neil and Ian, it was insane how they used to fight at the skate park here in the summer. You see little fights and quarrels from the Pettits and sometimes they can take it too far and sometimes it’s all good, but the coolest thing is they are there for each other. They are always looking out for each other and the skills that these guys have on their skis is really scary, man. Callum is way different than Sean in a lot ways, but they are so similar in a lot of ways. I think Callum right now has been hanging out with Kye Peterson a whole bunch and is maybe starting to get a little taste of mountaineering. Skinning and hiking and getting into bigger mountains and I think that’s such a righteous thing. Callum’s gonna learn so much from just wanting to know about a mountain and know what’s gonna slide on him and know about wind-loaded pockets and know about temperatures of the snow and know about layers and know about digging pits. He’s already learned so much stuff and it’s already coming in really handy in his skiing skills, especially launching big cliffs. It’s amazing, the kid fully charges 100 percent. Then when you look at Sean, the kid is the murder machine right now. I look at it to the point right now where the kid’s 15 years old and what he did this year up in Retallack and what he did up here, when the kid is my age he’s gonna be on top. He’s gonna be running the world. The ski world is gonna be Sean’s world. Just keep these kids on the righteous path and they know what they want. The eyes they have for the mountains when we go out and film: they are  looking at the same lines I am. They got the eye to look for the good line, to look for the gnarliest thing right in the middle of a face and that’s so sick to see young kids to do. Most kids Sean’s age are worried about training pipe and park and going to the X Games and winning. Sean maybe wants to go to the X Games one day, if you ask him he might say yes, but I don’t think that’s in his mind right now. I think what’s in his mind is world domination. And he’s on the right path. You stick him in a halfpipe he’s gonna do what everybody else is doing. Off of jumps he’s got crazy artillery. Put him on urban rails. Put him on park rails. Whatever. Now stick him in heli and put him on big mountain lines. Stick him on pillow lines stick him on a backcountry booter. If nobody out there has really realized what we’ve been trying to do with skiing, well, it’s an all around thing. Skiing is just fun and I can see in Sean’s eyes it’s really an all around thing to him. The sky’s the limit for the kid, he’s just gotta grow up a little bit. Sean’s still got a little kid body, wait until he’s a full-grown man. I mean he’s stomping 60-footers right now to flats, he’s gonna be stomping 100-footers no problem. Maybe. Right now I don’t where his progression is going, but I’m just stoked on the Pettit brothers.