It's been a crazy last few months. We premiered "Come Find Us" on September 2nd to two sold out crowds in Bozeman, MT. Since then, we've been premiering all over Montana and the Northwestern United States. We've been working on wrapping up premieres and DVD distribution while trying to schedule trips and shoots for the upcoming year. For our next project, we will be making our way out of Montana a bit, while also exploring more of the terrain in our home state. One of our biggest obstacles during the first part of the season was school. The entire TSP crew was attending school full time this past semester, so it was a struggle to find time to shoot while also focusing on our studies. We did what we could with the early season snow, finding time in our schedules to get some urban shooting done. We definitely got some early bangers in the bag, thanks in large part to Shay Lee, Sandy Boville, Zak Steele and Brock Paddock making a weeklong trip up here to shoot in some cities around Bozeman.
The first two weeks of December were insanely busy for me. I booked a flight to Anchorage, AK to shoot with Luke Tanaka on December 14th, but had to focus on getting all my projects, papers and tests finished before that. I ended up running frantically around Bozeman on the morning of my flight trying to get all my gear in order. When I hopped on the plane I was just hoping that I hadn't forgotten anything.
When I got into Anchorage, I was immediately able to relax. I hadn't thought much about the trip beforehand so it ended up being kind of surreal when I found myself in Alaska. We stayed at the Tanaka family cabin in Girdwood, which is a short walk from Alyeska Resort.
We had bluebird weather everyday of the trip, which is great for filming. However, we didn't get any snow, and the temperature was hovering right around zero for most of the time I was there. I also found myself out of ski shape, since I hadn't had any time to ski before I arrived in Alaska. Luke and crew whipped me into shape pretty quick - those guys are billy goats! It was definitely a new experience for me as I had never done much hiking while filming. My camera bag became a burden and the other guys made it up the mountains way quicker than I did. However, we did our best with the conditions we had and ended up filming some pretty nice spine lines. Unfortunately, snow and avalanche conditions got pretty bad towards the end of the trip so we ended up skiing at Alyeska a few more days than we expected. Alyeska was a blast though - doesn't get much better than hot laps during night skiing!
The Alaska lifestyle is different than anything I've ever experienced. It didn't get light until around 11 AM each day, and sunset happened around 3:30 PM. The sun stays really close to the horizon for most of the day, so if you are below the mountains you really don't even see it. Since the sun is so low, the light looks like sunset for most of the day. Once 8 PM rolls around, it's been dark for awhile and it feels like it's way later than it actually is - bed time!
My first trip to Alaska was inspiring and I hope to make it back up there as soon as I can. I flew back into my hometown of Whitefish, MT on December 24th, did the Christmas thing with my family, and am planning on skiing around here for the next couple weeks. There's some snow in the forecast and we're working with Whitefish Mountain Resort to get some filming done. Once the new year rolls around, it's back to Bozeman to organize some trips and get some bangers!
Here's some video content we've released in the last few weeks - stay tuned for TSP Webisode #1!
