Catching Up With An Older, Wiser Tanner Hall

Tanner Hall has long been considered one of the most controversial figures in our sport. From mouthing off on camera to his dominance of competitive freeskiing , and some of the most brutal injuries we’ve seen, Tanner is in many ways is skiing’s rock star. Whether you hate him or love him, you can’t deny he’s one of the pioneers of our sport. Now into his 30’s, injury free, and feeling like he’s only getting better, Tanner looks to take his skiing to some of the biggest mountains in the world: Alaska.

I got a chance to catch up with an older, wiser Tanner Hall while he was in Bend, Oregon getting in some family time to talk about everything from the state of competition skiing to the protests in Ferguson to skiing in Alaska.

Although partially influenced by injury, how do you feel about being out of competition scene, even though you and Simon’s rivalry pushed the sport more mainstream than it ever had been before and helped bring it to the Olympics? Do you still have a sense of pride for bringing the sport you pioneered to the Olympics?

Tanner in the prime of his X Games half-pipe dominance back in 2007.

Everything changes in life. I give thanks to the X Games and every contest that I was a part of back in the day. It all helped me bring our sport to some kind of a platform. Back in the day, the contests and stuff seemed to be more in control of the riders, and even the companies, but then these big organizations started to take control and it slowly hit me that this might not be the best thing.

Contest skiing has gotten crazy, and the level is just insane, and it’s really fun to watch. But at this point, it should have been on me and a handful of other people to just really take control and have the riders and the culture of skiing dictate the future, and not these big organizations of non-skiers that don’t really understand the culture of skiing. 

But at the same time, the chance it gives kids to go out and see the world and understand life outside of school is great. But again, I think it’s gone in a direction that I don’t really agree with. In a way, skiers’ individuality has been stripped from contests–lots of the skiers are just doing a lot of the same tricks.

When you were coming up in freeskiing, you claimed to look for influences outside the sport, such as snowboarding and skateboarding, because freestyle skiing was so young. Do you feel like influences outside of skiing are just as prevalent today because skiing has progressed so much?

Henrik Harlaut's just about as stylish a skateboarder as he is a skier. Photo by Pete Alport via Henrik's  Instagram.

I think that's what has to happen, in a way. If you don’t wanna be open to taking in outside influences, or don’t think other sports are as cool as skiing, you're restricting yourself on what could be done on your skis, on who you are as a person. Just look at someone like Henrik Harlaut, who ties into the cultures of skateboarding, snowboarding, and other culture– even something like hockey. He really focusses on his style and does research out in the world of how to progress his style.

When I think a lot of kids might just look to the next kid on skis who does a better trick than them, and they can see it on Youtube, and then they have to do that trick. Where someone like Henrik, and Phil, and even some of the younger kids like Kai Mailer–there're a lot of kids out there who you can tell they just ride differently. I think that comes with just going out into the world and researching and dedicate your life to progressing their own style.

I think kids in this day in age don't really want to expand their minds as much. You gotta realize how small skiing is in life–it's not life, and if you can open your mind to that and take in outside influences, your skiing's only gonna get that much better.

Matt Walker and Joss Christenson’s SLVSH games of skate on snow has brought this new, skateboard-style competition to skiing, with skiers setting tricks like nollie switch 50-50’s. Do you think this sort of competition is the latest outlet for creative progression?

SLVSH brings skateboard-style games of "skate" as a new kind of "comp" skiing.

Of course, man. I think what Matt and Joss are doing with SLVSH is a great thing, and they're killing it. The number one thing with something like that is to be consistent from the start with putting out content that's really entertaining to watch, and they have been and continue to. It's also easy for people who don't get our sport to get it through that game, because it only takes common sense to understand what’s going on. It also shows up-and-coming kids that they don't have to go out and huck right and left doubles; they can just play around and have fun.

I know the “crew” mentality was a heavy part of skiing for you when you were coming up. With crews like The Bunch, Stept, 4Bi9 and Phil and Henrik’s B&E, do you think the crew is still a positive force in the ski world?

Tanner, CR Johnson, and little Kye Peterson and Sean Pettit reppin' the C-Crew years ago. Photo via Tanner's  Instagram .

Of course; everybody has a crew. It's nice to be able to go out with like-minded people, because you’re all out there for the same reason, and you all got the same kind of vision. It makes it a whole lot easier to go through a day and enjoy it, because that's all skiing is: enjoyment. Just to be able to go out with your best friends, and make little edits and movies and show your vision is just priceless in life. Not a lot of people get that opportunity. You gotta give thanks to be out with your crew; it’s living the dream in my mind.

I know you took a trip to Ferguson, Missouri during the Michael Brown protests. That’s an issue we don’t see too many action sports athletes getting involved in. Do you think the lack of diversity is an issue in action sports, especially in snow sports?

In snow sports, it's not really hard to figure out why there's not that much diversity. There's clearly not much diversity in ski towns, and that's just the reality. Skiing is not a cheap sport, and it takes a lot just to get into, and that does really suck. I really don’t like the lift ticket prices. I don't like the prices of gear and whatnot, but those prices are set for a reason. You know, it's not cheap to maintain the ski areas, it's not cheap to run these mountains. It takes money to play.

 Tanner out in the streets of Ferguson MO during the Michael Brown protests. Photo via Tanner's Instagram.

For me, the Ferguson thing came at a point in my life where I was watching the news a lot. I was like “Holy shit, man, I cannot believe how easy it is for the media to lie to our faces.” I was just basically watching a war break out in Ferguson, and was like “I gotta go see this shit,” instead of having all these opinions without ever going there and experiencing it for myself.

So me and my buddy Justin Woodcock just wanted to get out there to go see it for ourselves. We got off the plane, got our rental car around midnight, and pulled up to this assembly area for all the protestors. We showed up, and what we had seen on TV looked like a civil war–the whole town rising up–and when we get there, there were maybe ten peaceful protestors, not causing riots or anything. We met some really cool people that now we call our friends, and they were just out there protecting their rights.

It wasn't normal. I've never really seen a part of the United States like that where it’s literally a whole white police task force in pretty much a 100% black neighborhood. When you see what happened to Mike Brown, and what’s going on, and you hear the stories, and see how the police treat those people, I mean... I saw some shit I really never hope to see again. I saw some police officers beating the shit out of black protestors for really no reason.

To see these police officers stomping out some dudes, it gets really real, and for me to see that with my own eyes, and realize what's going on right here in the America, it was really scary. When we were out there, we saw that it wasn't anything that they were seeing on the news. I feel like there's something going on in the US right now that we have no idea of, and Ferguson was just a building a block of what's going on right now all over the world, with everything going on in Syria, even. 

It makes me think every day to give thanks that I live in these ski towns and my life is dedicated to skiing, because at the end of the day, I get to not to think about all the bullshit in the world.

I’m interested to know what you think about the fact that building a strong social presence has been so important for athletes to get recognized and sponsored. When you were coming up, social media was nowhere near what it is today. Where and how do you get your skiing news and latest videos?

Tanner out in his element, enjoying a long career that started with writing letters to potential sponsors. Neil Provo photo.

I do get my skiing news a lot from Newschoolers–to keep up on the park scene–and I get lot of news from TGR’s site. I also like to check Jon Olson’s blog, because he does a really good job with that. Instagram is a great way to know really what's good, too. It's a great way to sort of wipe out the type of skiing or skiers you don't wanna follow. I'm not necessarily saying skiers you don't like, but obviously in skiing, when it just comes down to the art form, you're gonna enjoy someone's art more than others. And it’s just an easy way to keep what you want to see in skiing fresh.

When I was coming up, we had no Facebook, no Instagram, none of that. I was writing letters; remember those things? I was out writing letters, and sending them out to sponsors. Today you can just hit up someone on Twitter, and you’re sponsored.

I know your life has been fairly consumed by skiing, but what non-skiing activities have you been into these days?

Tanner getting ready to session the mini ramp while in Nicaragua. Photo via Tanner's  Instagram.

I've been getting back into skateboarding a bunch. I just took skateboarding real easy after I hurt my ankles and then my knees, because it's super easy to get hurt on a skateboard. But also easy to not really go bananas. It's taken a long time, but man, I'm feeling like I’m back to normal again years after that crash at Steven's Pass, feeling like a little kid again. 

Just skating for a good part of a day is a great way to exercise, a good way to keep your mind fresh, and keep your balance up. Everything really comes down to balance, and both skating and skiing require very high forms of balance.

You can also argue that skateboarding today has gotten incredibly mainstream and commercialized. 

"It's sick to see there's a new generation of kids that wanna hold it down." Cam Riley among them.

But there's always going to be a Thrasher magazine out there. That's one of my favorite media outlets to follow–those dudes are raw as fuck. They do not give a fuck about being role models, which is a word I just hate hearing. It’s 2015, and skiing is big enough, and our culture has been set through enough time, where we [can] have a raw aspect to what we do. Not everyone has to be a "role model."

There's always gonna be a Cam Riley, a Clayton Vila, a Henrik Harlaut, a Phil Casabon, and even someone like myself, someone like Candide. It’s sick to see that there's a new generation of kids that wanna hold it down–I look at kids like Beau-James Wells and Jackson Wells–those kids are so ill, and they get it. As long as there're generations of cats like that, I think it’s gonna be all good.

But at the same time, there's a generation of kids who just get dropped off at the ski hill to ride the park just 'cause it’s an Olympic sport now. That's the point when the culture starts getting erased. Those kids won't be brought up on the raw ski movies, and the sort of history lesson of our sport.

Many people consider Alaska the final frontier as far as big mountain skiing, are you considering your time in Alaska sort of the final frontier of your career?

Tanner charging a line in Alaska last winter while filming for Ring The Alarm. Will Wissman photo.

For myself, yeah, for sure, but I don’t think of it as the final frontier for big mountain skiing. Alaska is definitely a special place; you could even call it a mecca. But for big mountain skiing, there're places like Chamonix and La Grave, and a lot of other big places out there.  

But I think Alaska, as a form of skiing, is a more beautiful form because of the mountains out there; how they form, how they look, and what the options are for skiing and riding. But as far as the gnar factor, it can definitely get crazy in other places, too, but there's really only a few other places in the world that can compare. You really feel like you’re on a different planet up there, and when everything comes together, you got a good stable snowpack, a sunny day, and you’re up there with your boys, you are fucking stoked!

I re-watched your last documentary, Like a Lion, and man–you’ve lived a heavy life, and have had quite a career. Is there any of advice you would give to park skiers or professional skiers in general who would?

Tanner's as passionate as ever these days, sessioning the backyard jump line in Lake Tahoe. Kyle Beckmann photo via Instagram.

Well, at the end of the day, the reason why I’m still here–the reason why I feel like I’m still only getting better–is because first and foremost this is my passion. If I had no sponsors and no money, I would definitely still 100% make this work and still be skiing as hard as I could. It's just about being on my skis, and how can I be on my skis every day. Kids out there just gotta let that passion ride, and just do it for themselves. Once you do if for yourself, everything will fall into place. 

You just gotta put good energy into life, your crew, your family and your friends, and everything will follow. I've definitely been at points where I've kinda lost that vision and been put back in my place. It just so happens God put me back into place after two fucking gnarly injuries, and it made me change 100%. Once you have a clear heart and a clear conscience, the skiing becomes clear.