Ore-Kream Two from Logan Triplett on Vimeo.

A week long trip just for fun through portland!
Filming by
Logan Triplett
Adam Kirschhoffer
shot on canon eos 7d redrock cinema package, and Sony Ex1 and letus ultimate setups.

Jarret ~ Irrigon

I don’t know why we plan skate trips around Montana for mid October, maybe it is because it’s the shoulder season or maybe it’s just because we prefer to skate in the snow. Either way, this year, our planned trip to head East and hit Great Falls, the new Helena Park, Butte, then Missoula had to be postponed. Mark Heyka was calling for temps hovering around zero for most of the state so we quickly switched gears and decided on a trip to Eastern Washington and Oregon. We had lofty plans to skate Spokane, Walla Walla, Pendelton, Irrigon, Richland and Yakima on a four day super trip with a crew of eight.

Day 1:

Predawn start and something about Jedi backpacks and lattes

Sunrise ~ Flathead Lake of Fire

We all arrive at Brendan Rohan’s before daybreak and head out. Temps were probably hovering around 10 degrees. We are treated to a gorgeous sunrise along Flathead Lake and then the slog to Spokane. At Spokane we skate the Hillyard Park. It was Saturday morning, not too busy but cold, and had it’s fair share of kids buzzing around on razor scooters. It was a short detour before heading out for Walla Walla. We took the scenic (aka long) way down to Walla Walla but it was a pretty cool drive through some hilly and vacant country.

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Holloway at Hillyard

Jeff - Hillyard

Brown and Derrick, David's Pizza - Spokane

On the way to Walla Walla

We arrived late afternoon in Walla Walla to a park that was one large bowl that had a spine/island in the middle and it was all finished in pool coping formed from Granite, half the guys we were with, had skated it before and said it didn’t grind well. Upon inspection it looks like they gave the granite a little more of a bullnose and we all found it pretty buttery smooth. After skating for a bit it was getting dark and cold a van full of 12 dudes from Shrunken Heads/Jivaro rolled up and pretty much slayed it in the dark. It’s a hard park to skate with 20 people so we stayed a little while longer and headed out to checkout the Walla Walla nightlife. As far as we could tell it wasn’t really our scene but we gave it a go.

Day 2:

Can-o-beans for breakfast.

Granite coping.

Walla Walla set a new record low that night of 25 degrees so we got going slow that morning skated the bowl all morning and hung around for a bit. Ate a rad taco place but somehow ordered tacos de chicharrones (I had forgotten what that was).  I was starving so I had just polished mine off, while J. Boyes was inspecting his and finally asked what the f- it was. Pig fat and skin, some tabasco, and sour cream wrapped in a tortilla. Some would consider it a delicacy.

Brown - butt shot

another butt shot.

Jarret ~ Crail ~ not a butt shot

We headed out of Walla Walla only to miss a turn and drive straight through wine country. An unnammed, but self-proclaimed wine aficionado in the group was stoked as we turned around in the parking lot of some well know vintner. And he bolted inside to hob-nob and pick up a fine chardonnay.

Stopping for a break in Wine Country.

South from Walla Walla to Milton Freewater and spent waaaay too much time there. What were they thinking with those concrete pillars?

We kept on moving south to Pendleton. Pendleton was rad. Big bowl to a wide mini area, with a spine to a street-ish section, with pyramid, lots of bank walls with some stamped concrete to feel like brick. Then a step up with a stair set and handrail next to it. In addtion there were some little ledges and some rocks built in to the concrete that were fun to skate. It was pretty late by the time we rolled up to the park. Jivaro guys were killing it there (in the cold and dark again). The park was fully lit though so we stayed and skated it for a while. We found a semi-sketchy hotel where the rooms looked like the cops had broken down the door a couple times and headed out to see what the town of Pendleton, OR had to offer had to offer on a Sunday night.

Brum's lights were shining bright and snapped this shot of Willis Kimbel of Jivaro Wheels fame blasting off the extension

How do you spend a Sunday night in Pendleton, Oregon?

Day 3:

Being a father of two, I have no choice but to get up at 7:30 AM even if I am up until 3:00 AM. It is instinct now. The same went for the other guys with kids back home. As the rest of the group slept, we headed out in the morning to see what Pendleton was all about. Rodeo. Pretty much sums it up. It had some cool old buildings and some tunnels under the town. By chance we stumbled upon the woolen mills and went in an checked out some blankets and other fine wool goods. As soon as everyone got rolling we headed out to get some more time at the Pendleton park, skated it for the rest of the morning the headed West to Irrigon.

Jeff ~ Frontside air over the Hip ~ Pendleton

Derrick ~ Irrigon

Jeff getting Artsy in Irrigon

Hold on...let me take a Picture.

Jarret FS tailed this door thing

Then Jeff ollied it.

Jarret ~ FS air out of the capsule

It was getting late in the day after spending the afternoon in Irrigon and the following day was a travel day so unfortunately we decided to bail on Yakima. and head back to Spokane, We did a quick detour in Richland at that point everyone was pretty banged up or tired and the place was good but packed with kids. We packed up in the car headed north and had some late night sushi in Spokane to finish off the trip.

JUX FUN-TAGE EPISODE #4:Beauty and the Feast from Logan Triplett on Vimeo.

Brendan Rohan submitted some photos of the Butte and Dillon parks. Check them out here.

Butte Gallery
Dillon Gallery

Now someone hit us up with a couple Helena photos, and we’ll have all the parks in the state covered.

The Spirit Skate Shop Montana Tour video with footage from the entire Team skating parks and street spots on a 4 day whirlwind tour of the state in Whitefish, Polson, Missoula, Anaconda, Bozeman and Butte.

The Butte park is located East of the old historic district in a pretty run down area just on the edge of the Berkeley Pit (massive super fund site read more here). In fact the “Visitors Center” is pretty much right across the street. The land around the park is pretty much vacant except for some old mining leftovers. Guess I wouldn’t want to live that close to the pit either. The park seems pretty fun with a little more streety stuff than usual and two bowls. One large one and one Kidney pool bowl. The drain in the large bowl wasn’t working properly so it was filled with an eery green water, some trash and what looked like a dead rat. So we pretty much skated the kidney bowl and the street stuff. The street section had a step up, some various hips, rails and ledges as well as this big whale back bank wall thing that could be pretty fun.

From there we got some lunch in the old Historic District, which is really cool, and then decided we might as well hit Anaconda because it was right on they way.

Anaconda is another town that thrived on mining and then really died out once that ended. Right as you roll into town there is a big Smelter and a massive pile of black tailings. As we got into Anaconda it wasn’t snowing anymore but it was blowing about 35 miles an hour and couldn’t have been more than 38 degrees. That is what we get for doing a skate trip in Montana in mid October I suppose. The park in Anaconda is another Dreamland park built in 2005 I believe. It consists of one large bowl with a buch of small hip stuff in the shallow end and a street section that is basically two 3 foot quarter pipes with extensions and a table top in the middle. For being so cold we got a pretty good little session after warming up and then headed off to Missoula.

We arrived in Missoula at about 5:00 and it was sunny and relatively warm. We went straight over to the brand spankin new MOBASH skatepark and immediately got back in the groove. We had been skating all day at these parks in Arctic Tundra-like conditions with not a soul in sight. Now we were at Missoula skating in the sun with probably 75 people skating around the park. The Missoula park was definitely my favorite of the bunch. It was finished beautifully. It had a big bowl section with bank walls a cradle and deep area with pool coping. Then it had a kidney bowl behind that then a great looking street section that had some good flow between ledges and rails. The ledges looked to be finished in granite and there were fun bank walls all along the street section. And it’s Lit at night! Great park. I was too lazy to bring a camera along to that one so you’ll just have to trust me or go over to www.missoulaskatepark.org or do something like Search Flickr and check out some pictures there.