SKOLF The Movie story by Max Tokunaga
"Skolf, a game of 9 holes—or features—where many humans attached (or not) to their snowboards have four tries to attempt and land a very hard—or maybe they find it easy, awkward, scary, really stupid, or sometimes genius—freestyle stunt on their snowboard.
Skolf the Movie is a movie based on the locations we traveled to because of the Skolf contest series we, Airblaster, host. From the west coast…to the midwest, east coast, and across the pond to Oslo, Norway. You’ve heard this story before: snowboard there, party there, have a sick-ass lifestyle shoot there… Yada yada. I, Max Tokunaga, am going to share a similar story to this… but with the concept that we are going to these places because of an event where all our friends come together and we get to shred with them on their territories, at one time, in the name of Skolf. Thank you for creating an amazing event, Jesse Grandkoski… major shout out.
Bonezone at Brighton, UT, the start of the past Skolf season. We planned for this stop to go down in the middle of November. What a risk that was. Shout out Brighton for turning on the snow guns last minute and giving us a generous patch of snow to be able to hold the event! Here we met up with many people, so many homies in Salt Lake City these days. One of the key people we met up with was Colton Morgan, he is the one who filmed, edited, and created Skolf the Movie, major shout out, had an awesome time hanging out with him! Back to the magical patch of snow. It was magical, and very hard on that crisp Brighton morning. Thank you to Lucky Slice for warming up our bodies with some breakfast pizza! Following the pizza, we started the contest. First hole of the entire season… Zak Hale knocks himself out in the first five minutes. Okay, in my own brain, I freaked out. Not only was I given a job this season to host the Skolf event series for Airblaster, but Zak Hale just knocked himself out on the first hole and I have 62 more Skolf holes to create and host around the world and someone who is a very talented snowboarder just got smoked in the first five minutes. What the fuck did I sign myself up for? Deep breathe.
So this was the beginning, Skolf at Brighton was a success and people gave some amazing feedback about the contest by the end of the day. Congrats Cooper Whittier for taking the top spot! Feeling a bit better by the end of the day about my new job, I started to brainstorm for the next stop two weeks later at Trollhaugen, Wisconsin. This one was going to be insane, Skolf on a rope tow, are you kidding me? This was in our dreams! Linked up with Brady Lem and he took me to Hyland. Wow. First rope tow experience. Incredible. Will have to bring the team back there for sure. Brady then gave me a ride up to Trollhaugen, thank you so much, Brady. Airblaster crew showed up that night and we got the rope tow hot! So many homies on the rope for their first time! Going up hill nearly as fast as going down hill, we were losing our minds! Watching Tucker figure out the jibs was a sight to see. He got that board sideways on steel many times, but still would make time to grab, tweak, and flip his board through the air. The day of Troll Skolf was a blast, so many people, both new and old faces showed up and we got to see them laugh at themselves and their friends, while attached to snowboards. It’s a beautiful thing! Another beautiful thing is Mike Liddle’s snowboard abilities! Shout out Mike for earning the first place finish! Surrounding this Skolf stop, we took to the lakes of Wisconsin and the streets of Minneapolis. Sliding on a frozen lake is still fun in your late 20s, kids. So is snowboarding in parks. First night in Minneapolis, we got after it in a park near our Airbnb. Shout out to Ninja Suits for keeping our bodies freakin’ warm! After this park, Max Warbington got hyped up from a parking lot homie and beasted a nosepick off of a parking garage. Just watch the movie, you’ll see what I’m talking about. The next day, Tucker got the hammer of the trip, not to undermine Warb’s hippy hop off the stairs. Tucker applied his jib skills from the ropes, straight to the streets and busted out a stall, to 5050 on a knobbed rail with donkey! Tuck was on fire! As I said above, just watch the movie.
One third of the Skolf tour complete, so we hopped on flights to Oslo. Crew traveling from the states was Max Warbington, Erik Leon, Colton Morgan, Justin Leveille, and myself. We rented an Airbnb in the same apartment complex as Freddy Perry so he was forced to hang out with us. Love us some Norwegian Freddy time. Oslo had a little snow on the ground at the time, but we made the best of it! From the wheels of Freddy’s Honda Element, to the tracks of the train, we got ourselves around the frozen foreign soil and met up with Alek Oestreng, Len Jorgensen, Krish, Markus, and others of the Mushroom Crew. We shredded in many parks, day and night, with jibs that went up and down. Seriously, Warbs, Freddy, and Krish went beast mode on a double slide that allowed you to go up and / or down. Packing up a backpack for the day with a few Krones in your pocket, your shovel and snowboard in hand, and this will add up to an amazing way to experience a wintery city. We were able to film in the city daily, then we made our way up to Oslo Vinterpark for Skolf. Many new faces for us from the states, but they all knew Freddy, Alek, Len making us feel right at home! Skolf got started with a switch 5050 on a tube, where the rider would have to look uphill. And the laughs began. Bingo. Freddy whipped up a special hole where everyone had to balance a hard boiled egg on a spoon while doing a board slide on a down rail. It was so good to where we did a tribute of this hole at the Brighton finals. 9 holes of fun, Fridge shut it down by earning the top spot, and we had to get back to the states. So did Fridge, for the X Games. Knuckle huck master was running his Lifeproof speaker off his backpack during that event in Aspen. Shout out Lifeproof, not sure what you were listening to, Fridge, but I’m pretty sure I could hear it through my computer speakers while watching the livefeed, thanks for making a bumping’ product, Lifeproof! Before we hopped on our flights, Erik hopped on a massive kinked rail. Really sick shit to watch in person. And now you can watch it in Skolf the Movie!
A week and a half of rest from our Oslo experience, we traveled by planes and cars to Bear Mountain, California. Sunny and sick, didn’t want it any other way! Hell of a crew down here, Max Warbington, Erik Leon, Tucker Andrews, Shad aka Gimbal Todd aka Taylor Carlton, Logan Beaulieu, Colton Morgan, and Justin Leveille. If you were in Cali and not at Skolf then I’m not sure what you were doing. Also, if you were at Bear and didn’t participate in Skolf, I’m not sure what you were doing… cough cough Braedon Wheeler. Yeah, this is me calling you out to come to a Skolf, Braedon. We think you’d have fun! It’s all good though, we had other Canadian homies enjoying their time south of the border on the Skolf course that day. Drayden, whose name kinda sounds like Braedon, won it and got himself a flight to come to the finals. Okay, Bear ruled, thank you so much Bear for creating amazing features for us to snowboard on! Now time to head home and rest up for the next stop, Carinthia at Mount Snow, Vermont.
Middle of February hit and everyone had shred plans, but Dylan Okurowski was free so he joined Stan, Colton, and I on the east coast. The airport also had plans to delay Dylan’s travel and bags! Thankfully, I had multiple kits, so Dylan was dialed there. We hit up the dudes at Invasion Board Shop and they had boots, board, and bindings for Dylan. Money. Shout out Invasion! The Revert pant paired with any retro freestyle board is a damn fine combo, let me tell you. And let Dylan show you what you could like look, if you ripped as hard as him in that kit. From that point on Dylan has been wearing the Revert Pant and has been turning heads, and getting Instagram followers since. There you go, buy the Revert Pant, get Instagram followers. Okay so anyway, Carinthia rules! If you want to get nasty freestyle on jibs, jumps, halfpipes, wood, steel, you name it, Carinthia has got it! Hands down best Skolf features we got to work with all season. Best features provided, not the best weather to match. That did not stop the people from showing up! Familiar friends and new friends, from all over the east coast came to experience this Skolf stop. Not only did they show up, but they shredded the place to pieces! Kicking it off with a front board pretzel on a pad made of perpendicular logs, the people knew we were not messing around here. Following that was a crazy log kink rail, game faces were on. A ton of fun was had throughout the day, and Zeb Powell came out on top. Congrats Zeb!
As the Skolf season comes to a close, we make our way to Brighton for the two day, 18 hole Skolf finale. To warm up for Skolf, the winners of regional stops and Airblaster team that came to Brighton built a rhythm section outside of our modestly sized home. Haha kidding, Airblaster hooked us up with a mansion. Little flex, don’t care. Show up at a Skolf stop, win it, and we will hook you up. Hot tub jump and all, a session went down! Amazing stuff happened under a colorful Utah sunset. Focus up, Skolf time. Again, Skolf brought out an amazing group of participants to come celebrate an amazing season at Brighton resort. From no footed tricks, to the spin wheel, to tribute tricks including Freddy’s egg on a spoon, the Seamus Foster primo stall challenge, and the W.O.W. Doggy moving box hole, major shout out to Mouse for making everyone’s dream a reality with that hole. Truly amazing things happen for Skolf! People had huge successes, and failures over the two day course, and no one got hurt! Gotta love that. For the final 18th hole, the Brighton diggers carved out a putt putt hole where everyone had to risk their entire day’s score, totaled up from terrifying snowboard tricks, on a putting hole with no maximum score. Thankfully we had 10 Barrel Brewing beers to lighten the nerves and make for some solid putting abilities. As over 80 competitors completed the course, we tallied up the scores for both male and female winners. There were both ties for the males and females! So we made them break those ties, females had to out G Don Challenge each other, and males had to switch hill bomb down the face of Milly. Boy, was I nervous, and extremely excited to watch some insane snowboarding go down. Once the dust had settled and challenges / races were completed, we had our winners. Shout out for Phil Hansen, Zeb Powell, Drayden Gardner, Nora Beck, and Madison Blackley, and Naima Antolin for being better than / getting more lucky than everyone else!
Alright, that’s it. That was Skolf for the 2018/2019 season. We’ve had summer and fall to prep, and do we, at Airblaster, have some plans for Skolf this season! Start practicing for Skolf. JK there is no practicing for Skolf because we don’t even know what we are doing. Show up, shred, and come have a blast with us. We hope to see you at the Skolf course soon. Keep up with our madness via @airblaster or #skolf. Until then, best of luck to all the competitors this season! See ya on the Skolf course."