2. 63
Big wave paddle glory is not
the guaranteed proposition the
magazine hero shots promise.
Kohl returns to the beach after
a failed attempt at an open
ocean slab in Chile. “The
playing field was too big,” he
says. “The wave would suck
up out of nowhere and heave.
I brought my big board but
realized that I couldn’t paddle.”
3. 64
Fiji, 2012. “It took a couple of
years for people to realize that
Cloudbreak is a wave you can
paddle when it’s massive,” he
says of the de-privatization of
waves surrounding Tavarua.
“Before, the boatmen were so
used to having it to themselves.”
4. Kohl Christensen is stressed.
His travel plans to chase a large swell the following day to
Rapa Nui, an island 2,000 miles off the coast of northern
Chile, have been upended. Overnight, two of Kohl’s close
travel partners, Ramon Navarro and Greg Long, have pulled
out—bad winds, or so says the most recent forecast. As we
talk, he fields calls and text messages, now trying to figure
out where to go. Never mind that he’s already convinced
several others to join him, including friend and professional
kiteboarder Reo Stevens, and that they in turn have bought
non-refundable tickets. This is always an inherent risk
when signing on to Kohl’s program. He just wants to make
a decision. You see, Kohl has a few other things on his plate
that need attending to. Between juggling a hectic travel
schedule, a solar installation business, and an organic
farm, it’s a wonder he has any time for me. After a flurry of
back and forth messages, the call is made: they’re headed
to a semi-secret, hollow left point in Chile, good for both
surfing and kiting.
I’ve come to Hawaii to visit Kohl on “The Land,” a
somewhat notorious three-acre organic farm just outside
of Waialua on Oahu’s North Shore, which serves as equal
parts farm, surf salon, youth hostel, and home for wayward
big-wave surfers. From the start, Kohl’s relaxed Hawaiian
upbringing mixes with a sort of manic “surfer ADD”
that constantly keeps me off balance. When I arrive from
California to visit The Land, for instance, Kohl soon
mentions that he may have to cut our scheduled visit short
to depart for a trip the next day.
Those who haven’t met Christensen may be vaguely
aware of his endeavors in ridiculously giant waves through
a smattering of online video hits. When the swell is massive,
he seems to keep popping up, often in remote areas of Chile
and Peru, as well as big-wave meccas including Maverick’s
and Todos Santos. Watching the majority of accomplished
surfers muscle their way into huge waves, typically crouched
in functional, survival-type stances, Kohl is different from
the standard breed. He appears in a relaxed state, like moss
on a willow tree, his lanky frame and limbs hanging, his
board sliding fluidly into enormous walls of water. With such
composure, his positioning on a wave often nears perfect,
smoothly negotiating warbles and chops before projecting
into long, flowing bottom turns at a crucial moment.
65
JOLI
BY DEAN LATOURRETTE
5. 66
18-year-old Christensen on his
first trip to Rapa Nui (above),
standing at the rock quarry
where the iconic moai statues
of Easter Island were built, then
transported to the coast.
(Right) “A week before I left the
island, the family I was staying
with said, ‘Where do you want
this tattoo?’ I said, ‘Put it right
here, I guess.’ I didn’t have a
choice. It’s a native petroglyph
from one of the rocks there—
half bird, half fish. To this day
it’s the only tattoo I have.”
This late take-off at Waimea
(left) led to a two-wave hold
down. “It was back when every-
one used to go there. We’d paddle
out early and get a bunch of
waves before going to the outer
reefs. This wave looked like it
was going to close out the bay
but I held my ground and stayed
where you have to be.”
BRIANBIELMANN
6. Shortly after my introduction to his big-wave heroics,
Kohl appeared, again, on my computer screen, but this time
I saw him on the front lines of relief efforts following the
2010 earthquake and tsunami in Chile. His appearances
on camera revealed fluency in Spanish as he chatted with
Chilean earthquake victims. The prospect of an unknown,
Spanish speaking, big-wave surfer from Hawaii was puzzling.
As one might expect, by this point, Kohl charted an
unusual path beginning at an early age. Born and raised
in Kailua on Oahu’s east side, he later moved to the North
Shore. Growing up alongside his younger brother, Nick, an
accomplished big-wave surfer in his own right, the two were
surrounded by the robust surf culture in Kailua. The area,
which is perhaps better known for its windsurfing and
kiteboarding, has produced a surprising number of excellent
surfers. Kohl and Nick got started in the shorebreak and
soon graduated to more challenging surf, eventually
boating out to some offshore reefs in the area. “The waves
are generally pretty bad. It’s always onshore,” says Kohl of
the waves near home. “But there are some outer reefs and
one or two really good waves.”
According to Nick, surfing with his brother in Kailua
helped shape their future exploits. “Although there’s not
a lot of big surf, there’s plenty of adventure out there,” he
recalls. “We would take boats out to a few slabby reefs,
including a spot called No Can Tells, and it got us thinking
more about surf exploration.”
By the time Kohl got his hands on a driver’s license
at age 16, the brothers were eager to scour the rest of the
island for surf, including the North Shore. Soon, stories
of Kohl’s solo paddling exploits at the island’s outer reefs
proliferated. “It was something that just happened naturally,”
he says. “I never really had a mentor when I was younger.
I kind of just did it on my own.”
Kohl’s affinity for daunting surf at a young age—and
with no real encouragement from others—supports the
notion that perhaps big-wave surfers are born, not bred. He
made his first foray to the outer reefs of the North Shore as
a teenager when he pulled up to maxing Laniakea. “I looked
way outside and there was this perfect wave breaking on an
outer reef,” he says. “I only had an 8'0" with me, but I just
paddled there to check it out. I got pretty worked.” Only
one other surfer joined him that first session. “A guy we
now call ‘The Boogieman’ came out. It was the first time
I’d ever met him, and he was out there bodyboarding.
He schooled me on the lineup, showed me where to sit.
Pretty classic, I was taught how to surf the outer reefs by
a boogieboarder.”
“Even when he was younger he would paddle out
to new spots by himself, often way under-gunned,” says
Dusty Middleton, a close friend from Kailua who’s also a
passionate outer-reef surfer. “When there’s a lot of swell
running, sometimes it’s hard to tell where the good waves
are breaking, but Kohl has a really good eye for spotting
rideable surf in all the chaos.”
67
CHRISTENSENCOLLECTIONCHRISTENSENCOLLECTION
8. 69
On his first-ever wave at
Nelscott Reef, Oregon, Kohl
digs into a contest-winning
behemoth. “This is one of my
favorite pictures,” he says.
“I was trying to go right but
I was too late. I went left,
the board went sideways,
and I barely made the drop.”
SHAWNPARKIN
9. 70
The road up to
Kohl’s property
(above), through
the Keawawaihi
Valley, passes
the burned down
ruins of the first
Catholic church
in Hawaii. Every-
one helps work
the land (left),
including Kohl,
and everyone
enjoys the fruits
of that labor
(right), at the
outdoor kitchen
adjacent to the
fields. Here,
farm-to-table
means shaking
the earth from a
head of lettuce
and lobbing it
straight into the
sink.
10. 71
When he was 18 years old, and his classmates at the
academically competitive Punahou were all heading off
to college, Kohl hopped on a plane bound for Tahiti and
continued to the small island of Rapa Nui. He wanted to
travel and see the world. “Punahou was a hard school. Half
my friends got kicked out,” says Kohl. “So I was kind of burnt
out by the time I graduated.” Yet, instead of arriving, surfing,
and moving to the next pulsing surf destination, he stayed
and lived on Rapa Nui for almost a year. He surfed. He fell
in love. He learned Spanish. Then he went on to Chile and
did the same, staying for another three months.
Upon returning to the North Shore a few years later,
he moved to Pupukea, primarily working construction and
commercial fishing jobs to help fund his ongoing travels
to Indonesia, the South Pacific, and other remote surf
destinations. At age 20, while between fishing jaunts with
his close friend and surfboard shaper Chris Freed, Kohl
jumped aboard a boat owned by Alaskan crabbers heading
southwest from Hawaii. The crew hatched a plan to fish and
search for lobster in the Kiribati Islands, a series of remote
atolls in the central Pacific, and Kohl talked his way onboard
as their “warm-water fishing expert.” After picking up a small
platoon of native divers on Christmas Island, and some
initial fishing success, things deteriorated into something
one might find in a Melville novel. “There was a full-on
mutiny, and we ended up having to leave all these divers on
remote islands,” he recalls. “I still can’t believe how crazy
it was.”
With a newfound appreciation for the comforts of
home, Kohl returned to Hawaii and purchased the property
that came to be The Land with his brother in 2005. “The
opportunity presented itself, and we just jumped on it,” says
Kohl. Scraping the money together involved borrowing from
family and friends, as well as some creative fundraising,
which included participation in human drug trials. “We
heard an ad on the radio one day, and we ended up earning
almost $20,000 doing this asthma study,” he recalls. “You
needed to have asthma to participate, which I did, but my
brother had to lie to do it.”
The parcel was one of 17 lots, part of a former
sugarcane plantation nestled in the shadow of Mt. Kaala,
Oahu’s highest peak, an area historically known as the
Keawawaihe Valley (Valley of the Spears). An ex-sugar mill
town, Waialua is known as the quieter side of the North
Shore, and was one of six original “mokus” or traditional
ancient Hawaiian districts on Oahu.
“There was literally nothing on The Land when we
first bought it. It was an open canvas,” says Kohl. “We
needed help, so we invited all of our friends to come stay
and work on the farm. For the first three years, all we did
was work the land.”
It began as a core group of friends, most of whom
had a particular deference for extremely large surf, living
a sort of primal, communal existence. Slowly, it evolved
into a nucleus for a ragtag, big-wave fraternity that would
PHOTOS:BIELMANN
12. 73
TheLandBy Dusty Middleton
In those first winters on The Land, we were always covered in red mud
—our clothes, our feet, our hands, our pickup trucks, and our surf-
boards. Everything was stained red. Clomping around fields a scant
decade after their sugarcane days, our shoes and slippers were heavy
with clay. We spent hours fighting back eight-foot-tall thickets of grass.
We planted fruit trees, ginger, Heliconia, and vegetables. Ti leaves
around a Hawaiian home help keep out the ghosts, and we planted
them everywhere.
Our big boards were always ready to go, and we were awake
before first light, focused, and ready for battle. As dedicated big-wave
surfers, there were many winter days of massive, empty surf to be had.
We’d load the truck full of boards and spend a few hours out in a wild
sea, surfing the waves we love before blasting back into the mountains,
to the foothills of Ka’ala, to our own quiet world.
The testosterone and egos of the North Shore winter meant
nothing to us. The noise and scene were as distant as Hollywood.
Our sounds were cows across the river, echoing their strange calls
against the mountain. The quiet extended so far that when our dog
Ure got himself caught in a pig snare one night, we followed his yelps
from our porch for a mile, eventually finding him up in the hills.
The inhabitants of The Land were no more typical of those
whom you find on the North Shore. One Vietnam vet, Wild Bill [TSJ
17.7], lived on The Land for years in his army truck. Sharp and wise
in his own way, he’d plant his skinny frame on the porch and work
happily on oil paintings, drinking red wine and nibbling on cashews
and cheese. Some nights, he’d awake from a dream, feeling surrounded
in the tall grass by a platoon of enemy soldiers. We could hear as
he pulled on his double-trigger shotgun, screaming and firing into
the darkness.
The original house was built around a 40-foot shipping container.
There were usually four of us living in there, two up the rope ladder,
sleeping in bunks on top of the container, and two down below. Kohl
and I had rooms downstairs. To keep out the riff-raff, Kohl put a padlock
on his bedroom door. My door didn’t have a latch and I never bothered
to fix it, so it always remained open. In the trusses overhead were
beautiful, big boards: Chuck Andrus, Kirk Bierke, Robin Johnston, Chris
Freed. Our windows were screens stapled to the studs. We had a
propane fridge in the center of the house, a camping stove, and a
barbecue to cook our food. There were five small lights running off
a boat-style DC power system connected to a small solar panel and
batteries. Our rain gutters ran into a 1,000-gallon water tank. There was
a small bilge pump to pull the water from the tank. The toggle switch
was in the kitchen and in order to make the cold outdoor shower
work each night we used a system of yelling and teamwork.
Short, cold showers were no match for the mud. Our towels and
bed sheets were stained red. It was a dirty life, but fun. There was
beauty to walking from my home at night and choosing a trail across
the hill, carrying a shovel and a roll of toilet paper. I wasn’t concerned
about neighbors or police, shitting wherever I chose amid the high grass.
I’d stare up at the sky and try to avoid stumbling into the red mud,
distracted by my sleepy delirium and imaginings of the next run of swell.
Kohl’s beloved outer reefs (top) have grown
more crowded in recent years but he’s
comfortable sitting deeper than the pack.
(Second row) At a party on The Land (left)
with 1,000-plus attendees, Kohl recalls,
“I dug a mud pit with the excavator and
didn’t know what was going to happen. Girls
kept volunteering to get in there and get
naked. (Center) Applied balance on a slack-
line set up by the WWOOFERS. Kohl picked
up the first big wave gun (right) that Fletcher
Chouinard had ever shaped—sight unseen
—at Maverick’s on one of the biggest days
of winter 2010. (Bottom row) Kohl and Dusty
(far left) learn the ways of the pig roast.
A solar-powered, warm water, outdoor tub
(left) soothes the paddle muscles. At
Kaukonapalooza (right), all are welcome.
HANKSECONDROWCENTER&RIGHT,LOWERROWCENTER&RIGHT:BIELMANN
13. 74
Other than a handful of
step-offs, this Chilean
slab session is the only
time Christensen has
opted to tow. “I’m not
going to restrict myself,”
he reflects. “But if it’s
even questionable
I paddle.”
14. 75
work on the farm until the surf came up. The makeshift
house built from a shipping container housed big boards,
which they’d pull from the rafters any time swell popped
up on the North Shore’s outer reefs.
Collectively, the group became known as “The Bomb
Squad,” for their stealthy ventures in big waves. “There were
guys surfing the outer reefs years before we were,” Kohl
points out. “But it was always a really small group of guys.
Everyone else just seemed to be surfing Waimea.” At a time
when tow surfing was popularized, Kohl, his brother Nick,
Dusty Middleton, Chris Freed, Tom Henry, Andy Starn,
Orion Barelz, and several others gained an underground
reputation for paddling into massive surf. “We surfed out
there for years without jet ski assist,” says Andy Starn. “If
you lose your board, you’ve got to know the currents and
swim in through the impact zone or you’re going to get
sucked out to sea, and you’re probably looking at almost
an hour to swim in.” Listening to Kohl and the rest of his
contingent recount their first harrowing trips to the outer
reefs clarifies why few others surfed there for so many years.
Yet once the potential of the outer reefs was realized, it was
hard to avoid becoming fixated. “The waves out there are
so beautiful and mind boggling,” says Nick. “When I first
went out there, I’d never seen anything like them. There
are waves that come through and are so impressive that
everyone just watches, and they go unridden.”
The wild exploits of Kohl’s early years were by no
means limited to the reefs fringing the North Shore. At
The Land, rowdy parties earned the farm its namesake
“Kaukonapalooza,” where over a thousand people would
converge for a sort of giant, muddy mosh pit. They built
a stage for live music, dug a 15-foot deep mud pit for
wrestling, and erected two platforms with 20-foot poles for
“dancing.” “We spent weeks preparing for the parties,” says
Middleton, one of the original denizens on The Land.
“Before we built the big house, there wasn’t anything
valuable here, so we didn’t really care about who was there
or what they did. We’d be at bars when they were closing
and invite everyone up to The Land for an after-party.”
During my first night on The Land, I luck into an
evening barbecue. Friends come from all around, food
and drink in tow, appearing from out of the fields. Ito, a
gregarious musician from Rapa Nui, who, when he was 12
years old, “borrowed” Kohl’s boards during his first visit,
strums out smooth, island-inspired tunes. I eavesdrop on
conversations about big-wave training regiments, board
design, and mysto-reefs. The more serious the conversation,
the more hushed the tone.
These days, The Land has evolved into a bit more of
a mature operation. Beneath its laid-back exterior is an
undertaking with lots of moving parts. The residential and
commercial property functions completely off the grid. Four
solar array systems provide power that’s backed up by
several generators, a 190-foot-deep well plus a rain catching
system provides water, and propane gas is used for cooking.
ESCOBAR
15. On a board scrounged for
$80, Christensen joins
Ramon Navarro and Diego
Medina at El Buey in 2005.
“I was working in northern
Chile at this little metal
shop,” he recalls. “There
were times when I had no
money, just traveling on a
shoestring budget.”
76
16. In addition to the surf operation, which includes dozens
of boards (most over nine feet), a jet ski (support only, no
tow-in here), and a giant garage stocked with surf and travel
gear, there’s also a thriving solar installation business with
eight employees, and a prosperous organic farm.
The solar business was born in part out of necessity,
as Kohl and Nick needed to figure out how to get power to
The Land. “When we bought the property, we didn’t have
a lot of options,” states Kohl. “We were off the power grid,
so it was either run generators or look at solar or wind.”
Intrigued by solar, Kohl took some courses and received a
certificate for doing installations, eventually earning his
state license. “I convinced them to use The Land as the
hands-on portion of the course, so my own house became
my first official install.” One begins to see that Kohl’s skills
and interests developed from adapting to his surroundings:
no electricity available, he’ll make solar power work; locals
speak Spanish, he’ll learn the language; scary, uncrowded
waves near home, he’ll figure out how to ride them. Nothing
about Christensen seems staged because it isn’t.
The organic farm operates under the same ethos.
Maintained by “WWOOFers” (World Wide Opportunities
on Organic Farms), workers from around the world come
to help out on the farm in exchange for room and board.
The WWOOFers provide a constant and ever-changing
workforce, as well as continuous entertainment. As one
can imagine, the program attracts its share of characters.
“WWOOFers—they’re another species,” laughs Kohl. “You
get some good help. You get some bad help, and it seems
to work out.” He recounts a story of one worker, James, who
had an eyeball tattooed on the front of his neck, and nearly
got them all beat up in town. “This guy was kind of creepy,”
says Kohl. “I think he was on the run from a crime. We
went out to the bars and he picked a fight with one of the
heaviest locals around, who, of course, associated us with
him.” After getting chased by several large toughs through
the streets of Haleiwa, and eventually outrunning them,
James threatened to go back after them with a knife, at
which point Kohl intervened. “He wanted to kill these guys,
and when we tried to stop him he turned on us. We almost
had to call the cops.” That a knife-wielding outlaw was
not cause for notifying the police speaks to the free-
wheeling atmosphere found at Kohl’s home.
“The key is to screen the WWOOFers a bit better,” he
says. After a bit of trial and error, Kohl has implemented
a few more controls over the volunteer labor pool. He’s hired
a “WWOOF-Master” to oversee the workers; installed
“WWOOFer-Watchers,” security cameras that he can view
through his phone while on the road; and established a
designated “WWOOF-Zone,” a basic tent encampment
with a kitchen area where the workers live and eat.
“When I arrived, the farm was kind of in disarray,”
says Sarah Bonte, the current WWOOF-Master. “Everything
was overgrown, and we had to make three runs to the dump
just to clear it out.” Bonte has also been slowly trying to add
77
ESCOBAR
17. Kohl watches a
set grind at
Cloudbreak
(above), where,
in 2011, he
caught the best
wave of his life
(below). “It’s
the one wave
that will keep
me surfing for
the rest of my
life,” he says.
“I was so close.
I made it to the
end of the barrel
and fell out.”
78
18. feminine touches to the farm. “This place was so dude-
central when I got here,” she laughs. “I don’t think they’d
ever had a woman live here before.”
Kohl admits that he never had ambitions to
become a professional surfer, but when offered sponsorship
in exchange for, well, continuing to ride some seriously
scary, behemoth waves, he accepted. “All these guys like
Dusty, Nick, and others are capable of doing the things
that I do,” claims Kohl. “Ability-wise, they’re just as good
as me. But they just do different things for work.” Others
aren’t so sure about that. “Kohl’s gotten so crazy lately
that I don’t know if I want to try to keep up with him
anymore,” says Nick. “He’ll go on anything and come up
wanting more.”
Kohl’s relationship with Patagonia has also led to a
close surfer-shaper collaboration with Fletcher Chouinard.
“It’s been a really symbiotic relationship,” says Kohl. “I think
I’ve helped get him more involved in shaping big boards for
huge surf, and he’s been great to work with, dialing in design
concepts.” Few surfers, when given the choice of a proven
big-wave surfboard shaper or an inexperienced one like
Chouinard, would be willing to go with the latter in high-
risk conditions. Christensen even surprised Chouinard with
the decision. “All of a sudden I’m making all these 10'6"
boards for death-defying waves,” Fletcher says. “It’s a
constant feedback process. We talk almost every day.”
By the end of my time on The Land, I feel at home
there, only I know I’m not, at least not until I’m willing to
paddle into a 30-foot wave breaking over a mile offshore.
Perhaps it’s better that I’ve come when the surf is flat. The
camaraderie among the inhabitants here seems genuine,
and the notion of looking out for one another is evident—
whether it’s providing a place to crash, finding work, or
surfing.
Kohl floats at the center of it all. It’s hard to say how
long he can sustain traveling the world and chasing big
waves; he’s currently on a pretty torrid pace. “I think big-
wave surfing is an older person’s game because of all the
experience required,” he says. “But I do want to have a
family and all that, so we’ll see.” As for The Land, while it
will always serve as a hub for wandering surfers, it’s growing
up and evolving. There are toilets now, hot showers, and
a comfortable house. Who knows what direction it might
take from here? “Kohl has always said, ‘It’s not about me,
but making sure all my friends are taken care of,’” says
Paige Thomas. “He doesn’t leave anybody behind.”
As the night wears on at the evening barbecue,
everyone’s clearly enjoying the get-together, most of them
quite drunk. I look around and notice Kohl is no longer
around. Apparently, the power has gone out. While his
friends all drink and play music by the fire, he slips off
into the dark to start a backup generator. ◊
For expanded content including videos and photography, Go
Deeper with Kohl Christensen at surfersjournal.com.
79
SCOTTWINER/AFRAMEDANIELRUSSO
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