Skate-inspired bowls are cropping up all over the place in snowboarding right now. They’ve been a frequent feature in the amazing setups at the Vans Wangl Tangl and also played a big part in the Nike Chosen Series that went down earlier this year. The lastest incarnation of the bowl style setup was built in Hakuba, Japan at the so-called ‘Holy Bowly,’ which was an “international gathering of creativity and flow” that brought some of Japan’s best shapers together with some well respected riders to build and shred an innovative tranny-filled masterpiece.
Here’s an edit from Monster Energy featuring Jess Kimura, Teddy Koo, Harrison Gordon, Kohei Kudo and friends getting creative on the various humps and bumps at Holy Bowly. It’s all great stuff (check out Jamie Lynn’s massive method at 1.00) but it raises an interesting question: are we going to see more and more of this creative shaping creeping into the more traditional, linear slopestyle format that we’re used to or will it stay on the peripheries of the contest circuit and further the divide between the big budget, big scale TTR style contests and the smaller, more alternative (but perhaps more enjoyable) comps?
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