(All images by Tomoki Peters)Eighteen-year-old Tomoki Peters lived in Japan for eight years before his parents moved to Christchurch, with the idea of keeping him away from earthquakes. As it turned out, a massive quake hit Christchurch in 2011, then last year another one struck just further north, near Kaikoura on the coast.Inspired by a group of skateboarders who had skated on Christchurch's damaged roads, Tomoki took off with a few friends on the first weekend after the November 14 earthquake. With a camera, skateboards, "some really shitty push bikes" and not nearly enough water, they ventured past the cordon and along the ripped-up highway for six hours before ditching their bikes and hitchhiking back. Pay off came the next day when they caught a ride further north, finally reaching the tectonic skatepark they'd had in mind. The rough terrain made it hard to pull off jumps—for Troy Tapara's ollie shown in his Facebook video, Tomoki told VICE they "actually got clay out of the landslide that was beside it and filled in the cracks with dirt and clay so it was a smoother run up".
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They spent nine hours in the cordon, adventuring and jumping gaps in the earth that they couldn't even see the bottom of. "We were skating those cracks, Troy was in one of the cracks and one of our boards even fell in a crack. You know, one earthquake and that's your arm gone, your life gone, your body gone. I guess it would have been kind of unhealthy to think of that at the time".Three teams of the world's best skaters compete on our VICELAND show KING OF THE ROAD. The weird, sloppy and downright ridiculous finale is almost here. To celebrate, we're holding free screenings at skate shops around the country this Saturday. RSVP here.
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