"Outracing the exploding lip of a breaking wave is like sking in front of an avalanche" Sean Collins, SurfLine Surf Forecaster. Since the ancient Hawaiians first slid shoreward on their hand-carved Olo boards, riding the biggest wave of the day has continued to be one of surfing's most revered accomplishments. But while the professional surfing circuit has blossomed over the last two decades, offering millions of dollars in prize money to agile small-wave performers, there has been no regularly-offered reward given to some of the true heroes of our sport -the big wave chargers.
The K2 Big Wave Challenge went ballistic with a week long series of giant swells which barraged the California Coast beginning in Mid-January. Top surfers from around the world have quickly risen to the occasion, gallantly taking on the Pacific's fury in the quest for the winter's biggest wave and the $50,000 K2 prize.
Maverick's, a famous big-wave surfing spot off Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco has been the venue for most of this winter's epic rides. Ion Banner and Mike Brummett of Santa Cruz and Don Curry of Carmel were all credited with riding waves in the five-times overhead realm on January 13.
Their tenure on the unofficial K2 leader board was brief, however when an even larger swell slammed the coast on Saturday, January 17. Santa Cruz pro surfer Peter Mel returned from a Hawaiian surf trip in time to take of on a huge outside beast which he rode flawlessly through the length of the Maverick's reef. Unofficial estimates put the face height of Mel's Saturday wave at well over thirty-five feet.
El Nino has yet to show any signs of a let-down as far as surfers are concerned; only three days later the biggest swell of the year thus far clobbered the coast with Heavy Surf Advisories for the entire state. Again Maverick's was a focus. The unofficial consensus of witnesses was that another wave nearly equal to Mel's Saturday effort was ridden on January 20 by a trio of surfers at the same time. According to K2 Big Wave Challenge rules, in such an instance credit for the wave goes to the surfer who takes off furthest back...in this case Peter Mel once again.
Mel concurred that the three-way bomb was something special. "Yeah, it was solid. Flea (Virotsko) took off, too, and Mike Brummet further out on the shoulder. It was pretty amazing. We paddled out to sort of check it out and watch for a while," said Mel. "Then this set unloaded about 100 yards outside of where we though it was breaking. It was the biggest wave I've ever seen in my life. The wave was at least thirty feet from the back and you could have fit four busses inside the tube."
Extremely large surf was ridden at other venues on the West Coast on Big Tuesday, with Todos Santos Island, off of Ensenada, Mexico being the scene of other dramatic rides. Mike Parsons of San Clemente, California was a leader of that session with several rides worthy of entry in the K2 Big Wave Challenge. Several participants in the Todos Santos excursion, including Carlsbad pro Taylor Knox, were eliminated from contention early on when a giant set caught them inside, breaking their 9'6'' big-wave surfboards in half.
For all the high surf to hit the California coast, El Nino's aim has not been to Hawaii's advantage. Several swells have created moderate surf, but nothing since November 1 to make for a quality day at Waimea Bay or any of the other famed big-wave spots on Oahu's North Shore. Indeed, stalwart big wave hellmen like Australia's Ross Clarke-Jones and Tony Ray have taken to flying from Oahu to catch the swells in Northern California. According to surf forecaster Sean Collins, more unusually high waves are expected to hit the California coast as early as this weekend.
The K2 Big Wave Challenge runs through March 15, 1998. The final judging to determine the largest wave and the definitive photograph will take place in Early April.
The four of them stood on the bluffs at Maverick's, representing the first thing everyone needs to know about the K2 Challenge. The waves were raging out of control, a Hawaiian-style 25-30 feet with a savage south wind. For all anyone knew, a $50,000 wave could arrive at any moment. A few surfers met the challenge, but for these four, there was perspective, reason and common sense. They chose to wait, and surf another day.
There was Richard Schmidt, a world-class big-wave rider for the last 20 years and the man who might have ridden the biggest wave ever at Maverick's. There was Jeff Clark, who pioneered the notorious Half Moon Bay break and rode it alone for nearly 10 years. There was Jay Moriarty, who took the worst Maverick's wipeout ever seen and generally savors the biggest days. And Grant Washburn, who has probably ridden more 20-foot Maverick's waves than anyone in the last two or three years.
It was Friday morning, Nov. 14, and none of them surfed. They were looking at life-and-death conditions out there, a horrifying parade of wipeouts, pull-backs and dodging. "Tell you what," said Clark. "I'm not making any claims, but if I'm involved in the K2 thing, I want to be around to spend that money."
By now, most surfers are familiar with the $50,000 prize offered by the K2 sporting-goods company for riding the biggest wave of the winter. The basics: Anywhere in the Pacific Ocean. No tow-ins; only waves surfed on your own power. A courageous takeoff won't cut it -- you've got to make the wave, and have it recorded either by still photography or video.
Exactly what do they mean by "making" the wave? There has been no definitive word. Darrick Doerner is generally given credit for the all-time ride at Waimea because he took off on a 30-footer (on Super Bowl Sunday,1988), but he was crushed by whitewater after making a successful bottom turn. On the biggest wave ever ridden anywhere -- Greg Noll on an estimated 35-footer at Makaha in 1969-- Noll successfully made the drop, then got buried in an avalanche he couldn't have escaped with a jet-ski. There's no shame in reaching the bottom of a closeout wave; nothing else can be done. We'll see how the K2 judging panel sorts out what is certain to be a controversial issue. And if still photos are the only evidence, that photographer had better produce a sequence, not a single snapshot.
As December arrived, there was no question about the biggest waves in the Pacific Ocean this season. It was that Friday at Maverick's. The swell had arrived the previous day, in the afternoon, with just a small crew of Ocean Beach veterans there to greet it: Washburn, Clark, Mark Renneker, John Raymond, Jeff Harrison, Colin Brown and Bob Battalio. On another day, with the low tide and full-west swell, it might have been perfect. But the contrary winds and powerful swell confounded everyone. "It was otherworldly," Renneker marveled. "A North Shore 25 feet, with incredibly deep troughs. Most of us were sitting way over toward the channel, because you wouldn't think of going into the pit area. And we knew the swell was coming up fast.
"It was ominous," said Renneker. "The kind of thing where if you caught one wave, you felt you'd gotten away with something. And you always had this feeling that a bigger wave was coming outside. Grant caught a really big one. He'd be my nominee right now for the K2 thing. He's caught the most 20-plus waves of all of us so far."
Raymond, like Washburn, has ridden virtually every day of 15-foot-plus Maverick's this season. He's barely missed a day in three years. But even with all that experience, he was mortified by what he saw that Thursday afternoon. "He just spun out," said Renneker. "I saw him paddling up this giant face, and I was out on the shoulder yelling, "Go! Go!' And he was just, "Fuck you! Fuck you!' (laughter) I've never seen him so out of his mind."
Raymond admitted, "At the time, it really scared me. I really felt if you took off on a wave and didn't make it, you'd just get annihilated. You'd look down into the pit and the water was so churned, it looked like a cauldron, like nothing could survive in there.
"Yeah, I was freaking out," said Raymond. "I was a basket case out there. We keep track of all the days we surf out there, but you have to catch a wave to get a notch. I wasn't sure I could do it that day. Finally I kind of corner-hopped one at the end, a pretty nice one. The next morning, I drove back down there -- and it was even bigger."
The south wind had lessened considerably, but it still lent an ugly bump to the texture, and the sheer magnitude of this swell turned the set-wave takeoffs into insurmountable challenges. As usual on big Maverick's mornings, the Santa Cruz contingent was represented: Josh Loya, Kevin (Skindog) Collins, Mike Brummet and the Wormhoudt brothers, among others, along with Raymond and Brown. But many of the major Santa Cruz players were absent. Peter Mel was in Hawaii (where, last we heard, he was tearing up the Sunset contest of the Triple Crown), and both Schmidt and Moriarty backed off after making the crack-of-dawn drive. They gazed upon the scene and saw nothing but disaster, notably a horrendous Loya wipeout that saw him get about two-thirds of the way down a 20-plus wave, then fall rudely into the face and get absolutely slaughtered.
"Josh was down for the period of two waves," said Clark. "He was lucky there weren't any more waves in that set -- and that wasn't even one of the biggest waves. He wouldn't have made it up if that was a real set. Some of 'em had 10 to 15 waves. It was just pumping."
As it was, said water photographer Doug Acton, "Loya was really shaken up. He was shell-shocked. We had to help pull him out of the pit. This a guy who is known for making every drop, but that one got him pretty bad. He told me later that most of his body ached."
None of the really big waves were ridden, or even attempted. "It was clean enough, but too big to ride," said Raymond. "This one wave came that was way bigger than everything else -- at least a 60-foot face. Biggest wave I've ever seen, man, a rogue wave from hell. People were scrambling like crazy but nobody got nailed by it. I was joking around with Josh and Zack Wormhoudt and those guys. This huge set came through and I yelled, "If you take off on one of those, you've got the K2 in the bag.' They just laughed. There were maybe three takeoffs all morning, and three wipeouts. This was the unridden swell."
Up on the cliffs, Schmidt surveyed the chaos and quietly walked back to the parking lot. "He's got a baby on the way," said water photographer Doug Acton. "He saw that wave Loya got and just walked away. I don't blame him one bit. He's got nothing to prove."
"Richard was absolutely right," said Clark. "Being out there was just stupidity, in my book. Guys who do that won't be around very long. It was just like '94 (the year of Mark Foo's death at Maverick's), when guys were getting all those wipeouts. Same thing. Guys just falling out of the faces, going over huge moguls, big south warble runnin' through the thing. And we're talkin' 25 feet with bigger sets -- at high tide. This whole K2 thing has people running to the edge of the cliff and jumping, but that's not me, and it's not Richard. We like what we do. We want to do it for a long, long time. If you're dead, it doesn't much matter what you win."
Raymond was out there, but not because he was trying to make a statement. "I can go out there, see some amazing things, not take off and live with that," he said. "Richard Schmidt, if that guy paddles out, he's got to go over and grab one of those things."
In a way, Washburn couldn't believe he wasn't surfing. He's usually out there no matter what, ready to ride at least a couple of giant waves. "I still think I might have tried it if Jeff hadn't been there," he said. "But he and Richard know what's going on. They're the ultimate smart guys, and the consequence thing was just off the scale. It was blatantly not a good idea to go out there. We never even saw a lull. The 15-20-foot waves were like the shorebreak, just constantly breaking. The big black ones were out on the horizon. I remember this one really big one came and Richard said, "God, they're gonna die.' "
Washburn lives for Maverick's, surfs it every time it's big, and keeps detailed charts of the day-to-day activity. "That Friday was the heaviest conditions I've ever seen," he said. "There was a day in December '95 that was comparable, really giant. The buoy reports were 28 feet, as I remember. People went out to look just for the novelty of it, but nobody surfed."
By Friday afternoon, Maverick's was the province of unspeakable horror. The wind blew strong and nasty. The waves grew longer and heavier with the low tide. Most of the set waves were sectioning grotesquely or simply closing out. I remember arriving at the parking lot around 4 p.m. and seeing Donald Curry, the full-on charger from Monterey, packing up his gear. To my amazement, he was removing his wet suit.
"Naw, I got skunked," said Curry, his face looking a bit ashen. "I was out there with Jay and one other guy. None of us even took off -- not once. That was the scariest stuff I've ever seen."
I went out to the cliffside with Bob Battalio to get a look for myself, and I got the chills, just imagining what Curry had seen. Generally, 25-30-foot surf looks formidable from a distance, but not as mean or overwhelming as it appears from the water. These waves looked like death; the power and scope of the explosions -- sometimes three and four to a wave, sectioning all down the line -- were fully evident. Off to the south, the never-ridden break known as Blackhand Reef was firing out of control, a hideous, violent thing in the middle of the ocean. And there was Curry, whose bravado and big-wave riding feats are legendary throughout Northern California, wanting no part of it.
"I'll admit I was psyched out," he said. "My tail was between my legs and my hand was right there grabbing it. Jay and the other guy were pretty much by the boat (in the channel), but I wanted to paddle out there and have a look. Definitely the heaviest thing I've ever witnessed first-hand. I felt like I was seeing things that I shouldn't have. Things that were not meant to be seen that close by the human eye. I felt like God and the devil were right there, and it could go either way."
This was just a harrowing day all around. When Raymond drove back to his oceanside house on Beach Boulevard in Pacifica, he found that the police had blocked off the street. Waves had cleared the seawall below and were pounding the beachfront homes -- particularly Raymond's.
"It was getting mutilated by the surf," he said. "The waves knocked a railing down on the seawall and the whitewater was flooding my garage. My wife said at high tide, waves were landing on the roof, hitting the windows so hard, she thought they'd break. Some guys finally came around with a dump truck to help me clear things out. Here I come back from seeing these huge waves, just trying to get home where it's safe, and I'm still getting caught inside (laughs)."
You can't convince the Maverick's crew that the K2 payoff will happen anywhere else. Over the past five or six years, Maverick's has been the most consistent big wave in the world, and it's been pumping routinely this winter with the most formidable months to come. "Somebody's gonna get the K2 wave, and somebody's gonna get the death wave," says Washburn. "It won't be a Richard Schmidt who goes down. It's gonna be Joe Blow, somebody who has too much ego. It's such a fine line. Some of these kids are amazing, they can hold their breath forever, dive deep, surf really well, but ... will they make the right decisions? That's where John Raymond is smart. He doesn't have the ability or the reflexes, but he's gonna be able to be out there on THAT day and NOT be the one. He won't make that point-of-no-return kind of mistake.
"But someone will. One moment, everybody's hooting. And then the whole thing turns black and it's over."
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