Surfers take on Mother Nature
The unfathomable power of nature is all around us.
Storm winds can bend the most majestic trees like blades of
grass. Mammoth Lakes perches on the lip of a 23-mile-long crater,
created geologists say, in a single cataclysmic eruption. Tsunamis
can rake shorelines clean. Water falling in rivers lights our homes
and elicits thrills among whitewater rafters.
Surfers take on Mother Nature
The unfathomable power of nature is all around us.
Storm winds can bend the most majestic trees like blades of grass. Mammoth Lakes perches on the lip of a 23-mile-long crater, created geologists say, in a single cataclysmic eruption. Tsunamis can rake shorelines clean. Water falling in rivers lights our homes and elicits thrills among whitewater rafters.
Compared to an earthquake, a tsunami or a volcanic eruption, the waves that pound our shore seem pretty insignificant.
But a handful of people eagerly throw themselves into the mouth of the beast. That’s unlikely in the case of a volcano or tsunami.
Tuesday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle jumped out at passersby from newsracks. Nearly the entire top half of the front page was filled with a single photo, appearing under the headline “TAUNTING DEATH.”
The photo depicted a single tumbling wave behind a sheet of glassy water. A second look showed a human figure, a single surfer wrapped in black neoprene stood perhaps one-seventh the height of the wave that seemed about to swallow him, rocketing forward as he looked over his shoulder at the wave rising and tumbling behind him, hands held calmly at his sides.
The surfer was Darryl “Flea” Virostko of Santa Cruz. The location was Maverick’s, a rocky shelf off of Pillar Point Harbor.
The place went undiscovered for many years, but a local pioneer named Jeff Clark started riding the giant waves that pile up there by himself in the 1970s. Eventually the secret leaked out, and surfing magazines and Web sites quickly made the spot famous.
It is the site for the world’s best-known big wave surfing championship. But the waves Virsostko was photographed riding were not contest waves. They were too big.
The crests a week ago Tuesday topped out at nearly 80 feet – twice the height of the tallest building in San Benito County.
Waves that big move too fast to ride by just paddling. Surfers are towed behind personal watercraft, like water skiers. Once they’re moving fast enough, they’re dropped in while their tow pilots gun the throttle to safety.
Waves are not like ski slopes. They are mutable, changing by the second.
Only a handful of surfers elect to face waves like those that rose last week. It’s the greatest challenge for the best in their sport. But even then, they are occasionally injured or killed.
The irony of such an epic adventure is that it is almost impossible to experience among those who do not enter the water themselves. Last week’s record-breaking day occurred in dense fog that rendered the break invisible from shore.
Even on clear days, spectators must trudge along a clifftop north of Pillar Point Harbor to a perch far removed from the action. The scope of the drama before them is hard to imagine from such a distance.
Clearly, it is not fame or public adulation these people seek. It is something deeper, more spiritual.
With the certain knowledge that climbers will die and be entombed in its ice each year, the best flock to Mt. Everest. The most famous answer to the obvious question, why, was its most enigmatic: “Because it’s there.”
The same might be said for the waves at Maverick’s.
The majestic power of the surging sea is not solely the province of the select few. Waves pounding our coast can awe and imperil any of us.
The weekend after Thanksgiving, we took a Central California ramble. Tides were high, and as we headed south along a remote stretch of Hwy. 1, a wall of water shot over the roadway, perhaps 15 feet high.
Just last summer, an unexpected set of overhead waves, accompanied by a down-shore riptide, briefly imperiled family members and friends until rescues were effected.
That moment, again, reminded us of the power swirling around us, and of our own vulnerability.
