2009, by BrennanLagasse

As skiers, something very special happens when we check the forecast. Whether we know it's supposed to be "good" or "bad", we still check, and when the proper elements come together to bring in our old friend POW, we rejoice, dream, contemplate, and can't wait for the storm. This mundane, yet essential daily practice disappears from our radar in the summer (unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere). However, the other week in Santa Cruz I felt that magic again, although this time it was from a different friend named SWELL.

A Capitola set

I've maintained a practice to ski at least one day in every month of the year, which at least means a mission a month will be planned to some snow in the summer. The only thing that I feel has ever compared to the feeling of skiing is riding a wave. We all have off season sports, activities, and passions. Surfing is most certainly that medium for me, and what began as a brief window to surf knee high waves for a few days in Santa Cruz morphed into a 10 day surf odyssey that brought some of the most beautiful swell I've ever seen.

There sure are a lot of people who surf in Santa Cruz. The surf culture is really cool down there, kind of like our ski culture in that a big swell coming (especially a South Swell) is like the big storm that's due to arrive; people in town are buzzing, even those that don't surf. The smell and medium of the ocean environment is also sublime like the smell of a snowy winters' day. However, usually, we may see a bird here or there, or in Jackson the occasional Moose, but in the ocean there's pelicans swooping overhead, porpoises diving through kelp beds and maybe even a sea otter gently swimming along eating some fresh crustacean along the way. And then there's the feeling of hitting the water and immersing oneself in the ocean environment, trying to catch waves about to break on a beach that came from thousands of miles away and will break no matter if you're there or not. When you get out of the water, the magic stays with you like a good day of backcountry skiing; whenever I closed my eyes at night, all I could see were set waves rolling in....

Surfline

So Jillian and I hooked up with our buddies, who conveniently live within walking distance to Pleasure Point, which is akin to being able to ski Teton Pass from your front door, and surfed "the Hook", "Second peak", and "38th" for the next few days. The night before we were scheduled to leave I hopped online to check the surf report. "It changed to green" I shared to our group. Surfline is a great resource for checking the surf report (and they also have a killer article up right now about last weeks epic swell) that generally rates surf by a three colored tier system; blue, green, orange. We figured we should stick around for another day as nothing was pressing in Tahoe till Thursday, "we just surfed a few blue days, so a green day should be great".

Heading for a session.

The next day, after another session of 30-50 yard rides down super glassy faces, I checked the report again; ORANGE. I looked at my lady and she already knew. That previous day when the report changed to green and the excitement level rose I told our crew "I've always wanted to catch an orange swell. I wonder what that would be like...maybe someday...it must be like rolling into Little Cottonwood Canyon before they close the highway..."

The next several hours were spent plotting for a way to pass off responsibilities for just a few more days, and take root in 'the Cruz' for the incoming swell. Somehow we figured it out and after 10 days of surf, and caching what some forecasters on Surfline are calling one of the best swells in the past 10+years, contentment, analogous to an epic week of fresh snow, was the only energy around. Getting tossed, making sections, and sliding down some of the best waves I've ever ridden was a beautiful thing. To catch this prefect SSW swell and see places that earlier in the week were knee high, and Saturday were well overhead and sometimes barreling, was a beautiful sight in and of itself. Amazingly, paddling out and sliding down felt as good as skinning up and dropping in- I swear!

It was funny how things developed last week. I even got into a routine that was something like the winter: wake, check the weather, eat and drink something, stretch, gear up and go ski. Instead it was usually: wake, a skate, walk, or bike to scope the waves, then the "get ready" steps including, Step 1: Apply sunscreen, Step 2: put on wetsuit (hopefully it was dry), Step 3: put on wax, check leash, Step: 4 Go surf; one session in the morning, one session in the evening. It was amazing, and although I felt like staying even when we finally had to bail back to Tahoe, it really reminded me of that first checklist, and that winter is right around the corner.