The photo above shows another angle on the wave seen in the ‘End of the World’ clip. The question is, is this break actually ‘in the middle of nowhere’?
Our boat plowed through glassy water. Three waves peeled along a sand-bottom point. The beach was empty. The waves were groomed. The sky was low and cold. A nice breeze was blowing onto the face of the waves, but the break was bogged down by a steeply climbing tide. We were on the Alaskan coast, near the community of Yakutat.
In the afternoon we checked the outer beaches. The breaks here worked better on a high tide. The surf was larger. We followed a gravel road around the rim of a lagoon and into a forest. The trees were tall, thin, and they looked very old. They formed a tunnel around the road. Our van emerged into a clearing.
Below, large boulders sat in the sand. The beach terminated at the water line. The sea floor was blanketed by boulders. Hollow and peaky waves were breaking close to shore. The surface of the water was dead calm.
We opted to look at another wave further down the road. It was a lefthand head-high-on-the-sets bolder-bottom pointbreak. The boulders were slick, and they were clumsy to crawl over. I paddled out with a local. We sat on the peak and took turns catching roping lefts.
As I sat outside waiting for the next set I looked at the massive white mountain range across the bay. One of the prominent peaks in the range, Mt. Saint Elias, is one of the tallest peaks in the United States.
No roads lead here. The Yakutat community is only accessible by boat or plane. The population reaches a little over 4,000, but by area it’s the largest city in the United States.
Fall and spring swells arrive from turbulent Aleutian storms. The weather in Yakutat is unpredictable and tide swings are dramatic. While it can be difficult to find good conditions that stick around for awhile, bad weather can just as suddenly turn to sunny skies and calm wind. If the swell is too large on the outer beaches and the wind is wrong, there’s a chance that waves are wrapping around the cape into an offshore breeze and peeling for over 200 yards.
A solid swell and optimal wind have awoken this cold and distant point break from its slumber. It’s not often that the wave wraps from the outside all the way around the point. If you look closely at the cliffs in the background you might notice a hint of whitewash along the base of the mountain. This is a left-breaking wave that peels along a sandy spit and is only accessible by boat.
Only a handful of people on the planet have surfed Antarctica. Kelly Slater is one of them. In this video clip, Slater and friends surf a right-hander which appears to be peeling along the slabby base of an iceberg. Of particular interest are Kelly’s comments regarding the quantity, size, and quality of swell that reaches the antarctic coast.
In the distant reaches of the north an obscure and prehistoric bay hides two pointbreaks. They break opposite of each other, at the narrow mouth of the harbor. The island sitting at the center of the bay is only inhabited by bald eagles and grizzly bears. At times, the bay reaches depths of 720 feet, deep enough to allow whales to take residence.
[ The deeper parts of the bay cut steeply into the mountain range, resembling a fjord. ]
“There is a maximum tidal range of fifteen feet. With such a tremendous volume of water pouring in and out twice during a twenty-four-hour period, currents at the constricted entrance reach speeds of nearly fifteen miles per hour. Treacherous waves can form instantaneously on an ebb (outgoing) tide, particularly when an opposing wind blows…Inland from the coast the dark-green interior is virtually inaccessible.” – Fradkin
[ Access is less treacherous by float helicopter than by boat. ]
At slack tides the currents calm down and the entrance to the bay turns glassy calm. The region’s cobbled coast is known for punchy, peaky waves. Wildlife thrives here, but it is a difficult place for man to survive. The bay is surrounded on all sides by hundreds of miles of remote wilderness. Frequent gales, massive bears, and rogue currents make boat access a life-threatening prospect.
A gravel spit stretches 100 meters across the bay, never reaching higher than 12 feet above sea level. Across the mouth of the bay a more seasoned headland wraps stormy waves into a sheltered cove.
