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.