Archive for December, 2008
The worst!
Thursday, December 18th, 2008I lived in the Canyon, I wrote The Powder Hound’s Guides, but then I moved away. My closest touch with my favorite pitches at Snowbird now comes from the daily snow report. It’s best that I don’t check it, but I can’t resist. When I do and I see that it’s snowed nearly a foot overnight, and at about 11 degrees to boot, I am for a moment thrilled–and then plunged into deep depression. Not the kind of depression you make when your tip catches a willow branch in Wilbere Bowl, the kind that they treat with drugs and counseling. Making it worse is the fact that here in Santa Cruz we’re experiencing a fall surf season of epic disappointment.
This is the time of year when conditions get really good. Most mornings the wind is light or nonexistent. And usually we get swells from a regular series of storms marching across the North Pacific. Not this year. There have been a few good swells, including one Saturday morning when a west swell hit from just the right direction to put the best of the north coast big wave spots into their zone of maximum potential. Scotts Creek was epic, Mavericks was epic and, when the tide dropped, every reef point on the West Side fired. But this week there has been no surf at all. The whole of Monterrey Bay a sheet of glass, perfect conditions, but literally no rideable surf.
See for yourself. Go here You’ll see that Steamer Lane is dead flat–an extremely rare occurence, believe me.
No swell and no Snowbird. That’s the worst!
