Extreme Surf - 9780762749737

Extreme Surf illustrates the most extreme surfing behavior. It explores the candidates for the world’s gnarliest and fastest wave. It journeys up the Amazon to reveal the fearsome pororoca and travels to England for a surf ride that can last over an hour and where the major hazards are dead sheep, trees, and old refrigerators. It also includes the giant breaks of the surfing world—Jaws, Dungeons, Cyclops, Shiptern’s Bluff, and Cortes Bank—and reveals the most feared waves from Northern California to Tahiti.

Ever since Duke Kahanamoku helped revive the ancient art of “surfboard riding” in the early twentieth century, surfers have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Today, surfers will endure arctic temperatures in Iceland or suffer the crippling heat of Pakistan just to catch a new wave. They will dodge bandits, thieves, smugglers, security cordons, and evade civil wars to get to a good point break. They will journey to reefs a hundred miles out to sea to challenge sixty-foot waves, where one mistake can end in catastrophe, and medical intervention is a long, long way away. They will put up with toxic beaches, run the risk of shark attack or being grated across some of the hardest, sharpest, and shallowest reefs on the planet to do what they love best.

Featuring photographs by a dozen of the world’s best surf photographers, and comments and opinions from surfing experts such as Dr. A. Garrett Lisi, Laird Hamilton, and Kelly Slater, Extreme Surf shows the lengths that some people will go for the ultimate surfing experience.