Santa walking up the beach for another surf in the Cook Inlet storm swell.

It’s become a bit of a tradition to go surfing on Christmas day here in Alaska.  Well, at least for about five of us in Homer anyhow.  Every year we wonder if Santa will show up and what kind of wave slider he’ll be using. Not too surprising then when he did make an appearance for our stormy session at Anchor Point with his ruby slipper as we call it. We’ve seen this one before, seems to be a favorite craft of his.

The surf was pretty decent in Anchor Point (20 miles north of Homer) with about shoulder high sets and a pretty stiff sideshore breeze. The current was brutal though – With some of the largest tides in the world, Cook Inlet moves a lot of water during each tide cycle. A 20ft water depth change every 6hrs is not uncommon.  This session the wind and the tide were double teaming us which made for a bunch of beach walking . . . Jump in, paddle out, try your best to stay in one spot, maybe catch a wave, get out and walk up the beach and try again.  Even Santa couldn’t beat this current. Sort of made me wonder why he didn’t bring the reindeer along, we could have all used some help.

ps. I’ve heard some reports that local surf kayaker Randy Keller was missing on Christmas day, he has since been found and appears to be ok.

Let the story telling begin.

Surfing a break near Petrof Glacier in the Gulf of Alaska.

Years of talking, drooling, hypothesizing, dreaming, thinking, imagining . . Petrof Glacier, so close yet so far away.  From Homer this spot is only a 20 minute bushplane flight away. Just on the other side of those pesky mountains that so easily block the ocean swell from hitting our beaches. With the help of friends at Homer Air we made it over those mountains twice in the last week. One evening session and then a 2-3 day camping trip over the first weekend in May. A couple thousand photos remain to be edited, but I wanted to start sharing the stoke asap.

Recently the founding ideas of SurfAlaska.net — Open sharing of information and building friendships with new surfing buddies in Alaska, has met some resistance. I’d like to make it very clear that I believe if we all get together and share knowledge, resources, and our stoke for surfing the result will be us all catching more waves in epic locations like this. In that spirit, if you are interested in joining us on a trip to Petrof leave a comment below, we rallied 9 surfers for this awesome weekend trip and we hope that next time you can join us.

Surf Alaska!

Just a little something from the archive for a flat Sunday afternoon.

Rainbow at Snappers surf beach. Yakutat, Alaska

Day 2: Looking back through the photo files from 9/28/08 there’s nothing for the morning session, must have been rainy and the camera was left behind.  I think we surfed Pt Carrew at first light. Back to camp for a tanner crab lunch, cheers Iceman! It’s not so bad camping in the rainforest when you’ve got all you can eat crab legs after a long morning surf session.

The schedule for our Yakutat surfing trip was pretty strict, rarely in the seven days did we waiver from the following routine:  Wake up at 7am, crawl out of the tents into a drizzle and light the fire. Eat breakfast while stoking up the fire. Moan about crawling into a cold wet wetsuit so early, get over it because the surf is firing, grab your board and hike/run the beach to Pt Carrew for the morning session. Three to four hours later back at camp for lunch and maybe a short nap. Around 3 or 4pm back to the water for the evening session until dark. Once it was too dark to surf, it was time to eat again. Get that fire stoked high and try and forget about the rain till an early bed time around 9pm.  Replay, replay, replay.

Below are some photos from our first full day which gave us a rare and precious glimpse of the sun during the evening session at Snappers. The pot of gold was all you can surf glassy sucking up head high washing machines. Everyone got their share.

Matt Kinney putting away the crab legs in a craze between surf sessions.

Keith Bell navigates the driftwood approach at Snappers. Surfing Yakutat, Alaska.

Iceman applies the wax before surfing at Snappers, Yakutat, Alaska.

Mike McCune dropping into a glassy backlit beach break barrel while surfing Yakutat, Alaska.

Iceman on the nose surfing Yakutat, Alaska.

Mike McCune riding between the lines, Yakutat, Alaska.

Iceman scoring another glassy face at Snappers, Yakutat, Alaska.

Rainbow just before sunrise at Snappers surf beach, Yakutat, Alaska.

Matt Kinney heading back out for another surf session at Snappers, Yakutat, Alaska.

Iceman walking out of the sunset after surfing Snappers, Yakutat, Alaska

Iceman and his reflection go for a walk with their surfboard on the beach. Yakutat, Alaska.

Jake Beaudoin shares a little moment of surf stoke after a great session at Snappers, Yakutat, Alaska.

Back at the campfire Jake begins the long wait for dawn patrol. Yakutat, Alaska.

Gart Curtis runs towards some gnarly winter storm surf in Alaska.

BARREN ISLANDS AND KAMISHAK BAY WATERS
400 PM AKST SAT NOV 29 2008

...STORM WARNING THROUGH SUNDAY...
...HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY WARNING THROUGH SUNDAY NIGHT...
.TONIGHT...W WIND 50 KT. SEAS 16 FT. HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY.
.SUN...NW WIND 50 KT. SEAS 16 FT. HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY.
.SUN NIGHT...NW WIND 40 KT DIMINISHING TO 25 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. SEAS
14 FT. HEAVY FREEZING SPRAY.

We had some fun storm surf in Homer, Alaska today. Air temps were around 25F and it was blowing roughly 25mph onshore. That was all just fine and I was having a great surf until around 4pm when we started losing daylight fast the wind picked up even more and little icy precipitation started falling. The problem was the flying ice crystals were getting blown into our eyes making it painful to look offshore. Let me just say it wasn’t a good day to not be paying close attention to where you were at in the lineup.

According to the forecast something juicy is brewing up for tomorrow. Hopefully we won’t have so much wind locally.

I shot a bunch of photos today, but haven’t edited (or even downloaded) them yet. Stay tuned. The shot above is from January 2007 when the conditions were much like today.

NWS Marine Weather can be seen here