Moon Tubes

No doubt we aren’t the only ones to have entertained a dream or two of surfing by moonlight.
During the heart of a long Alaskan winter it’s only natural to consider this…with only eight hours of daylight and a 10-20ft tide fluctuation you’d think the chances of the surf peaking at night are relatively high.

Well, after about 10 years of watching the surf in Homer I have to say, it’s a special night that the swell, wind, tide, and cloud cover will cooperate with the moon cycle.

Once upon a time in a little cosmic hamlet by the sea all the magic ingredients came together. A swell was rolling into Kachemak Bay, the winds were calm, the tide was right, the sky was clear, and it was a full moon.

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It's a race against the fog and the rising tide. We barely snuck in, now the plane has to sneak out.

Yet another successful fly-in fly-out surfari to the Petrof Glacier break.

Something to put in the back of your mind for the next time you are scheming on flying over a coastal mountain range for a day at a remote surf break . . . What you see on your side is likely not what you’ll find on the other side. This was the certainly the case on January 30th when we loaded up the Homer Air Cessna 206 with surf boards and a little survival gear and headed up over the Kenai Mountain Range.

Scenic glacier and mountain views on our fly-out surf trip to a remote surf break in Alaska.

This time we did suspect that we might see some fog, but just couldn’t resist taking the gamble. The coastal fog was pretty thick as far as we could see as we came over the mountains. It was all smiles and surf stoke when we saw a swell crashing on the beach through a little sliver of a window in the fog right over the very beach we needed to land on.

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Iceman scores another left on a steel blue morning in January.

January 2010 was a pretty slow month for us Homer, Alaska surfers. We were eager when a swell finally showed up on the 22nd. Honestly, I can’t remember much about these sessions -  judging by the small number of photos, I must have spent most the swell window in the water recovering from the preceding dry spell. Looks like we had a nice morning session then a sweetly scenic sunset surf.

Party wave!

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Iceman surfing a remote surf break in Alaska near Petrof Glacier.

As promised, this post is the meat and potatoes of our last fly-out surf trip to Petrof Glacier, Alaska. Check out the first half of this adventure, which is just getting to this remote beach, in my last post - Surfing Petrof Glacier 1.8.10 – Getting There. With the short daylight of the Alaskan winter we only had four hours to enjoy this swell so let’s get on with it! Below is a nice selection of photos from the day. I photographed for a few minutes, surfed for a few hours, then photographed for a few more minutes. Hope you enjoy the show.

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Mike and Stephanie watch as the plane departs Petrof Glacier Beach, Alaska.

In 2009 our dreams of surfing this particular remote break in Alaska were realized, several times actually. All told I think there was about seven attempts at getting there and maybe four successes. The spot is called Petrof Glacier because the beach we surf is nearby the glacier and it’s the easiest way to locate it on a map. Access is by a short bush plane ride through the Kenai Mountains that is really long on scenery. In the brief 15 minutes of flying we cross Kachemak Bay, pass several glaciers, countless mountain peaks, an ice field, more glaciers, glacier lakes, rivers, and then back to the ocean in the Gulf of Alaska and the much anticipated moment of . . will it be fogged in? . . . will there be a swell?

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