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January 13, 2021

Chuck Patterson Attempts Big-Wave Skiing at Mavericks

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 6:34 am

In case you haven’t heard, Mavericks has been going absolutely berserk to start the year. The famed Northern California big-wave spot has seen a two-week run of huge surf that has captured the attention of the entire surf world.

January 10 was undoubtedly the biggest (and scariest) day in this miraculous two-week span. With the world’s best big-wave surfers charging the XXL waves––both paddling and tow-in––there is no shortage of jaw-dropping footage from that day. However, there was one ride that was unlike the rest.


Chuck Patterson ditched his surfboard for a pair of skis and ski poles. After getting towed into an XXL wave, Patterson managed to both outrun the saltwater avalanche and carve a buttery turn in the process. Check out his full ride in the video above (Patterson’s ride starts at 0:45).

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January 8, 2021

Pro Mountain Biker Uses an Unconventional Training Partner––A Racing Drone

Filed under: Fitness,Training — Tags: , , , — admin @ 11:33 pm

When humans start competing against machines, you know we have entered a Brave New World. But while Hollywood has made plenty of apocalyptic films with a similar plot, the competition between humans and machines isn’t always such a bad thing. In fact, this friendly competition can be used as a great training tool.


World Cup cross-country mountain bike racer, Vlad Dascalu, proves this point in a recent video edit from Red Bull. The top rider faces off against a racing drone and chases his buzzing and flashing new training partner up and down his home trails in Romania. Using the drone to set a faster pace, Dascalu pushes his limits and even manages to shave a few seconds off his time.

The modern world of training is here.

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SURFER Offers Rare Glimpse Into Early Days of the Sport

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:32 am

In 1960 John Severson published the first issue of “The Surfer.” Its 36 pages were a compilation of photos he took while filming “Surf Fever,” his own illustrations, some editorial, and a few ads. Flyers announcing “The Surfer is coming!” were pasted the windows of surf shops. Former SURFER Magazine Publisher Steve Pezman told the Los Angeles Times “I promptly stole the flyer off the wall of the surf shop, which was how hungry we[surfers] were for printed validation.” Surfers lined up to buy copies.


Many surfers’ earliest memories of SURFER is being a grom and thumbing through it with friends. Somebody would bring the latest issue to school, and try to pull it out of their backpack without it getting ripped to shreds by a pack of fellow frothers. Huddled around the mag, pages would turn, guesses of where the spots in the photos were shouted out, cases pleaded as to why they were right or wrong. Analyzing, absorbing and critiquing every aspect of the magazine before cutting out prime stoke-inducing photos to be scotch-taped to a bedroom wall surf collage—a SURFER Magazine reader tradition that seems to transcend the decades.

As we grew older, we’d thumb through a mag looking for our favorite writers, storytellers, and photographers. We searched for photos and tales of exotic waves to spark our own travel missions. We hunted for shots of our most cherished surfers. We sought connection in the words of thoughtful essayists. It’s hard to remember now in our digital age, but we even flipped through the pages looking for cutting-edge surf news.

Over the years, the stories, photos, art direction and the ads in SURFER became little time capsules for our surfing lives. To celebrate those moments, and to capture a bit of nostalgia, we’re revisiting our video series called “The SURFER Archives” — wherein we thumbed through the earliest issues from the canon that is SURFER’s archive and made corresponding videos. As of October, SURFER has since ceased publication, but that doesn’t mean frothers far and wide have to stop flipping through its many iconic pages. Take a stroll down nostalgia lane with us and enjoy.

[Ed’s Note: The above intro was originally written by Ben Waldron, published in 2018, and adapted to reflect SURFER’s recent changes.]

SURFER Volume 2, Issue 1

After the success of John Severson’s first issue of “The Surfer” in 1960, which sold over 5,000 copies, he decided to go quarterly the following year. Which brings us to the second issue of SURFER: Spring, 1961.

SURFER’s second issue was still mostly a one man show of Severson’s photos, writing and artwork. It’s easy to romanticize surfing as a whole in decades past, but in this issue Severson laments about overcrowded lineups and the homogenization of surf culture even in the early 60s. Ironically, much of this issue’s content is location-oriented with a hand drawn map of Santa Cruz’s surf spots and photo features on Rincon and Swami’s.

Embedded among Severson’s mixed-media content was a comic strip by a “Guest Cartoonist.” That was 16-year-old Rick Griffin. The naturally talented artist’s style would later develop into one of the most recognized of 60s psychedelia. Griffin went on to design the original Rolling Stone magazine logo, a Grateful Dead album cover and much more. His comic strip in this issue, “The Gremies,” pokes fun at surfers’ enthusiasm for big Hawaiian surf and then quickly retreating from it when seeing it in person.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 2, Issue 1 from Ben Waldron, here.]

SURFER Volume 2, Issue 2

The third issue of The Surfer (SURFERMagazine’s original title) was published in the summer of 1961. Founder John Severson shot the cover image of Reynolds Yater, stating that he snapped “the-difficult-to-get underneath shot” just before Yater ran over him.

After only two published issues, Severson already knew his audience loved deconstructing his magazine for the photos. Severson provides a giant two-page spread in this issue sarcastically framed as “suitable for tearing out and glassing on your board, wall, or you.”

Throughout the issue, Severson doesn’t hold back in giving an honest assessment of contemporary surf culture. At the time, beaches were being shut-down and/or considered for closure due to disrespectful behavior by, who Severson refers to as, “gremlins” and “ho-daddies”-the equivalent to kooks and barneys. He offers a satirical checklist of bad behaviors for these “surfers” lacking in actual talent to obtain “their strong need of recognition.” Mixed among the suggestions to “destroy” and “undress in public” was “flip bottle caps and make lewd remarks at surfing movies.” The latter was especially annoying to Severson because the growing negative reputation of surfers as a whole was making it difficult for him to find venues willing to let him screen his surf films.

In a feature about Peru, Severson gives great insight on how he discovered exotic waves to travel to. While surfers today are able to look for potential swell magnets using Google Maps, Severson used a more analog approach to surf discovery. He reports spending hours in his college library flipping through encyclopedias looking for photos of waves captured by photographers on accident. “Usually I had to settle for distant shots of surf lines behind some peasant tending flocks on the coast of somewhere,” he writes on page three.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 2, Issue 2 from Ben Waldron, here.]

SURFER Volume 2, Issue 3

The Fall of 1961 issue of The Surfer (SURFER magazine’s original title) features coverage of the summer’s south swells as well as a preview of the Hawaiian winter. Severson hints at his anticipation for the Island’s warm water and heavy waves with his cover shot of Ricky Grigg at Waimea Bay during “the biggest surf of the year.”

Severson delegates some editorial to Ron Perrot for a feature on Australia and to Gini Kinz for a story about a girl learning to surf.

Letters to the editor from all over the world start to appear, sharing their enthusiasm for surfing and admiration for Severson’s publication. Severson prints a rejection letter from an auditorium unwilling to screen his movies that details the behavior of those who he clearly defines in this issue’s introduction as “gremlins” and “ho-daddys.”

[Read more about SURFER Volume 2, Issue 3 from Ben Waldron, here.]

SURFER Volume 2, Issue 4

In the fifth issue of SURFER Magazine, founder and editor John Severson continues his campaign to “elevate the sport.” In his Editor’s Note, Severson warns that surfing may be outlawed across the state of California if conditions surrounding it don’t change. He pushes his readers to join the United States Surfing Association and pitches it as an insurance policy that will preserve surfing.

In one of the features, San Onofre surfers are asked to define their break. Some seasoned locals argue it had better waves in the ’30s, while others claim the surf has always been the same. Based on the photos in the feature, it looks San O hasn’t changed much since ’61 either

Letters to the editor poured in from all over the world, including landlocked locations. “It is a pleasure to read a publication so literate about a sport so elemental, it augers well for the future respect in which surfing may be held,” writes Kenneth Deardorf from St. Lois, Missouri.

Mixed among the copy, and the growing number of surfboard and shop ads, is an announcement for SURFER’s Cartoon Contest, the subject being “The Surf Car.” With judging based on originality and cleverness, it’s easy to imagine Severson and SURFER staff cartoonist Rick Griffin pouring over all the India Inked, surfboard clad, rat rods mailed into the office (winners to be published in the following issue.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 2, Issue 4 from Ben Waldron, here.]

SURFER Volume 3, Issue 1

“Full of characters, fads and fantasies, surfing is perhaps the most colorful sport to emerge since the Greek bare-handed bullfights,” John Severson writes in the editor’s note that opens up SURFER Magazine’s 6th issue. Speaking of colorful, this is the first issue to feature a color photo; Ricky Grigg rolling into a Pipeline stunner on the cover.

Even in 1962, the Disneyfication of surfing is prophesied through wavepools. On the topic of surfing becoming a viral trend, Severson writes: “Help is on the way. Artificial wave machines are in the process of being built…as are powered surfboards. Next-somewhere between Anaheim and Buena Park-SURFYLAND! ALL YOU CAN RIDE FOR $1, ALL SIZES AND SHAPES! GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT!”

There’s a Pipeline feature in which Mike Hynson and a slew of other brave surfers charge the world’s deadliest wave on the single fin logs of the day. Most are outrunning the tube or wiping out. Photos of the latter are captioned by Severson’s signature tongue-in-cheek voice; “He was only successful in nearly killing himself,” and, “Mike was making good progress until the whole Pacific Ocean caved in on him.”

SURFER’s international scope started to grow too, with features on Australia and France, exotic destinations at the time.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 3, Issue 1 from Ben Waldron, here.]

SURFER Volume 3, Issue 2

When SURFER Magazine (then, The Surfer) released the second issue of its third volume in the summer of ’62, it was greeted by a growing, surf-obsessed audience, but one still yet unfamiliar with the much with vast expanse of rideable waves out there in the world-at-large.

The Letters to the Editor section includes mostly fawning missives from waveriders praising the expanded editorial content (12 new pages in the previous issue!), and a few notes lamenting the character of the burgeoning crowds that would—save for the dated vernacular (“Gremmies” and “Ho-dads”), read like a complaint about our current state of surfdom.

As there was much terrain, yet to cover (known and unknown), Vol. 3 Issue 2 features a detailed illustrated map of South Bay surf spots, a short primer on North Steyne, and a feature on Maui, describing its uncrowded lineups, diverse setups, including a premier “Malibu-like” (huh?) point, called Honolua Bay.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 3, Issue 2 from Matt Shaw, here.]

SURFER Volume 3, Issue 3

Here’s a bit of trivia: Which famous surf-star landed the cover of 1962’s Aug-Sept issue of The Surfer? Was it Australia’s Midget Farrely? Miklos “Da Cat” Dora ? The very photogenic Mike Hynson?

In fact, all the real-life surfers of the early 60s boom period were slighted in favor of a then-18-year old Staff Cartoonist’s fictional (though quite popular) surf-star, Murphy, who landed the coveted cover, hand-stalling on his way to a dry hair exit from a Crayola green tube.

Volume 3, Issue 3 of The Surfer is a good indication of the burgeoning cultural phenomenon that was Murphy, as a fair amount of ink is dedicated to Murphy and his creator Rick Griffin, who, in a portrait next to a short profile of the artist, looks relatively buttoned-up compared to the shaggy, bearded Hippy icon who’d soon be known to the world at large.

[Read more about SURFER Volume 3, Issue 3 from Matt Shaw, here.]

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December 30, 2020

Five Minutes of Ridiculous Surfing Wipeouts and What Causes Them

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 5:22 pm

Anyone who has ever entered the ocean and attempted to ride a wave has probably experienced it: The Wipeout. They range from gentle splashes to violent pounddowns that reduce you to a helpless rag doll. Regardless, the thrill of riding a good wave always outweighs the unfortunate experience of being dragged along the ocean floor.

In an ode to the wipeout, surfer Brad Jacobson walks us through the many different types of wipeouts and what mistake causes each one. Watching this video will not only provide some interesting insight into surfing technique, but it also is very entertaining. Because let’s face it, watching other people wipeout for five straight minutes is a great distraction from work, chores, or anything for that matter.


Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

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December 19, 2020

Watch: Finding Surf Perfection Along the Shores of Morocco

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 12:30 am

The article was originally published by SURFER and was republished with permission.

Luke Davis recently went on what he calls a “2020 tunnel hunt” to Morocco, which involved a few glorious days chasing down big slabby barrels along the shores of North Africa. Davis met up with one Jerome Sahyoun, who knows his country’s wave-rich coastline like the back of his hand. As you’ll see in the video above, the two banked on Sahyoun’s local knowledge and were able to score screaming freight trains from sun-up to sun-down. Click play to see the fruits of Davis’ 2020 tunnel hunt.


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December 9, 2020

How Scary Is Surfing Jaws? Nathan Florence Shows Us

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:52 am

Once again, Jaws lived up to its name. With a massive swell slamming into the Hawaiian islands last week, the world-famous big-wave spot went into full psycho mode.

With 50-foot waves on tap, a handful of elite watermen tested themselves against the Jaws of the Pacific. While a few came away with some absolutely mind-bending rides, many others were simply gobbled up and spit out.


This video edit from pro big-wave surfer Nathan Florence provides a great example of just how powerful this wave can be. With a mix of both regular and POV footage, you get a sense of just how much water these guys (and girls) are dealing with out there.

The surfing starts at the nine-minute mark and as you’re about to see, playing with Jaws is a very dangerous game.


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December 8, 2020

Watch: Victor De La Rue’s Radical First Descent in the Pyrenees Mountains

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 2:53 am

First descents are nearly always a sketchy endeavor––no matter the sport. However, this first descent from professional snowboarder and 2019 Freeride World Champ, Victor De La Rue. just seems to elevate the stakes to towering new heights.

As one of the most innovative riders in the sport, Victor is constantly searching for his next big challenge. The big mountain rider is known for charging some of the steepest and most radical faces on Earth––including a 55-degree slope on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in Chamonix.


Back in May, De La Rue decided to do a first descent of the north face of Taillon––located in the Pyrenees mountains. The treacherous descent featured variable snow conditions and a radical pitch––just watching his FPV perspective made us squeamish. In addition to the challenging riding conditions, getting to the top required some very technical ice climbing.

Put it all together and this was one radical mission.


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December 3, 2020

‘Ride to Survive’ is One of the Most Creative Trials Bike Edits We’ve Seen

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 11:47 pm

Trials bike riders are notorious for some very creative video edits. Trials riding itself requires finding creative lines and obstacles, but once you add a quirky storyline to the equation––things can get interesting.

Case and point, trials rider Tomomi Nishikubo recently released a new bike edit, ‘Ride to Survive.’ The premise for the video is that Nishikubo is a castaway on a deserted island and finds a bike in the bushes. For the next seven minutes, he pulls off variety of wild tricks to “survive” and send signals for help.


While the plot is obviously a bit far-fetched, Nishikubo’s use of the natural environment to come up with trials obstacles and trick platforms is impressive. But how will he escape the island on a bike? Find out for yourself.

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Felicity Palmateer Releases Nude Surfing Film, ‘Skin Deep’

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:18 am

Skin Deep from Flick Palmateer on Vimeo.

Empowering.

That is how professional big-wave surfer Felicity Palmateer described the experience of shooting her newly-released surf film, Skin Deep.


Available to rent on Vimeo, the description reads: “Skin Deep is an avant-garde audio-visual performance-art project that meshes Felicity Palmateer’s two life-long passions; art and surfing.” The four minute and 16 second film features Palmateer surfing nude in remote locations around the globe including Fiji, Hawaii, and Western Australia.

The idea for the project was conceived four years ago and while it was supposed to be released in late 2018, an unnamed sponsor pulled the plug. However, everything was eventually worked out and the film was finally released this week.


“The ocean has always been my biggest mirror to how I’m feeling mentally and the process of shooting Skin Deep was incredibly empowering and cathartic,” said Palmateer in an Instagram post. “By embracing my femininity in a place free of judgement it’s allowed me to view my body in such a different way. To honour it for what it allows me to do physically and to embrace self love and acceptance.”


Get a sneak peak at the trailer above, and then head over to Vimeo to watch the film in it’s entirety.

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December 2, 2020

Watch: Two Guys Paddle Out at Pipeline on a Blowup Raft

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: , , — admin @ 1:44 am

Let’s be clear: Definitely do not try this yourself. At a local beach with playful, small waves? Maybe. At Pipeline, one of the most dangerous waves on Earth? Never.

Cool, glad we got that out of the way. Now, let’s explain what’s happening here.


In the latest episode of pro surfer Jamie O’Brien’s Youtube Vlog, he and Kaikea Elias decided to try something a little different––surf Pipeline waves on a blow-up raft. And we’re not talking about a small day at Pipe, there were some serious sets rolling through on this particular day. While probably no one else on Earth could get away with it, JOB is one of the few that can.

So how did it work out for them? Fast-forward to the 12:45 mark and find out for yourself.

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