North Shore

Hi guys

I'm back from the North Shore. I've got bulk pictures I'd like to be able to share, but the seabreeze picture uploader is being a pain in the ass and I always get an error page when trying to upload the most pictures the upload section says it can take. Any ideas on how to upload 97 without having to be incredibly tedious about it? Thanks in advance.

97!! Looking forward to this..........sadly I am unaware of an easy way to do it. I normally do no more than 10 at a time so you do not get to annoyed when / if it goes pear shaped. Maybe PM Laurie and ask him - he responds pretty quickly if he is around.

^^ Sparki that last one is a winner!!

Rocky rights


3rd reef Pipe


Waimea




Nice job he has - injury at Waimea


Waimea shorebreak - poor board

Keiki shorebreak


Outer Log Cabins - scene of surf film, Biggest Wednesday. Pics taken from Keiki




Log Cabins - babes & waves... can't beat it!


Sunset - inside section




Turkeys




Ehukai Beach park


Me


Nice angle


Kelly, Kerrzy, Parko & Gerry Lopez

Kerrzy's last ditch attempt to beat Parko.








The Parko household - the public surrounded his place in celebrations 30 seconds prior to end of the Slater/Kerr heat.




How he made it, nobody knows.











Epic wipeout

Awesme photos Sparki, must have been a really good trip, where did you mostly surf?

2 words...

****ing awesome....

Thanks for posting, I thought this was the shark forum for a while there...

fantastic pics thansk heaps

Awesome shots man, love the perspective of them & the unmakable barrel miraculously made shots are pure gold

Cheers guys! The trip was pretty epic! Also surfed 4-8ft Huntington Beach in the same trip for about a week in late November. Knocked a hell of a lot off the bucket list. I won't post any pictures of Huntington coz it simply doesn't come close to Hawaii. Caught some pretty big waves at southside of the pier, but if I thought they were big/good, I was gobsmacked in Hawaii.

Mainly surfed Gas Chambers and Turkeys on a smaller swell because the peaks are a bit more shifty than anywhere else, so even when it's a little crowded everyone gets a wave. When it got big, I pretty much exclusively went to Sunset and surfed the inside section. I'll give you a bit of a run down of the spots, because you guys have given me such good feedback.

I didn't get to surf much West of Waimea coz I didn't have a car where I was living, but when I did get there I surfed Hultin's which is a wave that looks like it belongs in Indo. Not a madly barreling wave, but you can see the sets coming from miles away and when the wave breaks, the wall just stands tall and if you get the right wave, it just peals beautifully. Tried to be too clever and go a bit inside to pick of smaller stuff on my first there. Ended up getting a 8 footer set of 5 waves on the end. Fun times. The remainder of breaks in the immediate vicinity West of Waimea all have different characteristics and it really is a matter of picking your flavour/peak. Also surfed Haleiwa, but only at 1-2 foot when I went with a fellow female traveler It was small enough that the normal shallow end section of the right that it was in fact the take off spot for a fairly long left. The wall here also just stands up the entire time, even at such small size. No wonder it's a classic wave at size.

Anywho, Waimea. Surfed it when it just started breaking. There were 8 footer rolling through that I was catching the shoulder of. I was only catching the shoulder because, I kid you not, even the white water in the shoulder shakes you like a 3 footer breaking a couple of metres in front of you at your local beachie. Or maybe that's just me being super sensitive to the elements considering it was one time surfing Waimea and I was crapping myself as it was? Either way, heavy wave! Did manage three waves on my 6'6" Lost Mayhem. You'll never forget your first drop at Waimea, trust me. Awesome thing was it was just me and one other dude like 50m further out than I catching the bombs on a 7'something tank of a board.

East of Waimea, the first wave is Keiki. Not a surfing wave. Bodybashing wave. Can get just as hectic as Waimea shorey, but it's just not as well known. Don't go in there though. On the biggest swell to come through when I was there (25-30ft at the magnets), a large section of sand was washed away to expose pretty angry looking rock. Wouldn't like to be pulverised into that sand knowning that's just below it! The first actual spot up from Keiki is Log Cabins. It's landmarked by a rocky outcrop. On a massive NW swell, Outer Log Cabins comes to life further out, as shown in the pictures.

Next up is apparent Aint's, but that must be some little (rather insignificant) inside section because nobody was able to point it out to me. Then you have Off The Wall. Easier to make rights that get seriously hairy on shallow lava bottom. Lefts lead to pretty sketchy rocks and a generally much shorter ride. On a small day, it breaks seriously close to the beach. Really round shoulder when you get past the pitching lip. From my experience, when I was looking East of OTW toward Backdoor/Pipe, it honestly looks like the infamous wave is slightly raised compared to OTW. Optical illusion? I don't know. It's interesting.

Backdoor/Pipe is about 30-40m East of OTW and Backdoor is the right on the same section of reef as Pipe. From what I could tell in my three weeks on the North Shore is that it Backdoor only really works when the wave gets really wedgy and Pipe barrels madly like you see in all the professional photos. Even then it's a fair bit more sketchy than Pipe because it has very shallow rocks on the end section. Now for the amazing/strange bit. During a NW swell, Pipe works. Not necessarily barreling when it's small, but it work at all sizes. The more the swell directions changes to NE, the more Pipe stops working and the more Ehukai beach park starts to work. Ehukai beach park is another 30-40m East of Pipe. That said, during a massive NE swell the whole stretch from Pipe to Ehukai seems to generally be a closeout, but when the swell dies down to 8 foot and below, Ehukai turns on and can be a fun, pealing wave (no barrels).

Next along is the stretch that contains Pupukea, Turkeys and Gas Chambers. All coral bottom waves with unique features. Generally fatter waves that are meant for carves and floaters. Gas Chambers is where I spent most of my time. It's adjacent Rocky rights - the left breaks into it. On a low tide and a larger NE swell, I've seen some left barrels there that look like they belong at Pipe! Heavy stuff. Don't know why I spent most of my time there - it just suited how I wanted to surf I suppose?

The Rockies. Rocky left, where Flynn Novak achieve his prolific backflip. Entry can be sketchy depending on the swell direction. NE pushes sand over the rocks and the larger a NW swell is, the more hairy and rock infested the place is. And I'm not talking level rock, by any means. It's all rock sticking out at strange angles. The place is a swell magnet, but only handles a smaller swell well. Good place for funky maneouvres though. Rocky rights are a lot more fast and hollow than the lefts. Saw some rare 5 seconds barrels go down there on a low tide and medium swell. Can get seriously crowded though (I've been told at times enough people to rival Pipe on a good day). Plenty of drop ins because it can be such a fast wave. You need to be on the ball when it's good. The whole place is again landmarked by a rocky outcrop.

Further East about 50m are a bunch of take off spots on waves that break like 50-70m out. I've been told so many names for these spots, it's just stupid (Monster Mush and Stones are examples I was told). If you're gonna surf there, just pick the best pick and surf it. Don't worry about the name. On a big swell, there is no defined channel, so don't bother. You'll probably get beaten back in. Fun wave on a lot tide though. Strange sections that can appear on some waves and not others.

30-40m further East is Kammieland. 70-100m from the shoreline, it has rights and lefts, but the lefts are generally more walled as they break into the same channel as Sunset. Rights connect in to the reef of the above paragraph and are therefore a lot more fickle.

When the swell was big I surfed Val's reef which is the inside reef at Sunset. Fun, fast wave that quite often churns out a barrel on a bigger swell. Harder on average to catch, but not a very heavy wipeout (relatively speaking). Val's is pretty consistent form wise in any swell direction. The rest of Sunset, well people say that the place has different personalities. In the short time I had to surf it, I'd say it's the most bi-polar wave I've ever seen! On a NE swell, the waves pretty much wrap into the place meaning lots of different take of spots. From the pictures I've seen of Indo waves wrapping around passages of reef, the sections of waves reminded me of those photos. The big difference being that these waves were very sectioned and you have to sometimes read a section very quickly in order to not have your ride end. NW swells very extremely different! One big ass peak like 50-70m North-East of Val's that would peak at triple overhead on the (good) big days. That peak seems to barrel very rarely - it just has a massive shoulder that roles along often morphs significantly until it reaches Val's where it doubles up on the inside and can offer some seriously fast rides. My best wave at Val's was on a wave a few feet overhead. It start out as a pretty average wave, but very quickly (coz of the swell direction or something) doubled up after a second or two and before I knew it, I had doubled in pace across the face and the thing started bottoming out underneath me. I knew there was a big ass barrel behind me because of how quick I was going and because the shoulder was then starting to look a lot more like it was throwing out behind me. Wasn't deep in it by any means, but I could feel the energy of it because of the way my board was behaving. Humbling stuff! I also surfed Turtle Bay, but it was small, shifty and ordinary when I went, so I won't bore you.

I know, as there always are, people that will be annoyed by me posting these intricate details of the famous stretch of waves. I don't care how much people might complain because the basics of these waves are also in a widely available map that's sitting right next to me. I simply explained my experiences on top of that. Hope you enjoyed reading. Don't hesitate to PM me if you any more questions.

I took thousands of photos while I was there, but this has just been the creme de la creme. There are more to come of this lot that I wasn't able to post today coz my computer has been so slow, but they will be on tomorrow!

Thanks for putting in the effort to share your trip with us sparki - no complaints from me about the rundown from the most un-secret 7 miles of coastline in the world!!! Did you do a lot of training prior to your trip to prepare yourself? How did you find the second board market over here? I have heard that its a much better option to just fly over there and pick up some second hand boards when you get there as they are well priced and there are loads of options. One day I will make it there - hopefully sooner than later!

Wow some great shots there...thanks for the report as well!