Where are the “final frontiers” of surf exploration?
Whoa there, hold on now... before you get too excited, this isn’t an article where I’m gonna dish out all the secrets. This is more so a general discussion of the types of areas that are still open to exploration, plus a pushback on the general notion that all the best waves on the planets have been discovered and surfed.
A quick sketch of the world. You can find the areas with most potential by looking where my pencil gets pushed harder into the paper.
First, let’s get one thing straight: you don’t have to travel that far to score. I’ve surfed completely alone at a crankin’ sand-bottom point that can be seen from a main artery out from a city with more than 10 million people. Sometimes outsmarting the hoards is all it takes to score in some of the most surf-crowded places on the planet. This spot is a prime example of a fickle spot, where sand movement, a specific tide and a special swell direction all need to line up to get it right. Fickle spots are some of my favorite in the world. You gotta put in the time to reap the rewards.
Here’s another thing I’ve noticed… surf areas go in and out of style. It’s not like the surf gets better or worse, it’s just surfers, like sheep, like to follow other surfers to that next best place. A good example of this is Costa Rica. It was all the rage in the early 2000’s, and for good reason. These days, all those same reasons are still there: epic waves year-round, welcoming local community, fantastic food, the list goes on. The only thing that’s not the same as before are the crowds - those gringos that crowded the water in the early 2000s are probably on some charter boat in the Indian Ocean surfing with 100 other dudes in the middle of nowhere.
Now, more than ever, it seems as though many of us live in a culture of convenience. We do everything in our power to make things as easy as possible and use as little time as possible with the mundane tasks, sometimes even just checking-out mentally from our ADLs. Sometimes this bleeds into our surfing habits - a classic example: mindlessly driving to the closest spot, paddling out at the first spot you check, straight out to the peak where everyone else is sitting. As a part of a daily routine, there’s nothing wrong with this… it’s a habit. Where I’d like to give a bit of pushback is when we travel for surf. If every aspect of our everyday life is geared towards convenience and comfort, why not pursue the exact opposite on our surf trips? The spots that remain uncrowded are the ones that take a bit more blood, sweat and tears than the average surf-traveler is willing to put in. Learn to relish in the feeling of discomfort and inconvenience, and a whole new world of adventure opens up.
So in conclusion, where are the final frontiers, and what do we need to be able to score in these areas?
Coastlines with migrating sand, and thereby fickle waves that come and go on a weekly basis. Some known examples of places with these setups are Denmark, Mozambique and, of course, Namibia. To score in these places it is absolutely essential with local knowledge - eyes on the ground who can track changes in sand movement from day to day, but also understand the big picture with changes from year to year.
Cold water locations, generally with wild weather systems that require extensive local knowledge in order to score. Good examples of places like this are Alaska, Canada, Norway, Iceland and Patagonia. Because of the necessity of local knowledge, some of these areas have established guiding services, while in other large swathes of land sometimes you just gotta go off a hunch and take a chance. Make sure you have the best neoprene money can buy!
Truly inhospitable locations, where you need a lot of supplies, not to mention skills, to survive. Some areas like this often featured in surf films are the Saharan coast, the southwestern African coast and West Oz. Here, in addition to local knowledge, you need a crew of dudes who’ve got your back. In any trip that far into the desert you’d probably want someone who’s good at fixing cars and well as someone who’s equally good at fixing humans. Nobody’s coming out to help you if anything breaks, either machine or body.
Places with long-standing threats of violence or oppressive governments. There’s a handful of places that have been so difficult to reach travel-wise, where only the tip of the surf potential has been uncovered. Some examples off the top of my head are Myanmar, Yemen and Somalia. All have coastlines wide open to either regular wind- or groundswell, however due to the logistical nightmare that would be planning a trip in these places, many of the waves in these countries remain surfed only in the minds of Google Earth explorers.
A long and complicated fever-dream of transit connections. This applies to a good number of the previously mentioned places but applies especially for some places in the South Pacific as well as much of the sub-Saharan African coastline. As an example, some islands only have a flight that comes in, say, once a week from a well-trafficked airport. Neighboring islands to this island may have a local flight that only goes once every two weeks. Could be a journey that takes days just to get to the customs officer of the final destination. The logistics of this alone will be enough to keep the lineups there empty for decades to come. Bring a few books, a sketchbook, an iPod and a few tablespoons of patience, and you should be ready to go.
Smaller bodies of water: lakes, seas, even rivers. This frontier of surfing will remain relatively untapped for many, many years to come, tying back to the concept of fickleness. Surfing a overhead barreling left-point during a storm in Sweden changed my entire perspective on surfing. The swell was generated over a fetch of about 100km of water over just one night. The only major difference I noted from the groundswell I grew up with was the swell period of 7 seconds. The power, speed and overall energy of the spot felt all the same. It remains, to this day, one of the best lefts I’ve surfed, mainly due to the remarkable novelty of that fickle wave. Now, I genuinely lose sleep over the thought that any body of water that’s just slightly visible on the world map could have it’s day with anything more than 10 m/s of wind in the right direction for a few hours.
We realize that these types of locations don’t appeal to all surfers; in fact, I’d be willing to bet that these kinds of locations don’t truly attract the vast majority of surfers, that is, anywhere beyond just their imagination when sitting on the couch watching the new QuikBong film. We thoroughly recognize this, but we’ve put together this site to hopefully bring together the handful of us that get super stoked about these kinds of places.
Happy exploring!
- the crew at LSE
