Unfortunately for the time being I find myself far far away from the Pacific and deep into the bowls of frozen interior Canada. Hopefully I'll be back to the coast early January to pick up where I left off with the wicked-good bang-on surf reporting.
Until then, check out some video footie of the Volcom surf competition held last month (as seen on TV!). Just click on the pic to watch.
Or get this vid and various other new & exciting Tofino-related material by punching this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/villageguidetv into your podcasting machine.
Big and lumpy at Cox, not as clean as the last couple days (epic!) but super fun hair-raising drop-ins on some long faces. Pretty cold & heavy waves made for one bitch of a paddle out (I gave up and jumped off the point).
Beauty day today at Cox. Clear skies, short waits, smooth waves and long rides. Another day of hard-living out here on the west coast...
Holy smokes! Big and punchy (and dumpy) at North chesterman with just under 3 meters of swell and 18 second period. Lots of fast and furious rides with some undesirable endings... got taken out by a couple heavier waves and was given some wicked-vicious roll-arounds. Tomorrow should be good too...
Big and fun today at Cox, 6.6 feet and a 14 second wave period with outside sets coming in well overhead. Although the waves were far from hollow, the size and strength were enough to push my shortboard into some long lazy turns.
From what I can tell, the swell is building and the wave period should stay in the teens for the weekend. And even though predicting waves is like teaching a 3 legged cat how to scuba-dive, I'd say that north chesties may be a bit crowded tomorrow...
More fun than a barrel full of hoola girls today at Cox. Rode an old-school 7'0 Scott Rowley classic on waist to shoulder-high long clean lefts and rights. Definitely more suited for the longer sticks as most waves were lacking in the steepness department.
Small and clean at north Chesterman... not all that exciting, but definitely good for a lazy afternoon paddle.
Super fun waves today at north Chesties. Really clean and buttery with a fair amount of strength and speed... just like riding deep pow in the alpine. Nice clear sky and sunset to boot. Yeeow!
Complete and utter chaos today at north Chesterman. Screaming south-easterlies, fantastically strong rip currents and highly unpredictable breaks made for a truly unholy experience. Madness. No wonder I was but 1 of the only 2 knuckleheads out there during a 1.5 hour stretch around day's end. Fun rides and strange paddles. Not to mention 10C water temp and -1.6C wind chill. Thank god for the thermal underwear.
Small waves, clear skies and cold-ass water at north Chesterman. The cloudless skies are letting all the heat out at night and it's getting pretty frosty here in tuff-city.
Too big and/or blown out at the usual spots. The above pic was taken at Florencia bay, some nice looking waves on the outside... too bad they were over a half kilometer out.
Bigger swell today with some sets coming in well overhead at north Chesterman. Heavy and unorganized and howling offshore winds made for a lot of wave chasing and some interesting blind drop-ins.
Really nice waves at Wick beach today, shoulder to head-high and fast... and holy smokes, the sun! Towards the end of the day the wind changed and the surf got sloppy, but there was still some good size out there. The next few days looks promising...
Check out some (very amateur) footage of the day: hit me!
Lumpy, foggy and gutless at Cox.... decided to crawl around on the rocks at sunset point rather than get wet today. Wish I had a longboard....
Sunny early afternoon surf at Cox until the fog rolled in. The view from shore looked real promising with what (I thought) looked like decent chest to shoulder-high sets. But then at some point during the walk to the parking lot and back the surf gods turned against me as the waves morphed into the all too annoyingly familiar 'build-recede-closeout' sort. The longboarders seemed to be having the most fun.
This is a crappy pic of a decent wave taken too late in the eve from the deck of Long Beach Lodge overlooking Cox bay. Glassy fun chest-high waves at a pretty full tide on the ebb.
The forecast for the weekend (apart from bad craziness) calls for gradually increasing swell height and period.
Oops, forgot my camera today... enjoy the (almost) full moon as of 5 minutes ago. Surfed at Cox bay under a wicked-good sunset on nice mid-sized lumpy Cox bay rollers. The buoy said 2+ meter swell, 10 second wave period with just a wisp of due east breeze. The rip was strong, ferociously sucking to mid-bay, then out towards Japan. Some peaks were definitely at eyeball level whilst in the trough, and possibly even bigger.
Low tide at Rosie bay, nicely shaped lefts & rights, waist to shoulder high. Howling northern winds just to remind us that this is Canada and it's west-coast winter out there.
Kick ass swell today, not as big as expected but big enough to make this mediocre surfer a bit nervous. Strong enough shore-pound at north Chesties to make one break a sweat paddling out. Head-and-a-half sets with the occasional double-overhead spine-breaker on the outside.
Note: I couldn't get a good pic of the outside sets, the inside ones kept blocking the view. Plus, I'm impatient and just wanted to get out there.
Wednesday Nov 9, north Chesterman beach. Bigger waves today, around head-high and unorganized on the outside with strong offshore winds and pelting rain. Looks like this swell is growing like a beast and should be HUGE by the weekend! Oil up those jetskis kids...
Tuesday Nov 8, north Chesterman (too lazy, too late to go to Cox where the real waves most likely were). Knee to chest-high clean waves. No more than a handful of people in the surf at any given moment. The weekend calls for some serious wave period....
Monday Nov 7, mid-north Chesterman beach. The sun poked through for a good 4 minutes then gave way to thunder and lightning on the horizon by dusk. Fun waist-to-shoulder high waves through it all though.
This is the end of the road. It's cold, wet and windy. But, damned if it doesn't turn up some decent, uncrowded (and ball-shrivelling cold) surf most days. Tofino, eh?
This here little slice of ether-space may or may not serve as a repository for things of great interest to west-coast, cold-water surfer-types. Whatever those 'things' may be... vids, pics, random scribblings perhaps.
(BTW - The above pic was taken last month. Today it rained, hailed and sunshined all at the same time. We're in for a cold wet one this winter for sure.)
