Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Hike... Psyche!


For our first session back in Oregon, we made the trek to our state's quintessential mysto break. The report gave us a shred hope, and when we made it to the first lookout point (above), we were psyched by what we saw: clean lines rolling in and peeling on the inside. We ran the rest of the way down the hill, taking slippery shortcuts between switchbacks to save time.

When we made it to the beach ten minutes later, the wind had already started blowing. By the time we got our wetsuits on and reached the water, it was whipping from the north. Despite the gale forces, we managed to snag a few, but after an hour of abuse, we were laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of it all. The wind was pushing us south a clip that would bring a tear to an old sailor's eye. When we fought it and battled back north, we got slapped in the faces by the whitecaps. And it was icy cold. Astonishingly, the waves continued to break down-the-line despite the chaos. We finally gave up the fight and drifted down the coast.

In the end, when we climbed back up the winding path, we looked back down at the break again and couldn't help but notice that the whitecaps had disappeared again from the surface of the sea. My legs were sore for two days, making me think, "I hiked all the way down to XXXX and all I got was this aching thigh."

Yesterday was better. Somehow. Shorties looked pretty sad from the shore, but we paddled out and I must've gotten about 20 small waves and 2 decent ones. Good exercise, good fun!

Islands "Rough Gem"

3 comments:

Diane said...

Sounds like a mediocre day surfing is better than almost anything else. Good for you!

Foul Pete said...

i've had the same thing happen to me. just so you know, we got it pretty damn good, last month.

Anonymous said...

Looking at that picture above makes me realize just how small it was yesterday...we probably should've turned around when we had that vantage point. But then maybe we would have never thought of Scout's Honor or the alternate title Scout's On'er.