Cortes Bank: the Largest Wave on the Planet
Surfer Mike Parsons drops into a huge wave, estimated at 70 ft, at Cortes Bank off the coast of San Clemente, California in 2008. Photo: Robert Brown/Billabong XXL.com.
…Dawn’s early light revealed a shimmering plume of spray. A Himalayan peak rose to life far off the bow. It was shaped like a great, volcanic cone– 43 million pounds of water, terrible and unrideable. Its foam exploding an unknowable number of feet into the air and churned the surrounding water into a 360-degree maelstrom of confusion.
— Chris Dixon (2011)
Ghost Wave: the Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth.
In the annals of big wave surfing the torch for the largest wave has been passed many times:
Makaha,
Waimea Bay, Jaws,
Mavericks’s, Outer Log Cabins, Todos Santos, Nazaré. But one surf spot stands alone: Cortes Bank. Located 100 miles off the southern California coast, Cortes Bank is as much legend as surf spot. A wave like no other. Not a coastal break but a swell that breaks on a submarine island. A titanic wave unloading on a submerged shoal in the middle of the ocean. The wave starts and ends in water deeper than 1,000 feet. And although the record for the largest wave ever ridden may not currently belong to Cortes Bank, it has the potential to hold a monstrous swell and create the largest wave on the planet, by far. Then, of course there is the human element: someone has to have the courage to ride it. So far, and amazingly so, surfers have met that challenge.
Cortes Bank from the air. Photo by Flame/A-Frame,
jeff@aframephoto.com.
TWK- your surf pic resembles Cortes Bank to me.
Please stop police now.
