Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [76]
Sharp thought this whole sensibility completely ridiculous. It not only made it impossible to measure how big, exactly, a wave was, but this strange logic had the effect of reducing the importance and significance of a big wave surfer’s accomplishments. No climber ever underestimated the height of K2 or Mount Everest. Sharp’s attitude was: Don’t tell me how big you think the wave was. Let’s cut the bullshit and measure the damned thing from top to bottom—and may the best man, or woman, win. In fact, why not reward the Surfer who rides the very biggest wave a thousand dollars a foot? A 40-foot wave would pay a surfer $40,000, a 60-footer, $60,000, and so on…
Sharp took his idea to Quiksilver, Billabong, and several other companies, but strangely, no CEO in the surf world wanted to endorse such a radical competition. He turned, instead, to the most aptly named new surf company on Earth, and the K2 Big Wave Challenge was born.
“In a sport of ‘men who ride mountains,’ Bill created Mount Everest,” Sam George said. “He put a number to the size. He single-handedly changed the scale of how surfers measure big waves. It was also a concept that the mainstream media—not to mention mainstream America—could easily grasp.”
K2 happened to endorse Sharp’s idea during the epic El Niño winter of 1997–98. A panel of surf industry icons agreed that one of Mike Parsons’s best friends—a respected pro from Carlsbad named Taylor Knox—had narrowly defeated Maverick’s icon Peter Mel after paddling into a 52-foot beast at Todos Santos. Knox deposited his $52,000 check at an ATM. “I got more publicity for that one wave than Kelly Slater did for any of his world titles,” he later said.
After a two-year hiatus, the K2 Big Wave Challenge would change its name and morph into an annual contest, eventually called the XXL, which would come to include yearly awards not just for the biggest ridden wave, but for the worst wipeout, the biggest barrel ride, and simply “Ride of the Year.” For decades, the professional World Tour had been the only ongoing annual crucible through which surfers made their reputation. The XXL would become, and today remains, the standard by which big wave surfers are measured.
Interestingly enough, however, Taylor Knox hadn’t ridden the biggest wave in the winter of 1998: that honor actually belonged to Ken Bradshaw, who rode a wave at Outside Log Cabins on Oahu that was variously estimated at between 60 and 80 feet on its face and would for some time be known as “The Largest Wave Ever Surfed.” The difference? Knox paddled for his 52-foot wave, while Bradshaw was towed into his. The K2 contest was only open to paddle surfers, so Knox got the money. Yet the fuzzy footage of Bradshaw’s giant had given everyone—particularly Bill Sharp—a glimpse of the future.
Out at Cortes Bank, the giants slept while paradigms shifted. At least two missions had been scrubbed in the early 1990s due to mechanical issues. Then in 1995, Flame recruited Mike Parsons and Brock Little for a paddle surfing mission on a promising swell. But as their boat rounded San Clemente Island’s Castle Rock, a wave-shredding gale sprang to life. This would be the last attempt at the summit for six years.
Flame thought it just as well. “Evan Slater, he’s thoroughly convinced that if there had been a pure paddle surfing trip, someone would have caught some waves,” he said. “I’ll betcha, too, but someone would have paid…dearly. I don’t know what we were thinking really. We didn’t have any rescue craft available. I was gonna shoot from the water—from a surf mat, or maybe a Morey Doyle [a soft foam longboard]. It would have been really difficult. There just was always something in the way,