Laird Hamilton gets towed into an Everest-sized wave at Peahi. Photo: Tim McKenna
Let me tell you about Mount Everest. It is the highest mountain in the world. Standing more than five miles above sea level, it was first summited 60 years ago by Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. Hillary, a kiwi, was knighted. Norgay, a Nepalese, was given a lesser award. In 2012, 547 people climbed the mountain. Many paid their guides anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 because they had next to no idea what they were doing. The main routes are marked by garbage, piles of human shit, and dead bodies that no one has bothered to remove for years. Even at altitude, climbers sometimes wait in line for hours – surrounded by corpses and shit – on their way to the summit.
I was reminded of Everest, which has been this way for more than a decade, when the raw footage of the most recent swell to light up Teahupoo filtered out through the internet. On some of the waves, the normally glassy, blue-green face was shredded to a frothy mess as swarms of tow-in teams descended upon it and tried to outmaneuver each other for the takeoff spot. It was uglier than a frozen corpse.
What to make of the twin invasion of the natural world’s last great bastions of fear and awe by hordes of unqualified wannabes shepherded by a few qualified, but basically unscrupulous traveling salesmen? Laird Hamilton has complained, as he always does when it’s too crowded for him to get the cover shot (see Peahi). But his public opinion is meaningless, because it obscures the conversations that we really need to be having.
Let’s start here: Professional surfing – that is, taking pictures or video of yourself riding waves and using those images to make money – is partially responsible for the current overcrowded and Hobbesian state of surfing – from your local beachbreak to the lofty peaks of Peahi and Teahupoo. And Laird Hamilton has contributed to that problem, something he seems to understand.
Perhaps, in his quiet moments of reflection between working out and self-promoting, has made some sort of peace with the way his greatest surfing achievements have eventually led to the commercial exploitation of his most beloved spots. The last time he opened his mouth to complain about crowds at a spot he helped to blow up, that is, the time before this most recent last time, was Peahi. After nearly universal condemnation, he admitted to Chris Dixon: “I should have never told anybody about Jaws and never taken a picture, and we’d still be riding it by ourselves today…I can only blame myself. So in the end, maybe I’m just disappointed at myself. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
I disagree slightly. It was not the fact that he “opened his mouth” that was problematic. It was how he did it, and how surf companies subsequently marketed his achievements and those of others, that turned certain spots into full-blown spectacles. Those who remember Hamilton’s millennium wave can attest that it was, and still is, one of the most fantastic photos ever taken of a man on a wave. That image, which almost perfectly encompasses the terror and sublimity of man’s relationship with the ocean, was created from the partnership of Hamilton and Tim McKenna, and they both deserve immense praise for it. It is as close to art as surf photography has ever produced. But here’s the rub: Hamilton sells autographed prints for $25.00 a pop on his web site. It is, you see, not the act of capturing the image that is wrong, it is the way it’s commodified as a mass-produced, vicarious souvenir. You might argue that Hamilton, along with many other pros, are little more than walking commodities – sometimes charming, occasionally awe-inspiring.
“Dude’s got to making a living.” Yes, we’ve all heard that refrain. It has become so commonplace and hackneyed it is basically just another way to say, “I have decided that this problem is too complex for my brain.” I’m all for surfers making a living, especially great, era-defining surfers like Laird Hamilton. But my goodwill lasts until the exact point that their living begins to have an adverse affect on the global commons that we all either enjoy, or can potentially enjoy, ie: surf spots. The Gold Coast, for instance, is an area of extreme natural beauty and great waves. It has been developed, partly by the surf industry, into little but strip malls, bad nightclubs, factory sized surf shops, and overcrowded lineups. The overcrowding did not occur exclusively because of the way the surf industry marketed it, but nothing prevented it. As a result, it (and Teahupoo) bears a certain likeness to Mt. Everest. The only saving grace is that the sweep on those right points is still the ultimate Darwinian arbiter. That is, of course, until the pros start using jet skis to get more shots in magazines.
Climbing Everest and riding big waves differ in that big wave surfing is still, to a large degree, a true meritocracy. Whereas for $30 to $100K, you can hire a Sherpa to drag your ass up Everest, it takes more than a modicum of knowledge, experience and ability to even grab a tow rope, much less paddle-in at Peahi. Our first goal then, is to try to preserve the inherently free and inclusive nature of surfing without turning lineups into chaos.
I would start by limiting the number of jet skis allowed at certain spots. This is obviously not feasible everywhere – who would enforce it and how? – but a spot like Teahupoo seems to have a small enough community of dedicated riders as well as a small but strong presence of locals who could say, “We only want x number of skis out on the biggest days and no towing when there are paddlers out.” Of course, such a system of power is bursting with the potential for abuse, so I don’t want to overstate the case. But come what may, at some point the most famous and crowded waves in the world are going to need stewards, not thugs organized into loose cartels, but leaders willing to cooperate in a non-coercive manner to set some mild structures that will benefit everyone. If nothing else, they need to open up the dialogue about how to keep wonderful surf spots from being overrun, and then hopefully, through trial and error, they can work out a system that allows all to enjoy their resources.
