Good news from the desert. Photo: PSSC
After several false starts throughout 2024, Palm Springs Surf Club (PSSC) announced that its wave pool is officially running and open for public bookings in October. For $212, you can book your spot in a 55-minute session that will include no more than 12 surfers total. For now, just the intermediate and advanced A-frame settings are available in the public sessions.
“We will be offering different wave setting public sessions once the weather cools off as we progress toward the winter season,” PSSC said in an email update. “The A-frames have been tuned up to be much more playful with a better lip to hit for the opening turn and an improved end section.”
The public A-frames are produced in six-wave sets that break at 15-second intervals. There are two minutes and 15 seconds of downtime between each set.
The pool has been operational since September when its doors were opened for private sessions – two to three-hour windows that reportedly cost between $6,000 and $7,500. All the available wave settings are on the table for the private sessions, not just the A-frame.
The October announcement of open sessions is the latest in a string of openings and closures for SoCal’s only public-facing wave pool. The pool first opened on January 1 this year, but was forced to close after 10 days due to technical difficulties. It reopened in April before suffering the same fate and closing its doors again in the same month (much to the frustration of paying customers).
An industry insider told us that he heard the problems likely stemmed from retrofitting the facility to pre-existing civil infrastructure, mismanagement of all the contractors involved in the complex web of responsibilities, and the unforeseen financial losses of not being able to put paying customers in the pool.
The pool was flat for the summer months until its most recent soft relaunch in September.
“We know it hasn’t been pretty on our end and we have been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into bringing the waves back online,” said PSSC. “Our team is full of passionate surfers and we know how much surfing means to everyone so we don’t take it lightly. We hope you all will come share the stoke with us and get some desert tubes! We are so excited to be back!”
