MORE SWELL OF SUMMER '69

By Corky Carroll

As a follow up to the story I did on the big summer swell on 1969, I want to share with you this email I got from fellow surfer, but no relation, Gregg Carroll.  It seems that he and some of our mutual pals caught the same day about a half a mile south of me at a spot called “Trestles.”  Here it is.

“I was 17 years old when that epic day of surf hit in August ‘69. As a member of the Windansea Surf Club and Greg Noll Surf Team at the time, my surf buddies and I often ventured up and down the California coast to surf with other club or team members. Quite often we found ourselves surfing all day at places like Salt Creek, Cottons, Trestles, or Church, and camping on the beach at night.

I still remember that August 19th day in ’69 like it was yesterday. I had gone over to my friend Jim Irons’ (Andy and Bruce’s uncle) house in Redondo Beach around 7:00 in the morning. Jim was four years older than me. He was one of the truly great surfers of that era and someone I idolized. He had just gotten home from working the swing-shift at local hospital when I knocked on his front door. When he opened the door, his eyes were dancing and he was talking in high speed jibber about a swell that was hitting “down South”. Jim had knowledge of the ocean like nobody else I had ever known. He always knew exactly when a swell was going to hit, and the best place to go surf. (Remember, this was way before Surfline and surf cams.) This day was no exception when he looked at me and excitedly said, “Man, we gotta go to Trestles. It will be insane”. So off we went in my ’55 Chevy, with our boards strapped to the roof and Jimi Hendrix blasting on the radio.

As we exited the freeway at Basilone Road an hour later, we looked out Trestles and lines were stacked to the horizon. It was HUGE! It was like no other day. Jim was already an experienced big-wave rider and had spent several winters on the North Shore. Although I had ridden some good sized waves on the California coast, nothing could compare to this day. We looked over our shoulders at Cottons and it was 15 feet plus and breaking mid-sea. 

You still had to sneak into Trestles at the time, so we decided to drive back and walk in through a school located north of Cottons. As we arrived at the school, we ran into Denny Tompkins and Jeff Hakman. I knew Denny from Torrance Beach and we were both in Windansea Surfclub. Jim was good friends with both Denny and Jeff. All of them were experienced big-wave riders. Jeff was one of the top surfers in the world at the time, and had been charging Waimea and Sunset since he was twelve years old. We quickly grabbed our boards and began the long walk to Lowers. As we made our way south down the train tracks, we could see Corky and Mickey Munoz dropping down the faces of monstrous 15-18 foot waves at Cottons.

As we continued past Cottons on our trek to Lowers, my heart was pounding and my stomach was in my throat, as I began to think of not paddling out. But the peer pressure was too great. We all decided to paddle out between Lowers and Uppers because it seemed the easiest. Somehow, we all got out without getting too hammered (this was before board cords and duck diving).


The first wave I took off on was about 15 foot, and lost my board while doing a bottom-turn as I skipped like a pebble over water. I remember diving for the bottom and holding on to the rocks, as set waves sounding like freight trains rolled overhead above. When I got to the beach, I couldn’t see my board. I finally found it several hundred yards down the beach at Church.

As I was walking back to Lowers after retrieving my board, I watched Jim jump off the point at Lowers five times, only to unsuccessfully get washed down the beach by the current. That blew my mind because Jim was a real iron man at that time.

Jeff and Denny had already opted to go down the beach and surf at Church, so Jim and I walked down to join them. When we arrived at around 1:00 in the afternoon, the tide was perfect and the waves were about 10-12 feet with bigger sets. Jeff surfed flawlessly and everyone got their share of epic waves.  It was to this day, the best I’ve ever seen Church break. We surfed until sunset (Daylight Savings Time).

As we made the long walk back to our car that evening, I think we all knew that there may never be another epic day like that at Cottons, Trestles, and Church….and there hasn’t been one yet.”

SURF AND SNOW ~ THE WAVE

by Corky Carroll

Many times, especially when I am teaching somebody how to surf or giving them coaching of some sort, people ask me about the similarities between surfing and skiing or surfing and snowboarding.  I guess it would seem like there would be some basics that hold true for all three of these sports because they are all done sliding on boards of some sort. 

I was lucky to have grown up at the beach and had the chance to surf since I was really young.  My dad loved the ocean.  But my mom hated it; she never even liked to go onto the beach in all the years we lived there.  Good thing was she loved the mountains and we had a little cabin up in the San Bernardino Mountains.  Hence I also got to learn to ski at a young age too.   So, having plenty of experience in both sports I can honestly say that for the most part they are totally different.  Skiing is much easier to learn than surfing is for one thing.  The mountain doesn’t move.   Skiing in packed snow conditions really is a totally different set of movements than surfing. 

However, skiing powder is very similar.  You use the exact same weighting and un-weighting motions as you do to turn a surfboard.  And you lead with your arms and shoulders the exact same way.   It is because you are banking in powder as opposed to setting edges like you do in packed snow.   When I teach people how to turn I always use the comparison to weight and un-weight like skiing powder. 

Skateboarding is also a little like surfing in the fact that you lean into turns.  But Snowboarding is totally different as far as leading and weight distribution.  In Snowboarding there is a lot of heal versus toe stuff that we really don’t ever think a whole lot about in surfing.  

Now I have to tell you that my experience in Snowboarding is really limited.   I did ski on mono skis way back before Snowboards, but that was only for powder snow and is a totally different thing.   I only had one day on a Snowboard and it was not a pretty story.  I was the announcer for a Snowboard event up at Big Bear a number of years ago and everyone was telling me that I should try it.  One of the pros that was up there offered to take me the next day and get me some equipment.   So I went for it.

First off, let me say that I was pretty confident that I was going to be able to do it right off the bat.   I had both surfed and skied my whole life and this was also back when I had way more confidence in my athletic abilities which carried over into my thought patterns that there was absolutely no way that I could be anything other than good at this in no time at all.   In my mind it was a given.

So the next morning I showed up and got hooked up with a board and boots and off we went up the chairlift.  The dude that was taking me thought that we should start on the bunny hill but I convinced him that was not necessary, I was going to be able to do this.   So we picked a nice intermediate run to start at. 

Getting off the lift was sort of exciting and maybe it should have given me a little warning of what was to come.  I had no idea how to stop and almost took out a whole row of people standing there.   But I just figured that the dude I was with would tell me and I was gonna be able to do it.  

So he did and I listened and was sure I had it down and off we went down the hill.   I felt like I was surfing and got up a lot of speed right off the bat and leaned into this long carving bottom turn all the way across the slope.  It felt nice, just like on a giant wave.  But at the end of the big turn I came up and arched my back just like coming off the lip of a big wave.  That is when I caught the downhill edge and went down so hard and so fast that it knocked the daylights out of me.  It was so abrupt and so violent that I didn’t know if I was completely broken or not.  And I don’t mean just a leg or arm or something.  I mean totally broken body, head to toe.  

So I am laying there trying to wiggle all my fingers and toes to make sure that I am alive and I can hear a bunch of my friends on the chairlift overhead laughing and yelling amusing, to them and everyone else but me, things.  It was both an embarrassing and painful moment in my life.  

Four hours later I reached the bottom.  I was totally wet from eating it every ten feet and totally angry that I had been defeated so badly at this new sport that I was so sure I was going to conquer in a matter of minutes.   All I can say is that it was really hard.  Way harder than I thought.  And I hear that everyday from people beginning to surf, so I can empathize with them.