Trails

The reports called for huge, walled closeouts at our local breaks, so Ian and I decided to get our travel on and hit up Trails in San Onofre. Reports were calling for 7-10' faces at Trails. Even though that prediction was, shall we say, really optimistic, and quite exaggerated, we caught some really fun waves, with no crowd on a day that would have sent us to the current paddling treadmill known as Huntington Beach whenever a extreme NW or S swell hits. No crowd, no drift, sunny skies, warm air, and decent waves once the tide dropped made for a pretty sweet Sunday. Now it's nap and football. Morningface. This is what three hours of sleep looks like. It usually takes a couple of waves to shake the frown.

First look at what we came for. Even though it turned out to be smaller than expected, I always have a great time coming here. There is just something about hiking to a surf spot, that gives you that feeling of discovery. I'm sure it is a lot like Central and Northern California, but without the mind numbing cold water and hungry sharks.

It was a steep hike down, but it makes it more adventurous. It's pretty neat to find a bit of wilderness just outside of urban Orange County.

Almost there. There is that guy again.


Ahhhhhh. Now try not to think of the steep hike back up in a couple of hours.

We arrived to find this one guy surfing where we planned on going out. Paddled out, said 'morning', and chatted for a while. Pretty friendly guy, and didn't mind us tripling the crowd. This was one of the smaller waves today, but I didn't come here to shoot video, I came to surf.

A couple of hours and bunch of long, leg burning waves later, all is good in the world. Uh oh, now there is that hike to deal with.