Longboard maestro Christian Wach.
millen in the slot.
From Glacier Bay we continued north, heading 700 kilometres up the coast to a place known as Troll Island. The journey should have taken about 10 hours but due to the blizzard conditions it turned into an 18-hour rally. When we arrived, I could see how the place got its name — the mountains have curious outlines that do look like trolls. Most of the crew went to bed, exhausted, but Matt and I were determined to scout out some waves, so we drove for another two hours around the island. The wind had dropped by this time and suddenly we stumbled on a surprise: clean waves. Matt suited up quickly. It was late – nearly midnight in fact – and snowing again. Matt caught a dozen waves or so, and named the spot Discos, after the glowing lights on the channel marker at the mouth of the harbour. A couple of days later, on a different stretch of coast, we found a cobblestone point that was shoulder-high and peeling perfectly. Everyone went into a frenzy. For the second time it was Matt who caught the first wave and bagged the naming rights. He thought about it a bit and named the spot Broken Hearts. When I asked him why, he said that it would be a great place to come to surf and mend a broken heart. He couldn’t be more
right. The hardships of the previous days and the lack of great surf were quickly healed by our session at Broken Hearts. As we took turns riding the fun little waves, we noticed a small figure running along the road towards us. It was an 11-year-old boy called Hans, who lives in a house overlooking the point. He’d never seen surfers before, and his eyes were almost popping out of their sockets with excitement. He said the waves today were tiny compared to the waves that broke on bigger swells, especially in the winter. We wondered what the point would look like on a bigger swell. Possibly world class. We spent the rest of the week surfing up and down the coast, back at Broken Hearts and several other breaks, before moving further north. To travel up towards the border with Russia we took a few short flights on small planes. On the last flight, I got to ride in the cockpit with Captain Espen of Wideroe Airlines. He’s familiar with Norway’s far northern coastline, having flown this route for many years. On a map he showed me the places where he had most often seen waves. For the next few days we explored the coast towards the Norway / Russian border, including the areas Captain
Base camp at Hell’s Peak.
carve surfing magazine 71