On Friday, December 21, big-wave surfer Greg Long suffered a wipeout on a giant wave at Cortes Bank. In the aftermath, he fought through a three-wave hold down before losing consciousness in the water. A detailed report from ESPN described the full incident on December 24. Here is part of their account:
Long—a repeat Billabong XXL winner who's also taken the Maverick's
contest—was forced off his board when fellow surfer Garrett McNamara
unknowingly dropped in on him, blocking Long's line and causing both
men to tumble into the deep. The massive wave the pair paddled into
(about 25 feet, according to on-location photographer Frank Quirarte)
pinned Long down through a rapid series of bombs and knocked the wind
out of him, preventing him from catching his breath whenever he managed
to break through the wash.
Here's a short video that might influence how you spend some of your time: 70-year-old Spaniard Juan Giriber recounting his first drop into a tube. The clip is a teaser for The Old, The Young, and The Sea, a documentary about a filmmaking team's 16-week journey along the European coast in two VW buses looking for characters who ride waves and protect the ocean.
It's unlikely that Robert Frost could have imagined such a choice when he wrote "The Road Not Taken," but in 2012 slackliner Andy Lewis was at a crossroads. You may remember Lewis from Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show. He was dressed in a white toga adorned with a gold leaf sash, a gold necklace, a gold bracelet, and gold boots. He wore his hair in a sandy blonde afro that barely bounced as he flipped, jumped, and twisted on a slackline, a sport called tricklining. After the performance, articles rolled out proclaiming that Lewis had stolen the show. Soon after, Madonna offered him a spot on her tour, Lewis said.
Andy Lewis' Colorado and Utah friends evaluate his Super Bowl performance.
Beaver Creek. Photo: Jack Affleck/Beaver Creek Resort
We’ve had a slow, dry start to winter here in the southern Rockies. So dry that doomsday scenarios began to creep in. Was winter dying? Would it ever snow again? Would our kids forget what skiing is? Would we burn through a whole winter without using a single day of our season passes? Then the storm track began to set up and dumped 16 inches in the Sangre de Cristos in a day. Things were looking hopeful, but when it comes to snow, you can’t be too superstitious. So we did the only natural thing to ensure it keeps snowing in New Mexico: Ten days before Christmas, we drove north to ski in Colorado.
Usually when we go north, we stay south: Telluride, Crested Butte, Wolf Creek. But this time we set our course for Vail and Beaver Creek, figuring that in iffy conditions, Colorado’s largest resorts would have more off-snow options to keep us and our daughters, ages two and four, entertained. As luck would have it, we wouldn’t need to hedge our bets. On the morning we left, a storm roared in from Arizona, coating northern New Mexico in thick, wet snow, while a second system made aim for the Vail Valley, where it would storm—and we would play—for three days straight.
This week on Adventure Lab, we've featured dispatches on shark attacks, shark science, and shark conservation. Attitudes toward the marine predators have come a long way since 1934, when filmmakers recorded a shark being caught by a Goodyear Tires blimp near Fisher Island, Florida. The animal was dragged over the surface of the water at high speeds before being lifted high into the air and then hung up on land next to a man in a suit and tie who presumably "reeled" it in. Smithsonian grabbed the clip from the archives at Critical Past, and this week announced it was the most popular video on their site in 2012.
