Last week Mason Ho scored some beautiful waves behind his house on the North Shore of Oahu. The crowds are thickening and the winter swells are starting to show.
How Spain’s Natxo González prepares his body and mind to tackle the biggest swell on earth
Natxo González paddles a thin line. At 25, the professional big-wave surfer from Spain’s Basque Country has already challenged some of the most legendary waves on the planet, riding giants at Punta Galea near Bilbao and picture-perfect tubes at Namibia’s Skeleton Bay. But he also nearly lost it all in 2017.
Surfing Nazaré, in Portugal, a wave that can reach up to 80 feet in height, González crashed at high speed. His inflatable life vest, a survival tool adopted by nearly every big-wave surfer, failed to inflate, and he had to endure a massive five-wave set, where … More