La Piste

La Piste, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Vive la France!!!

Not too many people looking to paddle out this day at La Piste. Had to be really fast on your feet to make one of these freight trains. Sooo beautiful though...

Mundaka

Mundaka, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We were staying up north when the southerly winds started ripping through the surf out front. Swell continued to build and so we headed south to Mundaka. Hoping that the sandbar had truly regained some semblance of its former glory. The photos don't lie. The bar is back in form. Unfortunately the locals have been starved for the past couple of years and are really hungry. It's been a difficult place to surf as a traveler for many years, but now it's near impossible. We were paddling out in pitch darkness listening to the sets hammering the bar and already there was a Lower's like crowd rotating through the peak. I spoke with one guy from New Zealand who had been out in the dark for over 2 hours!!! I can barely surf when I can see. I can't imagine trying to weave backside through Mundaka's pipes in the dark.

SW France

La Piste, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We'd been huddled next to the fireplace in the living room at Dave's place for nearly a week drinking way to much espresso, eating far to many french pastries, and driving ourselves mad trying to finish Sudoku puzzles. The weather in the Bay of Biscay is unpredictable at any time of the year but, in November, you just know you're going to get hammered by a storm at some point. These wicked storms coming in from the North Atlantic bring weeks of rain and wind but they also bring the swell, and plenty of it. Just gotta hope the winds switch east. On this morning we knew there had been a change. The dampness we'd gotten used to had left the air and you could smell the pines in the crisp morning offshores. After a quick jog through Napoleon's pine forest, then up and over the sand dune to where we're greeted with corduroy lines to the horizon. The midnight offshores had worked their magic and straightened out the ragged stormy mess of the previous week into ruler edged lines. We we're stoked to see a new sandbar had formed where once there had been none. The storms move so much sand every time they come through you just never know what you'll be looking at till you get there. With only a single fisherman casting from the shore the three of us feasted on perfect right hand sandbar barrels. Later that evening with Dave smoking us out with one of his wet wood fires, we poured out a little Vin rouge and re-lived the days waves. We all decided that at this point in our lives it's not about the quantity of waves but the quality we occasionally luck into. And in France, for all of the elements to come together you've got to be lucky!