Ghost Tree Lives: One Epic Day at Pebble Beach’s Legendary Big Wave

Big blue barrels and a broken leg highlight a day in the life of Ghost Tree, the legendary big wave located off the 18th Hole of the famed Pebble Beach Golf Course.

by Ryan Masters, March 9, 2005

On the evening of March 9, 2005, I call Don Curry to ask the lowdown on Ghost Tree. He tells me to expect 17-foot waves at 20-second intervals from due west at first light.

Sure enough, at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, a 40-foot wave rears up like an electric-blue glacier off Pescadero Point and breaks thunderously into Stillwater Cove. Ghost Tree is awake.

From the north, two jet skis whine. Curry and Ed Guzman arrive, unfazed by the long, bumpy ride from Monterey Harbor. The tow partners drift at the edge of the channel to watch a smaller set detonate before continuing into Stillwater Cove to anchor one of the skis and prep. Twenty minutes later, a second tow team arrives from the north, Santa Cruz pros Adam Repogle and Alistair Craft.

Kelly Sorensen of On The Beach pulls up in his white truck on 17-Mile Drive. Rob Gilley from Surfing Magazine is hiding somewhere in the cypress trees. Surfers and tourists park along the famed roadway and wander down for a front row seat to the action. Sheriff’s deputies will arrive to chase everyone from the Del Monte Forest Foundation’s land before too long so I beat it, heading to the dock at Stillwater. I find my friend Erik Nelson. He and I share an affinity for swimming out into big water and sometimes, when the situation calls for it, he brings along a video camera in a splash housing. Today’s one of those days. I start suiting up alongside him.

Nelson’s the only one to ever shoot this wave from the water. The first time he did it, he jumped off Pescadero Point and swam to the channel through the impact zone. Today’s swell is far too big to risk the point today, so we’re swimming out from the back of the cove. A lot longer, infinitely safer. We’re both wearing fins. He’s on a boogie board. I swim. He has his video camera in a water housing. I have an old Nikonos V loaded with black-and-white film strapped to my back.

There is an enormous amount of water moving through the cove as we swim out. Yet an ominous calm persists. Nelson ties his boogie board off to a buoy anchored 100 yards from the impact zone. “This is our home base,” he tells me, giving the buoy an assuring pat. “Just stay close to it and you’re golden.”

No Home Bases

Guzman tows Curry into a peeling 30-footer, the sun lighting the wave’s enormous face a magnificent otherwordly blue. Right behind them, Repogle drops into a mountainous slab.

Nelson and I swim to the edge of the impact zone. The large wash rock at the outside edge of the channel sucks and schlomps hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every few seconds. Getting pulled in there would not be a happy experience. Nelson works his way around it, setting up far inside.

On cue, a large set rolls through. As Guzman peeks down from his jet ski 45 feet above, Curry javelins across the wave face. With some alarm, I note this wave is breaking further into the channel than previous waves. I check my distance from the marker buoy. All good.

Craft and Repogle respond with an even larger wave. I snap photos with abandon, less concerned with composition than triggering the shutter and staying out of Ghost Tree’s path. Yet the next wave nearly clips me and I’m forced to swim under the wave’s tailing energy. Am I in the impact zone? But there’s no time to wonder. The set of the morning has arrived and Guzman has Curry in position. When the surfer known as “The Terminator” releases the rope, it becomes clear this wave is at least 10 feet bigger than his last. The image burns into my memory for life: Wrapped in a hangar-sized barrel, Curry disappears from view for a Mississippi three before skipping like a surface torpedo to the shoulder. Guzman’s retrieval by jet ski is text book and they’re safely to the channel by the time Craft and Repogle follow up with a nearly identical wave.

Nelson kicks past me, back in the direction of the channel in a big hurry. That’s when I notice his boogie board. It’s deep in the impact zone, directly in the path of the next set, and still tethered to our “home base”. Oops. The buoy had been ripped from its mooring a few sets earlier. We’ve been drifting into the danger zone all this time. Rather than follow this buoy into oblivion, I turn and swim like hell after Nelson for the safety of the channel.

The Legend of Jughead

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel lingers a few hundred yards outside the cove. Curry and Guzman have switched off and Curry, now driving the jet ski, buzzes out to speak with them.

“They told us we were towing illegally. I explained to them that our craft were legal three-seat machines. He took a look and agreed,” Curry said later. “He told me they had to come out and check because there’d been so many calls complaining about jet skis in the Sanctuary.”

All the more reason why today is special. In a few years, the tow surfing era in Monterey County will be nothing but legend. However, I’m out of film and late. Time to go. As I begin the long swim back in, Nelson cheerily calls out: “Remember, it’s always harder getting back in than out!”

He’s right. The ebbing tide drains Stillwater Cove like the Yangtze in spring. After 45 minutes, my headway is disheartening. A seal pops up and swims around me with a bemused expression on its face. Curry and Guzman give me an assist on the last leg of the swim. As we arrive at the dock, two Australians begin the paddle out to the line up on guns. Their progress is swift and effortless compared to the brutal swim I’ve just endured.

One of these Australians is a hellman from Shelly Beach, New South Wales named Justen “Jughead” Allport. A few hours earlier, Jughead had stepped off a plane from Hawaii, climbed into a car driven by the wife of Santa Cruz surfer Ken “Skindog” Collins, and blown down 101 to the Monterey Peninsula. When Allport finally paddled into the line up, Collins was waiting.

“As he paddled up, I threw the tow rope at him and hit him in the head,” Collins said. “I tow him into a couple 30-40 footers and he starts freaking people out.”

Allport was performing deep fades, bunny-hopping the slab’s numerous steps, and generally ripping a wave everyone else was simply trying to survive. Collins felt the Aussie was trifling with Ghost Tree and repeatedly warned him not to underestimate the danger.

“I had to tell him to stop it,” Collins said.

Collins was speaking from experience. He was not yet 100-percent  recovered from a traumatic mauling at Maui’s infamous Jaws the year before. But Allport insisted on slicing up the massive, deadly walls of water like Zorro.

“In my mind I was thinking it wasn’t as big as everyone was saying,” Allport told me the next day from a hospital bed at CHOMP. “I wasn’t trying to prove a point or anything. I just thought it was only 20 foot, I guess.”

By bunny hopping, Allport had loosened the straps on the tow board and his feet were wiggling around too much. To compensate, he used the heel straps as well, effectively locking himself to his board. When a “Frankenstein” mountain of whitewater clipped him, the board spun 360 degrees and broke Allport’s left leg in four places.

“Skinny [Collins] came in and got me and hauled me up on the rescue sled and took off,” said Allport. “There was another huge wave bearing down on us. We were bouncing so much and my leg was flopping around back there in pieces, but Skinny couldn’t stop. He was yelling, ‘You don’t want to know what’s behind us.’”

A Day of Carnage

The waves continued to build throughout the day. Hawaiian legend Noah Johnson would catch the wave of the day, a mythic monster that rational men have called 60-plus feet. Russell Smith would overturn his jet ski trying to pick up his brother Tyler, who had taken a solid 50-footer on the head, and they would both be swept into the boneyard, with Tyler sustaining an injury to his shoulder.

Ultimately, March 9, 2005 will be remembered as an all-time day at Ghost Tree. One of the last. Just a few years later, tow surfing would be banned. As for Allport, he kept a philosophical view regarding his thrashing.

“I had a friend who broke his leg in two-foot surf back home,” he told me from his hospital bed with a crooked, medicated smile. “You know?”