A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

The largest of America's 50 states, twice the size of runner-up Texas, Alaska has the smallest population of any state save Wyoming. While it's unclear just when Alaska was initially surfed, Daniel Brandel wrote to 

 magazine in 1967 to announce the formation of the Kodiak Island Surfing Association, the state's first surf club. "As of this date," Brandel reported, "we have 57 active members and 38 inactive members, [as] not everybody has their own board." 

Washington surfer Greg Wheaton further explored dozens of southeast Alaskan lineups in the late '70s and '80s. The American surf press began getting packages of photographs of the Alaskan surf in the early '80s from bodyboarder Robert Kemp, along with detailed handwritten notes on local wave and weather conditions. "The main difficulty here is access," Kemp wrote in 1988. "You have to either fly in or take a boat. Both are expensive. Backpacking is an option, but it's a two day hike and there's the problem of the notorious Alaskan bears, both black and grizzly. Not surprisingly, everyone here carries a gun."

California surfer/boardmaker/journalist Dave Parmenter, along with pro surfers Brock Little and Josh Mulcoy and photographer Bob Barbour, spent two weeks surfing along the jagged coastline of Alaska's Tongass Park in 1992, riding desolate but beautiful point surf, while trying their best to adapt to a tidal range that gets up to 30 foot. "A lot of the times the tide changed so quickly," Parmenter wrote later, "that by the time you returned to the same spot in the lineup [after a ride], the wave-focus had shifted elsewhere along the point." 

In 1998, following in Kemp's footsteps, California big-wave riders Mark Renneker, Peter Mel, and Jay Moriarity, along with surf journalist Steve Hawk and photographer Tom Servais, explored Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands—the chain extending southwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, terminating a few hundred miles from Russia—and found near-permanent cloudy skies, frequent high winds, predictably cold air and water temperatures, and a number of high- quality albeit temperamental surf breaks.

As of 2003, Alaska has less then 100 resident surfers, all part-timers, and most of them doing their wave-riding along the fjord-filled southeast coastline. Yakutat is the state's most popular surfing area; Cannon Beach provides sand-bottom peaks in the summer; the rock-lined surf at Graveyards requires a big winter swell. 

Air and water temperatures in this part of the state are relatively mild, due to the Alaska Current. Water temperatures here range from the upper 30s in January to the mid-50s in August; air temperatures range from the mid-20s to the mid-50s. Although the Alaskan surf often gets huge, the best waves—from two to eight foot—are generally found in the state's wave- and wind-protected coves and inlets; the number of undiscovered high-quality surf breaks along Alaska's 2,800-mile Pacific coastline is probably in the dozens. 

Autumn is the best time to surf here, as the days are still long, the weather tolerable, and the surf fairly consistent as storm systems begin to form in the North Pacific. Summer waves are often small and fogged in; winter surfing is all but impossible, as nights last for 18 hours or more, and violent weather frequently forces everyone into gloomy hibernation. "Ninety-nine percent of the people up here drink," a guide told surf journalist Dave Parmenter in 1992, explaining how the natives survive the cold and dark winter months. "The other one percent are court-ordered not to." 

Alaska was featured in Bruce Brown's 1994 movie 

. Icey Waves Surf Shop, the first retail outlet of its kind in the state, opened in Yakutat in the summer of 1999. A small number of Alaskan surf breaks are detailed in 

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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The Sunday Joint

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint