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Terrifying open-ocean break located 100 miles west of San Diego, California; thought by many to be capable of producing the world's largest surfable waves. "A sort of supernatural Everest," surf writer Chris Dixon wrote, describing Cortes Bank. "It pulls like Melville's whale, an enigmatic monster that lures you out for the hunt—and nearly kills you every time."

Part of a 25-mile-long underwater mountain range, Cortes Bank is named after the steamship Cortes (which was named after the vicious Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando Cortés); it's been a navigational hazard for centuries. The ridable portion of Cortes Bank—a tilting, shifting peak, resembling Sunset Beach in Hawaii—is a few hundred yards southeast of a nightmarish swirl of white water later described by surf journalist Evan Slater as "a half-mile chunk of reef forever doomed to 360-degree confusion."

Cortes was first surfed by San Diego ship captain Harrison Ealey in the summer of 1962. Returning by sea from a winter stay on the North Shore, Ealey anchored in the Cortes channel and rode some six-footers by himself. The break was later scouted out by California big-wave pioneers Walter and Flippy Hoffman; photographer Larry Moore and pilot Mike Castillo reconnoitered the break by air in 1990.

Moore boated back to Cortes in 1990, accompanied by three surfers who rode a handful of eight-foot waves. But Cortes' real debut was on January 19, 2001, during an expensive and intricately planned one-day excursion dubbed "Project Neptune," engineered by Moore with assistance from former 

 editor Bill Sharp, involving two boats, a single-engine plane, three personal watercraft, six cameramen, and six surfers. The ocean was glassy smooth that day, and an enormous swell rolled in from the northwest. Following a nighttime boat trip, two tow-in teams set out to ride Cortes Bank just after dawn: Mike Parsons and Brad Gerlach, both from Southern California, and Ken Collins and Peter Mel of Santa Cruz. "The water [at Cortes] was moving so much faster than anywhere else I've ever surfed," Collins later said. "I remember riding a wave, looking back and seeing 50 feet of whitewater behind me, then looking forward and there was nothing but open water than the beach would normally be. It was surreal."

On that first day, Parsons was towed into a wave that measured roughly 65 feet on the face—by far the biggest wave ridden off the continental United States up to that point. Two months later Parsons' wave earned him the $60,000 first-place check in the Swell XXL Big-Wave Contest. The Project Neptune venture was featured in the 

, as well as all the network news stations, and two surf videos, 

On a 2008 return trip, which also included big-wave chargers Grant Baker and Greg Long, Parsons rode a wave that was thought to be roughly 75 feet, earning him a Guinness World Record for the biggest wave ever surfed. (Long rode a wave just before dusk that went undocumented; it was likely five or ten feet bigger than Parsons' wave.)

Cortes' remoteness and exposure to open ocean winds kept the amount of days surfed at the break to a minimum through the 2000s. Yet the resurgence of paddle-in big-wave surfing in the 2010s began to draw a hard-charging crowd to Cortes. Greg Long nearly drowned during a paddle-in session at the break in 2012, after being held underwater for three consecutive waves.

Ghost Wave: the Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth

, by surf journalist Chris Dixon, was published in 2011.

Cortes Bank

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