With low expectations I dragged by body out of bed at 4:15. I really doubted that it was going to be worth the loss of sleep and gas money. I made my coffee and lunch and was on the road in the dark. JB and I agreed to meet at DLanding. The forecast was for smaller, short period waves and wind. We figured at least we would take a look and learn something about the spot. We learned that it wasn't good that morning. We drove up to Scott's and found the same, but that was expected. We decided to head back to the same old same, but made another recon stop along the way. We had an interesting experience at D.aves. When we parked it looked like at least one or two of the cars were not overnight sleepers but morning arrivals. We walked the main trail and saw one wave that hinted at what I thought was worth surfing. Then a guy came up from the beach trail and kinda startled us. Maybe he was down there going pee or something, I dunno.
We saw more potential, but hadn't seen anything worth it when three teenage girls came out of the trees through the path, all giggles and excitement. What in the world were these girls doing at the cold beach in the first light of day? The sun wasn't even over the hills yet! They milled about chatting until one of them had the courage to ask us, "Where is the swing?" Ah, the Instagram-able swing, that makes more sense. Maybe they were savvy enough to know that the morning is "golden hour" in the photography world and wanted to up their Instagram game. I gave them directions, and they left just before another young person came through the path. This guy was suited up with a board under his arm. We didn't see anything to surf, but he looked like he knew what he was doing so we stayed to watch. We soon figured out his game was the sideways-backwash-hits-the-incoming-wave-wedge. It was cool to watch him get wave after wave and sorta good rides, but not rides we were going to try to get.
So we headed to Tres and actually parked in our usual spots. DwnPtrl was there but nobody else was around. We opted to bring gear down because we weren't sure it was going to be worthwhile. We made an agreement that if there was anything, we would go surf. When we got there it was a little more than nothing, and DwnPtrl was heading in! We hiked down to our usual spot and went out. I opted for a long walk to the pinnacle reef. I climbed up and inspected the jump off. The waves were small, but non-stop and the edge of the reef has steps in it making it impossible (or just really risky) to jump off the top of the reef. The non-stop waves made it tricky to time a walk down the steps. I managed it by being patient.
I stopped at the top of the reef and it was starting to do the break/roll/threaten thing. I got a few fun waves and convinced JB to come up to the top. The inside wasn't great and was getting crowded, so he did join me. He got some good ones and we had it to ourselves for the most part. It lasted about an hour before it shut down, which is a pretty good little session. After it stopped working I tried to figure something out on the inside, but it was truly crowded. We went in satisfied. Even though it was only and hour I caught a good number of good enough waves and felt good about it.
Edit: Part of the inside crowd included a surfmatter on a Standard model 4th gear flyer. I stopped for a moment to chat, but the conversation was cut short by him catching a set wave and "whoosh!" off he went. I talked a bit more to his buddy on a longboard. He had tried a mat but wasn't convinced. I gave him a few hints of when/where to ride a mat to the most enjoyment, and hopefully sparked some interest. I was tempted to swap out the board for my mat but it's a pretty long walk and the chances were good that he'd be gone by the time I returned. Anyway, good to see variety out there.
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