the place

You’ve seen Pipeline. Yeah, you have. Even if you’ve never been here. It’s the stuff of thousands of magazine covers, movie posters and surfers’ fantasies.

Not that any picture could really do it justice. Not that seeing it from shore could either. The absolute best views are from inside the long telescoping tube of ocean you gotta ride to really see properly.

It’s a sight as beautiful as it is dangerous. The waves break just 50 to 75 yards off the beach, over a shallow, lava-rock reef that hides hollow, craggy caves where you could be trapped and drowned. Pipeline is located in the middle of a seven-mile stretch of coast on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawai'i. And in the mythic soul of every great wave rider.