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"The first time that I heard the name Mavericks was in 1968, when I surfed inside the rocks there with Walt Von Hauffe and a couple of friends," explains Mavericks surfing pioneer and legend Jeff Clark. "At that time Walt owned the Von's Cinema in Half Moon Bay, a popular hangout for the kids in the neighborhood. This was a time when you could drive to the end of Pillar Point and park right at the beach, then walk up the hill to see past Sail Rock where the big waves would break.

"On the giant days we would bail on school and find our way to the point to watch Mavericks. The year that I first surfed the main peak that we now know as Mavericks was 1975. In the early years I would bring whoever was willing to paddle out with me to sit in the channel, people like Jeff Kayes, Jim Dale, Jerry Hogan, Keith Delari, Heather Brown Dent, Mark Harrington, and John Dale. Interestingly, one of the biggest problems I had back then was a lack of the right equipment. The mentality was that there was no such thing as a 20-foot wave in California, so there was no reason to have a board for it.

"One day in 1990, Tom Powers, Dave Schmidt and I paddled out to surf Mavericks. What we experienced that day was bigger than anything that any of us had ever seen. When Dave and Tom returned to Santa Cruz with stories of the most perfect big wave on the planet, everything changed. The thought of a 20-foot wave in California didn't really sit well with the rest of the surfing world, but over the next few years the photos and the videos convinced the doubters that Mavericks was for real.

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