Harrison Roach And Cloud 9 — Enough To Farm A Click

Last month, we put out a piece entitled “One Of The World’s Best Air Waves Just Joined The CT”.

You’ve likely already heard that, due to some unforeseen geopolitical scuffles (Trump v. Iran), the WSL has opted to postpone the Surf Abu Dhabi Pro and replace it with the first-ever CT event at Cloud 9 on Siargao Island — one of the Philippines’ 7,461 islands.

And as you probably know, Cloud 9 is a ludicrously good wave — hence why we went there to film both for Zipper and Milk & Honey.

“I think we’ve all seen footage of it when it’s firing. It’s just like a super hollow, machine barrel,” Skip McCullough (former QS event winner at Cloud 9 QS) said. “But the underrated part of it is just a huge air section. You just fly out of these barrels into the biggest, most cupped-out air section ever.”

“The main barrel section is in the same spot every time,” Skip continued. “It’s basically who can be in the barrel the deepest and the longest. The barrel’s so square out there, you can stuff yourself so far back, and the foamball, for whatever reason, is so forgiving. It’ll just lift up your board from the back and push you out of these really, really, really deep barrels.”

What makes the wave so consistently cylindrical? The reef sits right at the edge of the 34,580 ft deep (third-deepest on Earth) Philippine Trench — that deep-ocean geography running smack into a two-foot-deep reef is what generates the forever-power behind Cloud 9.

In the video you see above, Roark surfers Koa Smith (of Resurfacing) and Harrison Roach (of Mysterious Affair) join with locals to sample a fun day at the 9. The interplay between Koa’s frolic and Harrison’s poise is worth the click indeed.

The crew also gets to take a ride home on a P Jet from a suspiciously moneyed financier. The boys didn’t ask questions…