Reef McIntosh, Pipeline tornado, Hawaii

Y’been watching that wall clock? It’s ticking slowly toward friday a.m. when, hopefully, finally, the Volcom Pipe Pro will sound it’s first buzzer. ‘Til then, let Stab present you with the pleasure of Reef McIntosh, a tall, friendly man with a very lion heart. Name a swell in recent memory (Cloudbreak, etc) and y’can be pretty sure Reef was in the mix. Oh, and he’s the guy who won last year’s Surfline Wave Of The Winter with a Backdoor freight train.

But here we find him in the Pipeline, during a one-hour block which occurred at midday yesterday, in which the ocean sent a flurry of gems such as this. “Expectations were high in Hawaii,” says photographer Ryan Miller, who shot this. “When I woke up the ocean looked enraged. The swell had peaked overnight and was still massive in the morning. The contest was called off for the day with it being too big in the morning and the forecast calling for onshores in the afternoon.”

While Reef’s jewel is a left, Ryan’s descriptions of the rights is telling of the difficult conditions: “Maybe a half dozen rights were ridden all day. At that size if you fall early going right, you’re going to be put in a very, very difficult position.”