The Last Wave

Worldwide, some five million people surf regularly, but only a few nimble souls can handle giant waves--the 30- to 50-foot juggernauts that roar into big-surf meccas like Hawaii's Waimea Bay. Among this elite, Mark Foo was one of the best. A 36-year-old known for attacking waves that could roll a large yacht, Foo died last winter during a week of monster sets at a little-known northern California break called Maverick's. Hidden away on a rocky stretch of coast just 22 miles south of San Francisco, Maverick's has earned an increasingly ominous reputation as a mainland Waimea with terrifying extras, including icy, energy-sapping water and jagged subsurface boulders.

In the aftermath of Foo's death, we dispatched contributing editor Jon Krakauer to assess the legacy of a surfer who died as he lived: shredding humongous waves before the camera's eye. The path that the driven and flamboyant Foo took to Maverick's is complicated by fits of ego, a hunger for endorsements, and the occasional enmity of some of his fellow big-wave surfers--those who ironically benefited most by the clamor that his hairball style brought to the sport. Predictably, more than a few were quick to blame the tragedy on Foo's unapologetic quest for fame. But as Krakauer reports, the real reasons proved to be more complicated--and surprising.

For decades, Plum Island has been not only obscure, but off-limits, courtesy of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. A tiny, desolate sand spit in Long Island Sound, Plum Island houses the U.S. Laboratories for Foreign Animal Disease Research and Diagnosis--a maximum-security research complex and the linchpin in the government's efforts to keep deadly animal pathogens from landing on American soil. In "Plagues at the Gate," author Charles Siebert and photographer Edward Gajdel offer a rare glimpse of the nation's command center in the war against Exotic Newcastle disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and a host of other afflictions. As Siebert makes clear, Plum Island serves a vital function: An outbreak of these killers--entirely possible in a world where jet travel, animal smuggling, and simple carelessness are common--could cost American farmers and consumers billions of dollars.

Elsewhere in this issue, associate editor Brad Wetzler hooks up with the lunker-obsessed fishermen who haunt southern California's Castaic Lake, a deep, murky, and entirely artificial body of water that may contain freshwater fishing's holiest grail: the biggest largemouth bass on the planet. His story, "Big Bass and the Men Who Love Them," is a fishing tale that has it all: quivering Ahabs, towering egos, and a mythical offstage presence-- a presumed-to-exist monster bass respectfully known as Sow Belly.

Finally, a conflict as old as Romulus and Remus: two brothers squaring off to prove who's king of the hill. In a matchup that's part sibling rivalry, part mutually exclusive training philosophies, Outside correspondent Todd Balf and his older brother, Tom, decide to go toe-to-toeclip in the Killington Mountain Bike Biathlon, a decidedly hilly 15-mile run and ride. During 12 weeks of prerace training, Todd hunkers down in the Massachusetts gym that produced boxing champ Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Tom, hoping to compensate for his greater number of years and fat cells, travels the high-tech road, embracing the teachings of a cutting-edge fitness guru and obsessing on readouts from his heart-rate monitor. Their tales of pain and gain, along with a full slate of nutritional and training advice for would-be Todds or Toms, are found in "May the Better VO₂ Max Win." As for the results, all we can tell you is that the better bro' wins. And the loser buys the Slush Puppies.

Copyright 1995, Outside magazine