Roger Cox: Who needs snow when you can scale the heady heights of big wave skiing?

Published on Sunday 7 February 2010 10:42

Another month, another brand-new extreme sport pioneered by thrill-seeking fruit loops with far too much time on their hands. Move over wingsuit flyers, your death-defying human missile trip is now officially last season's buzz. Yeah, I know we all raved about how cutting-edge you were when you first came fluttering on to YouTube, but I'm afraid you'll now have to join the snow bikers, ostrich racers and extreme pogo-stick bouncers in the bin marked "passé". You have been wel

The adrenaline soaked activity that's on everyone's lips these days is... wait for it... big wave skiing. Carving down the face of giant breakers with a long, floaty plank attached to each foot is the new black and the new coffee all rolled into one. If you don't believe me, pay a visit to www.starrsurfskis.com, click on the "Tow-In" link and check out the video of freeskiers Mike Douglas and Cody Townsend outrunning avalanches of whitewater on Maui earlier this winter using gear designed by aqua-visionary Jason Starr. Be warned though, the footage is so utterly mindblowing it may make you feel disoriented or even nauseous, so make sure you're sitting comfortably before you press play.

Usually when a new hybrid sport comes along, the initial experiments look a bit lame, but this simply isn't the case with big-wave skiing. Douglas and Townsend shred these waves as if they're messing around in the Whistler backcountry, punting giant airs and laying into monster slashes. The transition from stationary mountain to moving mountain doesn't seem to have fazed them one bit.

Of course, it's possible although very difficult to catch a double overhead wave on skis using your own muscle power, so Douglas and Townsend resort to being towed into waves by jetskis – a technique invented by surfing legend Laird Hamilton and his compadres a few years back (also on Maui, as it happens). As Hamilton and co discovered, if you're already moving at 30mph when you catch a wave, you don't need a great big surfboard to keep you on top of the water – you can plane on something the size of a tea tray. And if skinny little toothpick surfboards can work in monster surf, well, why not fat, floaty skis? In a sense, the development of wave skiing was inevitable the second Laird completed his first tow-in – all it needed was someone with the right combination of imagination and cojones to give it a try.

About the only thing Douglas and Townsend didn't manage to do during their Hawaiian R&D mission was get barrelled (covered up by a wave), but it's surely only a matter of time before somebody skis their way into the green room. Launching his Starr Surf Skis company at the SIA Snow Show in Denver, Colorado last week, Starr said: "We're attending the show to celebrate this moment in skiing – the moment people showed that skiing in this new realm is something that can and will be done. We're also using the occasion to officially launch Project Rip Waves, our effort to spur a global chase for that first tube ride on skis. We see it as a team effort among skiers and also a friendly challenge. First person to get barrelled on skis wins."

Alittle closer to home, it's good to be able to report that the Coldwater Classic at Thurso – Scotland's premiere professional surfing event – is set to take place as usual in April, in spite of the chilly economic climate. The contest is part of an international series sponsored by US wetsuit giant O'Neill, with legs in Tasmania, South Africa and Canada. In a recent interview in Surfer magazine, event director Matt Wilson said: "The series will run again this year in basically the same locations as last year. We've got a few other tricks, but we're keeping them up our sleeve." The mind boggles. A skins event? At Thurso East? In April? Surely not.

A couple of months ago we brought you the news that Fraserburgh surfer George Watt was on the verge of making the cut for the sexy MVP film project sponsored by UK surf mag Wavelength. All he needed to do as the deadline approached was make sure he amassed more online votes than the other hopefuls. Well, his plan to throw a last-minute "voting party" at his house clearly paid off, because he has just been announced as one of ten lucky surfers who will get to live like movie stars for the next few months, jetting around the globe to be filmed riding dream waves in exotic locations for a surf flick due out at the end of the year. Looks like Watt will have a travelling companion, too, because fellow Fraserburgh surfer Mark Boyd also made the last ten. Congratulations to them both.

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman Magazine on 06 February 2010