But the gargantuan waves that develop on this point in winter are truly mavericks themselves. They seem to come out of nowhere and break with tremendous force; then they crash over a rock garden covered with razor sharp mussels. Long feared and revered by locals, Maverick's reputation grew even more ominous when Hawaiian big-wave surfer Mark Foo challenged it and died one December day in 1994.

Nearly a decade before that tragic occurrence, I moved to the coast and met Michael. Eager to explore every inch of this dramatic coastline, I was ecstatic the day we first paddled out to Pillar Point reef in our kayaks. The inside break where Michael led me was relatively safe in comparison to Mavericks, which lay on the exposed, outer edge of the reef system, a few hundred feet to the north. Even though we could plainly see Mavericks breaking from where we surfed, I still had no sense of just how big and powerful it was. But the time would soon come when I would find out.

One stormy morning a few days later, I led fellow Ranger Glenn Gilchrist on a 3-hour tour of the local sights. We launched at Moss Beach and approached Pillar Point from the north about a half-hour later. As we drew near the reef, I warned Glenn to keep a sharp eye out for the huge Mavericks waves, which could rise up suddenly and break, far to seaward. No sooner had this warning left my lips than a massive comber materialized outside, bearing straight for us. I could feel my heart pounding as Glenn and I spun our boats around to face this El Capitan of the sea. We barely managed to claw our way over the cornice of that first towering wave, only to be confronted by another, even bigger wave building up outside. Once again we flailed at the water, our arms burning, until we punched through the wave just as it was beginning to break. We gasped for air and laughed with relief at our close call.

But bad news often comes in threes, and this was no exception. The biggest, baddest, boldest Bagwan of them all, as high as a three-story apartment building, reared up and bared its fangs. I lowered my head and paddled with all my strength as the wave steepened in front of me. A dozen feet or more of the wave's crest spilled over me, filling my ears with the hiss of trapped air from the whirlwind inside. I felt myself being sucked deeper into its maw, as megatons of energy started tumbling down. In the midst of all the chaos, I glimpsed a lime-colored wall of solid water near the crest of the wave and drove my bow toward it with everything I had. Bursting through, I sailed three fathoms down the back of that brute and splashed down in open water.

My own ordeal over, I stared back into Mavericks, looking for my partner. "Oh no," I thought, "Glenn's still trapped in there somewhere." But then I spotted him, out in relatively calm water beyond the break zone. By some miracle, he had also escaped. Later he would confess to me that when he looked up and saw the crest curling over, he thought he was done for. But that capricious wave had apparently expended most of its force over me, and it tossed Glenn aside like a sumo wrestler heaving a hobbit out of the ring. We were both so grateful not to have been driven onto the rocks by those waves that we crossed ourselves and offered thanks to Neptune. Once again, we had been allowed to pass through the battleground where land and sea wage eternal war, without receiving a scratch. We learned that it pays to observe the waves - from a safe perch!

- Eric Soares