It’s hard to fathom how many glorious, winter rides the Hawaiians enjoyed before Europeans arrived in 1778, but the concept of a ‘Hawaiian Winter’ really became a part of modern, surfing consciousness in the 1950s.

After deciphering Makaha on the west side of Oahu, a crew of intrepid Californians including Greg Noll, Pat Curren, Fred Van Dyke, Mickey Munoz, Ricky Grigg and Buzzy Trent amongst others, shifted focus to Oahu’s Northern fringes. In many ways it was a conquest as bold as the efforts of Norgay and Hillary to scale Everest. Maybe, a similar faculty of human nature was at work. The part of us that simply wonders ‘Can the mountain be climbed?’ ‘Can the wave be ridden?’   

Their pioneering wave plundering marked the beginning of one of the world’s most reliable, annual human pilgrimages. Every year for the last seven decades, surfers have travelled to Hawaii for winter, sometimes propelled as much by a sense of duty as the pursuit of pleasure. Their exploits attract the attention of a secondary tribe of photographers, filmers and scribes. Not surprisingly, there is no place in surfing that has been more heavily documented or mythologised.

Koa Rothman waltzing with Pipe; a dance surfers have been trying to perfect for decades. Photo: Mike Ito

These days, you can livestream a session at Pipe and debate the merits of a ride in real time, as you slurp a mid-morning coffee in Noosa. Although there will never be any substitute for the self-knowledge derived from experiencing the waves for yourself, more than ever it seems possible to live vicariously through others, and to understand ‘Hawaii’ as a state of mind, without ever travelling there.

But however much we hype and celebrate Hawaii as the perennial provider of surfing action, some seasons undeniably bear more fruit ...