The Coldest Ride

Surfing in Alaska, from the November issue of Outside Magazine. Photos by Stephen Ziegler. Here's an excerpt:

JUST AFTER DAWN one morning, Fletcher and I are bouncing down a dirt road in a big rented Chevy truck, looking for waves. The windshield is a web of cracks, and the heater doesn't work, so we roll down the windows to defog.

As I drive, he doesn't talk about his family, his surfing, his sponsors, or anything else. We establish that we both live in trailers, his a double-wide in Orange County and mine a single-wide in Utah, and then we drive in silence, bumping across rocks and puddles to the slap-slap of the windshield wipers.

"How thick is that wetsuit?" I say.

"Thick."

Nathan Fletcher is 30, but by the lines on his weathered face you'd think he was older. He has a hardened yet innocent look, like a mug shot of a teen idol. He retreats into his hood. Maybe he's asleep. After a while he stirs and fumbles for his smokes.

"Want a cigarette?" he says.

"Sure."

We emerge from the forest and follow a sandy two-track out onto the beach. There on a gnarled stump is perched a bald eagle, its head the size of a softball. We watch it. We're on a glassy bay, mist rising from the evergreens and glaciers off in the distance inching toward the sea.

"Eagle," he says.

Read the whole thing at Outside.