Ryan Augenstein has been chasing the Mavericks bowl for a long time. A one-time finalist at the Mavericks Invitational in 2014, Augenstein has been a devotee of the place for more than a decade. To this day the Santa Cruz surfer remains dialed in to lineups across San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. In 2023, he rolled into the smoothest Mavs tubes you’ll ever see. He got rewarded $5,000 and took Ride of the Year honors at the Mavericks Awards.
This wave playing above, however, did not go as planned and is an easy wipeout-of-the-year contender for the 2024 SURFER Big Wave Challenge. It’s a compelling spectacle, captured in haunting slo-mo by Curt Myers from Powerlines Productions.
Frame: Curt Myers/Powerlines Productions
It all went wrong on a bluebird November day during one of those runs when all of Northern California seems to come alive at once. Augenstein drove up to Mavericks where more than a handful of other surfers were giving it a crack. Not death-defying, but still enough to keep one honest. Augenstein tried to knife a very late, very steep takeoff on one rail, only to see the nose poke and the lip throw over him (and not in the good way).
But it’s hard to keep a guy like Augenstein down for long. The next month, he was towing into west bowl bombs and bouncing down moguls. As the Australians like to say, onya, Auggy.