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Comfortably Numb: Mick Fanning & Mason Ho on the Arctic Search.

The sound of the fire echoes off the ice chunks as Mick Fanning and Mason Ho —wetsuited and booted — warm their hands over the flames.

A new swell is coming soon, they’re almost sure of it. They wait.

Pop-crackle-snap.

“We need that big chunk to go so we can get a west swell,” Mason says, pointing straight ahead. “I want one of those lefts so bad.”

“You reckon those last couple of easts brought in too much ice?” asks Mick. The water just off shore is a minefield of microwave-sized ice cubes.

“Maybe,” Mason says. “But we gotta go no matter what. How often will we get a chance to do this?”

A half-mile in front of them, a 500-foot glacier rises from a calm bay like The Wall from Game Of Thrones. Mick and Mason came here yesterday when the surf went flat, a touristic detour in an area that can’t seem to shake the ice age. But when a chunk of ice the size of a city block fell and created a single-serve 10-foot swell, which then morphed into three perfect lefts, there was no choice but to return today to try and ride it.

Welcome to the Arctic Search with Mick Fanning and Mason Ho. Where Glacier tubes are on the menu and an ice-cream headache might just kill you!

 

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