Nic Von Rupp Takes a Break From Big Waves to Explore a Foreboding Portuguese Slab

At the beginning of his latest video, Nic von Rupp is frothing to go out. Though he’s mostly known for his big wave surfing, he’s finally carved out some time for himself to have a session that brings him “back to his roots.”

“This has been my dream, man, really,” he explained, as he got ready on the beach. “We left Nazaré and we’re going exploring today. [I’ve] been wanting to do this mission for so long. Just driving with the WaveRunners up the whole Portuguese coast, looking for waves.”

Returning to his barrel-hunting roots is a frequent theme for von Rupp of late. After placing second at the Nazare Big Wave Challenge, he seemed to be in a bit of an emotional slump, saying that it, “Really sucks when you put so much time and effort into a place and you’re not really able to get the performance and result you wanted to.” That time, he shook off the cobwebs by returning to a wave he used to surf in his youth. The experience seems to have whetted his appetite for (relatively) smaller surf, now that big waves are temporarily in his rearview.

“The last couple months have been strictly big waves, going to Nazare, going to Maverick’s, going to the opening ceremony of The Eddie, so on and so on,” he said. “[It] just feels incredible to go back to the roots of surf exploration, back to the roots of riding barrels, back to the roots of not having FOMO of missing out on big waves.”

Of course, von Rupp’s definition of “small” is a little different from most everybody else’s. After suiting up, he went out into gloomy, foreboding, overhead barrels at a break he described as a “slab only known to a few.”

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