Surf’s up

NORTH SHORE — Part-time Kapaa resident Mountain Cooper couldn’t sleep Tuesday night.

“I get energized by storms,” she said.

By 4 a.m. Wednesday, Cooper was parked in front of Hanalei Pier, taking in the giant surf that rolled in overnight and swallowed Black Pot Beach Park, as well as a car parked on the sand.

At noon, she was still there, peering through her front windshield at the extreme surf and weather.  

“It’s been pretty intense,” Cooper said. “I was planning on going camping but you can see how well that’s going to work.”

Hundreds of residents and tourists — many armed with cameras and windbreakers — flocked to Kauai’s North Shore Wednesday morning to take in the powerful swell, which reportedly brought waves upwards of 40 feet.

At Pine Trees waves washed over the sand and into the parking lot, causing people to throw their cars in reverse to avoid the rushing seawater. At Black Pot, high winds toppled a portable toilet and several trash cans, and rain blew sideways away from the bay.  

And at Kee, a few brave souls set out onto the Kalalau Trail, while  winds sent plumes of ocean foam high into the air and into the parking lot. Waves reached the lifeguard stand.

The National Weather Service reported the surf would likely remain above warning levels through tonight and possibly persist above the advisory level through Friday.

All North Shore beaches, from Anahola to Kee, remained closed. A sign in front of Limahuli Garden and Preserve read, “Closed due to weather.”

Steve and Nancy Galassini, of Petoskey, Mich., said this week was their sixth trip to Kauai, but they have never seen waves as big as those Wednesday at Lumahai.

Nancy described them as “fantastic.”

“You know what’s amazing is the power,” she said. “I just hope we don’t get stuck up here from a road being closed.”

After getting up early to sightsee along the North Shore, Toronto residents Leigh MacMillan and Michael Crichton stopped at The Hanalei Gourmet for lunch and an early beer.

“Certainly the biggest waves I’ve personally seen in my life, especially the way they are crashing up on those rocks,” said Crichton, looking through his personal collection of photos from the couple’s morning drive.

But not everyone got what they had hoped for Wednesday morning.

Johnny Love, a winter resident of Kauai and avid surfer, said he was disappointed not by the surf’s awesome power, but that the wind took away from what would have certainly been much larger waves.

“I wish it would have been a little more clean,” he said. “This is bigger than the (other swells), but you can’t tell because it’s all blown out.”

Before sharing his thoughts, Love was caught standing a little too close to the cliffs at Lumahai and found himself drenched by a powerful wave.

Throughout the morning, Kauai County road crews could be spotted along Kuhio Highway, removing overhanging tree limbs and monitoring areas where ocean water spilled across the road. County officials closed three county parks on the North Shore, Black Pot, Pine Trees and Haena, Wednesday afternoon because of the extreme winds. The county also closed the Kekaha Landfill, and said all of the sites will be reopened when it is deemed safe. It urged the public to stay away from the coastline in affected areas.

Carl Berg of the Surfrider Foundation of Kauai said there was no doubt the giant surf was washing portions of Kauai North Shore beaches away and he expected marine debris would be left behind in its wake.

“It’s really mixing stuff up,” he said by phone from the Kilauea lighthouse.

When asked how long it’s been since Kauai has seen a swell this large, Berg said, “I think decades is safe.”

Don Heacock, a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, said big surf moves a lot of sand and is, to a large degree, what creates Hawaii’s white sand beaches.

“These storms are natural events,” he said. “Mother Nature — we can’t and don’t want to control her.”