"Rounding Kaena Point," by John Severson, was published in the October 1983 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited.

Driving Kaena Point in Hawaii is one of those experiences that you would not easily forget, for any number of reasons. I lost two cars there, got close to the biggest waves I’ve ever seen before or since, and filmed and lived real adventures.

If a real adventure is a matter of going beyond your daily experience, involving a bit of hazard, daring or risk, Kaena is that. Actually, it’s your car that takes the risk. Not that cars have a choice. We never asked ours if they wanted to take the Kaena road or go the long way to Makaha. We ordered them, and $50 or $75 worth of smoldering, roaring power gave up years of life to give us an extra 45 minutes or so in the surf. It seemed like a fair exchange.

Kaena Point is that northwestern finger of Oahu that juts out into the sea. Hawaiian legend describes it as a departing spot for homeless spirits journeying into the endless night. To this day it is not paved and not easily negotiated by 

. Signs at both ends of the trek read: “END OF IMPROVED ROAD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.” Bullet holes in the signs accent the message. Today, Kaena Point is a place for fishermen and hikers, but there was a time when surfers regularly ranged the territory in their quest for waves.

The world of surfing changes. A little over two decades ago a closeout or bad weather on the North Shore usually meant a trip to the West Side—Makaha—and if it hadn’t been raining too much, the choice was around Kaena or the long way through Wahiawa, Waipahu, around Barber’s Point and up the west coast through Nanakuli, Waianae, and Makaha. With a vision of hot beaches and waves, the decision was often a consideration of time over matter, but involved a gamble. If the matter broke down, you could easily blow the day. Cars were never the major concern. Not because we had money. We didn’t. What we had was an endless supply of rust-buckets in the $15 to $75 range. This was undoubtedly the golden age of creative driving.

As soon as I began surfing the North Shore, friends began to prime me for my first K-Point trip. It was a ritual, like a fraternal initiation, and the new kid on the block was invited to drive the car. His.

After all the horror stories—with so much left to the imagination—I was scared. For my car and my life.

The first trip wasn’t so bad. Beginner’s luck. It was dry, so we had little mud to contend with. Harry Schurch was my guide, and pointed out a vast mud-caked arena that rains filled to varying degrees. This mud-bowl could finish a trip before it started, but merely required speed and guts to negotiate. Much later I had the pleasure to witness what a thing of beauty it was to see a car snaking through a hundred yards of ooze, sheets of brown slime arching behind. But I drove it easily that first day, well aware of the rusting car shells hunkering on the side-lines. It struck me that a failed great adventure might not necessarily collapse in a final blaze of glory, as Hollywood would have us believe, but could just sputter and fizzle as the conductor raised his baton. Here was a formidable foe that could swat down your auto at the opening bell.

Off we went. I eased through the opening miles of jagged rocks and twisty turns, amazed that tires weren’t blowing. We passed the tip of Kaena Point and another crucial test: the rocky undulating turn from the North Shore to the West Side. It’s the kind where you go up over a rock and look out into space—no road in sight—trying to remember your top turn because a wrong move could put a lava boulder through your axle. 

Ever present on our right was the blue Pacific, with a variety of waves, all ending in rocky disaster along the shore.

Coming down the West Side, the road narrowed to a level strip, carved into the side of the cliff. Above was a wall of hanging lava rocks. Below, here and there, rusted cars and engine parts in various degrees of disintegration added orange accents to the shiny black lava. Whitewater boiled against the cliff, at times eating to the very heart of the road. We inched past one tight section, aimed toward Makaha, and finally confronted a long mud pool, with no way around, that looked eight feet deep.

Harry assured me there were railroad ties below the surface, so I inched forward, and sure enough we made it to the other side. Soon after we passed Yokohama Bay, named for Mr. Yokohama who used to switch tracks for the old Oahu Railroad that skirted the point between 1895 and 1947.

The Makaha waves we found that afternoon nearly erased the intensity of the drive, and that evening we drove home by the southern route.

Later that same winter, I heard of an ill-fated Kaena Point trip that started with a full-speed attack on the first mudhole and ended just moments later, with water flooding up to the steering wheel level and everyone bailing out of windows and paddling to “shore.”

A few years later, while filming a Kaena driving sequence for one of those early sixties surf movie extravaganzas, I pushed my star, Pat Curren, who in turn pushed the car—and we lost it. We were almost to Yokohama but since we did the filming on a flat day, decided not to continue but go back around the point in my high-dollar back-up car. Some kind of crazy energy prevailed and it turned into a speed run, and right on the point a rock met my oil pan and the spirit of my second car departed. It was a long walk home.

Over the years, the single greatest impression on the point drive was that of giant waves, often at point-blank views. We drove it when the surf was big and it was especially tough on the driver, who couldn’t afford distractions. A friend and I drove around Kaena during the January ’58 swell and watched mile-long walls roaring down the lee of the point. Tubes the size of blimp-hangers peeled off with mechanical precision, but always ended on the rocks. Further outside and to the west, waves were breaking a mile or so out; slow motion waterfalls in the blue. I could only guess their size: 50', 75'? More?

The road washed out behind us before we reached the tip of the point. 

"ROUNDING KAENA POINT," JOHN SEVERSON (1983)

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