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Whether surfing or skiing off cliffs, stand-up racing or filming great whites, this homegrown California waterman is in his element
By Pete Gauvin
If such a thing as a California Action Sports Hall of Fame existed, Chuck Patterson would win unanimous induction on the first ballot. Then the committee would need to go out and solicit bids to build an extra wing just to document the breadth of his exploits on water and snow.
Chuckโs body of work is that deep and diverse and innovative.
Now 42, heโs been making his living as a fulltime sponsored athlete for 20 years. Not in one sport mind you, but a quiver full โ as an extreme skier and snowboarder, professional windsurfer and kiteboarder, big-wave surfer and stand-up paddler.
Indeed, CWP (his middle name is William) has groomed himself into the ultimate waterman in the same vein as icons Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama, two of his mentors and contemporaries in big wave tow-in surfing and stand-up paddling, the latter of which has become Chuckโs bread-and-butter sport over the last five years.
โIโve been lucky that Iโve managed to make a living pursuing a bunch of different sports. Each sport just seems to lead to the next and compliment each other,โ says Chuck, in typically humble fashion.
When I talked to him in May he had just returned home to Dana Point from the Battle of the Paddle festival in Hawaii, where he faced off against the worldโs top SUP paddlers despite recovering from a staph infection that kept him out of the water until a week before the event. (The BOP California edition, which Chuck won in 2008, is Sept. 24-25 in Dana Point.)
Though not in top form, Chuck was there as much to be an ambassador of the sport as he was to compete. The amicable 6-2, 220-pound hulk of muscle with the broad white smile is one of the most traveled, recognizable and versatile figures in the sport.
In addition to racing, heโs surfed his SUP boards on big waves from Maui to Mavericks. โItโs a really challenging wave,โ he says of Mavericks. โYouโve got to move around a lot to find the peak and not get annihilated.โ
In 2009, he was the first SUP rider to surf the Cortes Bank break more than 100 miles off the San Diego coast.
For his body of work, he was named Mr. SUP of the Year 2010 by the online magazine and networking site SUP Connect.
In the past year, heโs also distinguished himself for his fearlessness in a couple unique and inventive ways.
Dances with Sharks
Last summer, Chuck became a media and online video sensation for intentionally paddling his SUP board out to film and take mug shots of great white sharks that had been sighted off San Onofre Beach. Using an extension pole rigged with a GoPro waterproof camera, he paddled his Hobie SUP race board out to the spot the shark had been seen and within minutes was being circled by a 7โ-8โ juvenile shark. Later it turned out there were two sharks.
โFrom the vantage point of an SUP you can see a lot more,โ Chuck says. โSomeone pretty much saw a shark everyday in the summer there, and so far they havenโt attacked anyone.โ
You can watch Chuckโs video, โMe, My Shark and I,โ on Vimeo and YouTube and get a laugh from reading the comments about the size and composition of Chuckโs family jewels. For details and perspective on the encounter, read Chuckโs blog at chuckpattersonsports.com.
Since then, Chuck has done some filming with National Geographic for a program due to air in the fall.
Ski Boots in Big Waves
From one โJawsโ experience to another, entirely different, this past winter he followed the biggest swell of the year to Mauiโs famed tow-in surf break at Peโahi (a.k.a. โJawsโ), where heโs surfed many times before.
This time, though, he brought his ski gear.
Bringing to fruition an idea that was hatched more than a decade before while living in Tahoe and skiing at Squaw with his good friend, the legendary Shane McConkey, Chuck took to the surf with ski boots, ski poles and a pair of custom Starr Surf Skis mounted with alpine bindings, which heโd done some R&D with a few times at smaller tow-in breaks along the Central California coast.
Years before, McConkey, who once took water skis down an unreal run in Alaska, had told Chuck, who split his time between skiing in Tahoe and surfing in Maui, that he was the perfect man to flip the paradigm and bring skiing to the surf.
โI jokingly tried it 10 or 11 years ago in Hawaii using jumper water skis,โ says Chuck.
But he didnโt pursue the experiment any further until last year when he was impressed by some video of the fusion efforts of fellow freeskiers/surfers Cody Townsend of Santa Cruz and Mike Douglas of Whistler. They had experimented using the same custom skis and alpine boots.
Chuck thought they had potential to be taken to a bigger canvas. But during his trials with the equipment on the California coast, he found something was missing โ ski poles!
Why bother with ski poles, you ask?
โYeah, it looks pretty funny,โ Chuck admits. โBut for me growing up skiing, poles were not for pushing โ they were to help give you a nice tight body position, control and balance. So even though itโs a pain to hold onto the (tow) rope with them, I thought they helped me achieve a better body position and improved my balance on the waves.โ
One look at the video of Chuck bombing face-forward down these monster waves traveling at 30 miles per hour, legs independently jack-hammering on the wind bumps, and you can begin to see his point.
โUnfortunately, there was so much wind with the swell, it kind of knocked down the waves,โ says Chuck, sounding a little dissatisfied with his Jawsโ skiing debut. โIt was the worst conditions you could probably do it in, but there was so much media there, it was a go. I ended up getting three really good set waves. Of course, the next day conditions improved considerably but the hype was over,โ so those rides werenโt documented.
Evolution of an Amphibian
Like the three stacked protein shakes he downs each day, Chuck is a blend of his Nor Cal roots and the So Cal surf lifestyle soaked in his momโs German-Austrian blood lines, with heaping dollops of Tahoe and Hawaii time thrown into the mix.
Raised in the Bay Area in the Piedmont/Oakland Hills by an American father who was a nuclear physicist and a mom who had been a ski racer in Europe, Chuck was skiing by the time he was two and a half years old.ย The family โ he has a sister, Janet โ spent a lot of time in Tahoe over the years. In the โ80s, his mom became a top windsurfer and Chuck started windsurfing when he was 10.
By the time he graduated high school, the extreme ski scene was emerging and Chuck moved up to Tahoe in 1986 and started skiing Squaw everyday while working at his momโs lodge. Alvina Patterson owns the Holiday House on Tahoeโs north shore.
Though he was considering college, his higher ed plans were derailed when he got an offer to compete on the windsurfing tour. It was the perfect summer compliment to his ski lifestyle.
โI learned more by traveling and being on the road competing then I could have in college,โ Chuck says, โand I was pushed by my dadโs doubts that I could make a living in extreme sports.โ
While his athletic roots come from his mom, Chuck credits his father with giving him an analytical, scientific, disciplined way of approaching extreme sports.
โIt really came about in skiing, thinking about the equations of jumping off cliffs,โ he says. โIโm very much an observer. Being able to observe and study stuff before jumping in and then apply my talent to it, helped me stay in one piece.โ
In addition to shooting for magazines, Chuck competed in extreme skiing and big mountain events as a skier and snowboarder. He was combined champion four years in a row.
Meanwhile, spending his off seasons in Hawaii, he was on his way to becoming a complete waterman. His surfing and windsurfing background led to tow-in surfing and kiteboarding, and eventually, back in California, stand-up paddling.
โSkiing was a great platform to launch in to all the other sports I do, especially big-wave surfing because you donโt have a fear of heights and speed,โ Chuck says. โDropping off a cliff and skiing out the bottom is kind of the same thing as dropping a 70-foot wave and outrunning an avalanche of water.โ
A little more than 10 years ago, he met his wife Susan in Tahoe and was drawn down to her home in Southern California. He had learned a lot about sponsorship and the media from his mom, and being in the global epicenter of surf industry allowed him to leverage his pursuits.
โIโve certainly learned more about the business side,โ he says, โand the importance of training hard and staying healthy.โ
Care and Maintenance
Chuck is not the prototypical wiry surfer. If his bodybuilder-in-surf-trunks build doesnโt intimidate great whites, as the โShark Hunterโ cartoon by illustrator Jason Wood suggests, then thereโs no hope for the rest of us.
Despite his large frame and muscled physique, one that he admits is โnot the perfect body makeupโ for all the sports he does โ though heโs not too dissimilar in size from fellow linebacker-built watermen like Laird and Kalama โ heโs been able to remain relatively injury free.
โIโve been really lucky. Iโve only broken two bones in my body,โ he says. โIโve blown both knees really close to needing surgery but Iโve been able to rehab them. And Iโve suffered a number of gnarly lacerations, especially from kiteboarding and surfing.โ
On the other hand, he credits his mental toughness and physical strength for being able to push through punishing moments in racing and training, and to bounce back after taking a beating in the surf.
Itโs not by accident. He works hard at it, rising most days at 4:30 a.m. to begin a two-hour cardio-endurance training workout at the Sport Performance Institute in Laguna Beach. โIt keeps me honest,โ he says of the dawn patrol workouts.
He then heads home and runs his dog, followed by a 6-8 mile paddle on his SUP out of Dana Point Harbor, which allows him to check out the surf to see if he wants to go back out for a session. He generally trains on a 12โ 6โ board so on race days he feels a little faster when he hops on a longer board that can better float his weight.
To this schedule, he somehow regularly fits in weight training at another gym.
In the afternoon, heโll go to work in his home office for a bit, staying in touch with sponsors, firming up his calendar with events and clinics, writing for SUP magazines and websites, and updating his blog. Then heโll finish off the day with another workout like mountain biking or surfing.
โI like to mix it up,โ he says. โItโs been a perfect formula to be ready for any sport I might do and anywhere I might go.โ
In winter, that might mean scratching his skiing itch by making the eight-hour drive from Dana Point to his former playground of Squaw Valley to once again huck cliffs for professional photographers like Hank de Vrรฉ and Ryan Salm, even if heโs barely touched snow in a couple years.
Or it might mean booking a flight to Hawaii with less than 48 hours notice to arrive in perfect time to catch a massive swell. โThen the minute it gets small weโll follow it back to California,โ he says. Sometimes heโll even track a system from Hawaii to the California coast and then on to Tahoe for a couple feet of fresh pow.
Stand-Up Guy
Without a doubt, SUP is Chuckโs biggest passion these days and, more than anything else, key to his continued livelihood as an athlete over 40. The sport is allowing him to continue to be at the forefront of a fast growing, popular, healthy activity just about anyone can enjoy, even if they have no background or interest in surfing.
โItโs amazing, you see it every where you go now. Itโs expanding and exploding every six months,โ he says. โIt goes right along with all the other sports that Iโve done and is a combination of all those other sports.โ
Sponsored for years by Hobie SUP boards, Chuck surprised the industry recently by switching to Naish out of Hawaii. Founded by famed windsurfer and kiter Robby Naish, the company remains big internationally in those sports as well as stand up, making it a good fit for Chuck.
Still it was not an easy decision.
โI was with Hobie for six years and theyโre a phenomenal company, but a lot smaller than Naish,โ Chuck says. โThatโs the hardest thing as an athlete to balance the business side of things with the personal side and still be able to train and travel and compete.โ
And Chuck does a lot of that.
Heโs competed in a number of SUP surf contests (heโs won the SUP Surftech Shootout at Santa Cruzโs Steamer Lane twice) and upwards of 50 races in the last few years. Heโs won the popular Ta-hoe Nalu event on Lake Tahoe a couple times, among others.
His biggest payday ($10,000) came when he won the inaugural California Battle of the Paddle in 2008, just three years after he tried the sport for the first time.
โThatโs when I knew it was legit,โ he says.
From Skeptic to Fanatic
Like many surfers, Chuckโs first impression of SUP was that it was a novelty. โThen I decided I would just give it a try because Iโd watched Laird and Dave Kalama doing it in Maui,โ he says.
There were no SUP boards available so he started by using a tandem surfboard in 1-2 foot surf. โIt was very humbling,โ he recalls, โbut every day I went out, I learned something new. It was constantly challenging and I was hooked.โ
โI get more water time now then I ever did when I was just a surfer,โ he adds. โThere are days I go out now that I wouldnโt even touch the water previously. With an SUP you can go out and have a good time no matter what the surfโs doing, even on little days or when itโs windy, you can still go out and explore or do a downwinder. There are so many different aspects of the sport that you never get bored with it.โ
When it comes to the proliferation of SUPs in the surf lineup, Chuck thinks thereโs widespread awareness among SUP riders that behaving like wave hogs is unacceptable, but constant education will be required as more people get into the sport.
โI surf as much as I stand-up paddleboard so I understand,โ he says.
Though he usually seeks more remote breaks on his SUP, if heโs out at a crowded break heโll call out sets for the surfers because heโs able to see the swell further out. โIโll let them have the first waves and Iโll take the last one of the set,โ he says.
The initial backlash among surfers toward SUP has died down as more and more surfers give it a try, often in secret, he says.
โLots of pro surfers are taking up stand up and adding it to their mix. Guys with open minds are looking at it as another way to be on the water and train. โฆ Itโs really cool to see. The minute someone tries it, they find it pretty addicting.โ
As anyone thatโs met him knows, Chuck loves to share the stoke by introducing people to the sport. At SUP races and festivals across the country, Chuck teaches โPaddle with the Prosโ clinics with womenโs pro Karen Wrenn. (Theyโll be at the inaugural Battle of the Bay in San Francisco on Oct. 29.)
Itโs hard to imagine that the sport could ask for a better, more accomplished ambassador than Chuck Patterson โ even if heโs never elected to any โAction Sports Hall of Fame.โ