What’s 105 miles off San Diego and 17 miles long, lurks just three feet below the surface at its highest point, earned San Clemente’s Mike Parsons a nifty $60,000 for about two minutes’ adrenalin-stoked work in January ’01, and generates waves so freakin’ huge they show up on radar?
It’s Cortes Bank, a submarine mountain range, where the right combination of light winds, low tides and big storm swells from the northwest—a Pacific surfer’s version of the perfect storm—can gen
