For more than 20 years, Peter Mel has been trying to conquer the Mavericks surf break, a monster wave that produces walls of water the size of buildings when the right swell hits.
He was 22 when he first started surfing the spot, just up the road from his hometown of Santa Cruz. By training there through the years, he would become one of the best big-wave riders in the world, living the life of a professional surfer and traveling the world in the hunt for big waves.