Second-years Greg Gerschenson, Ahil PonArul and Jon Tong hit the slopes in homemade sleds last Saturday at Red Bull’s Schlittentag event, hosted at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort. Photo by Sal Ingram.

“We are going to die.”

That was the conclusion College Nine second-year Greg Gerschenson reached as he drove College Ten second-years Ahil Ponarul and Jon Tong to Alpine Meadows Ski Resort on Saturday, April 9. The trio were discussing their plans for Red Bull’s Schlittentag.

“Every possible scenario I can think of ends in all of us dying,” Gerschenson said.

Schlittentag, German for “Sledding Day,” is an event Red Bull holds at various ski resorts across the nation. Event participants build sleds from found materials and ride them down a course. Teams compete under team names reflecting their chosen theme. This year’s Schlittentag saw igloo-riding eskimos and three men in a tub tearing down the Tahoe slope.

One week before Schlittentag, Gerchenson, Tong and Ponarul decided they wanted to bring some UC Santa Cruz representation to the slope. While teams were not required to be affiliated with a college, the event was marketed towards university students. Consequently, a significant number of the teams displayed some form of school spirit.

Two days before Schlittentag, the trio started gathering supplies to make their sleds. Having started later than most, the group from UCSC said they did not have their eyes on one of the top three positions. Sleds at Schlittentag are scored on a 100-point scale, with 50 going to speed, 25 to creativity and 25 to style. Gerchenson said they were more concerned with just having a good time than with winning.

“Well, we’re going to enjoy ourselves,” Gerchenson said. “Maybe we’ll get best crash — that would be awesome.”

Another team led by UCSC second-year Samuel Bruns was slated to compete, but had to back out at the last minute due to a family emergency. This left Gerchenson, Tong and Ponarul with an extra sled and the idea of splitting into two teams.

Gerchenson decided to use a plank of wood Bruns had found, attach skis and a beach chair to it and adopt the team name “Wait.. This Isn’t Cabo.” He completed the outfit with board shorts, a tank top and flip-flops. Unable to transport his entire sled from Santa Cruz to Tahoe, Gerchenson built it just minutes before he took it down the slope. Saying that his sled may not have been the best, he remained confident that he would be able to make it work.

“My sled is probably about 70 [percent prepared for the course],” Gerchenson said. “But I’m around 100.”

Gerchenson was the first person to register on-site at the competition, so he was given the honor of going first.

When constructing the sled, Gerchenson underestimated the effect that all the duct tape he put on the bottom would have. The friction created by the layers of duct tape holding on the skis brought his sled to a halt before he reached the first jump in the course. However, after giving himself a few pushes, he was slowly but surely able to make it to the bottom.

“At least I can say I had the safest sled out there,” Gerchenson said.

Team Banana Swag, comprised of the banana-suit-clad duo Tong and Ponarul, had a little more success. Riding face-first on boogie boards rented from OPERS, they launched themselves down the hill separately because, as Tong said, “Two slugs are better than one.” Tong picked up more speed on the course and finished with a clean run. Ponarul trailed behind by a few yards and lost his momentum before the last jump, slowly sliding across the finish line.

Neither team managed to place in the competition, as only the top three and best crash were announced. First place went to a golf cart mounted on snowboards and second was awarded to a Bat-mobile replica built and manned by the family of UCSC third-year Tessa Santos. Best crash went to a sled from Stanford that exploded into pieces when it hit the last jump. However, the failure to claim a prize didn’t bother Gerchenson.

“I didn’t expect [my sled] to be the safest sled,” Gerchenson said, “but at least I finished. And my sled didn’t explode like Stanford’s.”

And the trio is already looking forward to Schlittentag 2012. Gerchenson discussed contacting the Ski and Snowboard Club and having them make it one of their events in order to increase the UCSC participation. Ultimately, all three of the UCSC participants said that the best part of Schlittentag was that it provided a unique, albeit slightly wacky, way to show their school pride.

“In the end [winning] didn’t matter,” Gerchenson said. “We went with an idea, executed it, and it went well. It was fun and I got to represent my school for a little bit.”

With the new name the Jay at Mavericks, the world-famous surf competition promises the same great waves and history making surf-runs, but its new management reflects a higher dedication to the sport and its players. Photo by Nick Paris.

Kenny Collins, a Santa Cruz veteran surfer (third from the left), bows his head with other competitors in the Jay Moriarty Mavericks Surf Competition. The surfers remembered Jay Moriarty, a friend and fellow surfer for whom the contest is named. Moriarty was killed in a tragic diving accident in the Maldives in 2001. Photo by Nick Paris.

For them, last Monday’s opening ceremony to the Jay Moriarty Big Wave Invitational was the dawn of a new chapter in big wave surf history. The opening ceremony was the culmination of a long-standing conflict between the surfers and the previous permit holder of the competition’s location, Mavericks Surf Ventures.

In 2004, Mavericks Surf Ventures began hosting the Mavericks Big Wave Surf Invitational near Half Moon Bay. The company, named after the competition’s location, had annually attracted thousands of viewers to watch the daring surfers tackle the Goliath waves. The scene is a dream for many a big wave surfer: 80-foot swells, California sunshine and the biggest names in surfing around the world.

Hawaiian big wave surfer Jamie Sterling, current leader in the Big Wave World Tour, recalls some of his best moments in surfing that happened at Mavericks.

“Mavericks generates the perfect swells,” Sterling said. “It breaks in a defined reef location consistently, and has some of the biggest waves in the world. The Jay pushes the evolution of big wave surfing to the next level by bringing together the most stellar athlete line-up from around the world. In this way, all oceans meet at Mavericks.”

But in recent years, the competition has been mired in poor management, angering both the surf competitors and the competition’s sponsors, veteran surfer Grant Washburn said.

“[Mavericks Surf Ventures] was going to do whatever it wanted to do, regardless of what we thought,” Washburn said. “They were taking all of the money provided by the competition’s sponsors to spend on other company events and merchandise. They wouldn’t — no, couldn’t — pay the judges, the staff or even the prize money to the winning surfers.”

Washburn’s comments reflected the attitude of the international surfing community as a whole, unhappy with Mavericks Surf Ventures for commercializing one of the largest surf events in the globe.

“When they forced Jeff [Clark] out of the competition, the guy who made Mavericks what it is today, none of the surfers were happy then,” Washburn said. “When they were cutting the smaller prizes out to just give one big prize to the top winner, we weren’t happy then either. But we all banded together then just as we are now … [Mavericks Surf Ventures] had this coming.”

In October, the Half Moon Bay Surf Group, composed of veteran Mavericks competitors in conjunction with Barracuda Networks, succeeded in a prolonged campaign against Mavericks Surf Ventures over the permit for the competition’s location.

The competition, renamed the Jay Moriarty Big Wave Invitational — or “the Jay,” for short — is named after the late Jay Moriarty, an avid surfer who died in a diving accident. In the huddle of Moriarty’s friends and family at the opening ceremony, not a single story passed without describing him as “stoked.”

But more than just the event’s name has changed.

One third of this year’s competitors hail from Santa Cruz, the rest coming from other prominent international surf spots such as Australia, South Africa, Brazil and other U.S. surf locales. Kenny “Skindog” Collins, winner of Billabong’s 2010 XXL Ride of the Year, is one of the surfers from Santa Cruz invited to compete at the Jay this season.

“We’re a real close community,” Collins said. “You can see we’re all out here just doing what we love doing most. Now that the old management, Mavericks [Surf Ventures] is out, and we, the surfers, are in, things are awesome. No other contest is run like this.”

The event has had an overhaul in its managing scheme, now being geared as a non-profit event — its earnings going towards supporting local charities. The invitations to the event are now allocated based on a vote among the surfers handling the Jay, as opposed to being chosen by Mavericks Surf Ventures. In short, every facet of the world-renowned competition is now solidly in the hands of its surfers.

“These shores have a global reputation and a dedicated bunch of dudes who love to surf them,” Collins said. “It’s no surprise that so many surfers from Santa Cruz — surf culture central — should care about what happens at Mavericks.”

To see the wave riders out on the water and hear the shore roar from the beach-side crowd, it’s clear that Mavericks this year belongs to none other than the surfers themselves.

Courtesy of Skydive Surf City

Skydivers board a plane on the Watsonville airfield in preparation for their flight. The airfield serves as the base for Volker Haag’s skydiving company, Skydive Surf City. Photo by Nick Paris.

Volker Haag starts and ends his business day doing something many others would not. From about 10,000 feet up, his “office door” on the side of a small aircraft is open to any and all who would take up his offer to skydive with him. Nearly a year after taking over the business from its previous owners, Haag, owner and operator of Skydive Surf City, has found his niche along the Santa Cruz coastline.

Born in Germany, Haag initially enjoyed falling from the skies as a weekend pastime.

“The first time I jumped was because of a girl, as a matter of fact,” Haag said, the slightest bit of a grin escaping the corner of his mouth. “Of course I was nervous — it was pretty terrifying. But it turned out to be the best thing in the world. A few weeks later, I was a licensed diver.”

Haag’s newfound passion for skydiving had to be put on the back burner, however. Between holding a corporate job and pursuing his Master’s degree in business economics, Haag was hard pressed to find time to leap outside the weekends. But after an extended vacation in New Zealand Haag — already in love with skydiving’s recreational and competitive aspects — discovered his true calling.

“People skydive all over the world to see its beauty from up there,” Haag said, pointing up at the sky. “It’s harder to fall in love staring at cornfields when you could be seeing ocean.”

When he established a base of operations on the Watsonville airfield, Haag brought both his business sensibility and skydiving passion to Santa Cruz County.

Leaning on the edge of a table racked with parachutes, Haag recounted his jumps worldwide.

“I’ve jumped in Germany, Australia and New Zealand,” Haag said. “I can tell you that this is far better than any corporate desk job I’ve held. I mean, multiple jumps a day with that kind of view? Come on!”

Skydiving doubles as a recreational hobby and a competitive sport for Haag. While Skydive Surf City mostly offers tandem jumps with trained, licensed professionals at heights upward of 14,000 feet, skydiving enthusiasts have been known to push the limits of the sport to even greater extremes. Low-altitude parachute deployment, synchronized formation drops and jumps including assorted objects — couches, inflatable rafts and even cars — have become popular among those who find enough is never enough when leaping from an aircraft.

For many first-time jumpers, just tapping into the many raw emotions evoked at the plummet’s precipice can be a sensory overload. To that end, many of those that choose to jump with Skydive Surf City have never done so before.

Having just finished the orientation video, Chris Zundel, jumping for the first time with his girlfriend, Paige Morrison, cracks a nervous smile while signing the pre-jump waiver.

“This room’s got four walls, is on the ground, it’s got a desk and phone. It’s just like any other room,” Zundel said. “Except when I step out of this room, I’m going to go skydiving. Why am I so eager to run to the plane I intend to jump out of?”

Safety is often the cited concern for many won’t-be skydivers. The fear of the fall, while compelling to some, is often the largest hurdle for first-time jumpers to clear. Haag, along with his wife and business partner Lisa Airmet, ensure that every precaution is taken with each parachute, and that all safety measures are taken before a client ever boards a plane. From spring-loaded parachutes to make deployment quicker to automatic activation devices if a jumper is unable to pull the cord, multiple measures have been installed and monitored to guarantee a safe jump.

Steven Jester, an instructor for Skydive Surf City, worked for the company before Haag took over, but said he left dissatisfied. Jester came back after Haag bought the Skydive Surf City and attributes the business’s success to Haag’s business savvy and careful safety measures.

Having taken the troubled business off the hands of its original founders as an outsider, Haag invested $200,000 — breathing new life into Skydive Surf City’s parachutes. The renovations included updates to all of the parachuting equipment, taking on additional instructors, a second airplane, and rights to an inland parachute landing area.

“You have to spend money to make money, you know?” Haag said. “A great experience is brought about by great service. Besides, safety has to be a critical concern for us.”

The end result is a skydiving company with character, headquartered in buildings with walls covered in the satisfied scribbles of customers past. Haag now finds himself pressed for time to catch a bite to eat between jumps, grabbing a sandwich between congratulating first-time jumpers and giving reassuring thumbs-ups to those next in line.

What attracts everyone to jump? For some, it’s the rush of the wind on their faces that could only be described as the “high of the high.”

Brian Day, a parachute packer for Skydive Surf City, said he found the imminent sense of danger to double as both his personal thrill ride and an escape.

“It’s the safest, most dangerous thing you can do,” Day said. “The freedom of it, with nothing to stop you, is what makes it great. No people, no traffic, no phone, no Internet, nothing. Nothing to say ‘You can’t do blah, blah, blah.’”

Haag sees no reason why fear alone should stop anyone from skydiving.

“Everyone should come out and try it at least once,” Haag said. “It’s really incomparable to anything else you can do.”