By most definitions, Big Wave surfing was the first extreme sport, born one day in 1969. Three massive storms collided over Hawaii, and much of the coastline population was evacuated for fear that the waves would wipe away their homes. Armed with a wooden longboard, Californian Greg Noll spent two hours standing on Makaha Beach staring at the walls of water crashing down with thousands of pounds of force. Finally he marched into the sea and rode a 35-footer, the largest wave ever surfed at that time. “Some of my friends have said it was a death wish wave,” Noll later wrote. “I didn’t think so then, but in retrospect I realize it was probably bordering on the edge.”

Heretofore wave riders avoided breakers greater than 20 feet; they were considered too dangerous to navigate on the era’s primitive surfboards. The idea of seeking out huge waves was new, and it caught on. Every outdoor sport needs an Everest, and surfing now had one. Suddenly, a crew of surf gladiators began to travel the earth in search of that rolling peak, and the sport of big wave surfing was born. It spurred the industry to create new boards and permeated fashion and pop culture, eventually resulting in surf film classics Riding Giants and Point Break.

The scene in the continental U.S. came to the fore in 1975, when Jeff Clark discovered one of the biggest waves on the planet in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, that rose sometimes 70 feet in a symmetrical wave that broke in both directions. These were frigid, rocky, shark-infested waters. Clark paddled a half-mile out and surfed it alone. He named it Mavericks, and it’s still North America’s most famous big wave spot. In 1992, Clark got a call from a local in Monterey named Peter Davi, a 30-year-old commercial fisherman and renowned surfer. A group of hardcore riders had been hearing about Clark’s wave, and they wanted in. Clark agreed to guide them, and Davi, his friend Don Curry, and a gang of Santa Cruz heavies drove up Highway 1 to Half Moon. “In those early days Davi would have people videotape them surfing Mavericks and they’d watch it afterward and study it,” Curry says. “For them it was uncharted territory. I mean, we were surfing into rocks. Who does that?”

The men who sought out the Goliaths of the sea found something spiritual in them. The danger, the immeasurable power of the ocean’s thrust, the adrenaline surge: The big wave offered transcendence. Riding the big wave was like a drug, and mortal notions like jobs and money took a backseat. “To keep your sanity, you have to ride waves, and some of them need to be big,” surfer Dave Kalama once said. “The closer you get to total annihilation, the more real everything becomes.”

The sea claimed its share of the best. In 1994, Hawaiian Mark Foo drowned in an 18-footer on his first attempt at Mavericks. A year later, Donnie Solomon died in a 20-foot wave in Hawaii’s Waimea Bay. Todd Chesser was fished out of 25-foot swells at Alligator Rock in Oahu in 1997. Three years after that, Briece Tarea was killed at Tahiti’s Teahupoo (“Broken Skulls”). But the pull of the big wave still beckoned, and many who’d experienced the high it provided couldn’t resist. “I’ve never thought about surfing these waves as all that dangerous, really,” comments Mavericks founder Clark. “On my worst day out at Mavericks, I’m doing better than my best day onshore. It’s my home.”

Peter Davi’s legendary status was based not on pure skill but rather his love of the sea and his desire to hurl himself into the most intense situations the ocean could muster. He was a peer to the greats in the sport—Clark, Curry, Peter Mel, Johnny Gomes, Laird Hamilton.

Davi grew up in the 1970s on the foggy Monterey peninsula, the grandson of a renowned sea captain who ran 90-foot ships off Cannery Row back when it was still the hard-luck harbor of the John Steinbeck era. “Pete was a real mellow kid,” says Curry, who grew up with Davi. “I moved to Hawaii in 1978, and when I came back in ’81 the kid had become a big man. He had figured out how to have a good time. He was looked up to, and when he went to the North Shore later that year, he fit in with the big intimidator crowd there. That’s where he got a lot of his notoriety.” Davi spent a few years surfing the North Shore’s towering waves. “He was one of the guys who paved the way to Hawaii for us California guys,” says Clark. “He had his spot on Pipeline in the lineup. I mean, you can’t buy your way in there. Pipeline is so heavy. When you can call Pipeline your home, you’ve made it. That was him: Pipeline Pete.”

When Davi returned to California, he chased the Pacific’s biggest swells up and down the coast. He lived for years in the redwood stands of Big Sur with his son, Jake, now a pro surfer, and Jake’s mother, Katrin Winterbotham. He knew the breaks along the fickle beaches of Big Sur probably better than anyone. Even before he was to make a name for himself in Oahu as Pipeline Pete, everyone in the Monterey area knew him. He had the reputation as a hard-working guy with a huge heart and a Sicilian-bred tough-guy edge. “I met Pete at a local spot in Big Sur around 1980,” says Anthony Ruffo. “He was a big Italian dude, real intimidating, and Big Sur was most definitely his spot.”

By the winter of 2007, Davi had moved his family to Pacific Grove. From his hillside house nestled in a grove of oaks, he had a view of Monterey Bay. The house had no TV. Surfaces were covered in driftwood, pieces of jade, arrowheads he found on Pescadero Point, stones from Big Sur. Like his Italian forefathers, Davi made a decent living working netting boats. Five or six nights a week, he’d arrive at the docks at Moss Landing and go out with the crew of a large diesel netting boat. He’d fish all night, and return around 7 a.m. to unload mackerel, herring, and squid. If the swell was good, he was ready to surf by nine.

But there was another side to Davi. He had become a part of a different subculture crystallizing among surfers in California. There is a moth-to-the-flame quality to the thrill of the big wave. “I guess [big wave surfing] is an addiction,” surfer Ken Bradshaw once said. “I have no idea, but it must be like being on drugs. Because when you’re not doing it, it torments and eats away at you.” Many surfers in the late ’90s began to rely on an alternative source for that high. It was a jaw-clenching ride that could be experienced no matter the size of the rolling ocean, within the confines of a smoky living room or a barroom toilet. In the early ’90s crystal meth burned through the surf community like no other, especially along the Highway 1 corridor from San Francisco to Big Sur. “Adrenaline junkies thrive on the rush of the wave,” says surf icon Peter Mel. “After surfing a big wave, you get depressed, and you look for another rush. Drugs are a quick fix. Maybe the drugs fill the hole, because surfing is the best feeling—ever.”

Somewhere along the way, like so many others, Peter Davi began to surf that phantom wave. “We were close when we were kids and I was a hard partyer, too,” Curry says of Davi. “But then we went down different roads back in the early ’90s. I went down the road of sobriety, and Peter went in the other direction.”

Davi straddled his board in the Ghost Tree lineup, watching waverunners tow riders into the massive swells. Pro surfer Anthony “Taz” Tashnick was next to him. Like Davi, Taz was trying to paddle into the waves rather than use the tow-in. He hadn’t surfed Ghost Tree, and Davi was feeding him pointers. A heli­copter was now hovering above, the chopper blades punctuating the sound of the crashing waves. When a swell rolled in, it sucked the water out of the shallows, revealing the boulders that lay just beneath the surface. The waverunner engines revved, and some brave soul launched himself into the fury.

A roller approached and Taz prepared to paddle in. “Here it comes!” Davi yelled. “Ten feet in, 10 feet over, you’re going fine. Go! Go! Go!”