Photo: MROD MAUI
Teahupo’o gets all the love when it goes full XXL. There’s no other stop on the Championship Tour that gets surf fans excited for lay days when the swell is too big for competition, bringing out the skis and tow ropes and leaving CT athletes safe in the channel. Those code red swells are the stuff of legend, and they tend to be the highlight of an entire summer season when they occur.
Then there’s the version of swells that bless Teahupo’o with marathons of perfect tubes. The skis might come out. They might not. But if you ask just about any professional tubehound around the world — even the ones who don’t want anything to do with the place past a certain size — they’ll tell you there’s something special about the place when it doesn’t look so scary on your computer monitor or smart phone. I can think of a handful of professional surfers at the CT level and below who’ve told me without hesitation that Chopes at head-high and a little beyond is their favorite wave on the planet. Can’t think of another wave that’s been described to me so frequently using the word “perfection.”
The End of the Road saw a series of swells at the end of May that brought traveling surfers out of the woodwork. May 30, 2026, was definitely larger than that “head high and a little beyond” range so many people describe as perfection, but it also wasn’t the kind of Code Red XXL that sends our social media notifications through the roof. The 12-ish foot session saw mostly paddling, but that day eventually churned out a memorable tow-in bomb for local Matahi Drollet.
“Probably the closest I’ve been to ending my surfing journey,” Drollet said. “Had to choose between the boat or the lip… survival mode made me grab the rail and do a cutback in the explosion to avoid hitting the boat.”
