The Search for Volcano Island
A new surf film skirts the edge of the unknown
Writer BY:
Ethan Stewart
This story was published in Issue 29. Subscribe: HERE.
The jaded amongst us will try and tell you that real, discovery-driven adventure no longer exists on a planet powered by Google and ordered by app-based cartographers like onX and Strava. But such claims are woefully narrow in both their accuracy and imagination. We still very much live in a time of great unknowns, be it by sea, by land, or the landscapes of our own minds. You simply need to go to the edge of your comfort and then take one step beyond.
Consider, for example, the new film The Search for Volcano Island, by Ben Weiland and Brian Davis. In it, a group of friends from California’s Bay Area chart a boat deep into the unmapped wilds of the Aleutian Islands in northern Alaska. They are all surfers and lifelong devotees of adventure, but none of them make a living from it. Instead, they are blue collar bros, motivated by a captivating fever dream one of them had many years ago about a volcano surrounded by the sea with waves well worth hunting peeling off its forbidding shores. It is a quest of mythic proportions, both in its physical challenges and logistical hardships as well as its romantic inspirations. Most reading this can well relate to the underpinnings of a life spent in pursuit of riding snow or waves (or dirt or rivers or pavement, as the case may be), but the overarching uniqueness of Volcano Island is the audacity of the idea itself, to head deeper into the very place where the storms we need to ride are born.
Surfer Brogie Panesi on a set wave at one of the few known waves in the Aleutians. It’s waves like this that captivate the mind of a traveling surfer; what else is hiding in this part of the world? Photo: Ben Weiland
For his part, Weiland, a celebrated surf filmmaker and multitalented creative known for his decade-plus commitment to documenting cold water surfing and telling tales less ordinary from the Arctic Circle, came to the project after being invited by its mastermind, Ricky McDevitt. Weiland has made films—Cradle of Storms, Island X, Coldwater Journal, and Under an Arctic Sky (with Chris Burkard)—all of them set along the outer edge of the known surfing universe and requiring thick wetsuits, boots, gloves, and an appetite for ice cream headaches. It was after screening one of these films a few years back that McDevitt introduced himself and explained what he, his brother, and their friends had planned for the unknown northern reaches of the Aleutian Islands.
“I think he might have been half joking, but as soon as Ricky invited me, I knew I was going with them. This wasn’t just another sponsored surf trip. This was real people spending their own, hard-earned money to go search for something special…I mean, for everyone involved, even the boat captain and crew, this was a destination no surfers had ever targeted. There were no known charts for many of these places. I wanted to be there to document it as much possible.”
I mean, for everyone involved, even the boat captain and crew, this was a destination no surfers had ever targeted.
The result is a nearly hour-long documentary-esque adventure film that inspires, informs, and, for those so inclined, motivates you to start planning something epic. Certainly, it is a surf film, but not along the lines of what might be called “surf-porn.” Instead, it is a film focused more on the spirit of adventure and questing into the unknown with a spirit of stoke than it is on the exclusive act of riding waves. It is also a bizarro sort of coming-of-age film that meditates on this idea of adventure in modern times. The main characters are all young men in their mid-twenties very much in negotiation with what their adult lives will look like, while the narrator (Weiland) is a man in the earliest days of middle age, having just survived a brain tumor and now readying himself for fatherhood. These voices and vantage points are balanced by the wisdom and grounding presence of elders along the way, like their boat captain Mike McCune and famed big wave surfer/cold water explorer Mark “Doc”
Renneker, whom they cross paths with at their first port of call. It is a potent blend for storytelling, and that’s before you even consider the otherworldly beauty of the seascapes and volcanic islands they travel. It is a story that somehow feels both futuristic and ancient all at once. Classic yet avant-gard. A pilgrimage into a long-forgotten place that resides just beyond the frontiers modern mainstream consciousness.
Ricky Kemps gets the barrel he's been dreaming of for years in the Aleutians. Photo: Ben Weiland
“Imagine being on a boat traveling an area roughly the same as going from San Diego to Seattle, and you only have a week or so to find waves. No real maps and no real known destination. Uncharted reefs. Huge storms. Zero infrastructure on land. That’s basically what we were up against,” sums up Weiland. “You have to watch the film to see what we found, but I can tell you that we only scratched the surface. It is amazing how much potential is still out there.”
“Imagine being on a boat traveling an area roughly the same as going from San Diego to Seattle, and you only have a week or so to find waves. No real maps and no real known destination. Uncharted reefs. Huge storms. Zero infrastructure on land. That’s basically what we were up against.”
Ben Weiland
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