Zuma Beach County Park Guía

This three-mile long beach is a popular summer spot for the Valley kids. Plainly marked restrooms, picnics, snack bar, blackball flags...bring the whole barn. The area serves up a punchy shorepound, with mostly lefts during summer. Great place for bodyboarding, but gets heavy with size and is absolutely nuts over 10 feet. Your best chance is to catch it on a crossed-up swell, stronger from the south, with Santa Ana winds. A great family beach, except for that big gang brawl back in 1992.

At the very southern end of Zuma is a stretch called Westward or Drainpipes, one of the heaviest beachbreaks in Southern California. How heavy? This is where one of California's most promising amateurs, Jesse Billauer, hit the sandbar wrong and is now paralyzed from the waist down. (Today, he helps fellow spinal cord victims with his foundation, Life Rolls On). The wave is no joke, and it's always thicker, hollower and bigger than it looks. Big summer south swells wrap around the point, grinding out bathing suit-stripping lefts. Follow Westward Beach Road as it snakes a mile-and-a-half out to a dramatic rock cliff at the north side of Point Dume. Voted most likely to blow out.