PRINCETON-BY-THE-SEA, CALIF. — Every winter, the world's best and bravest big-wave surfers wait for the call. And most years, the call comes.
The waves, the weather, the wind — everything's perfect, the pros are told. The contest starts in two days. You have 48 hours to get here.
The Mavericks Invitational — arguably big-wave surfing's most epic contest — is on. Waves, sometimes with faces measuring over 50 feet, will give surfers the rides of their lives. That, or batter them mercilessly — oftentimes both. Spectators attending equal parts party and competition cheer from ashore. On the line: A $12,000 grand prize. But, more importantly: Glory and immortality in big-wave surfing lore.
"It's got cold water, giant sharks, giant waves and giant rocks. It's like nothing else," Hawaiian surfer Jamie Sterling told the San Francisco Chronicle just before the event.
And so they come, the lucky invitees, to the deadly surf spot called Mavericks, a break that lies out to sea just beyond a jutting hill of land called Pillar Point some 40 minutes' drive south of San Francisco.

Rescue workers on jet skis, here watching Nic Lamb, help Mavericks contestants after rides.
Image: Eric Risberg/Associated Press
Men have died there, but the surfers come from up and down the California coast. They come from elsewhere, too, from as far away as Brazil, South Africa and Australia. Some hop red-eye flights to make the last-minute call. Local heroes Kenny "Skindog" Collins and Peter "The Condor" Mel drive up from nearby Santa Cruz. South African charger Grant "Twiggy" Baker, who won it all in in 2006, makes it too, along with the field's 21 other contestants.
On event day, Jan. 24 this year, crowds descend from near and far. Thousands of fans pour into the tiny hamlet of Princeton-by-the-Sea, overtaking it like a flash flood. They pack the bar and the outdoor patio and the dozens of indoor tables at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. They pay to enter a fenced-off festival area and crowd around giant screens broadcasting aerial and up-close footage of the competition. Minds are blown. Homage is paid.
Mavericks isn't just one of the most extreme things to ever hit the sports world. It's also a celebration, a tribal gathering of surfing greats and those who admire them. But more than anything, Mavericks is a spectacle to behold.

Ben Wilkinson takes a plunge during the first round of the 2014 Mavericks Invitational.
Image: Eric Risberg/Associated Press
Zoltan Szendro used to watch the Mavericks Invitational from the Pillar Point bluffs and beach. He was up on the cliff in 2010 and saw the sleeper wave that rushed in to drench and injure spectators on the beach below that year. Pillar Point has been deemed off-limits for fans since. Now they're confined to a festival area in a hotel parking lot, surrounded by a chain-link fence and anchored by massive video screens on either end. Either that or pay hundreds of dollars to get one of few spots on an observation boat, or watch the live feeds carried by local bars and restaurants.
So for many, a secondary sport nearly equals surfing's importance on event day: Trying to sneak, climb or otherwise finagle a trip up to to the old viewing spots. A constant procession of fans arrives at the access road that begins where Stanford and West Point avenues meet. Without fail, those fans are turned away by volunteers from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, who block the access road with a cruiser. Some find a path up anyway, but most turn back toward the center of town in disgust or resignation.
Back in the fenced-off parking lot, Szendro watches early heats on one of the giant screens. Tents of all varieties, from GoPro, to paella, to the U.S. Army, try to lure in curious fans. Men, mostly, dressed overwhelmingly in flip-flops, shorts, hoodies and sunglasses, sip from plastic cups of Sierra Nevada. It's about 9:30 a.m.
"This used to be a much smaller event," Szendro, a tech worker from nearby Palo Alto, says in the parking-lot-turned-fairground. "But it's growing year after year with with more mainstream media noticing."
A chorus ("Ohhhhhh!") rises from the growing crowd when a surfer in a bright green wetsuit wipes out head-first on the big screen. ("Over the handle bars," an announcer intones in his laid-back patois). The surfer bails off his board into a massive wave.
"This is pretty much just a festival," Szendro says. "When you could actually go out to the cliff and see the surfers, it was more authentic."

Nope: Sheriff's volunteers block fan access to Pillar Point at the Mavericks Invitational.
Image: Sam Laird/Mashable
But try telling that to eight-year-old Dominic Collins. He and his dad, Randy, are inside a surf shop at the harbor being interviewed by Carter Evans for a CBS Evening News segment on Mavericks. Boards line the small shop's walls and Dominic becomes the room's center of attention, charming Evans and onlookers alike with his earnest exuberance about being here on a Friday morning.
Dominic got into surfing after seeing the 2012 film Chasing Mavericks, which stars Gerard Butler as a local surfer. Dominic's been obsessed ever since. He now surfs often near the Collins family home in San Francisco, as Randy proudly shows me in a video from his phone. Randy took up the sport after his son did so they could surf together. He's letting Dominic skip half his second-grade school day to come see the contest for the first time.
Outside the shop after Evans finishes his interview, I ask Dominic what he thinks of being here at Mavericks.
"It's probably the best day of my life," the little boy says matter-of-factly. "I'll probably never forget it."
When you're eight years old and Dad pulls you out of school and Twiggy and Skindog and The Condor are on the water, who cares about bluffs or beaches or how things used to be?
The shop in which Evans interviews father and son belongs to Jeff Clark, founder and director of the Mavericks Invitational. Back in 1975, the story goes, Clark was a brass-balled local high schooler who became the first person ever to paddle out from Pillar Point and ride the gigantic break that hosts today's contest. For 15 years he surfed the spot solo, until finally getting two buddies to join him in 1990. He founded the Invitational in 1999.
Now, standing in Clark's shop, young Dominic says he wants to surf Mavericks when he "grows up." Who knows, maybe he'll even make the Invitational one day.
"Does that inspire you, or does that scare you?" Evans asks Randy.
"Yes," Randy answers without missing a beat. Everyone laughs.

Randy Collins brings his eight-year-old son Dominic to the Mavericks Invitational.
Image: Sam Laird/Mashable
2006 champ Twiggy Baker takes top honors at the 2014 Mavericks Invitational, which most at this year's festival ground agree features some of the best waves in contest history. Breakers in the 30 to 40 feet range include steep drops that lead to amazing rides and jaw-dropping wipeouts alike. But dominating in the final heat puts Twiggy over the top and earns him his second Mavericks title.
Sunset is just beginning when the festival mic-man calls the contest's six finalists to the stage. The 40-year-old Twiggy bounds up last, a scarf of South African colors around his neck and a blonde woman in a black tank top on his arm. Then the rest of the 24-man field is called up. Peter Mel — a local Santa Cruz legend and the defending Mavericks champ until Twiggy's big win — receives a particularly affectionate ovation.
Twiggy hoists the Mavericks trophy, a massive bronze thing featuring mini-statues of Body Glove's twin founders Bill and Bob Meistrell, above his grinning face. The rest of the field gathers around him onstage. Everyone is smiling. Other than the giant piece of hardware above Twiggy's head, you'd be hard pressed to tell which surfers reached the finals and which didn't make it out of the first round.
Autographs, beers and adoration will follow in a fenced-off area adjacent to the stage — then at who-knows-where until who-knows-when. "Call quickly, I'm getting drunk," Twiggy will text a surfing reporter looking for an interview later.
"This is your day, Twigg-ay!" bellows a man near the back of the crowd.

Danilo Couto (left) and Peter Mel share a wave during the Mavericks Invitational on Jan. 24.
Image: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
The Old Princeton Landing bar shows the Mavericks Invitational live on seven screens. But the best time to go is likely after the contest, after the awards ceremony, when $10 gets you into the after-party.
The sun's not down yet, but folks are already starting to trickle in and the energy is already palpable. A stocky bartender named Christian laughs when asked if he's worked here a long time.
"I really don't work here at all," Christian tells me. "This is my buddy's place. He just called me like, 'Dude, can you make it out? I need help today.'"
He produces a business card. Christian Gericke's actually a 34-year-old sales rep for Kelly Moore Paints. But these types of nights only come every so often in Princeton-by-the-Sea, the nights where bar owners have to call friends for reinforcements. So here he is.
Tattoos, some of them blue waves, cover Gericke's left forearm. He's a nice guy, but more conversation is difficult. Grey Goose and vodka for a lady. Maker's Mark and Coke for a guy. Pints for the masses. Tasters for the indecisive.
He's a busy man — Mavericks comes but once a year, if you're lucky, and you've got to ride that wave while it lasts.

Peter Mel catches a wave as rescue workers look on at the Mavericks Invitational on Jan. 24.
Image: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images