NOBODY REALLY KNOWS how many waves go unsurfed in Alaska. The state has 33,000 miles of coastline, more than all the others put together. (California, the runner-up, has 1,100.) Much of that coast is either inaccessible, facing the wrong direction, or blocked from swells by islands and capes. But tiny Yakutat gets a straight shot from the Pacific in the form of relatively warm water—up into the low sixties during summer—that arrives on the Kuroshio Current, the world's second-largest after the Gulf Stream. Waves roll through here almost year-round. The islands and peninsulas that guard Yakutat Bay are like cogs, their nubs protruding in all directions; with a dozen or more point, beach, and reef breaks, if there's any swell at all, it'll be breaking at one of them.

That said, there are no guarantees. On Josh Loya's first Alaska trip, in 1993, he and his friends were dropped off on an island by a floatplane. It rained the whole time, and the waves were lame. "Once we'd drunk all the whiskey," Loya says, "we just sat around the rest of the week shooting guns at the campfire."

Big waves or no, there is the sense of adventure in being the only one surfing them. On Mulcoy's initial 1992 foray, the fishermen staying at the Glacier Bear Lodge thought he and his three fellow Surfer riders were nuts. "Every night when we got back to the lodge, they were amazed we were still alive," he says. "They'd given us up for drowned."

Since then, Mulcoy has been back more times than he can count. Why? "Just to sit in the water," he told me. "Other places are beautiful, but I've never seen anything as dramatic as Mount St. Elias. It gives you peace of mind. And, besides, I don't mind the cold. I like it, actually."

Mulcoy and the others are a breed of pro surfer slightly different from world champs like Kelly Slater. Freesurfers don't compete much—"not if I can help it," says Mulcoy. Instead, they have sponsors—Vans shoes, in this case—that send them around the globe to gather photos and videos. It might sound glamorous, but here in Yakutat the Vans junket means 15 guys and three girls wolfing down canned food in a pelt-laden three-story rental house called the Moose Mansion that might have been designed by Dr. Seuss and could, at any moment, tip over. Beachley, Bevilacqua, and Mehlberg have rented a separate, much tidier bungalow overlooking the bay, but the Moose Mansion stands on Yakutat's main drag, right across from the liquor store. Someone got the idea to paint the thing green—all of it: walls, eaves, porch, chimney, and the sheet-metal roof—but apparently the rain came and the painter gave up. Four rickety extension ladders lean up against its mostly green walls; outside, a roller floats in a pan of green rainwater.

There are not many streets in Yakutat, mainly just two intersecting strips of asphalt carved through the woods and lined with a smattering of lodges and shops (hardware, auto parts) and a bank housed in what appears to be a double-wide. Everything is wet. This week the town is as busy as it gets. It's the height of silver salmon season, and all ten or so lodges are booked up. The entire fleet of dented rental vans is out bumping along the muddy roads, and the fish-cleaning station behind my room at the Glacier Bear Lodge buzzes late into the evening with packs of dudes in camouflage waders.

But the surfers are making cultural headway. Over the years, the town fathers have figured out that surfing could be big business, and now, in the person of Yakutat's biggest surfing booster, 54-year-old Jack Endicott, they're rolling out the red carpet. Endicott is the National Weather Service's "official in charge" of the 230-mile stretch of coast from Cape Fairweather to Cape Suckling; he's also a father of seven, head elder of the local Mormon ward, and owner of the Icy Waves Surf Shop, located in the back of his house. A self-described armchair surfer, he is a one-man welcoming committee, introducing the visitors to the local kids who've seen their pictures in magazines, supplying fish dinners from his own freezer, and predicting where the waves will be best.

With Endicott in the lead, the city council has passed a resolution in honor of Mulcoy and Beachley, proclaiming that surfing is a viable tourist industry. They've printed up the resolution on laminated yellow paper and thrown a party in somebody's house with an open bar and a rustic buffet of salmon and black cod and even alligator meatballs flown in for the occasion by a Florida hunter who fishes up here every fall. Yakutat's interim mayor, Casey Mapes, makes the presentation.

"Yakutat has great resources and cultures," he begins, launching a speech that will go on for a while. Nathan Fletcher pulls out a cigarette and darts for the door. Mapes points out that while most tourists who come to Alaska take something away—fish and game, mostly—surfers are showing that some leave the place just as they found it.

Whether or not the resolutions will find a place on Mulcoy's and Beachley's mantels, they accept them graciously. A player piano launches into some ragtime, and a few surfers scurry off to try the laser shooting range downstairs. Somewhere in the house a Chihuahua has been stepped on and lets out a scream. A second dog, a wet poodle, begins humping a stuffed orca and then pukes. It's a hell of a party.