FIELD NOTES: THE 2025 SLAB TOUR KICKS OFF IN CHILE

There are surf trips—and then there is the Slab Tour. The kind of surf expedition that starts with a few weather models and a half-baked plan. A last minute flight booked, a shot in the dark and before it ends you're riding the heaviest, best waves of your life.

Test Pilot, Nathan Florence is back at the helm and in 2025 his mission is simple: chase further into the unknown. Not just to find surf but Nathan wants to explore new coastlines, surf untested slabs and share the stoke with new friends he meets along the way.

This year's kick-off, Chile. Nathan grabbed his brother Ivan and the two left the North Shore on a slab-hunting mission that ended in the Atacama Desert. Dry as bone. Wild as hell.



Words by Nathan Florence.

"Slab Tour 2025 is all about exploration.

We’re looking for those niche little towns and lesser-known surf communities. Waves that maybe haven’t been surfed on their biggest or gnarliest days—or even thinking about new lines on waves that have been surfed for years.

Obviously, we’ll still hit the big, marquee swells. I’m not going to pass up an XXL forecast. But ideally, my focus is on areas I haven’t spent much time in. That’s what led us to South America.

Last year, we had an epic time exploring Brazil. We made a ton of new friends and surfed some insane waves. It was such a great experience, I wanted to see more of South America. There’s just so much coastline down there, so many different climates, and it can be really remote. For this trip, we originally planned to go to Patagonia, but we ended up getting sidetracked chasing the swell and ended up further north. We followed the charts and ended up in the Atacama Desert. It’s a massive, remote, and extremely dry area—averages less than a spoonful of rain per year. But it also has tons of coastline.

Where we ended up, we met up with some amazing people. We connected with a local bodyboarding community that had been charging these slabs for a while. Some of the slabs we surfed had definitely been ridden before by bodyboarders and a few tow-in surfers. But the main left we ended up surfing the most, from what the locals told us, had never been paddled into on a surfboard. So that was a pretty cool experience. To hear that, go out and test it, and actually get good waves was a huge reward.

My first wave on that slab wasn’t my best of the trip, but it was maybe the most rewarding. Just knowing it hadn’t really been done before, and then to ride it successfully—that felt amazing.

The crew was pretty small—just me, Ivan, and some local bodyboarders we linked up with. The conditions were raw. The water was brown the first few days, and there was a spooky feeling paddling across these deep channels. We didn’t walk much—we were mostly paddling from wave to wave. I think we clocked something like eight miles of paddling one day and surfed for six hours straight. And the whole time, you’re thinking: how sharky is this place? Are there things below us? There were seals around, which didn’t help the nerves. But we didn’t have any shark encounters—just that heavy feeling that comes with surfing somewhere totally unknown. Ivan was definitely nervous. He’s more careful than I am when it comes to new slabs. I like to get out there and go straight away. Ivan’s more thoughtful. He takes his time. And for the first few days, he wasn’t getting too many waves.

But on our last big swell day, I was yelling at him—“Dude, you have to go on one of these sets!” He was in a tricky spot, not in the perfect position, but a big bomb came in and I’m just yelling,

“Go! Go! Go!” I even started to think, “Maybe I shouldn’t be yelling at him to go...he’s not in the right place,” but he went for it.

He pulled into this wave that ended up being the ride of the trip—deep takeoff, clean barrel, deep on the foamball, and then exits and throws his hands up. One of the waves of his life, for sure.

That’s really what Slab Tour is all about—just getting out there. It’s not about guaranteed results. It’s about the chase. The curiosity to see what’s around the next corner, or what’s breaking on a reef no one’s looked at during a big swell. You take a lot of risks on these kinds of missions. You don’t know the swell windows, the tide, the local setups—you’re just hoping to score. And when you do, it’s worth ten times more than a session at a spot you know inside and out.

Because honestly, the odds are against you. When you go to places you know, you already understand the reef, the conditions, the forecast—you know what to expect. But when you head somewhere totally fresh, it’s a huge gamble. So when it actually comes together—when you get those rides, connect with locals, and explore a new coastline—that sticks with you.

Ivan got one of the best waves of his life on this trip. That alone made it all worth it. And for this to be the first stop of Slab Tour 2025... Yeah, we’re fired up. Hopefully more just like it." - NF 🚩