Packing List: A Week Chasing Swell in Baja

The temptation with any surf trip is to pack for every possible condition and end up with a truck bed you can barely close. After a decade of running trips down the Baja coast, I have gotten this list down to what actually gets used.

Board-wise, one step-up over your usual daily driver and one true backup is enough. Point breaks south of Ensenada can run bigger and more powerful than they look from the road. Skip the quiver you would never touch — deck space and border crossings both punish excess.

Reef booties earn their weight even on trips where you are mostly surfing sand-bottom points, because the walk down to some of the better breaks is over volcanic rock. A basic ding repair kit is non-negotiable — solar cure resin, sandpaper, and a lighter for the peel-ply.

On the food and water side: a good water filter beats cases of bottled water for a week-long trip. We cook simple — one cast iron pan, a two-burner stove, and whatever fish and produce we can find at the markets along the way.

What we leave behind, every time: extra wetsuits (one full suit and one spring suit covers a week of temperature swings), a cooler bigger than 48 quarts, and anything that needs to be plugged in nightly. The best Baja trips run on less than you think you need.