About The Clam

A historical tribute to a hundred year tradition of cliff jumping at The Clam, the Rough Water Swim, and the 4th of July at La Jolla Cove. All of it now effectively outlawed in the name of public safety, and all of it less safe because of that law.

What is The Clam

The Clam is a collection of cliffs in La Jolla, CA. The edges hang out over the Pacific. Two of the main edges curve outward over the water and meet in a rounded middle, forming the shape of a clamshell. That is where the name came from.

For close to a century, people jumped and dove off those edges. In the summer hundreds of people would gather, some to jump, most to watch. It was a tourist attraction on the order of the Acapulco cliff divers, set right in the middle of one of the most photographed coastlines in the country.

The tradition

The Clam was never just one thing. It was the cliff jumping. It was the La Jolla Rough Water Swim, the oldest open-water swim race in the United States. It was the 4th of July at the Cove, with families on the rocks and bodies in the air. It was an entire summer culture built around a single stretch of coastline.

The cliffs themselves had names: The Clam, Bear Claw, The Wall, Rock Pocket, Dead Mans, and others. Each had a different jump, a different entry, a different set of rules learned from the people who jumped before you. The knowledge passed down generation to generation, in person, the way every real tradition does.

1993, and what came after

A no-jumping ordinance had been on the books for thirty years before anyone seriously enforced it. In 1993 that changed. Lifeguards began ticketing, citations were issued, and the gathering scattered. The cliffs emptied out.

The cliffs did not stay empty. Sea birds moved in, and the rock that was once warm brown now looks like a snow-covered mountain peak, white with bird droppings. The smell carries on a south wind. What had been one of the most vibrant beach scenes in California became a roost.

Why the ban made it more dangerous, not less

In the hundred years before 1993, one person died at The Clam. He had jumped from Dead Mans, struck wrong, and died about thirty days later from internal injuries. One death in a hundred years, in a place where hundreds of people a day were jumping every summer.

After the ban took hold, three more people died. None of them died from a jump. All three drowned in the surf, in the wintertime, at night or near it, with no lifeguards on duty.

That pattern is not a coincidence. The safest time to jump at The Clam is in the summer: warm water, good visibility, small swell, lifeguards on the sand, and other jumpers around to help if something goes wrong. The ban does not stop people from jumping. People are going to jump. What the ban does is push them into the times when nobody is watching, which is exactly when the ocean is at its worst.

Winter at The Clam is a different place. The water is cold enough to take your breath. The only way out of the ocean is to climb a barnacle-covered reef. In a heavy swell a climber can get two-thirds of the way up before a wave hits the reef and rinses them back into the water. Five, six, eight attempts is normal. Cold water and exhaustion compound. People stop being able to swim. That is how the post-1993 deaths happened. Not from the jump. From the climb out, in conditions no summer jumper would ever face.

The founder of this site nearly drowned this way one winter. He made it out. Three others did not.

The argument

Every sport carries calculated risk. Skydivers train for years before a solo jump. Surfers learn to read a break before paddling out into one. Climbers plant pro and check it twice. Cliff jumping is no different. It rewards research, training, knowing the depth, knowing the tide, knowing the entry, and not jumping when conditions are wrong.

What it does not reward, and what no sport can afford, is being driven underground. The reason cliff jumping was outlawed and the reason other risk sports were not is straightforward: there is no money in it. Surfboards, wetsuits, ropes, parachutes, climbing gear. Every legal risk sport has an industry behind it that lobbies on its behalf. Cliff jumping needs a pair of shorts. There is nobody on retainer in Sacramento speaking for it.

In a country that calls itself the land of the free, an activity should not be illegal because nobody profits from it. People who trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety end up with neither. The ledger at The Clam proves it in plain numbers: one death in a hundred years of legal jumping, three in the three decades since the ban took hold.

Reopen The Clam. Not someday. Now.

How to jump at The Clam

This guide was on the original 1997 site and is preserved here. Whether or not cliff jumping is legal in your jurisdiction is your responsibility. What follows is what jumpers learned from doing it. None of it is a substitute for going down with someone who already knows the cliff.

A starting point are these general cliff jumping rules from Stu, quoted on this site since the late 1990s:

"Cliff jumping is an extreme sport and by nature is dangerous. You owe it to yourself to make it as safe as possible. I try to follow several commonsense guidelines. If you are new to the sport, I recommend starting slow, going along with someone more skilled, and coming up with your own guidelines. Just for reference, here are mine:"

1. Know your own ability. Don't push it.
2. Take gradual steps. Before you jump off a 50 foot cliff, jump off a 25 foot cliff.
3. Always swim your landing spot before you jump it. Check the depth, pick your target, and swim around for obstacles.
4. Know your physics. Your fall will be parabolic. Throw small stones to imitate your leap and get an idea of where jumps that are too long or too short might land. On high jumps, most people travel less horizontally than they expect. Don't jump for any targets that aren't double the size of your margin of error.
5. Land with your feet together and arms crossed over your chest or firmly at your side. Arm-slap is extraordinarily common for beginners.

Stu, mermonkey.com

Those are general. The Clam adds its own complications. The rules that the jumpers themselves enforced, in order of importance:

• Never jump in the winter or during a storm. Most important rule. Cold water, big surf, fewer people around, and a reef climb out that turns into a death trap when the ocean is heavy. The post-ban deaths all happened in winter conditions.
• Snorkel the cliff before you jump it. Learn where the rocks stick up and what the depth is for each jump. There is no substitute.
• Don't hesitate. Explained below.
• Follow the tides. Tides change depth significantly. Jump at medium tide or higher. Some jumps require a high tide and a swell on top of that.
• Don't jump at night.
• Don't drink and jump. Like every extreme sport, judgment matters more than nerve.
• Don't jump alone.

Hesitation, explained

The old saying: "There are two categories of cliff jumpers. Grand Master, and Stuff On Rock. If you fall, you are Stuff. If you jump, you are a Master."

Most accidents at The Clam were not from bad jumps. They were from people who started a run, got cold feet, and tried to stop. You lose your footing on the edge and fall down the cliff instead of off it. Most jumps at The Clam require forward momentum to clear the cliff face on the way down. Pulling up halfway takes that away.

Once you start your approach, commit to it. You are safer landing in the water than rolling down the rock. Good luck out there. Be a Grand Master.

About this site

TheClam.com was first built in 1997, when the cliffs were already emptying out and it was clear that what had happened there for a hundred years was not going to keep happening on its own. The site was an effort to hold on to the photos, the videos, the names, the jumps, and the people, before all of it scattered.

Eric Lind produced the two original Clam videos that anchor this archive, The Clam and The Clam 2. Without those tapes, most of what happened on those cliffs would only exist as a story. He gets equal credit for anything you find here.

The site is built and maintained by Will Childers, the founder, who has been jumping at The Clam since 1984 and who put up the first version of this site in 1997.