These days you have surfers tackling everything that swells from rivers in Germany and England to tidal bores in China and the Amazon. The latest type of wave riding consists of chasing down Tsunamis at their source. Hawaii tow-in surfing team Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala ventured up to Alaska to sit and wait, sometimes for hours for huge slabs of Glacier to peel off and coming crashing into the icy waters of a river bank.
As the sometimes 400 ft. high sheets of ice came toppling down it would produce left and right breaking waves that had rides lasting nearly a minute.
SurfersVillage.com was able to get a few words from the tow team.
“This has changed our outlook on big-wave surfing. In this case, we didn’t even need a huge wave to get a rush. It was the heaviest rush just sitting out there, dwarfed by this enormous glacier face, waiting for the whole thing to crash down in front of us and hoping we’d survive it when it did. I wouldnt recommend it for any one. I won’t be going back. This is not a new sport.”
If you want to see more of the action check out the links below. Thanks to SurfersVillage for the low down on the first and possibly last, as they say, surfers to successfully ride glacier generated Tsunamis at the source. What’s next?
www.deepwaterfilms.com
www.garrettmcnamara.com
www.deepwaterchannel.com
Bluebird Surf 