Watch: Himalayas // 16.01.21
All season, Hawaii and California have been playing Hot Potato with the XXL swells, and this weekend the spud landed squarely in the islands (again).
Saturday saw huge surf at Peahi, where the trade-wind played havoc from mid-morning onwards, and on Oahu, which escaped strong trades so the exposed outer reefs sparkled under 20-30 feet of NW swell.
This clip was filmed at Himalayas, though includes a few waves from across the channel at Outside Laniakea. It's raw, a bit shaky, but gives a good indication of quality and includes a near-make - see 3:20 - on a backside 25ft paddle in barrel.
Below are a few more clips from the day, first Kawai Berry's paddle in barrel, and below that a ski getting rocket-launched off a closeout set.
Comments
John at Himalayas impersonating Cloudbreak:
Looks like a great place to die..
Just incredible!
FECK !
That ski launch was amazing.
Certainly a case of "oh my spine" on landing. For both the driver and whomever it landed on. Crazy.
Jeez, Outside Laniakea looks incredible!
Watched this last night, mouth a gape.
Just the naming of these big wave spots....it's just pure marketing brilliance.
'Outer Reefs', 'Himalayas' etc.
Is there anything else they could be named which would conjure up excitement/intrigue!?
Nipples?
Surely there's a wave called nipples somewhere?
There's Boobs in Torquay....which is fairly unexciting on most accounts (the wave that is).
Depends on the size. I've seen a guy get a dislocated shoulder - big Boobs.
Yep love big boobs.....sorry but it had to be said.
Yes boobs...........goood
Being a frequenter of the spot(s), I can only assume Boobs is called Boobs because there are a pair of fat soft waves there...oh and they're not exactly symmetrical either so the name is quite apt.
I see the naming of these lesser known spots more as grandstanding or just pure fuckery.
Not necessary at all, Hawaiian outer reef would be more than enough information. Maybe its not a secret spot anymore but jeeze its not pipeline either.
I surfed this break a lot through 90,s through early 00,s, never more than a handful of surfers out, mostly just underground guys, there to surf, no skis (in fact this spot was was anti ski, Hill house rules) , no floaties and none of these vlogfloggers preoccupied with taking films of themselves while spruiking their delusional "we are all doing this safe" bullshit.
Keone Watson, Kirke Bierke, STEINKE!!!, that crazy old boogie boarder with the goatie, Davis the roofer and others, out there for love not just for clicks .
Totally Mikehunt. It's cheesy as. I think we'll be looking back on this period in a decade or so and cringe.
Right now though, it's getting the desired effect....clicks, attention, sponsorship etc.
Right. Cause Koa’s Waterworld clip ooooozes secret spot...
Fair call indeed.
What's a wipeout/hold down/getting caught inside like at that size without floaties or jetskis? I can't even begin to imagine. I think I'd be out of oxygen even before I went under if I was caught inside due to shitting myself at the size of the mountains rolling in about to break on my human sized head! Or if your board snapped and you were caught inside! Terrifying stuff.
That blind ski launch is nuts. Coulda landed anywhere on anyone. Even the two on the left who went over somewhat more gently beforehand look like they may have collided on the other side. The wiser heads did an abrupt U-ey.
Kilgore : Smell that? You smell that?
Lance : What?
Kilgore : Jetski, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of jetski in the morning
It's raining skis
The waves in that clip were absolutely mesmorising.
Any idea what size guns the paddlers are knifing those hollow ones on. making the drops and getting under smoothly.
I read something on Pyzels Instagram post that JJF was riding a 10.0 Padillac.
With a concave deck.
mesmerising but tricky, not many made, especially the sets.
can't be fun forced to straighten out on a 20-30 foot wave.
I guess the skis and floaties make it much safer now.
Did you notice where a lot of the ski footage is FR, seems to be some sort of inside ledge and the bigger ones stand up and shut it down?
There's a left in the midwest that will do this at 5-6ft, quite a few times I got caught by something like that.
How big overhead are we calling this btw? Some were 4-5x? Some bigger?
Beautiful. Shame they don't make silent electric jet skis. (I guess salt water and electricity is a bit tricky)
I do ponder what the ideal jet ski / surfer ratio should be for water safety in a lineup.
Too few = rescues are compromised and too many and it may not be the lip that lands on your head.
Sangsta, see below
"The University of Western Australia’s Renewable Energy Vehicle Project (REV) has teamed up with technology partner Electro.Aero, a Perth-based start-up company, and funding sponsor Galaxy Resources, an ASX-listed lithium producer, to develop the world’s first electric hydrofoil personal watercraft, named WaveFlyer.
The WaveFlyer appears similar to a conventional jet-ski when stationary, but rises above the water during operation using an actively stabilised hydrofoil propulsion system. It is much quieter, more energy efficient and produces no emissions compared to petrol powered-alternatives.
UWA REV Director Professor Thomas Braunl said WaveFlyer built on previous work of the team that developed Australia’s first electric jet-ski in 2015."
Thanks seaslug,
Wow, great tech, and I really am hopeful for our renewable future with smart folks like that.
Practical applications leave me pondering and I would get out of the water if I saw one in the lineup :-)
cheers
Mikey charging!
Charging - on a board built for Reef Mcintosh
something like this i guess
how much does something that size differ from what west oz ,vic oz, puerto, crew use. If any. Keen to hear what crew are finding thats really working. Gun, large step up gear knowledge for paddling . How large a bloke is reef mac. I have had a read of the gun topics in forum, some good detail. Keen to hear whats working for every day (non pro) punters having a crack.
Good question
I don’t know how I’ll cope if my son grows up to ride a jet ski.
There’ll be fights at Christmas. My wife will say “be civil, it’s his life and his choice”. I suppose I’ll brood, try hard to be nice then blow up when carving the turkey.
Full credit to the guy around the 3:20 mark. Big balls to pull in and hold that line on that beast.
That guy is J.J. Florence
.25 speed and 1080 p on full screen
thats mental !
Beautiful.
WOW
where are the brazzos
Surfing Waimea, by the looks:
Hahahaha! Epic comment!
That’s a frighten lot of skis right there.
Looks like the kind of place where you could get drowned by a freak clean up, or impaled by an out of control jet ski doing its best impression of a scud missile. JJF’s paddle bomb was so good especially from the water angle, watching him wrestle that big board before finally losing his tail and going down in a blaze of glory. In fact that Jon Jon wave would go well with the Jon Bon song.... Blaze of Glory.
Great drone footage of the same session:
Damn drones, buzzing around, but they certainly get the best footage, although the jet ski eye level gives a better idea of what’s going down.
Hats off to the paddlers. Scary just watching.
Keahi making a beast of a barrel:
Phwoar!
Jeez, I enjoyed that footage. Tip my hat to the fella's paddling in.
Geez the reefs really take a beating on these swells no coral could possibly live through that surely. They are the ultimate sea barrier shame it is not replicated in other areas on a smaller scale rather than just dumping a heap of rock on the foreshore where it looks shite. Portsea front beach comes to mind and all the way south to the heads. Since they blew up the heads the erosion is crazy and could really benefit from shallow underwater sea reefs.
I don’t know at all memla, but surely the coral would have the crap kicked out of it. Given that Hawaii is a series of volcanic islands, it may just be basalt slabs out there, which will last for another million years.
Yes dead right forgot it was volcanic, and yes it is hard. Must be a hell of a cliff at the edge of the rock.
4.38 - fella way deep bailing with a few more coming .
How's the size of the sets after the JJF barrel, the swell obviously just kept getting bigger all that day, the set at 4.15 with all the skis scattering for the shoulder, fkn NUTS!!!
Oh god this is a bit indulgent, but watching this Himalayas clip reminded me of a fairly disastrous session out there. (note, it was probs about a fifth of the size). Anyway, I wrote a piece about it which follows . Here ‘tis. Sorry.
I started work as Art Director at Australia’s Surfing Life mag in 1988. I’m still not sure what an Art Director actually does. I never directed anyone, or anything. I basically made the pages look nice. I only mention this because the end of this sad little episode requires it as context.
In late ’91 I trooped along to Hawaii with ASL boss Peter “PM” Morrison, editors Tim Baker and Derek Rielly. We swam a shitload of laps in the months beforehand and, motivated by fear, cut down on durries and beer.
I’ll spare you the breathless observations of a North Shore first-timer, but it was amazing. Rielly declined to pick up his waiting quiver of boards for several days, and I avoided paddling into anything too fearsome, but still, rode waves as big as I ever had.
We’d been there only a week when the Pipe Masters finals went down. I’ll never forget the beach’s collective gasp as Tom Carroll performed The Snap – a small-wave move applied to a 10-foot thundering canvas. Tom won the day, and there was still a lot of day left. Bakes made the call, let’s go check Himalayas!
Himalayas is an outer reef, just west of Laniakea. We’d surfed Lanis a few days before at a gorgeous four-to-six foot, but today it was an apocalyptic mess. Across the channel though, and out to sea, clean slo-mo lefthanders rumbled through the Himalayas lineup. Two small dots signified surfers in attendance. I wanted no part of it.
“Carn, Gra, we don’t have to catch anything. Let’s just go sit in the channel and watch!” Bakes insisted, with enough honey in his reassurance that we soon found ourselves paddling out.
By local standards, this was undoubtedly kiddie-Himalayas, not remotely close to “proper” Himalayas. But for me it was terrifying. Fortunately the channel was well defined and it was exciting to make tentative sorties into the impact zone, and scoot back out again. But after an hour or so of playing cat-and-mouse, it started to get frustrating. The waves were just so amazingly perfect!
We’d dispersed a little by this stage. Bakes patrolled a bit further out, with the other two surfers, and I hung a little on the inside, thinking I could open my account with an in-betweener.
And so the cat and mouse game picked up pace. I calculated that if I really fanged it into the inside of the reef immediately after a set I could definitely nab one of the insiders. Death or glory here I come.
Soon as the last wave of a set washed through I paddled like a demon, in past the point of no return. A small set showed itself, and our co-ordinates intersected perfectly. I paddled for a wave. I really paddled for it, but it was never gonna happen. I remember the moment well: there was nothing – bar an awful void – between me and the trough, strangely far below.
To add to that, as the deep roar and sonic rumble filled my ears, an intense tropical updraft whooshed up the face to meet me, like this wave had just created its own weather system or something.
Being a timid surfer’s been an ongoing disappointment for me as long as I’ve surfed, and, so – wedged up there in the feathering lip of this thing – I backed off. No surprises there, really.
What WAS surprising, however, was the swift arrival of the next set. I turned around to see three surfers paddling their arses off for the channel, as the ocean lifted with an astonishing set feathering across the fucking horizon.
Just as he cleared the first wave of the set, in the feathering lip, Bakes turned to see where I was. Our eyes locked for a moment. I’ll always remember the look of Pure Horror on his face as he realised the deep shit I was in. I felt touched by his concern.
It was odd, completely snookered, with this first wave bearing down on me, being both on the edge of panic and oddly curious – like, exactly how big is this thing? The scale made no sense.
And so I got mowed by three of the biggest waves I’ve ever, or will ever, go under. I swam down deep as possible, got beaten up in the dark, waited for pockets of light to reveal themselves, and swam up through them to the tombstoning board, gasped in as much air as possible, pulled the board back to me, reset and did it again.
By the end of the set I was stuffed. I pulled my board back to me for the last time – the legrope now stretched to comedian’s hanky proportions – and turned to paddle in. There wasn’t actually terribly much of a paddle left. I’d covered a surprising distance back to shore underwater already.
We debriefed later that evening, over our standard dinner of salsa, corn chips and beer back at ASL’s rented digs. Turns out Bakes wasn’t quite so altruistic after all. He put his beer down, turned to me and confessed: “When that set came and I looked back and saw you there, to be honest, the only thing going through my mind was, Fuck, what am I gonna tell PM? I’ve killed the Art Director.”
"as the deep roar and sonic rumble filled my ears, an intense tropical updraft whooshed up the face to meet me, like this wave had just created its own weather system"
Got my heart rate up just reading that, great story.
.
You've got a way with words, put me right there! Scary, good work trying to nab one though.
The Art Director is dead. Long live the Art Director.
Great story.
Great read mate.
Drone footage or it didn't happen.
Haha !
Legrope now stretched to comedian’s hanky proportions, dude thats one of the best lines l've ever read, god I wish I'd penned it..........Giddyup
PS - Great read.......
Loved that Gra. Really put me in the spot (from the safety of sitting in front of a computer - that's about as close as I want to get to that sort of experience). William Finnegan was brilliant at doing that in Barbarian Days.
What brand leggie, Gra?
Good advertisement for it, holding together after all that.
haha, yeah but really, compared to 'real' Himalayas, it probs would have been the equivalent of a small fun day at your local.
Ripper Gra! The vision of the whole episode embedded in your mind forever no doubt.
Did T.B manage to catch one?
What length boards were you on?
Was it just as heavy trying to negotiate the shorebreak when you finally got to it after the beating?
7'6" I think. Yeah but seriously, that day wasn't remotely big by Hawaiian standards. I'm sure Baker got one. Shorey was fine. Oh and I may have had a little cry back on the beach, moreso frustration at my own fearful ways.
The timid surfer dies a thousand deaths, the brave surfer dies but once.
Yep, talking from personal experience here.
There have been times in my past where I’ve got my fitness and gumption up but it’s hard to recapture. And I’m not talking anything even remotely close to your small Himalayas day. Lovely, frightening story Gra.
cool to see JJF made a couple of bombs.
how was the line he was pulling, sick.
Such perfect waves. Terrifying of course, but perfect.
Outside Lani's has got me frothing. Half that size would be good, thank you!
Nice one Gra.
Gonna get me a ski just for this wave and call it the Sherpa.
The footage, it keeps on coming!
Click to 2:05 for great drone footy of Mikey Wright (red and white board) and others dropping into silk:
wow so clean.......
Well written Gra, I was wondering how hard it would be to position out there, you answer the question nicely.
That footage is amazing.
JJF 10' Paddilac Concave deck
First comment by Stretch!
I'm pretty much frothing on this thread. Keep it coming. Great read also Gra. cheers!
Not sure if anyone linked to this?
https://magicseaweed.com/news/ryan-moss-broke-his-back-after-outer-reef-...
If they weren' t on the white ski as reported, any word on the rider/s who were? They must have come down pretty hard off that.
Haven't landed yet Zen :-P
Ha ha- nice!
Mr G Murdoch, you are a class act.
Beautifully written as usual. A great insight in to how the not so legendary surfer tackles such a beast.
Please pen more stuff.
Even watching the first one, on the back of the JetSki, I was sitting here saying “fang it you fuckin idiot, we’re going to die here”.
No sign of @pitmove for these swells
Stu - injured ?
There was some footage of him at Himalayas. Forget where.
Nah, Ben was out there, saw footage of him on a big clean one.
I'll try and dig it up.
Kelly get any waves or just try to ruin the shots of JJ?
.
Those lefts should have been Kelly's second Cloudbreak.
Some pretty sick footage of the session on Koa Rothman's youtube, if you skip through all the talking.
Lotta talking but very good footage, water and air, from 7:30 mark to about 11:30.
Is that Koa the goofy at 9:45? Incredible drop and ride. Awesome how it threw open towards the end
Oh I think you see it twice from different angles, first from 9:30
Enjoyed that whole clip. Those waves are just incredible. Charging it.
wow, how was the crowd out there?!
nuts.
Would be pretty noisy out there with all the skis! Wonder if any of the drivers wear earplugs.