“If you fall, grab your board and paddle to the mud bank, then start running as fast you can. You can chase the wave down, get out in front of it, jump in and catch it again.”
That’s the advice O’Brien gives to his buddy Marshall Alberga, as the pair gets ready to ride a 3-mile, 20-minute, 35-foot tidal bore in Alaska. Neither has ever done it before, but according to O’Brien, “you don’t want to get left behind, freezing, on the side of the road.”
What a strange feeling it must’ve been for the crew as they sat in waist deep water, in the middle of a flat river between snow-capped mountains, waiting to ride the tide in the opposite direction from the ocean. At the 9:00-minute mark, the wave appears, and what a trip it is. While it’s a far cry from O’Brien’s homebreak at Pipeline, it’s still a 2-foot endless left breaking 3 miles from the nearest ocean.
What the wave lacks in size and power, it sure makes up for in length. Nobody, not even the most fit surfer in the world, can ride a wave for 20+ minutes, even on an 8-foot softtop. Still, the boys try. Jumping on and off the wave, they finally make it to the end (at least O’Brien does), so severely out of breath you’d think they just survived a two-wave hold down at 20-foot Pipeline.
Click play to watch O’Brien’s foray into the weird waves world. Speaking of which: Where was Ben Gravy and Dylan Graves?
Related: Surf in Wyoming? Dylan Graves Returns To The Novelty Spot That Inspired “Weird Waves”