Out the back. Like, WAY out the back. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
The way we consume media these days can be a little misleading. For every unreal Pipeline barrel we see in a five-second Instagram clip, there are countless wash through sets, hold downs, and wipeouts.
But when we stop and watch the stuff outside the highlights, we see what real surfing is. It’s not just the act of riding a wave. Surfing is the paddling, the duck diving, and the ear-popping, chest-heaving hold downs. It’s the waiting out the back for too long, deciding to get an insider, then realizing that the set of the day is just about to break where you were just sitting. And it’s all wonderful. In February, the North Shore saw an epic two-week run of swell that’s still being processed.
What you see below is an example of the fact that those two weeks were a hell of a lot more than just perfect barrels.
“A solid, rising second-reef Pipeline swell is equal parts chaos and beauty,” Off Da Lip wrote on YouTube. “For every epic ride, there are many more massive walls of whitewater rolling through over the reef, and this vid shows just that.”
