It’s just a little clip from Stephanie’s iPhone. It doesn’t even show a set wave. I’ll bet it still makes you squirm in your seat. The video is from our last fly-out surf trip to Petrof Glacier, Alaska when we surfed all day in a thick fog and thought we’d be making an unplanned overnight stay. The plane, to our surprise, did squeak in to pick us up just before dark and we haven’t had a chance to return since.

Surfing in Alaska we get to see a lot of unusual things. These waves in Anchor Point a few days ago were cool, really cool, almost frozen, like a salt slurpee. I was mesmerized, in a desperate effort to try and capture this sight, despite the flat light, I shot some video and photos:

Alaskan slush barrel

The slush layer was about 100ft wide, see the dark water outside.

The set waves were about thigh high.

Heavy slush with ice chunks

We thought about trying to surf these, but the size just didn’t look like it was enough to overcome the drag of moving through all that slush and we were actually having a good time just watching! Besides just being alien like, one fascinating thing about a slush layer is that even a 20mph onshore wind can’t disturb the waves underneath. I’m really looking forward to finding these conditions with a head high swell. Can’t wait to see someone surfing down a slush face or getting barreled in a slurpee, probably call that getting slurped I guess.

It hasn’t really been THAT long since we last had waves. Only a few days really. But yesterday afater my brain had gone to mush and any chance of productivity had left me, I left the office and went to try out an idea that had been brewing for a while – tie a line to a bridge, jump on a surfboard and hang on while trying to surf standing waves. It all seemed a bit fantastic in my mind, but even I figured it might not actually work out. Talking about it certainly wasn’t going to resolve my curiousity, so off I went to our nearby river.

I took my handy pocket digi cam (canon G9) and recorded this fine film:

It was better than sitting at home. With a faster moving river and larger standing waves I think this could be pretty fun. The board I was riding is an 8’6″ and barely kept me afloat. Maybe I’ll go back when the river is flooding some day.