This clip is from Beefs TV YouTube channel, and it's the best and craziest surfng footage I've ever seen at The Wedge, in Newport Beach, California. How gnarly is The Wedge? Count the broken boards in this video, that will give you an idea.
A little look at surfing history and its ties to Southern California
As you may know, surfing originated in the Hawaiian Islands hundreds of years ago. It nearly faded out in the late 1800's, due to the missionaries and haoles who took over the islands. Right around 1900, a group of young watermen in Waikiki brought the sport back, and started surfing there on huge traditional Hawaiian boards.
What few people know is that writer Jack London, best known for novels about gold miners in the Yukon gold rush, like The Call of the Wild, and White Fang, was also a travel writer. He sailed to Hawaii, around 1907. He wrote and article for a women's magazine about the surfers of Waikiki. Thousands of miles away on the mainland of the U.S., Southern California railroad magnate, Henry Huntington, was showed the article by his wife. At the time, Henry was developing an area of the beach west of Los Angeles, Redondo Beach. Henry hired the expert surfer, swimmer, and diver, George Freeth, to come to California and give surfing and diving demos in Redondo Beach, to promote the new community.
For any who may be wondering, yes, Huntington Beach was named after Henry Huntington. It wasn't because he lived there, he didn't. The developers of Pacific City, as H.B. was called around 1905, changed the name to Huntington Beach to encourage the railroad man to build a route from Long Beach to Huntington Beach. They needed to attract more people down to the new beach town. It worked, and more people started traveling down to the sleepy coast town in Orange County. Then, in 1920, oil was discovered in Huntington Beach, and people flowed in, trying to strike it rich. Huntington Beach became known as "Surf City" in the 1950's and 1960's, the name made famous in the Jan & Dean song, "Surf City."
Back to the surfing, not long after George Freeth traveled to the mainland, a younger member of the Waikiki crew, Duke Kahanamoku, also came to California to show off his surfing skills. Over the 1900's and 1910's, Both men showed surfing to many beach goers in California. Freeth wound up dying during the Spanish Flu pandemic, in 1919, getting sick after a heroic act rescuing people from drowning. Duke continued to show the sport of surfing to people in California, and around the world, and became known as the Father of Modern Surfing.
Duke was alive to see surfing explode in popularity, driven by the music and movies from Southern California in the 1960's. People began surfing around the world, inspired by the movies of surfers on longboards in Malibu, primarily. While surfing was blasted to worldwide popularity from California, most SoCal waves really aren't that big. As surfing moved to new areas, short boards were invented, and surfers improved, they kept seeking bigger and bigger waves. Surf spots like Pipeline, Waimea Bay, Jaws, and others in Hawaii, gained fame. Other huge breaks began to be surfed around the world, like Teahupoo in Tahiti, Maverick's in Northern California, Todos Santos in Mexico, and more recently ,Nazarre, Portugal, all with gigantic waves, when the right swells came in.
While surfing and California go together in many people's minds, all of the biggest waves were located far away from Malibu, Los Angeles, and Southern California. Almost all, that is. There is one gigantic wave right on the beach, barely 40 miles from downtown L.A.. That wave is The Wedge. Located at the end of the four mile long Newport Beach Peninsula, The Wedge rises up to a tumultuous, triangle shaped wave, when the perfect swell rolls in. Faces can rise 20 to 25 feet, and it breaks right over the wet sand, which has led to many serious injuries, The Wedge wave forms by the Newport Harbor entrance jetty, where big swells get squished into the corner of the beach and jetty, causing a huge, dangerous, and really deformed shaped wave. For decades it was considered too crazy and dangerous to surf. As surfers began chasing huge waves around the globe, big days at The Wedge were ridden mostly by Boogie boarders, and only the best and craziest of them.
Over the past 30 years or so, a few surfers began to venture into big days at The Wedge, and they take a beating for their attempts to ride it, and catch the huge, but short-lived tube that often forms, then quickly closes out. I've shot video at The Wedge three times on big days, and it's just plain insane to see up close. The force of the wave coming down in such shallow water, make you continuously wonder if the body boarders and surfers disappearing underwater are still alive. It's an amazing site to watch people catch that wave on big days up close. Crowds of 300 or more people are not uncommon, as word gets around that it's big at The Wedge. This video has more great surf rides there in 12 minutes, than I've seen in all the hours I've shot video there on big days. It's well worth watching.
These days, there are now three gigantic waves in the Southern California area. They are all remarkable for different reasons, besides the size of the largest waves that form. The Wedge is one of the world's most dangerous beach breaks. You can see that in the video above. The next huge SoCal wave (sort of), is Cortes Banks. It's a gigantic wave in the open ocean, about 100 miles west of San Diego. Once holding the title for the biggest wave ever surfed, Cortes Banks is renowned to serious surfers, despite it's location. But still largely unknown, there's an even crazier wave, off the west side of San Miguel Island, one of the Channel Islands, about 90 miles west of Los Angeles. Shark Park is not only one of the heaviest, and least known giant waves in the world, it's also teeming with great white sharks, due to huge seal populations nearby. In a sense, surfing has come full circle to California, which took the Hawaiian sport and spread the word around the world. Now there are these three really serious waves on and off the Southern California coast, that have now been surfed, all rating among the craziest surf breaks in the world.
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