"Don't go anywhere near it!"
Although Dylan Graves is of middle age, a stately forty years old, he’s no liver-spotted man, but an example of who we can be if we don’t fall into the trap of remaining in our velvet cages of couch, device, home.
The adventures of Puerto Rican Dylan Graves in his pursuit of the strangest waves on earth have been assiduously documented on BeachGrit, a website that may be counted as Graves’ biggest fan even if there exists no reciprocity of feeling, first in his ongoing series Weird Waves and, now, as he traverses the world solo.
Click here, here, here, here and here.
And here.
Here, too.
In his latest instalment, Dylan Graves joins the Australian surfer Anthony Walsh, in the otherwise waveless Kimberley region of Western Australia, almost three k clicks north of Perth, London to Moscow sorta distance, a hot and wild hellhole for the most unless you’re riding in a shiny Landcruiser and you got money and camping gear to burn.
No waves for the most ’cause the continental shelf along the Kimberley coast is wide and gradual.
The pair attempt something that has never been done: riding a tidal bore so violent it has earned a reputation among locals, some actual indigenous locals, as one of the coast’s most treacherous natural phenomena.
The wave they chase s born of geography and tidal physics. Along the Kimberley coast, the Indian Ocean forces wild volumes of water in and out of King Sound, a vast inlet whose constricted channels compress that energy into something resembling a moving wall.
In the nearby Talbot Bay, the effect is so extreme that the tide effectively becomes a river, surging through tight sandstone cliffs in a phenomenon known locally as the Horizontal Falls — one of the more disorienting sights in Australian nature.
What Graves and Walsh found was something beyond their expectations, and their expectations were not modest.
Walsh described the experience as dropping into a small, fast beach break while a Teahupo’o-sized wall detonated immediately behind him. On one wipeout, the current pinned him underwater for 38 seconds.
That number means nothing until you try it yourself.
The viewer is invited to join Anthony Walsh underwater. Count. At ten seconds you’re fine. At twenty you’re aware of your lungs. At thirty you’re negotiating. At 38 you’re scooping in lungfuls. And that’s on the couch, not striking for daylight.
Essential viewing, natch, and Dylan Graves’ best yet.
