The word “history” is derived from a Greek term denoting knowledge acquired through investigation. Although there will always be unsung people and untold stories, the history of river surfing in North America at the end of the 20^th century has remained largely unexplored. This article is not intended as a comprehensive description of people, places, and times that many may regard as water under the bridge. Rather, it seeks to identify and celebrate those who went first, insofar as we know. It revels in early promotions, outtakes, in-between stories, and the lesser known but crucial beginnings of a late 20^th century river surfing renaissance that occurred in North America.

This article seeks to identify and celebrate those who went first, insofar as we know.

Stories and commentary in surfing- and sports-media have long branded 20^th century river surfers and their accomplishments as “novelty” or “not broad-spectrum”. These are especially troubling word choices, because they whitewash groundbreaking contributions that were pivotal to river surfing history. A recent din of solipsistic crowing and sycophantic accords among contributors to the river surfing press seems intent on further eroding the accomplishments of those who preceded them. Equally troubling are narratives that equate postmillennial river surfing personalities with ocean surfing’s foremost pioneers. Such comparisons pervert the fact that those same individuals came to river surfing after seeing someone in our cohort doing it. They are akin to a leaf detached from its tree.

In the mid- to late-1990s young people began embracing alternative sports competitions like the neoteric X-games. Snowboarding debuted at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The world’s attention turned to the action sports, bringing the generation that pioneered the lifestyle no small bit of satisfaction. By the turn of the century only half of North American adults had yet tapped into the internet. Progress since has opened new windows for the recognition and promotion of the sport of river surfing that 20^th century river surfers simply did not have. That people capitalized on those new opportunities is commendable, but what our generation achieved without those advantages is definitively historic.

Locals Rule!

Transient surfers on passing sorties are dependent on those familiar with local rivers to enable their successes. Stationary river features have long been the exclusive play-spots of white-water rivercraft. When we river surfers claim to be the first to surf a river wave, it is with the full understanding that white-water boaters have been surfing those same features for decades, and in some cases, they were surfed for centuries before us.

Communities of river sports enthusiasts spring up around good waves, and community is everything.

Locals, traditionally the river runners, but progressively generations of river surfers, understand how to access, enjoy, and safely exit river waves. They know local rivers in all seasons, water levels, weather conditions, and complexities. They are there for big water spring runoffs, midsummer play days, and enduring low-water conditions. They watch out for the safety of the less-experienced. They develop complex relationships across years of shared sessions and uncommon adventures. They transmit local knowledge, techniques, and style. They tell and retell local stories. They build river cultures that enhance river environments and boost local economies. Communities of river sports enthusiasts spring up around good waves, and community is everything.

LOCALS RULE! ”They watch out for the safety of the less-experienced”. Kayaker Dennis Wills pulled this distressed body boarder into the eddy above the Lunch Counter in 1988, but when the current turned perilous it was determination, communication, and collaboration that got her safely ashore.

Addendum

There have been longstanding differences between some river surfers and other river sports enthusiasts about the importance of Personal Floatation Devices (PFD), helmets, and the risks associated with surfboard leashes. PFDs in earlier eras were especially bulky and unwieldly. They hindered surfers’ ability to remain stable on top of their surfboards while paddling in hazardous conditions. This article is rife with historical images of river surfers with little or no safety gear in sight.

The collective answer was for surfboards to act as our floatation, and we relied on being tethered to them. Very few of us wore helmets. These were not the right solutions. I myself very nearly drowned when my leash failed and I was separated from my surfboard. River surfers have drowned when their ankle leashes became entangled. They can suffer traumatic brain injuries from impacts with their surfboards, fins, bottom features, and river debris. Testaments on the importance of appropriate safety gear can be found here and elsewhere.

Dress for Success: Water safety signage posted in the privy near the trailhead to the Lunch Counter and Big Kahuna rapids in 2019. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Snake River, Wyoming 1978

North American river surfing history traces very precisely through Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick, Steve Osman and Steve Hahn, who first surfed the Lunch Counter wave on the Snake River in 1978. Their shared experiences as whitewater river guides and kayakers meant they understood surfing the Snake River’s abundant holes and waves. Varying degrees of ocean knowledge helped them to foresee the Lunch Counter’s board-surfing potential. Fitz says that they had no knowledge whatsoever of river surfing having arisen anywhere else.

Fitz and Osman’s conversations about whether Lunch Counter was board-surfable began as early as 1976, but neither had the necessary equipment to give it a try. Unfortunately, 1977 was a particularly dry water year, and there was little opportunity or motivation to test their theory. River levels in 1978 were considerably more generous. That year the river ran in the 8,000 to 13,000 cubic-feet-per-second (cfs) window that the Lunch Counter wave requires to be surfable throughout the month of July.

Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick guiding a commercial raft through the Lunch Counter in the summer of 1978. (Photo: Float-o-Graphs)

That same year, an acquaintance guide working for another river running company, Steve Hahn, returned from a trip to California with a surfboard. Hahn was the first to attempt surfing the Lunch Counter, but a lack of surfing experience prevented him from mastering it on his own. Fitz and Osman asked if they could join him in challenging the wave together. The trio lingered on the river one afternoon after work, and then assembled at the Lunch Counter to try their luck.

FitzPatrick became the very first North American river surfer.

Starting below the now long-gone Lunch Counter roadside pullout (river right), they all took their turn putting in, paddling Hahn’s surfboard across the channel, and backing into the wave. Each managed to catch and ride the wave prone that first session, but standing proved elusive. Then Fitz leapt to his feet and did a series of rollercoaster turns for about thirty seconds. In so doing, he became the very first North American river surfer. A riverside professional whitewater photographer working for Float-o-Graphs out of Jackson, Wyoming captured FitzPatrick’s historic 1978 first ride in the two pictures posted here. Fitz recalls that it took several more sessions before his companion surfers were able to join him up-and-riding.

Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick sets up his takeoff on the first ever North American board-surfed river wave on the Lunch Counter in July of 1978. (Photo: Float-o-Graphs)

Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick up-and-riding on the very first ever North American board-surfed river wave on the Lunch Counter in July of 1978. (Photo: Float-o-Graphs)

The three of them continued to board-surf the Lunch Counter for years thereafter. Fitz purchased a 7’6” Caster singe fin gun of his own to surf the wave. They began to put the word out about what they were doing and to share photographs. In time, a river surfing picture taken at Lunch Counter found its way into Outside Magazine, at the time a brand-new and very popular American periodical focused on outdoor lifestyles. River surfing had gained national exposure.

Fitz originally learned to surf at Higgins Beach on the East Coast of Maine. After brief stints surfing in California and Hawai‘i, he took a sailboat trip to Tahiti. According to Fitz, surfing at Huahine in French Polynesia significantly improved his surfing abilities.

A heartfelt video interview of Mike and Cam FitzPatrick by Ryan Dorgan is imbedded in an article by Clark Foster in the September 2018 Jackson Hole News and Guide. It celebrates over 40 years of river surfing history on the Snake River. An interesting aside at the very beginning of the film is drone footage showing a river surfer setting up a takeoff on the Big Kahuna rapid. The Lunch Counter can be seen downriver in the distance.

Interview with Mike and Cam FitzPatrick by Ryan Dorgan in Clark Foster’s article in the September 2018 Jackson Hole News and Guide. (Photo: Jackson Hole News and Guide)

Mike FitzPatrick is 71 years old, happily married to his delightful wife Lee, has one adult son, Cameron, and still lives within a few miles of the town of Jackson. He last surfed the Lunch Counter at the age of 67 in 2015. A shoulder injury and replacement surgery have forced him to shift his spring and summer recreations to whitewater cata-rafts, standup paddle boarding, and other pursuits associated with an active lifestyle in the Intermountain West. In winter, his focus parks squarely on alpine skiing at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR), along with some alpine ski touring in the surrounding backcountry. Fitz has been on the Ski Patrol for over 25 years, and he still works for JHMR as a ski-patrol dispatcher. He is responsible for various organizational tasks on the mountain, including coordinating field emergencies.

Fitz’s only son Cam rips the Lunch Counter every surfing season, is a highly regarded professional snowboarder, and a sponsored athlete for JHMR. Cam has skied at JHMR since he was two, and among his accomplishments of late is being a featured JHMR snowboarder in the 2019 Warren Miller Entertainment 70^th Film entitled “Timeless”. The film references his family history at JHMR, and includes a clip of his dad on the mountain in winter.

Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick surfing at Lunch Counter shortly before his 65th birthday in 2013. (Photo: Float-o-Graphs)

Mike “Fitz” FitzPatrick pulled out at the Lunch Counter in 2018. Mike was whitewater guiding for Mad River Outfitters at the time. Note the river surfers on Lunch Counter in the background. (Photo: Cam FitzPatrick)

Steve Hahn passed away in 2018 truncating the stories that he might have shared, but certainly not his pioneering accomplishments. He was a skilled whitewater guide for Snake River Park back in 1978. He was a very accomplished whitewater kayaker and alpine skier throughout his life. Steve owned a very successful masonry contracting business and lived in Jackson Hole until his passing.

Steve Osman and his family moved to Costa Rica in 1989, opening a naturalist touring business on the Pacific Coast. They specialized in white water rafting, sea kayaking, and naturalist trips. In 2000 they returned to the USA and settled in Bozeman, Montana. During his decades in Big Sky Country he has worked as a fly fishing guide, restauranteur, and marketed his fine art works as Steve Osman Fine Art. Besides painting, Osman continues to enjoy skiing, fishing, and family time with his grandchildren. This 2018 Mountain Journal article chronicles some of his good works.

Jordan River, Utah 1983

Possibly the first organized North American river surfing competition was held on Utah’s Jordan River on June 14, 1983. The Jordan River Hole Riding Contest was organized by kayakers, who opted to include a surfboard division. Hyrda Kayaks, Raccoon Productions, and Class VI Whitewater sponsored the event. A raffle associated with the event raised $275.00, a nice sum of money at that time for the America Rivers Conservation Council. In the surfboard division Ron Orton took first, Tony Logosz second, and Pedro Armington took third.

June 23 – July 7, 1983 Canyon Times article on the Jordan River Hole Riding Contest. Tony Logosz is shown up and riding. (Source: Ron Orton)

June 23 – July 7, 1983 Canyon Times. Tony Logosz during the Jordan River Hole Riding Contest. (Source: Ron Orton)

According to Ron, “The (Jordan River Hole) wave was the result of the thaw of the epic powder we snow surfed during the legendary 82/83 season in the Wasatch Mountains. The following spring flooding mitigation efforts included an excavation downriver of a bridge that produced a fun standing wave that we would ride pretty much every day after work. Although it was possible to get on the wave from the bridge wing wall, it was easier to use a rope to catch it, and then toss the rope and work the wave.” Regulars on the Jordan River Hole included Ron Orton, Tony and Jeff Logosz, and a couple of Hawaiian men. Although Ron does not recall the men’s names, he remembers that they showed up rockin’ a bright green 57 Cadillac with gold bumpers. Both worked for Delta Airlines and were transferred to Salt Lake City from the Islands. One has to wonder if they had knowledge of or had ever river surfed in Hawai‘i prior to that time.

Only known photograph showing the Jordan River Hole setup in 1983. Note the rope that river surfers typically used to catch the wave. (Source: Don Piburn)

An aside about the Jordan wave was how when Ron was done surfing or fell, he would sometimes hold his surfboard flat and the current would take him down to the bottom of the hole, which he describes as “pretty deep based on the pressure I felt on my ears”. Before he reached the bottom, he would tip the board sideways which brought him back to the surface. In hindsight he suspects, “It might not have been the smartest thing to do, as I could have been pinned”. Ron came by his audacious spirit by linage. His great grandpa would swim the rapids on the Snake River back in the 1920′s, and people thought he was crazy. Ron added, “Apparently if he would get stuck in a hole, he would crawl out of it”.

Ron Orton and Don Piburn in 1984. First generation backcountry “snowsurfers” atop the Wellsville Range in Northern Utah. Ron is packing an early 80s Winterstick Roundtail and Don has his 1983 Burton Snowboards Performer, aka a “Burton Woody”. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Ron surfed the Lunch Counter in big water back in 1995. He recalls it was a weekday in the month of June. Nobody was around except for his wife Michelle, who was sitting on the roadside bank with their infant and toddler. While attempting to paddle across, Ron was swept the length of the rapid. He climbed out way downriver by the third eddy along the far bank (river left). He had to break trail through the dense forest with a surfboard under his arm all the way back to the Lunch Counter. The river flow was on the high side, and much of the time the wave was washing out. It was especially hard to catch it on his 5′ 6” Rusty Preisendorfer Canyon shortboard. After multiple attempts, he managed to catch and surf the wave. He was exhausted, all alone in big water, and his wife was seriously concerned for his safety. It was a short, but none-the-less eventful session.

Ron Orton started backcountry “snowsurfing” on Guardman’s Pass in Northern Utah in 1979. He pursued river surfing not long after, and is still drawn to standing waves. An avid boardsailor since the early 80s, he channeled those skills into kitesurfing in 1999. He helped pioneer the sport of snowkiting in the United States, where his obsession is finding and riding the perfect wave—frozen and fluid. Ron primarily kitesurfs Montana’s uncrowded lakes, and snowkites the Rockies’ diverse terrain. A decade ago, he started a family-run, local kitesurfing business, Kites West, to support Montana’s local kiting community.

Ron Orton logging hangtime on his snowkite in 2015. (Photo: Ron Orton)

Ron Orton. 2020. (Photo: Ron Orton)

Snake River, Wyoming 1983 and 1984

In 1983 and 1984, professional surfer Steve Machin visited a childhood friend living in Jackson Hole for a white-water rafting and kayaking adventure on the Snake River. Just as FitzPatrick, Osman, and Hahn had before him, Steve recognized the board-surfing potential of the Lunch Counter. His buddy was from Hawai‘i and owned surfboards, so one day Steve asked to borrow one. He had no knowledge of other surfers having preceded him, and just assumed that he could figure it out.

The Lunch Counter is located at roughly the midway point of the West Table to Sheep Gulch section on the Snake River. That makes it a natural place for rafters and kayakers to pull out and take breaks. Many kayakers repeatedly portage their boats upriver to make cyclical runs through the Lunch Counter wave train. There were rafters and kayakers around when Steve first board-surfed the Lunch Counter, but there were no other surfers. It took a few tries, but he got to his feet during that first session. Steve was able to river surf the Lunch Counter multiple times during trips to Wyoming in 1983 and 1984.

Snake River, Wyoming 1985 and 1986

The Meistrell family of Body Glove International have longstanding business relationships and personal friendships with John Krisik and John Scott, executives at Life-Link International of Jackson, Wyoming. Croakies®, the original neoprene eyewear retention straps for outdoor enthusiasts, were invented by Jackson Hole resident Robbie Fuller. He repurposed scraps of spray-skirt material to secure his sunglasses in whitewater and on the slopes at JHMR. When demand grew, Fuller licensed Croakies® to Life-Link. Body Glove was the production center for Croakies® for many years. Krisik and Scott secured the patented manufacturing process, and began producing and marketing Croakies® themselves.

Krisik and Scott were also friends and river sports companions with first-ever North American river surfer Mike FitzPatrick. The Meistrells had heard of board surfing on the Snake River. In 1985 Scott and Krisik invited Body Glove to send members of their team of professional surfers and body boarders to surf the Lunch Counter wave.

Robert “Robbie” Meistrell, son of Body Glove co-founder Bob Meistrell, led that first trip in May of 1985. John Scott had extensive whitewater guide experience, so he coordinated the trip logistics with Robbie. Scott used contacts at the Jackson Lake Dam to monitor the expected runoff levels ahead of the trip to ensure that the Body Glove surfers would arrive when the Lunch Counter wave was breaking at its best. According to Robbie, they were all on standby until John made the call.

He recalls having to remember to breathe at first, because the rush of cold water literally took his breath away.

Robbie flew in to Jackson Hole Airport and met the safety and support boaters by arrangement. Body Glove Team surfers Jim Hogan and Brian McNulty drove a supply van full of camping and surf gear up from Southern California. Surfer Allen Sarlo and photographer and journalist Robert Beck flew in to Jackson on a later flight with plans to rally with everyone at the Lunch Counter, and later to camp with the team at a nearby Forest Service campground.

Brian McNulty, Jim Hogan, and unidentified surfer cued up on the first Body Glove trip to  Lunch Counter in 1985. Note the tent, kayaks, surfboards, and all the support folks in the background (Photo: Robert Beck)

In 1985 Robbie Meistrell was first to test the Snake River waters on his body board. He worked his way up the roadside bank, put in, paddled across, and backed into the first wave of the trip. He recalls being more than a little startled by the sheer power of that much moving water. The Alpine Canyon section is melting snow not all that many miles upriver. Water temperatures hover around 39 degrees Fahrenheit in the month of May. According to Robbie, the wetsuits they brought on both trips were only 3/2 mm and used overlock seams, not the blind stitch and taped seams available in their 4/3 mm Body Glove suits. He recalls having to remember to breathe at first, because the rush of cold water literally took his breath away.

River surfing pioneer Mike FitzPatrick was on-board as a river surfing consultant for the 1985 Body Glove trip. He met Sarlo and Beck at the Jackson Airport, put their gear in his pickup truck and drove them straight to the Lunch Counter. Fitz says Body Glove had asked him to “show them the wave and how to get on it”, but when they got there Robbie, Jim, and Brian were already settled in and had been surfing the place for hours. Allen quickly suited up and joined the other surfers. Fitz joined the pros as well, surfing on his 7’6” Caster single fin. Body Glove gave Fitz a nice wetsuit as compensation for his efforts, which he still has to this day.

John Scott coordinated the safety and support boating for the Body Glove surfers in both 1985 and 1986. John Krisik ferried surfers, gear, and photographers to and from the far bank in a Lavro whitewater dory. Whenever surfers were up and riding, the safety and support boaters positioned themselves strategically along the Lunch Counter rapid. They were there to assist any surfers who missed punching the eddy line, got into any kind of distress, or were at risk of being dragged downriver. Scott described himself perched in his kayak atop a slide-in-rock just upriver of the Lunch Counter wave. Another boater was settled into the downriver eddy, ever ready to turn into the wave train at a moment’s notice if a surfer needed help.

In most cases when a surfer heard the warning blast, they would kick out of the wave to get clear.

One of John Scott’s suggestions for safety during the 1985 trip was for each person to take turns acting as a spotter armed with an airhorn and positioned some distance upriver. The river was in flood stage during the 1985 trip, and the experienced river guides knew that branches, logs, and even full trees can blow through on the current. The spotter’s blast was also helpful to warn the surfers of incoming rafts, because rafters were not expecting to have board-surfers riding the Lunch Counter wave back in those days. A vessel that is upriver of a feature has the commercially established right-of-way over a vessel in the feature. Thus, stationary surfers have to give way. In most cases when a surfer heard the warning blast, they would kick out of the wave to get clear.

Robert Beck was on assignment to photograph and capture the whole mission for Surfing Magazine. In addition, Beck recalls that his feature in Surfing generated sufficient interest to get picked up by Rolling Stone Magazine and the National Enquirer. River surfing had gained transnational exposure.

Later the next year, in October of 1986, Beck went to Hawai‘i to shoot the Ironman Triathlon with nothing but his camera gear and an airline ticket. There were no hotel rooms available, so he slept on a friend’s floor the first night. He checked in with the media center the day before the event and found out Sports Illustrated (SI) had “hired” him to shoot the race. He came out of that first assignment with a double truck table of contents picture for SI. The image became one of Life Magazine’s Pictures of the Decade. Over thirty years later he is still shooting sports, twenty of them as a staffer for SI where over 150 of his images have graced the cover.

Per his bio Beck has, “covered Gretzky and Bonds as they set lofty individual records, shot the Red Sox breaking curses, Kings winning crowns and a Tiger being chased by everyone. He’s had sittings with Peyton, Kobe, Shaq, The Flying Tomato, Tony Hawk, Magic, Floyd, Misty, Usain, Kersh, Neymar, Pele, Kelly, Steph, Baker, Montana and Michael (the swimming one) to name a few. World Series…check. NBA and Stanley Cup Finals … check. Super Bowls and BCS Championships … check. Final Four … check. Golf majors? Check to over 75 of them. And he has ventured to Beijing, Atlanta, London, Rio, Vancouver and Sochi to capture the emotion, color, pageantry and action that are the Olympic Games”.

We deeply appreciate Robert Beck so willingly sharing his photographs from the 1985 and 1986 Body Glove Lunch Counter trips for all river surfers to enjoy:

Allen Sarlo, Brian McNulty, Jim Hogan. Lunch Counter 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Allen Sarlo cutback. Lunch Counter 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Jim Hogan cutback. Lunch Counter 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Jim Hogan snap Lunch Counter 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Allen Sarlo, Brian McNulty and Jim Hogan again. Lunch Counter 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Jim Hogan cutback 1985. (Photo: Robert Beck)

The river during the1985 Body Glove trip was running at around 13,000 cfs, which is big, brown, cold, and powerful water. Although both mediums are immensely powerful, fresh river water does not behave like salty ocean water. The boards the 1985 Body Glove surfers brought did not offer quite the floatation that they were accustomed to in the ocean. This led some Body Glove surfers to select boards with extra volume for the 1986 trip. Managing heavy water in a river versus in the ocean are completely different skill sets. John Scott described the surfers as being a bit out of their element, at least until they were up-and-riding.

 Their highest-level professional surfing delighted the Snake River locals and the riverside tourists alike.

All the surfers dialed the place in over the course of the day. Their highest-level professional surfing delighted the Snake River locals and the riverside tourists alike. Beck describes Robbie, Jim, Allen, and Brian absolutely shredding the place. Robbie enjoyed relating how his cutbacks would spray people sitting on the riverbank. Hogan figured out how to set his edge midface in a way that caused the wave to pitch and throw over him. McNulty was doing massive roundhouse cutbacks and whitewater rebounds. Sarlo was aggressively slashing upriver slip-faces.

If the surfers missed punching the eddy line and a kayaker wasn’t able to intervene, they would be washed down river. Beck described the lower wave train in big water as comparable to the same thrashing you’d expect on a 10-foot day at your local ocean surf break. You could end up anywhere from 200 yards to a mile downriver. When that happens, you can climb out on the roadside bank, scramble up loose scree to the road, and walk back along the highway with a surfboard under your arm. That would have garnered more than a few odd glances from drivers on the highway in those days. Alternatively, you could scale the steep bluff on the far bank and break trail through the forest back to Lunch Counter. By the second day the river level had risen and the wave became mushy. By the third day the river was running at 15,000 cfs, and the Lunch Counter wave was no longer surfable.

Some of the biggest names in professional surfing at the time absolutely shredding the Lunch Counter wave (Billy Meistrell).

The July 1986 Lunch Counter trip was led by William “Billy” Meistrell, son of Body Glove co-founder Bill Meistrell and Robbie’s first cousin. Billy explained that both the 1985 and 1986 Body Glove Lunch Counter promotions were all about the “biggest pros and flash.” Most wetsuits used by river runners of that era were available only in basic black or blue, that is until Body Glove surfing professionals came on the scene wearing bold, vivid, blazing color and neon. Billy described the atmosphere as, “Some of the biggest names in professional surfing at the time absolutely shredding the Lunch Counter wave.” The Body Glove trips formally introduced river surfing to the rest of the surfing world.

Surfers on the 1986 Body Glove Team included Scott Daley, Ted Robinson, and professional bodyboarders Danny Kim and Ben Severson. Daley explained that in 1986 the team flew in on day one, surfed until their legs were rubber on day two, and did their best to surf through sore muscles on the morning of day three. They all headed home later on that third day.

1986 Body Glove Team. Ted Robinson, Danny Kim, Ben Severson and Scott Daley. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ben Severson. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Scott Daley cutback Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Scott Daley. Lunch Counter cutback 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Scott Daley and fan. Lunch Counter cutback 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ted Robinson. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ted Robinson and fan. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ted Robinson cutback taken from the trail down. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ted Robinson fins-free. Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Ted Robinson, with Ben Severson and Danny Kim sharing Lunch Counter behind him 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Danny Kim and Ben Severson walking down, with Ted Robinson surfing Lunch Counter 1986. (Photo: Robert Beck)

To this day Billy Meistrell calls John Scott his “Lifesaver”. When John tells the story, he suggests that it is just a long running and good-natured repartee between friends. Billy’s tenor is noticeably more serious. According to Billy, he somehow became separated from his body board, but managed to swim to the roadside bank. Finding himself on the opposite side than everyone else, he worked his way upriver several hundred yards and jumped in to swim across. In hindsight, he wishes that he’d have taken swimming in a flood stage river without floatation more seriously.

I too would surely have drowned, had my buddy Seal Morgan not jumped in and rescued me (DP).

Billy made it across the river, but near the far shore he missed punching the eddy line that is immediately upriver of the Lunch Counter. That momentary hesitation set him up to get flushed through the primary wave into the downriver eddy or possibly through the whole of the Lunch Counter wave train. Billy describes John Scott scrambling to the river’s edge and extending one of his legs out to give him something to latch on to. Billy is adamant that by offering up his leg and helping him to shore, John very likely saved his life. There is credence to his suggestion, given that a whirlpool forms in that downriver eddy where individuals have been dragged down and lost their lives. I myself can attest to the hazards of the Lunch Counter wave train, having once been separated from my surfboard and flushed through it without floatation. I too would surely have drowned, had my buddy Seal Morgan not jumped in and rescued me.

Severson was the reigning 1986 body boarding world champion at the time.

When Severson and Kim returned home to Oah’u in 1986, their new found river surfing skills transferred readily to the standing waves on the Waimea River. Severson was the reigning 1986 body boarding world champion at the time, having won the Morey Boogie Bodyboard Pro World Championship at Pipeline that January. Kim shared how over the many years that followed, the North Shore bodyboarding crew began opening up the beach pond during the annual Body Boarding World Championship contest period. Having the planet’s apex bodyboarders and select North Shore surfers collectively ripping O‘ahu river waves galvanized the respect for the Waimea River that carries through to the present day.

Body Glove co-founder Bill Meistrell passed away in 2006 and his twin Bob Meistrell passed in 2013. Bill’s son Billy Meistrell has worked full time for Body Glove since 1976. At 62 years of age, he now focuses principally on their retail Dive N’ Surf original location. Billy has been happily married to his wife Karin for 35 years. They have two grown children, Jenna and Daley. Bob’s son Robbie Meistrell was General Manager, President, and CEO of Body Glove International and Dive N’ Surf, Inc. between 1974 to 1983. He ran the Professional Surfing Association of America in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He is now retired at 68 years old and lives in the Palm Desert with his wife Nora. The business stayed in the Meistrell family for three generations. Two of the Meistrell grandchildren, Nick and Jenna Meistrell, still work for the company. Body Glove continues to make products for active outdoor enthusiasts internationally.

Bill and Bob Meistrell, founders of Body Glove. Four generations including the founders, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all surfers, divers, and mariners. (Photo: Body Glove)

Robbie Meistrell “throwing tail” during the 1985 Body Glove International trip to Lunch Counter. (Photo: Robert Beck)

Robbie Meistrell, 2020. (Photo: Robbie Meistrell)

Billy Meistrell fully committed to a coffin in 2017. (Photo: Billy Meistrell)

Billy Meistrell, 2020. (Photo: Billy Meistrell)

John Scott is a 45-year resident skier and whitewater kayaker in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He is a former whitewater river guide on the Snake River and professional ski patrolman on nearby Snow King mountain. John founded the Paddle Shop which was the first retail store in the Valley dedicated solely to river sports. After working the retail side, John then moved on to become Executive Vice-President and part owner of Life-Link International, an outdoor products manufacturer that created brands like Croakies® outdoor accessories, Life-Link backcountry ski products and Simms® fly fishing gear. John also founded the United States Ski Mountaineer Association (USSMA) dedicated to the sport of ski mountaineering. John and his wife of 35 years, JoAnne, raised three children in the mountains and he continues to ski and paddle in the Tetons.

John Scott waiting for his turn on the wave at Lochsa in 2006. (Photo: John Scott)

John Scott, 2020. (Photo: John Scott)

Snake River, Wyoming in 1986

As a result of the Body Glove Lunch Counter promotions, Robbie Meistrell fielded inquiries from the multinational food, snack, and beverage cooperation PepsiCo about the feasibility of filming a river surfing commercial on the Snake River. Body Glove Team surfer Steve Machin already had an agent with LA Models, so he was ready with his portraits and portfolio when the casting call came. The Body Glove sponsorship and scoring the cover shot on the December 1985 issue of Surfer Magazine helped him to land the part, but his 1983/84 river surfing experience on the Lunch Counter certainly didn’t hurt.

Steve and two as yet unidentified actors were featured surfing the Lunch Counter wave in the 1986 Mountain Dew soft drink television advertisement. He recalls that acceding to the producer’s vision for what the youth of America would respond to was more than a little frustrating. They supposed that formulaically attractive youth, strategically placed people and props, and over-the-top dramatization by the river surfers would appeal to their young, hip, and active target-demographic. They wanted to convey a fun-loving festive atmosphere, and according to Steve, surfer wipeouts factored heavily into their thinking. The young blond woman laughing hardily at one of Steve’s watery pratfalls is the actor Katherine Kelly Lang. This was the year before she was cast in her long running role as Brooke Logan in the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful”.

Steve was hired to teach them how to river surf, and by his description it was no small task.

Steve noted that the other two surfers were athletes and professional stuntmen, not experienced river surfers. John Scott confirmed that the two of them were on retainer for the production, and that they were not at all river savvy. Steve was hired to teach them how to river surf, and by his description it was no small task. He spent a week before the production filmed coaching them to their feet. Part of that process involved having them lay prone and hold onto a rope while he steered them out onto the wave face. Their fitness and Steve’s skills as an instructor are born out in the clips of the actors surfing upright in the commercial, if not exactly ripping it. He recalls the producers even tried sending several young female actors into the river on boards, but without training it did not work out. Taking all the theatrics into account, the ad does showcase Steve Machin nailing an absolutely rock-solid backside snap.

1986 Mountain Dew Commercial at Lunch Counter featuring Steve Machin.

John Scott has contracted safety boating for a number of Hollywood movies and large-scale productions, including the 1986 Mountain Dew commercial. In bidding for such contracts, John explained that certain amenities are mandatory for the cast and crew. For example, all bids had to include “craft service.” Craft service workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and represented by a union. Craft work can involve camera, sound, electrician, and prop people. There are various art and set directors, hair and make-up specialists, and so on. Food is a craft service, and must be available at all times to the cast and crew members while they are working. All of the staff had to be ferried across the river, and there was a craft table set up on the far bank. Plates, silver, table covers, and other table wear were required, and the table was stocked with food, snacks, beverages, as well as various sundries like bandages, aspirin, and sunscreen.

Machin noted that besides the excellent compensation he received for his role, other amenities included accommodations and a generous cash peridium for the two weeks of production. There was safety boating backup and ready access to the craft table with all its bits and bobs. They even had heat lamps set up on the far bank to warm freezing surfers, which it turns out were absolutely essential. Eager to project the impression of warm summer fun, the surfers were cast in entirely too small and appallingly thin wetsuits given the icy water temperatures.

Mike FitzPatrick was hired as a river surfing consultant, safety kayaker, and rigger to help set up shots for the Mountain Dew commercial. Both Fitz and Machin referenced a raft hooked by a carabiner and sling to a taught cable strung clear across the Snake River. Its purpose was for alternative point-of-view camera angles, although none appear in the final cut of the commercial. Fitz noted that, “It was definitely something the National Forest Service would not have approved of.” The commercial’s upside was that its broad national release had an undeniable impact by repeatedly exposing tens of millions of American television viewers to the concept of board-surfing on a river wave.

One of Wyoming’s nicknames is the Cowboy State. The Mountain Dew commercial was filmed years after the peak of “country pop”, as exemplified in films like “Urban Cowboy” and Barbara Mandrel’s song, “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool”. By the mid-1980s real country culture was returning to its traditionalist roots, but there was still room to milk the “Dew it Country Cool” theme, dress surfers up in cowboy boots, and pose an actor in a cowboy hat surfing on the Snake River.

Machin river surfed the Waimea River in an era well before it became widely popular and world famous.

Steve Machin moved to the island of O‘ahu in 1988. He parlayed his heavy water experience and water safety skills into a position life guarding at Waimea Bay on O‘ahu’s North Shore. Machin river surfed the Waimea River in an era well before it became widely popular and world famous. Waimea Bay was already famous for its massive waves that attract the best big wave surfers on the planet. The big wave spectacle and picturesque beach are also a magnet for hordes of tourists and other not very ocean conscious people. The combination spawns the most demanding lifeguarding on the planet. In time he was invited to join the Hawaiian Water Patrol, an elite collective of water-safety personnel specializing in extreme ocean safety and water patrols for the world’s foremost surf contests and movie productions. Machin worked water patrol in eight of the nine Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational Contests at Waimea Bay.

Steve Machin is currently the President/CEO of Machin Marketing which specializes in brand development, sales, and distribution of many front-line action sports brands, energy drinks, and select spirits. He is 53 years old, has been happily married to his wife Christina for 20 years, and has four children. He lives in La Pine, Oregon, not far from the powdery winter slopes of Mt. Bachelor and the river surfing wave in Bend, Oregon. His recreational pursuits of late include ocean surfing, river surfing, snowboarding, and stand up paddle boarding.

The idea of a perpetual wave that never stops breaking was a revelation to many ocean surfers, this author included.

The idea of a perpetual wave that never stops breaking was a revelation to many ocean surfers, this author included. I once read a fictional story about an infinite wave that wrapped completely around a fantasy island until it was literally surfing itself. Mid-1980 surf magazine features, photographs, wetsuit ads, and watching the lip of the Lunch Counter wave spill over and roll forward on its own slip face in a soda commercial hinted that fantasy wave could actually exist.

Snake River, Wyoming 1988 – 1991

From 1988 through 1991 Seal Morgan and I surfed the Lunch Counter every weekend that it was breaking, and as time allowed during the week. Because the Big Kahuna rapid would start to break just when the surfing wave on the Lunch Counter began to back off, we lingered there well into mid-summer. Research for this article suggests Seal and I were likely the first to board-surf the Big Kahuna beginning in 1988. Seal and my Lunch Counter river surfing experiences from 1987 through 1992 are well documented in the Lunch Counter Trilogy: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Lunch Counter Trilogy: Part 1: In the Beginning; Part 2: Camping, Big Waves, & Bikinis; and Part 3: The World’s Eyes on River Surfing. (Photo: Riverbreak)

Our initial river surfing experiences were strictly trial-and-error. There were no other river surfers around to show us where to get in and out of the water, the safest places to ferry across, or how to react after the inevitable wipe-outs. I rented a dry-suit to keep me warm until I could drum up a wetsuit. We rode twin-fins and a squash-tailed channel bottom single fin that Seal shaped and glassed in his Ocean Beach, California fiberglassing/surf shop. We camped walking distance from the Lunch Counter wave, right where the parking lot is now located.

The camping and surfing that we experienced at Lunch Counter in those early years was magical.

We made do and over the years came to know that stretch of river in all water levels, weather conditions, and many moods. The camping and surfing that we experienced at Lunch Counter in those early years was magical. It was as though we’d discovered surfers’ paradise.

Don Piburn holding the Seal Team fish and Seal Morgan with the Seal Team twin-fin, 1990. (Photo: Seal Morgan)

Don Piburn in dry suit and helmet surfing the Seal Team fish, 1988. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Seal in big water surfing the Seal Team twin-fin, 1989. (Photo: Seal Morgan)

We began sharing photos and video clips of our river surfing experiences with frontline contacts at major surf publications, but they were readily dismissed as “novelty.” A collection of river surfing articles featuring the two of us were published in regional sports magazines between 1989 and 1992. This included a 1989 feature on Seal entitled “Surf’s up on the Snake” published on the front-page of the Jackson Hole News. The number of surfers riding Lunch Counter swelled from all the regional exposure, sowing what was possibly the first North American community of river surfers. When Seal moved away in 1991, he left his favorite magic twin-fin behind for me to use, and I was able to squeeze in one more eventful river surfing season in 1992.

Montage of Regional Articles featuring Seal Morgan and Don Piburn river surfing Lunch Counter 1988 – 1992. (Photo: Don Piburn)

In October of 2017 Seal attended, river surfed, and wrote about the First North America River surfing Summit held in Bend, Oregon. He was there as a freelance writer for OutThere Outdoors Magazine in Spokane, Washington. The magazine was trying to generate interest in funding for a similar wave structure in the very sizable Spokane River. Another version of these articles was published in a small publication in Ocean Beach California (now at www.obrag.org), the same SoCal beach town Seal was born in. The Summit was the first time he had river surfed since 1991. He was welcomed by the local Bend surfers and given a whirlwind tour of Bend’s nightlife over the 3 days/2 nights he spent with them. Great fun!

A Gathering of the Tribe: North America’s 1^st River Surfing Summit (Part I of II); A Gathering of the Tribe: North America’s 1^st River Surfing Summit (Part II of II). (Photo: Riverbreak)

Seal Morgan and his K2 Cool Bean, 2017. (Photo: Seal Morgan)

Seal Morgan is now in his mid-60s and teaches free snowboard lessons at 49′North, Kenpo in his home dojo, wake-surfs old Hyperlites, and regularly uses 1970s pool rider skateboards when he goes to town. He lives in the Selkirk Range of NE Washington State where he builds custom winter gear for locals in his sew shop www.boardwarm.com.

Snake River, Wyoming 1992 – 1994

In 1993 I submitted one of my 1992 Lunch Counter video clips to ABC Television’s America’s Funniest Home Videos (AFV). They noted no immediate need for it, but said they would hold onto my footage in their archives. Years later, in 1998, I was contacted by representatives of Disney-ABC Television Group telling me that my clip had been selected as a $10,000 semi-finalist for an upcoming AFV episode. Copyrights prevent them from showing my appearance on the show here, but you can watch a copy of my clip graciously provided by the Vin Di Bona Productions/Cara Communications Corporation affiliated with AFV.

AFV arranged to fly me from my then home in Hawai‘i to Los Angeles, where I was chauffeured around Hollywood in a limousine, put up in a nice hotel, and featured in a closeup on the show with my Lunch Counter river surfing clip. All expenses were paid, including a small peridium. I did not win the $10,000 first prize. My video never really was funny, plus I was competing against puppies, babies, and genuinely hilarious little kids. I came in second place though, which netted me two-grand in prize money. That’s not a bad take in 1998 dollars, to go along with a pretty good story. In the era before widespread internet use, each 1998 AFV episode carried close to 8 million households. Thus, many tens of millions of people saw my clip, and that’s without factoring in global syndication, reruns, and the fact it ran twice on the show. River surfing gained significant international exposure.

Don Piburn’s America’s Funniest Home Videos (AFV). Clip “Surf’s Up: River”. The clip was from 1992, and episode aired on April 27, 1998. Courtesy of Vin Di Bona Productions/Cara Communications Corporation.

I met Mike Morganson and Tony Jovanovic surfing the Lunch Counter during the 1992 river surfing season. Mike and Tony attended the same high school in Huntington Beach California in the early 1980s, before they both moved to Jackson Hole to ski and snowboard. They surfed regularly at Lunch Counter from 1992 through 1994. They were among a short list of highly accomplished river surfers the last year I surfed there in 1992.

Mike Morganson and Tony Jovanovic at Lunch Counter in 1992. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Tony Jovanovic at Lunch Counter in 1992. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Mike Morganson at Lunch Counter in 1992. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Mike Morganson and Don Piburn at Lunch Counter in 1992. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Mike Morganson, Tony Jovanovic, and Don Piburn sharing Lunch Counter in 1992. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

The three of us were among a handful of Lunch Counter locals invited to audition for a Toyota Trucks commercial filmed at Lunch Counter in 1992. Mike and Tony were selected to star in the commercial, and they invited me to be there on the day it was filmed as their guest.

In addition to the millions so exposed, its broadcast reach included airing during the 1993 World Series of Baseball, which alone ran internationally to over 20 million viewers! River surfing gained sprawling international exposure.

Pictures and stories from that day can be found in Lunch Counter Trilogy 3, appropriately named, “The World’s Eyes on River surfing”. Their commercial was broadly released on national television the following year. In addition to the millions so exposed, its broadcast reach included airing during the 1993 World Series of Baseball, which alone ran internationally to over 20 million viewers! River surfing gained sprawling international exposure. Mike and Tony parleyed their earnings from the commercial into a surf trip to Costa Rica.

Tony and Mike during the 1992 filming of the 1993 Toyota Trucks commercial. Image and story from The World’s Eyes-on River Surfing. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Tony, Mike, and production crew during the 1992 filming of the 1993 Toyota Trucks commercial. (Photo: Don Piburn)

Tony river right, Mike in the middle, and the Director at river left filming the 1993 Toyota Trucks commercial. (Photo: Don Piburn)

In 1993 Tony and Mike were featured on cable TV surfing Lunch Counter by a sports media outlet called Scratch TV. In addition to their first-hand accounts of what it was like to surf the Snake River in 1993, the report includes a brief clip of their 1992 Toyota Trucks commercial at the Lunch Counter. Tony has also posted a clip of Scratch TV’s raw footage, which contains unedited clips of Tony and Mike surfing the Lunch Counter and Juice Box waves. It has always been standard practice to catch and surf the Juice Box for as long as its pulsing nature allowed, especially when a surfer was paddling river right to get back to the roadside bank.

Scratch TV Raw Footage. Includes clip of 1993 Toyota Trucks commercial.

Tony was likely the first to board-surf King’s Wave in 1993, a stationary wave located several miles upriver of the Lunch Counter on the Snake River. King’s Wave can be accessed or viewed via a simple trail off a solitary highway pullout exactly one mile downriver from the Hobach Junction. It has always been a very popular wave with the kayakers as a place to practice their free-style skills. Tony describes the wave as further out into the river, thus backing in from upriver is the only way to catch it. Although catching it can be a challenge, kickouts are fairly benign. There was nothing particularly scary immediately downriver, thus it was a quick punch through whatever river right eddy that was accessible.

Tony Jovanovic was likely the first to board surf King’s Wave on the Snake River in 1993. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Lochsa River 1993 to 1996

Another accomplishment for Tony includes likely being the first to board-surf the Lochsa Pipeline in 1993, a river break located on the Lochsa River near Lowell, Idaho. Tony had heard about the wave’s surfing potential from a local kayaker, so he set out on a road trip to look for it. He stayed with a friend in Missoula, Montana and searched upriver until he located it. He notes that you enter the wave from its left side (river right), and that exiting the wave means sprinting for the nearest eddy line. If you are slow or unlucky and miss it, the currents will flush you well downriver. Tony added that a fun feature of the wave is that you can traverse to river left and surf that shoulder, but you have to time this with the surges of the water. Sometimes the wave goes flat and then it picks up and throws a small tube, thus the name “Pipeline”. Tony returned multiple times, and he and Mike surfed it together in 1996 as documented in Tony’s pictures posted here.

Tony Jovanovic Lochsa Pipeline in 1996. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Mike Morganson surfing Lochsa Pipeline in 1996. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Mike Morganson now lives not far from the many quality beach and reef breaks of North County in San Diego, California. Mike says that he doesn’t surf as often as he once did, finding the crowds of suburban surfing a little dispiriting. He is married with a son, and their family both supports and participates in youth sports.

Columbia River 1994 to 2000

Tony moved to Rossland, a small city in the West Kootenay mountainous region of British Columbia (BC), Canada in 1994. He first river surfed nearby Lower Rock Island on the Columbia River in 1995, and later was likely the first to board surf the Upper Rock Island wave in 2000. He describes both waves as “fickle”, but rideable in the heat of the summer. The Columbia is big water, and Tony explained that it is not a place to try to fight the currents. You use them to carry you out of the main flow to the safety of a near shore eddy. The experience served to prepare Tony for the even bigger waters he would later river surf.

Tony was featured river surfing Lower Rock Island in the local newspaper, the Trail BC Daily, on Tuesday, October 5, 1995. He took his river surfing experience a step farther by submitting a proposal to the City of Trail, BC for the building of a manmade river wave feature in Gyro Park. The City Director of Recreation was interested, but the project never got traction. A separate project of Tony’s included engineering a scaled down fiberglass feature that could be placed in a suitable waterway to create a mini-wave. He based his design on the bottom contours he had seen at the Lochsa Pipeline during a 1993 visit there at particularly low water levels.

News clip of Tony Jovanovic river surfing Lower Rock Island on the Columbia River in the Trail BC Daily, Tuesday, October 5, 1995. (Photo: reproduced with kind permission of Black Press / Trail Times)

Tony Jovanovic river surfing Lower Rock Island on the Columbia River in 1995. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony all alone at Upper Rock Island on the Columbia River in 2000. This was before GoPro cameras, and there was nobody around to take his picture while he was up and riding. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony related how he surfed King’s Wave, Lochsa Pipeline, and Rock Island all by himself. River surfers were few and far between back in those days. He reasoned that since he had gone to that much effort to get to such places, he would just commit and send it. His audacity proved useful.

Skookumchuck Narrows, BC 1999 to 2000

Tony Jovanovic is a native Canadian who originally hails from Creston, BC. It is only natural that a Canadian was the first to board-surf the ocean tidal rapid named Skookumchuck in July of 1999. It is located in the Skookumchuck Narrows section on Sechelt Inlet, a fjord in BC’s Sunshine Coast. Tony frequented the wave in both 1999 and 2000. The newspaper clip shown here is from the August 2000 issue of Coast Magazine, a British Colombia sports magazine. The underlined portions confirm Jovanovic was likely the very first to board-surf Skookumchuck in July of 1999. The underlined portions state, “In July of 1999 the newest wave-riding performance made his debut. But Tony Jovanovic of Rossland, B.C., did it standing up. With his trusty surfboard underfoot, he managed to claim the honour of board surfing the wave for the first time.”

Coast Magazine, August 2000. British Colombia sports magazine. The underlined portions confirm Tony Jovanovic was very likely the first to board-surf Skookumchuck in July 1999. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

In describing this picture of his first session at Skookumchuck in 1999, Tony points out that this was before Personal Water Craft (PWC) or jet boats were used to tow surfers into the largest waves or as safety back-up. He says, “This is a picture of my very first visit to the Skookumchuck Narrows. It was big water, and the wave was breaking a solid 6 feet high by 25 feet wide. There were several kayakers present, but I still had to put in slightly upstream and back into the wave in order to catch it. I just went for it, hoped for the best, and it worked out.”

Tony Jovanovic during the first ever board surfing session at Skookumchuck Narrows in 1999. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony Jovanovic sharing a wave face with playboaters on Skookumchuck in 2000. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony Jovanovic sharing a cutback with playboaters on Skookumchuck in 2000. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony Jovanovic bottom turn at Skookumchuck in 2000. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

In 2000 Tony was featured river surfing Skookumchuck by an extreme-sports cable show called Adrenalin TV. There were over a dozen kayakers queued up for the wave on the day of the shoot. One young woman is shown attempting to catch the wave on her body board. Tony is the only board surfer in sight. His observations, paired with his river surfing abilities, are featured prominently throughout the production.

Adrenaline TV – Tony Jovanovic surfing Skookumchuck in 2000

Tony had his heaviest river surfing experience at Skookumchuck on the very last day he surfed there. Here’s the story in his own words:

“Skookumchuck Narrows is by far the largest and most dangerous river wave I have ever surfed. I went there with a girlfriend. We arrived late in the day, and I was not planning on surfing at all. We made the hike to Roland’s Point, where the wave is located, simply to check it out. The tide was just starting to push up the Narrows.

Low and behold, I ran into several pro-kayakers I had met there previously, and they persuaded me to give it a go. I ran back and forth between my truck and the point mustering all of my gear. When I finally had everything by the shore, it was almost an hour later and the wave was going full bore. Usually I had a pre-game routine of stretching and visualization, but I had to forgo all that and just go for it.

The water was probably the strongest I have ever been in. After surfing a wave, I missed the exit eddy and was forced to take the whitewater tour. Fortunately, my friend the kayaker came after me. I grabbed the rope loop tied to the back of his boat. At one point while we were getting flushed, he called out, “You’d better hold on tight. We have a whirlpool developing in front of us!”

That was by far the heaviest situation I have ever been in, and it left me pretty spooked. It sounds incredible, but it’s a true story (Tony Jovanovic).

In a matter of seconds, we went from being horizontal on the water surface to getting corkscrewed vertically and being pulled down. I held on for dear life as the vortex spun us. At one point, all I could see was a small hole of light looking upwards as we were being drawn down. I suspect I was nearly ten feet below the surface, but still in a vortex of air. I never had to inhale water. His boat was also vertical, and he was paddling like mad to get us up and out of there. I was fully extended laying on my surfboard. The power was so strong that my right shoulder started to tear, and at that point I just had to let go. I came off my board and was being spun and bounced off my friend’s boat. Luckily, the vortex dissipated and released us up and out onto the surface. I was thrown out of the whirlpool on the main-flow side, and he exited on the shore side. He quickly returned and once we were reconnected, he pulled me into the shore side eddy. The sun was going down, and my girlfriend and the other kayakers had no idea what had become of us. It took him another half hour to paddle back to Roland’s Point along the shoreside bank. That was by far the heaviest situation I have ever been in, and it left me pretty spooked. It sounds incredible, but it’s a true story.”

Tony Jovanovic continues to live and work in the town of Squamish, along the south coast of BC. He was so taken by Costa Rica and its waves, that he and his wife now reside there for half of the year. He shared that he picked up a couple of new surfboards this year, with his 6’ 4’ double channel swallow tailed twin fin now his magic go-to board. He has applied a lifelong interest in photography to capturing the natural beauty, wildlife, and waves of his adopted home. Surfing water photography has become a particular passion, and his photos have been featured in a number of regional magazines. You can view Tony’s photography on his website at www.viadeagua.com.

Tony Jovanovic making a late drop at Puerto Sandino, Nicaragua in 2016. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Tony Jovanovic covering a Costa Rican surf contest. See more of his photography @ www.viadeagua.com. (Photo: Tony Jovanovic)

Conclusion

The attention span of the general public is notoriously short, and what was once celebrated is hastily forgotten. Firsthand accounts from North America’s earliest river surfers are few, and the chemical shelf life of their film and video technologies have long since lapsed. Many individuals who lived it are no longer with us to share their stories. It is increasingly important that authenticated stories, photographs, films, and video clips are ferreted out, preserved, and shared. Some accounts will undoubtably arise that extend or even supplant the many truths written here. That is precisely the point: To uncover as many dormant narratives from the eldest devotees of our sport as possible. River surfers in the late 20^th century made extraordinary contributions worthy of recognition, respect, and preservation before time takes an even greater toll on what little is left.

About the Author

Don Piburn is a surfer, ’70s outlaw skateboarder, ’80s backcountry snowboarder, and a late ’80s Snake River surfer. He moved to Oah’u in the early ’90s where he completed a 35-year career teaching infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities. Recently retired, he now surfs ocean and lately Waimea River waves. He surfs and fishes from his kayaks on windward reefs, and regularly hikes with his Hawai‘i born and raised wife, Janice.

Don Piburn; northwest swell at Jocko’s on Oahu’s North Shore in 2016. (Photo: John Galera)

Don Piburn at the trailhead to Lunch Counter and Big Kahuna rapids. Don P. and Seal Morgan attempted a foray to surf there in June of 2019, but an eleventh-hour warm-snap pushed river levels beyond its 15,000 cfs upper limit. (Photo: Don Piburn)

The post The History of River Surfing in North America: 1975 to 2000 appeared first on Riverbreak.

Don Piburn

“Determined to have my friend’s back in whatever the hell was going on, I leapt into the current intent on doing what ocean surfers call a “duck dive” under the primary wave. That didn’t work and I found myself hung up in the wave hydraulic for a long moment or two. When I got loose and crested the secondary wave, I could see Seal pushing the surfboard with one hand toward the guy now floating toward the flat water section the rapid empties into well downstream. Seal clearly had everything under control, so I punched the eddy line and climbed back out of the river.

It turned out that the guy had tried to jump out of the raft and catch the wave, but he had no leash and absolutely no floatation, which river rafters are supposed to wear at all times. Seal told me later that the guy just disappeared below the surface immediately. With no floatation of any kind, he was clearly going to drown. It had almost been a life-ending mistake for this man.”

Seal Morgan

“Yeah, the guy was just gone. He had no idea what he was getting into and was hauled down the instant he hit the water. By the time I got to him, he had been pulled under numerous times. He was dragged through the surf wave washing machine, the secondary wave eddy line, and then pummeled underwater through the churning rapid section directly below that. He managed to get to the surface a couple of times for air – barely. Once he was out of the rapids he surfaced, but he was done. He wasn’t swimming; he was just trying to float on the surface and was puking up water at the same time. If he stayed where he was, all he had to look forward to was being dragged into the next set of rapids around the bend downriver. There weren’t any kayakers close enough to get to him. He was too tired to swim much less paddle, so I had him grab my leash and I ferried him sideways across the current into slack water where the raft he had jumped off in the first place had pulled out. His people were very happy to see him.”

Don Piburn

“My grasp of the kid’s circumstances following that wipeout ended up saving my life. Well, Seal saved my life. Only weeks later, I too found myself separated from my surfboard after the ankle attachment on my surf leash failed. We are aware of current discussions here on the Riverbreak website detailing the dangers of leg ropes in wild rivers and we support that new knowledge, but that hadn’t been our experience up to that point. Life vests back then were very bulky and absolutely interfered with a surfer’s ability to remain stable on our boards while we paddled. The ability to paddle was critical to a surfer’s control and safety on the water, so we relied on our surfboard leashes.”

Seal Morgan

“It’s obvious that we aren’t wearing vests in any of our still photos or video clips.”
 
 
 
 
 
 

Don Piburn

“I am a very strong swimmer, and every year for several months leading up to the river surfing season, I would swim laps to train for the hazards of the river. I swam 1,000 to 1,200 yards every weekday before lunch in our University swimming pool. That fact made absolutely no difference whatsoever the very instant my leash detached and I went one way while my surfboard went another. Without floatation I was completely at the mercy of flood stage currents that were vastly stronger than me at my very best. The currents seemed intent on dragging my sorry ass down for good. After struggling for what seemed like a very long time, but probably wasn’t that long at all, I ran out of the energy necessary to fight it. At that moment I looked up and saw Seal coming downstream pushing my board with one hand toward me. By then I was completely exhausted and my only thought was to fight to stay afloat until he gets here, and live.”

Seal Morgan

“DP was on his high school swim team and had surfed for decades, but that river would not float him after his leash let go. We both were always ready to go in after one another. For at least 50% of the time early in the season, the two of us were liable to be the only ones anywhere in or near the water. Wetsuits were always zipped up, leashes were always on, and eyes were continuously scanning for hazards. Watching each other’s back was mandatory.

It was bigger water when DP went down than when the rafter kid lost his board those few weeks earlier. This was medium to big water, and I saw him go under and the board spit out the back of the wave with the leash flapping in the wind. He got pulled down three times and came up three times, before I got his board to him downstream. Sucked down and held down hand-in-the-air kind of sucked down. Gnarly, was the only word for it. My only thought quite honestly, was “Oh Sh&@!” as I leapt off the rock when he didn’t come up. From the previous incident, we had learned that the person in the water typically gets pushed downstream faster than the board floating and bouncing across the surface, so I went after the board while trying to keep him in sight. A 5’10″ short-board paddles lousy with the weight of two fully grown men, so it makes for a terrible rescue platform. Retrieving that second board ensured we could both make it back to shore before being dragged through the next series of rapids downstream. To put it simply, get the board, get to the person, and do it all damn fast. I was glad to be a strong paddler in those days.”

Seal Morgan

“Just upriver of Lunch Counter there is one big-ass hole in the middle of the river called the Big Kahuna rapid. There was no wave face on it to speak of back then, so it was mostly a kayaker play spot. We found it really hard to board surf. You paddled backwards until you dropped over the leading ledge and into a hole. It was so weird. You had to get to your feet as quickly as possible, because once you stood up you found yourself chest-deep to the level of the river flowing all around you. Until you got on your feet, you couldn’t see what was coming at you from upriver. It was like standing in a big garbage can made out of air surrounded by water.”

Don Piburn

“Kahuna would start to break just when the surfing wave on the Counter started to back off. It would suddenly get big, inviting, and it was always easy enough to catch the soup or white water of the wave. But there was almost no wave face to stand and surf on. I appreciate your trash can analogy, as I am only about 5′ 7″ and on Kahuna I just wasn’t tall enough to see much of the upstream traffic coming at me. I remember trying to guess roughly how long it would take an upstream raft to reach Kahuna. I would jump in hoping to surf the wave just a little less time than that. More than once I was suddenly looking face on at the bow of a huge raft dropping into the same hole I was standing in. It could get heavy just trying to get the hell out of the way.

Surfing Kahuna is a good example of how we as surfers were continuously ferreting out new waves to surf. The search for new waves is as old as the sport of surfing itself. As a river runner, I would explore for surfer friendly waves any time I floated an unknown section of river. I still kayak a lot in the ocean, but at that time I discovered I could get invited on permitted river trips if I was willing to act as a raft captain. It wasn’t a bad gig, really. Everyone wanted to kayak, and I was willing transport the gear, beer, and significant others. The 1992 photo is of one particular float trip deep in Idaho wilderness on the wild and scenic stretch of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. That is Seal’s twinfin closest to the rafts in the black and grey board bag among all the kayaks and river gear. I don’t have pictures of the few small waves I tried to surf on that trip, but I have a vivid memory of one particular two meter haystack of unbroken wave face mid-river not far upstream from the Salmon River confluence. It was big water on that trip. One of our kayakers dislocated his shoulder and had to be helicoptered out, and then another kayaker very nearly drowned in a recircular only a quarter mile upstream of the wave I am thinking of. With all that drama playing out, it would not have been an appropriate time to insist that we all pull out and scout, let alone unpack and let me take a crack at surfing it. Rivers change after 24 years, but in my dreams I will always wonder if it’s still up there.”

Ferreting out new waves to surf along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River

Seal Morgan

“The couple I mentioned earlier were the only two boogie riders we ever saw there until I took my step-kids into Lunch Counter in early summer 1991. The river had really gone down since DP and I surfed it a couple weeks earlier at max flood, but it was late in the season just before the main summer crowd showed up. It was a small whitewater-line lateral wave that was way too small for a board. The kids had watched DP and I surf it earlier that spring but they never thought that they would! I thought it would be screaming fun for three little kids raised at the beach, so I grabbed the big boogie board from the Jeep and asked ‘who’s first?” The 8 year old twin JJ was, and we launched with me in my Duckfeet lifeguard swim fins and bracing him against the board underneath while we bashed into it. He immediately wanted to do it again but his lips were too numb to talk. That water was still pretty cold.

His twin sister Nevie was extremely scared due to a near-drowning incident a couple years earlier, an “I can’t put my head underwater” kind of fear. She just couldn’t bring herself to go into the water so it was Nelle the oldest that went screaming into the wave next. She screamed the whole time. Loudly. In my ear. Too much fun!

After JJ’s second run his teeth were chattering so hard his mom wouldn’t let him go again. Both kids were almost blue (no wetsuits for them) and trying hard to not shiver but they had gigantic grins on their faces as they bounced around on the rocks on the bank like magpies wrapped in mom’s huge beach towels afterwards. They were seriously stoked. Nevie was in a full panic. She wanted to go but was shaking her head so hard that it looked like it hurt, so I scooted into the water alone for one last boogie board run at the dinky little wave and was kicking out towards midstream when the family started yelling for me to come back. Nevie had changed her mind. Yes, then no, then yes the entire time the other two were surfing it. This was her last chance and she knew it. Into the water she came so I kicked us out to mid-river for the final run.

The instant the current grabbed us she changed her mind again and, very calmly, looked over her shoulder and said “Seal I don’t want to do this, can we go back now?” Which of course was far too late to do anything about it except get ready to spin around and catch the whitewater. She screamed the whole time with fingernails digging into my wetsuit and poking holes in the boogie board from gripping it so hard. She was so scared and had so much fun that she couldn’t help coming out of the water with her face split into the same gigantic grin her siblings were wearing.

Later on that summer I was able to teach her to swim in the big university pool, overhand stroke with head under and everything else, and she passed her swim test to go into the deep end and jump off the diving board. No more kiddie pool for her! Riding the Lunch Counter was the cure for her fear. That Lunch Counter wave helped a bright little girl get over her fear of water in the most fun way imaginable. For me that was a good end to the years I spent there.

DP had one more spring to surf Lunch Counter ahead of him. The dog.”

Don Piburn

“The news spread quickly on the river one Saturday afternoon in 1992. Toyota Corporation was going to film river-surfing at the Lunch Counter rapid for their upcoming Toyota Trucks TV commercial! It looked like something akin to the Mountain Dew commercial was about to repeat itself. Interested river surfers needed to be at Lunch Counter two weeks later for the big audition. I remember reminding the person who shared all this with me that the river was already in decline from flood stage. The wave was well past its yearly peak, and if they didn’t film very soon the surfers they selected would be trying to rip on ripples. The audition day came and because we were comparatively few, I recall maybe a half dozen of us or so, it didn’t last very long. Their representatives watched each of us surf, took a few pictures, wrote down our contact information, and told us they would be in touch with whoever they selected. Weeks ticked by and river levels continued to drop, and then my phone rang. It was fellow river surfers Mike Morganson and Tony Jovanovic from Jackson, Wyoming calling to let me know that Toyota had chosen the two of them to star in the commercial. Though I was not selected, my consolation was insider information on the day they planned to hold the shoot and an invitation for me to attend as their guest.

I have still pictures and a few stories I will share from that day, but the whole account has to be Mike’s and Tony’s to tell. There is so much more to that day than just the brief and blurred footage that Toyota used in their commercial. Big media doesn’t scrimp, and the array of people, equipment, and amenities that spilled out onto that pristine bank along the Snake River was like nothing before or since. Their small army of personnel included the director, film and still camera people, media consultants, food service workers, seamstress, hairdresser, water safety specialists , “roadie” type laborers (maybe that’s “riverie” type laborers), and many more. All those hard working professionals certainly couldn’t go hungry, so the buffet table that the caterers set up along that isolated river bank was first rate.

All of the equipment and people were ferried across to the wave side of the river in either a pontoon or McKenzie boat piloted by skilled operators. Kayakers were in place along the downstream eddy lines for safety back up. The river surfers were not allowed to paddle across the river because they might tear all the patches the seamstress had carefully hand sewed onto their wetsuits to cover up any company logos that might be visible. The guys were not to surf until the cameras were rolling because in addition to safety concerns their hair might get wet! The hairdresser was nearly beside himself towel-drying their bushy, bushy blonde hair after each take. There was a lot of down time while they discussed or set up different takes or camera angles, which I used to surf the wave all to myself. Their director and camera guys took advantage of my surfing to frame the image of the surfer and wave that they wanted and to focus their cameras.”

Don Piburn

“Later, when they were all briskly shooting take after take and reviewing footage on the riverside portable monitor, I warmed up and rested on the nearby rocks. One of their guys who had been at the auditions mentioned that he thought I should have been chosen, because I was the best technical surfer on the river that day. I don’t know that Mike and Tony would have shared his opinion, but one of the photographers overheard him and, leaning in carefully to make sure the director couldn’t hear he whispered to me, ‘Next time dye your hair blonde.’

The details of that day are well documented in a video that Tony’s and Mike’s girlfriends took from the riverbank. I have a really poor copy of that video, but Mike and Tony’s original needs to be dug up and digitally archived along with copies of the resulting Toyota commercial that aired for the first time that following season during the annual championship World Series of Major League Baseball. As the sport of river surfing continues to gain traction, similar historical footage ought to be ferreted out and digitally preserved before time takes an even greater toll on whatever is left. The video cassette technology from those years is already well past it’s chemical shelf life, assuming those who took video actually held onto them this long. How Tony and Mike spent the money that they made from the commercial is a surfers’ tale in itself, so I am hoping that one or both of them will surface soon to share their own river surfing story.

Don Piburn

“I came up with the slogan “Surf Wyoming” as a spinoff of a popular “Ski Iowa” tee-shirt from the mid-1980s showing a skier crashing through flatland cornfield rows. To this day you can still find that same tee shirt as vintage clothing on EBay sometimes. The “Surf Wyoming” slogan caught on with the half dozen or so Snake River surfers and became part of our lexicon in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Seal still has a “Surf Wyoming” “Lunch Counter Local” photo tee shirt that I had made for him as a gift back in 1991.”

Seal Morgan

“I’ve got that tee shirt showing a picture of me surfing Lunch Counter with your “Surf Wyoming” logo hanging in my closet.”
 
 
 
 
 

Don Piburn

“The backstory is that after all those years of river surfing I came to realize just how important surfing really was to me, so I moved to Hawai’i in 1993. While watching America’s Funniest Home Videos (AFV) on ABC TV one night, Bob Saget, the master of ceremonies at that time put out a request for videos of “strange or unusual sports.” River surfing clearly qualified, so I sent a 1992 video clip of me surfing Lunch Counter to the address provided. On the video cassette label I wrote the words, “Surf Wyoming.” AFV kindly returned my cassette a short while later with a letter noting no immediate need for it, but that they would hold onto my footage in their video archives.

Four years later in 1998, my home phone in Hawai’i rings, and it’s an AFV representative. They selected my river surfing footage, which they had kept all those years, as one of the three $10,000 semi-finalists for an upcoming AFV episode. They offered to fly me from Honolulu to Los Angeles, where I would appear on the show and the studio audience would vote on my clip to see if I would win the $10 K first prize.

Plans were made and flights were arranged, and then just weeks before I was due to depart for the March 11, 1998 taping of my episode (# 922), trailers for the March 27, 1998 release of the latest Disney movie began airing on television. The Disney comedy “Meet the Deedles” was the story of brother “surf dudes” from Hawai’i headed to a boot camp for wayward youth in of all places, Wyoming. The movie trailer (US, other countries) shows the main characters surfing Wyoming river waves, and just prior to their river surfing scene in the movie, one brother turns to the other and says, “Whoa, dude! Surf Wyoming!” The parallel story line, the timing of the movie’s release, and my invitation to be on the show all happening at the same time felt surreal.

As far as the AFV experience, it was great fun. They picked me up at the airport in a limousine. The driver took me on an hour long limo-tour of Hollywood before dropping me off for my stay in a rather nice Hollywood hotel. All expenses were paid, including a $50 per diem. Copyrights prevent them from showing my appearance on the show here, but you can watch a copy of my clip which has been graciously provided by the Vin Di Bona Productions/Cara Communications Corporation affiliated with AFV. On the show the AFV host Daisy Fuentes introduced my clip as “Surfs up: River” and made a joke, noting “No he’s not lost. This is actually the opening sequence to a new cop show, Denver 5.0”. At the end of each show, members of their studio audience review the three finalist’s video clips and vote for their favorite. When the camera zoomed in I smiled and flashed an “I love you” hand sign while mouthing those same words and my wife’s first name. I didn’t win the $10K. My video never really was funny, plus I was competing against puppies, babies, and genuinely hilarious little kids. I came in second place though, which netted me $2 grand in prize money. That’s not a bad take in 1998 dollars to go along with a pretty good story, and as Seal and I know well, those who die with the best stories, win.”

_______________________

The post The Lunch Counter Trilogy, Part 3: The World’s Eyes on River Surfing appeared first on Riverbreak.

Seal Morgan

“There were a handful of hidden camping spots where the parking lot is located now. You hooked a right off the highway between two trees and onto a little dirt track that looped along the base of the drop-off. The track followed the contour along for a bit before ending up back at the road farther up canyon. It was mostly shielded from the highway noise up above, being lower and blocked by greenery. Traffic pretty much died off at night anyway, except for the occasional big truck heading north towards Hoback Junction or Jackson. Those few unwelcome sounds were mostly drowned out by the ever-present roar of the river at flood stage. That river, she be talking loud in that narrow canyon at night. That echoing white noise could lull you to sleep much like my childhood growing up next to the ocean and hearing waves always breaking. It was a great spot to camp, and best of all it was free. Most of the regulated campgrounds anywhere nearby weren’t open that early in the season anyway. Often they were still blocked with snow as they were almost all at higher elevations. Hell, we barely had the gas money most of the time, much less campground fees. We ate a lot of sandwiches and soup.

Camping rarely got crowded, even on weekends. An occasional county sheriff might drift through checking to be sure nobody was trashing the place, but for the most part we were left to ourselves. The golden rule was to pack out more than you brought in. Everybody took care of the place. You could pitch your tent isolated from other campers by all the alpine vegetation, or you could take over a more open area by circling up a camper, a couple of cars, and a tent or two. The kayakers and their family groups tended to do that. They would meet, mingle, and share around a campfire or barbecue. We got invited to join in, but that was usually after we had spent the day surfing the ‘counter with them. We had to prove our boni-fides first, so to speak.

Don Piburn

“Evenings were spent sitting around a campfire with whoever happened to be camping nearby. Strangers would share food and drink, break out instruments and play music together, read books under camp lanterns, or curl up under warm blankets and sleeping bags to talk story late into the night. I remember one trip when my troubadour musician buddy, Ardy Michaels and his dog Bojo showed up in his built for traveling pickup truck. I drifted off to sleep in my tent listening to the two of you night owl musicians types blowing harp and playing guitar until the very wee hours.

The camp spot had a discrete trail leading at an angle down-canyon along the forested cliff from the campsites right to where the surf break viewing and cheerleading rocks were. Directly above that was the highway pull-out where the buses let tourists off to walk down the myriad crumbling tracks that had been worn down the bluff over many years. We laugh about all the 35mm film photos taken by the tourists that are decaying in dusty old photo albums across the planet. We are also quite sure that the vast majority of pictures were absolutely the worst possible surf shots ever taken.

There was wildlife in abundance – deer were common. Bobcats would appear every now and then. Kingfishers, ospreys, and eagles nested in nearby cliffs, and they would regularly swoop down on the river to grab at fish. We saw moose across the river walking with their newborns, plus the big guys with huge racks on their heads. We heard the screams of cougars in the dark of night coming from somewhere across the river. Maybe there was more wildlife on that side since there wasn’t any human habitation or a road. Luckily we never encountered a bear, but we were told that it had happened to others who camped there. You just did not leave food in tents, because if it wasn’t a bear, it would be a mouse, squirrel, Jay, or some other ‘camp robber’ quick to capitalize on an opportunity.”

Seal Morgan

“I left a loaf of bread out in the tent just once, and came back to a perfectly round squirrel-sized hole chewed through the fabric wall with the remains of a wonderful meal scattered over everything inside. Oops…”
 
 
 
 

Don Piburn

“It got very cold down by the river at night with 39′F water and the wind whistling between the down canyon cliffs towards Alpine Junction. Being at the bottom of a narrow river canyon meant night came on quickly and the sun came up late. Mornings were frosty and nights could be downright cold as air drained out of the surrounding snow-covered mountains. We tended not to get up too early – no dawn patrol surfing here. There was never a rush to surf, because long rides guaranteed leg muscles would be transformed into wet noodles or cramped beyond use by the end of the day. Once the sun dropped behind the canyon walls in the late afternoon, you were out of the water.

Wetsuit technology wasn’t anywhere near where it is now. Surfing the Snake River with the wetsuits that we had back then was just barely adequate compared to the high tech wetsuits surfers can wear in subzero temperatures now. We were often cold and it was always a challenge to warm back up between waves, even when you could lie out on the sun-heated rocks. Any little hole or worn spot would let in freezing cold water, so in many of our pictures and video clips you see we are wearing board shorts on the outside of our wetsuits. It looks a little funny, but you had to protect your wetsuit from all the wear and tear of the sharp rocks that we rested on along the riverbank.”

Seal Morgan

“Early season was when weather could be bone-cold gray and gloomy, or else turn into bright sunshine shorts weather. You could never count on good weather, especially at that time of year. We got snowed on; we got rained on; we got run off by bitter cold and wet, and had to drive the three hours all the way back home on more than just a few occasions. But early season was often when the wave broke at its very best. One weekend, in the early spring of 1991, we got completely snowed out at the camp spot before we ever set up a tent or unstrapped the surfboards from the top my new/used Jeep Cherokee. It was just too cold.”

Seal Morgan

“There weren’t that many people willing to get into the water early in the season. The river was often brimming with debris knocked loose by the annual floods. The water was big and brown, and always just above freezing at that time of year. The air temperature was often about the same, and that’s without factoring in the wind chill. It was good that we had all our snowboarding clothes packed along, because we sure needed them.

We often had the river seemingly to ourselves, give or take those few hard-core early season river runners that came through mostly in pairs or groups of three or four. Many times the kayakers who showed up were there specifically to ride the waves along the same stretch of river we were riding. Their families camped with us at the usual spot, turning weekends into a little community of different souls. Some of the regulars we knew, and others we came to know. We frequently caravanned there with river rats from Northern Utah with their kayaks atop the lead truck and twin fin surfboards racked up Seal’s truck behind it. It became a pretty common sight until those same friends moved to the Oregon coast.”

Don Piburn

“As the flows came down and the temperatures came up later in the season, Lunch Counter transformed into a hub of activity. Because it is roughly half way between the put-in and take-out points, it is a natural spot for recreational river runners to pull out their kayak, raft, rubber ducky, canoe, McKenzie boat, or whatever they floated down on to watch the Lunch Counter scene play out. Kayakers sat behind the eddy lines, punching out to grab turns in the secondary waves, or portaging their boats upstream for repeated runs through the gauntlet. What we pulled out, much to many people’s surprise, were surfboards.

The wave side of the river is only accessible to people by boat or board, so it often carried the vibe of some kind of adventurers’ club. If you were on that side of the river, you were a player, not just another tourist. Truthfully, at times it could sort of segregate people, since the river folk didn’t go over and mingle with the tourist crowd much. We were all there mostly for that wave. Okay, maybe the occasional chance to chat it up with a potential love interest sitting on the rocks across the river might draw somebody back over, or we would ferry across for lunch or an afternoon break back at the camp spot between sessions. It was always fun to catch the Lunch Counter secondary wave on your paddle back across mostly to see how long you could stay standing before the pulsating nature of that wave inescapably brought you down.”

Don Piburn

“During early summer, it evolved into a very different place. That was the absolute party time to be there. The now long-gone parking lot along the highway side would overflow with tour buses and big RVs full of families during the day. Each disgorged hordes of camera-ready tourists that either hung over fence on the rim or hiked down the access trails to capture images from the riverbank. Women in bikinis, and those guys who were interested in women in bikinis, would be there laid out on their towels, beach chairs, or claiming the very best sitting rocks for the afternoon. It was quite the happening place by midsummer.”

Don Piburn

“Videographers hired by the major rafting companies were positioned strategically on the banks to document raft passenger’s grand adventure through Alpine Canyon. Raft captains spent the upriver sections verbally pumping up their passengers for the Lunch Counter Rapid. Passengers primed for adventure made for better end-of-float tips for some commercial rafters.

When the rafters floated through Lunch Counter, they would sometimes find a surfer already up and riding. We were constantly checking upstream for approaching rafts. –they had just one shot at the wave, so we did our best to move way aside to give them the right-of-way. We’d either move way over or often just kick out entirely. All the same, a minority of the commercial rafters began to think that having a surfer on the wave took away from their passenger’s exhilaration. We made it look too easy. I recall that one out-of-control commercial raft guide who took it upon himself to try to make an example out of you, Seal.”

Seal Morgan

“Oh yes, I remember that little episode. On one sunny day I happened to be on the wave when an aggressive raft guide deliberately took me out with an oar. I had moved completely out of the way over towards the rock wall, but that clearly didn’t satisfy him. The guy reached way out with his portside oar and I had nowhere to go. He smacked me hard in the leg with the spoon end. My leash tangled around the oar which jerked me off the board. His downstream momentum dragged me under the raft and pinned me there as it went through the rest of the rapid. I was completely and inescapably ensnared under the raft. I was still tangled up with that idiot’s oar when I came back to the surface on the starboard side of the raft downriver in the flat water section. Maybe a 20 or 30 second hold down which is a long time in the dark under a raft!

I must admit I was soundly pissed off. Fear and adrenalin will do that. I wanted to pound on him just a bit as I untangled myself, but self-restraint and a few harsh words were all that passed between us. The tourists didn’t say a thing, but looked shocked as hell, and I bet he didn’t make much of a cash tip for that run.”

Don Piburn

“It would have been hard for a raft guide on company time with paying passengers to pull out downriver, so it was all over pretty fast. About an hour later, he suddenly reappears on the river bank of the parking lot side. He’d gotten rid of the raft and his customers, and come back seemingly intent to settle the score. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, pounding his chest and swearing he’s going to kick ass, but he had no way to get across the river. He was at least thinking clearly enough to know that swimming was not an option, only we recognized we had all the time in the world and he likely didn’t. We just smiled, waved, and waited for him to blow himself out and leave, which eventually he did. I was one of your adult students in the martial arts classes you taught at the local community recreation center back then. I thought you showed a fair amount of practice-what-you-preach self-restraint by opting not to lose your temper and go toe-to-toe with the guy.”

Seal Morgan

“We’d experienced this a few times back in the 80s with purposefully targeted ski poles in those early years of riding snowboards at so called “ski resorts.” But in all the years we rode the Lunch Counter, this was the only time we had someone behave that badly on the river. Instead, there was a whole lot of taking turns and respect given by everyone, other than that one time by that one individual. Maybe he just had a rough start to his morning on that particular day, because he never came around again after that, at least that we know. It was uncalled for and very, very dangerous. It’s scary and very dark under the floor of an eight person raft going through a rapid.”

Don Piburn

“It’s interesting to see all the video clips being posted these days of mega-surf stars trying their hand at River Surfing.  The struggle for acceptance now seems to be paying off.  The major surf publications rarely gave river surfing even the least bit of press back then.  When we shared what we were doing with our contacts, the sport was habitually dismissed as a “novelty.”  Well this “novelty” is now getting legs under it.

Dodging ski poles was a minor reflection of how the ski industry at first tried to write snowboarding off as a novelty when that was first starting.  In winter of 1973 Seal wasn’t allowed to take his Snurfer up onto the lifts in Tahoe, California.  In 1985, I was one of five snowboarders in the whole county where I lived in Northern Utah.  We were all displaced surfers and called it “Snow Surfing.”  The last paragraph notes that Beaver Mountain Ski Resort was the only mountain in Utah, the same future home of the breakout 2002 Olympic half-pipe events, that allowed snowboarders onto their lifts. Seeing all this progress brings us no small bit of satisfaction.”

Don Piburn

“Rivers can and do kill. To this very day many river surfers treat wild rivers like they are some of kind of waterpark, which they are absolutely not.  A flood stage river at high water levels is gnarly, and people can and did die on the Alpine Canyon stretch of the Snake River during those very same years that we surfed there. We were continuously checking upstream for approaching rafts, but in big water somebody was ALWAYS assigned to act as a sentry. When we were there by ourselves, that individual also doubled as the de facto lifeguard.  Sentries were charged not only to watch upstream for all the little bits of crap and board damaging debris, but more importantly to shout out a warning when logs that had been dislodged by the flood waters came around the bend.  Someone would scream “LOG!” and everybody: kayakers, rafters, surfers, or whoever would scramble the hell off the wave and get out of the way. You didn’t wait. You moved when you heard that warning. The trees often got pushed directly through the center of the surfing wave into the same downstream eddy that we relied on to exit the river. Waterlogged trees were the worse, because they might not rise to the surface until they hit the stone ledge that creates the very wave we rode. That would shove them sometimes brutally to the surface, and to avoid that happening right in front of the surfer or kayaker who was up and riding, everyone kept a very close watch.”

Seal Morgan

“What are you supposed to do when a soggy 120 foot conifer suddenly broaches in front of you like some kind of whale?  We’ve seen trees that big go dead-on through the wave where someone was riding just 30 seconds earlier. There weren’t any lifeguards, so it was up to all of us to watch out for each other. And it was communal: the kayakers, surfers, rafters, and everybody else took care to watch out for one another. It didn’t matter who you were or what you were riding, there were always lookouts upstream and someone ready to go after anybody who got into trouble.”

Don Piburn

“On one big water occasion, I recall that a family’s closest companion followed its masters into the flooded river when their raft upended on the very same wave we surf.  The young black Labrador had no flotation and was immediately swept into the eddy line that we punched each and every time to get out of the water. The dog went directly into the whirlpool that circulates there in big water. Seal pointed out the carcass when it finally resurfaced a solid forty-five minutes later. Not surprising to some of us, it came up in the exact same spot where it went down.  One of the kayakers went after the poor pooch and pulled it across the front of his kayak to take downstream to where the rafters had pulled out downriver.  Everyone was shedding tears when the body finally surfaced.  It was a really sad moment and gave us all serious pause, because we wipe out immediately into that same spinning vortex that had held him down for so very long. And we didn’t wear life vests either.”

Seal Morgan

“One very cold and gray weekend a couple of body boarders, a younger man and woman, showed up. It was really, really cold that day. It was gray, overcast, and threatening snow. It was miserable camping, but an excellent wave. Big water! We showed them the quickest and easiest way we knew to ferry across, but it wasn’t working for her. The poor woman got dragged through the entire stretch of the ‘counter the first three times she tried to get across the river Each time she got carried through, she had to paddle back to the road side and scramble upriver along the rugged bank  all the way back to the flat water crossing above the wave.  She  was so worn out by that forth attempt that our kayaker friend Dennis Will paddled over to shadow her and try to assist.  She made it across, but she was very nearly dragged through the rapids yet again. Her guy was there on the rocks, and he was able to grab her before that happened. He went on to ride the wave fairly well, but she was spent.  Dennis towed her back across later on, because she was too exhausted to even contemplate tackling it on her own again. The water was 39′ that day, and the air temperature was no different. It pulled the heat right out of you.”

Don Piburn

“On another big water day I was standing on a ledge just upstream of the primary wave waiting out a passing raft. I noticed one of its occupants was another surfer wearing a wetsuit and with a surfboard under his arm. “Cool.  Another surfer!” was my passing thought. I returned my gaze to whatever might be coming at me from upstream, because I was next on deck to surf the wave.

A couple of river runners were sitting on the bank just upriver of me watching the goings-on, when suddenly a look of terror and concern flashed across their faces. I spun around just in time to see the same surfboard from the raft now separated from its owner and cartwheeling through the air above the river. In that same instant I saw Seal leap off the six-foot rock embankment clear out onto the secondary wave, something anyone intent on river surfing had no cause to do.  From water level I could not see what was happening downriver at that point, but I surmised that he was in some kind of big trouble.”

_______________________

The post The Lunch Counter Trilogy, Part 2: Camping, Big Waves & Bikinis appeared first on Riverbreak.

Don Piburn

“You and I met surfing the sandbars of Mission Beach, California in the mid-70s while I was still a teenager and you weren’t very much older. Our shared passion for surfing and skateboarding in empty swimming pools started a friendship, and then the passion shifted into snowboarding before that sport became popular. I do remember your stories about snowboarding in South Lake Tahoe back in the early 1970’s, though. Then we got into something completely new and different, river surfing the Lunch Counter standing wave in Alpine Canyon section of the Snake River in Wyoming. The attitude was always the same, only the medium changed.”

Seal Morgan

“We met out in the ocean, and I started patching your surfboards at my ding repair fiberglass shop. Years later you told me that you started shadowing me out in the water because it was my home beach and I always caught the best set waves. We both skateboarded in empty swimming pools whenever the surf was flat, although not all that often together. We were skating in a different crowd at that time.”

Don Piburn

“We have a host of stories from the mid-1970’s outlaw skateboarder era that we won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that trespass was the name of the game. This started before skateboard parks, so when someone discovered an exceptional pool, bowl, or drainage ditch the word got out. We have back issues of the now defunct mid-1970s Skateboarder Magazine, and they are rife with pictures of that era’s apex skateboarding professionals riding the very same San Diego hotspots that we did, many pictured in this montage. Having a pro show up at your spot was common place, and in a few cases they were there because we were close friends.

We weren’t making the magazines, but we skated on par with well-known friends who were. That is significant because other modern board sports trace common roots right through the mid-1970’s outlaw skateboarding movement. Riversurfing belongs on that exclusive list. Regrettably all the period skateboard pictures of Seal have been lost over the years, so we’re adding in just one of him taken on September of 2014 dropping a bowl at Hillyard Skatepark in Spokane, Washington. At 60 years old, no doubt he was the only skater there in vintage 1970’s Rector Skate Wear Pads.”

Seal Morgan

“In the early 1980s you disappeared on a bicycle tour across the Intermountain west and settled in Northern Utah. You only came back to visit family and ride waves, but we managed to stay in touch. I remember calling you up in the winter of ’84 after I bought my first P-tex snowboard (a Burton 150 swallowtail) to tell you to get off that Burton woodie you were riding. When they started making snowboards with p-tex, the sport just took off. Little did I know that four years later we’d be sharing an old farmhouse and surfing together again, but at Lunch Counter instead of in the ocean.”

Don Piburn

“We wonder who the first person to river surf the Lunch Counter was. I had heard tales about the first guy circulating among fellow river runners who knew I was a surfer. The story goes that the very first person to take a surfboard out onto the face of the primary wave at Lunch Counter was a displaced California surfer and skier who came up with the idea while running the Snake River during the spring runoff. We have no idea what year or years he was there or what his name was, but if it was in the 70s he likely was riding a single fin and maybe even a longboard …”

Seal Morgan

“It isn’t hard for us to imagine the founder’s very first leap into the freezing snow-melt of a roaring Snake River to surf the place alone because we had a very similar experience ourselves one fine spring day. There was no one there to guide us, other than some shared memories of a photo we’d both seen in an old surfing magazine, a TV commercial that aired in the early 80s, and the tale about some guy having gone first many years before.

We’d both seen the Mountain Dew soft drink commercial that aired nationally in the 1980’s and, as surfers, we were clearly intrigued by the idea of a perpetual wave that never stops breaking. We were told by Lunch Counter locals that the TV production company had a huge safety rope strung across the river, and that river runners just hated that week of filming madness. With everybody all jacked up on the gallons of highly-caffeinated sugar water that was being given out for free, it must have been, well … interesting. Despite all the national exposure, few surfers ever showed up to surf the place during the years we were there.”

Don Piburn

“When Seal joined me in Northern Utah for the 1987 winter snowboard season, he brought along his wetsuit and three of the surfboards he shaped and glassed. I borrowed a river runner’s dry suit from the University recreation center and suddenly we had all the equipment we needed to follow through on the old stories of a land-locked standing wave only three or four hours to the north somewhere near Jackson, Wyoming.”

Seal Morgan

“It was in the spring of 1988 when we headed out on that first trip to actually look for the wave. Knowledgeable contacts in the local kayaker community clued us in on the time of year the wave broke best, how to find it, and where to camp. We racked up my surfboards, loaded the little pickup with a pile of camping gear and food, and headed north through the farmlands of Central Idaho. Surfboards atop my truck invited more than a few bewildered stares from the locals in the fields and small towns we passed through. They’d get used to us over the next few years.”

Don Piburn

“There had to have been others like the original surfer on the Snake River elsewhere. Mavericks who were the first in their regions of the world to literally plunge in head first. Progressive men or women who thought just enough outside the box or who had heard the stories or saw the same images that brought us to the edge of the Snake River with our ’80s short boards tucked firmly under our arms. We sincerely hope that very first Wyoming surfer will resurface again someday, because that individual was our true pioneer whose lead we followed that first spring run-off day in 88.

River surfing an unfamiliar spot for the very first time was and always will be a pretty harrowing experience. We found ourselves face-to-face with so many unknowns. The water was ice-cold and, because our timing was good, we caught it rising into flood-stage. We had smaller and bigger days over the next few years but that first day of our initiation was both intimidating and exciting. There were no other surfers around to show us the safe places to ferry across, how to get in and out of the water, or how to react after the inevitable wipe-out.

The couple of kayakers that were there guided us with basic suggestions for what had to be in place to ensure one another’s safety, but their systems weren’t always practical for a surfer’s needs. For example, life vests back then were so bulky that they interfered with a surfer’s ability to be stable and stay on top of the surfboard while paddling in a torrent of whitewater. Our solution was for our surfboards to act as our floatation, and we relied on being tethered to them. We’d both surfed big waves where surf leashes worked, and they were what we knew. They were not the right solution, and as a result several surfers very nearly drowned when we became separated from our surfboards.”

Seal Morgan

“It was very much a trial and error process. My very first jump into the river, to put it bluntly, sucked. Only river surfers know the facing a rapid for the first time ‘oh crap what do I do now’ feeling. It’s not an ocean rip. It’s way worse. The river is moving 30mph with whirlpools that suck you and the board down. I leapt in first and just got completely trashed, industrial machine laundered, and spit out upside down and backwards below the rapids. It wasn’t nearly as big water as when we rode it at later times. Who would have guessed that I couldn’t paddle through a little churning whitewater? I’d been surfing big waves for years and could paddle like a demon. DP suggested that maybe ferrying across upstream in a calm stretch of flat water made more sense. Wish I’d thought of it first.”

Don Piburn

“You were usually a bit more gung-ho, and I a bit more cautious. I always preferred to learn from your mistakes. Vicarious learning was significantly less painful, although I made more than my own share of mistakes.”
 
 
 

Don Piburn

“Seal’s last season on the river was in 1991. He kindly left me one of his surfboards. I was able to squeeze in one last, but very eventful season in 1992. The board that worked best for both of us was your old school 5’10″ single-winged swallowtail with V in the tail that was based on the Mark Richards twin fin template. It was a Clark Foam green blank, and had 6 oz. glass job with a 6 oz. deck patch which made it kind of heavy compared to modern surfboard designs. Still, it had solid outlines and was really functional. We both made it work reasonably well. It is the same board I am surfing and loving in all the 1992 video segments. It was a magic board that seemed to work in just about everything.”

Seal Morgan

“Yep, I left you my favorite twinnie that I shaped and glassed back in the summer of ‘86. It is one of the few Seal’s Ding Repair/Seal Team Rider boards that are left in existence from my Ocean Beach shop. My ex has one, there are three hanging in my house, and I keep hoping I will see one on EBay someday, but that never happens. I didn’t shape all that many surfboards, principally because my fiberglass and surfboard repair shop on the beach brought in a much better income than making and selling new boards.”

Don Piburn

“The heavy fiberglass job of your twin fin is probably the only reason it survived a particularly horrendous wipeout of yours that I witnessed on the river in 1989. Kayaker Dennis wanted to try surfing the wave on his kayak with one of us board surfers sharing the wave, which he didn’t think anybody had ever done before. He paddled into the wave first in his 13 foot Perception kayak. It was a contemporary kayak design for the times, but by today’s standards it was very long and heavy. You floated into the wave laterally from the river bank. Oops, big mistake. He took your butt right out, as you can see in the video sequence. He flipped you up and over the back of the wave and your leash held just long enough to pull the surfboard over his bow for a second assault, spinning it once before the leg rope came off and you completely disappeared underwater. I’m stoked you were able to stay the hell away from the whirlpool in that downstream eddy, but none of us knew that at the time. It wasn’t big water, but we all knew that spot was gnarly without floatation and you had completely disappeared into the torrent. Everyone was scanning the river and calling for you, but you were nowhere to be seen or heard above the surface.”

Seal Morgan

“I was underwater swimming hard for the eddy line at first. I surfaced before I hit the secondary wave, and sprinted through it. I was just barely able to grab hold of the rock face under the bank and hung there to catch my breath. You can see my head at water level in the shadows as the camera pans by. I could hear people yelling above me but I was under the slight overhang and too close to the river to be heard calling back. I inched my way across the rock face until I reached our usual take out spot, which is where you all finally noticed me.

Both the board and I lived to surf again. I had it patched up and back in the water by that very next week. I had to fix a huge rip in the glass from Dennis’ kayak, along with several superficial dings and other damage. Modern superlight boards would never survive getting worked over that way by an old 80s model kayak. That board is hanging in my kitchen.

Don Piburn

“Dennis and I had another go at sharing the wave together just a week later, but we had learned a thing or two from all that earlier drama. I jumped onto the wave first, and Dennis slid onto the bank side of the wave where he couldn’t run anybody over again. We were pretty focused on what we doing at the time, trying our best to avoid repeating the same mistakes.”

Seal Morgan

“Kayakers sitting nearby on the bank agreed to do the upstream safety watch I had been assigned to, so I grabbed my board and trotted upstream out of view. I wanted to sneak into the water and drop in on you unexpected-like. It worked, too. Neither of you had any idea I was coming in, being as intent as you were on the wave and what you were doing together. I just kind of appeared and squeezed DP right over into Dennis as I backed onto the soup (whitewater) side of the wave face and stood up. The video segment of the three of us riding Lunch Counter at the same time was probably a first. None of the local yakkers had ever seen or heard of it being done before 1990. DP was trapped in the middle between us and had no wave face for generating speed and nowhere to go except up and down like a damned yo-yo as the river ebbed and flowed. That was pretty funny, as I just stayed in the same spot and he kept asking me how the hell I was managing that. Hey, I grew up on a beach-break!”

Don Piburn

“River surfers were few and far between in the 1980s. That’s less true now with an entire online magazine and scores of U-tube videos dedicated to and promoting the sport. We saw only a handful of other surfers pass through in all the years we surfed the place together. Most weren’t even able to get to their feet much less ride with any style. A common mistake for many people was to look down at the water screaming by underfoot triggering instant vertigo, and down they’d go. That changed just a bit in 1992 after Seal had left. Maybe it was all the press we were getting in the local newspapers and sports rags, but there were suddenly a handful of reasonably decent surfers that showed up to ride the place that last year I was there.”

Seal Morgan

“I remember maybe eight other surfers total who showed up over the four season I surfed it with DP, and there was only one other guy who rode it well. He drove down from Jackson one weekend to surf it with us after seeing us in the Jackson newspaper, because he said he didn’t like to surf it alone. He ran a Snake River guided boat outfitter business, and he had learned to ride a surfboard on the Lunch Counter. He was riding regular foot on a mail-order single-fin longboard doing the relaxed cruiser-type surfing with good style. He said once he had tried to translate his surfing skills to the ocean on a trip out to coast, but, as any of you who ocean and river surf know, the two involve an entirely different set of surfing skills. Being successful at one doesn’t necessarily transfer to being successful at the other, at least not without a moderately steep learning curve.”

Don Piburn

The Lunch Counter primary wave had a window above or below which the wave is more or less not surfable. Too low and there’s not enough wave face to keep the current from whisking you downstream. Too much water and the wave will flatten into a pulsating hydrodynamic sculpture that is genuinely beautiful but is essentially useless from a surfer’s perspective. A typical surf season would have us monitoring the river run-off telephone update recordings starting in early April when the snowpack was deep, but melt-off was slow. Our plans were typically to start surfing in May and throughout the whole of June into July. We were there every weekend when it was breaking as time allowed, during the week as well. April was just too cold to deal with most of the time, although we did surf it a few times that early in the season.

What we referred to as “big water” was 10,000 to 14,000 Cubic Feet per Second (CFS). Big water was when the wave was the most challenging, but also the most fun to surf. We could ride the wave as low as 4 or 5,000 CFS, but below that there wasn’t a wave face. It was little more than a line of soup. River flows naturally depended on the weather, melting snowpack, and the whims of the Teton Dam operators upstream. Local knowledge mattered, combined with a good bit of guess work.”

_______________________

The post The Lunch Counter Trilogy, Part 1: In The Beginning appeared first on Riverbreak.