A Western Swell @ Aliso Creek on January 24th, 2014

A western swell hit last week. I had been hearing about a big swell coming in to town; a couple of people mentioned it and I was like “whuh?” and grabbed my phone for the Surfline substantiation. Wedge? Flat as a board. Hmmmm…. 5-day forecast looked equally sedate…. Then I asked myself, “Self? If you were a road weary western traveling wave, where would you want to settle down for the day?” … I thought I’d check in at the Aliso Creek roadside stop of good charm and will.

Sure as shiatsu, Aliso Creek had reports of 7-8ft swells. That isn’t monster, but it is worth paying respects to.

There were a half dozen skimboarders on scene and they were roundly pounding the waves as they rolled in. Something I had never seen before at Aliso Creek was the wave that was refracting off of the rocks on the south end of the beach; an almost indetecable small swell would roll in, refract off of the rocks and then rush northwards, almost perfectly perpendicular to the shore. When a big set came in, if that northbound perpendicular wave was formed right, the two would intersect and a decent A-frame would set up. The skim boarders were catching that northbound barely-there wave and when they had their timing right, were nailing that A-frame setup and killing it.

I’m posting three galleries with the photos, laid out in the sequence I shot them in over four hours last Friday, January 24th from about 11AM to around 3:30PM.

Check the galleries here:

Aliso Creek Western Swell Sessions – 01

Aliso Creek Western Swell Sessions – 02

Aliso Creek Western Swell Sessions – 03

I didn’t know any of the people there, but did get a couple of email addresses from a few of the boarders. If you see someone on here you recognize, shoot me an email or post a comment so I can get them properly credited.

A couple of faves:

This is part of a sequence (should be the next photo in the gallery) but I just loved this solo shot so pulled it out to stand alone…

There is a sequence of photos of Morgan Just rockin this wave. I thought if I had to choose one from the set…

He nailed this. Killer boost off of a supplicant wave.

Jesse

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