Surfing The Ice Cold Eisbach Under Lights

The O’Neil river surf team recently took to the Eisbach wave in the centre of Munich, as night fell, for some colourful floodlit antics.

The wave sits on the Eisbach river, (German for ice brook) and is formed by a huge amount of fast moving water, which flows out from under the city and over some sunken concrete ramps, put down deliberately to create the wave. It was first surfed in 1972 and has been developing a dedicated and enthusiastic following ever since, which see’s the wave constantly surfed, even in the middle of winter where snow lies on the ground and the water gets down to 1 degree.

Despite the uniform nature of the wave, different styles of surfing have been developed on it, with the smooth rail carves of its most famous surfer Quirin Rohleder contrasting sharply with the ultra-technical, skate inspired tricks you see here.

This clip features surfers Simon Bitterlich, Florian Kummer, Simon Strangfeld and Moritz Wienecke: