John Warner
Chad “Kahuna” Waxman rides a wave just south of Lake Elmo on the BBWA Canal on Tuesday morning, as a dude walking his dog (right) looks on in amazement.
Emerging from the raging waters of the BBWA Canal early Tuesday morning, California transplant and avid surfer Chad “Kahuna” Waxman was stoked to the max.
“Dude, that was a bitchin’ pounder,” he said of the wave that propelled him all the way from the ridge overlooking Alkali Creek Valley, where the irrigation ditch emerges from an underground pipe, to the shores of Lake Elmo, a distance of just under three miles.
“I’ve been doing this for, like, seven or eight years, and that was totally the gnarliest ride yet,” Waxman said.
Waxman is part of a small coterie of surf enthusiasts who have made a tradition of riding the big wave every April 1, the day the managers of the BBWA Canal open the headgates on the Yellowstone River a little downstream of Laurel.
The resulting surge of water creates a wave known to surf aficionados as a “pounder,” though some refer to it as a “honker.”
It is illegal to enter the canal or even to walk on its banks, but Billings police officers have traditionally turned a blind eye to the activity.
“I mean, it’s only once a year, and the dudes totally know what they’re doing,” one young officer told Last Best News. “Plus (Police Chief) Rich (St. John) is cool with it because he went to Cal State Long Beach, on a surf scholarship. Not a lot of people know that.”
Frank “Beets” Krauthof, a ditch rider for the Billings Bench Water Association, said enforcement of the association’s no-trespassing rules is tough because there are so many excellent stretches of water on the canal’s 62-mile path from Laurel to a little north of Shepherd.
“We never know where they’re going to be,” he said of the golden-haired, wetsuit-wearing surf monkeys. “It takes a long time for that bodacious wave to get from start to finish, so you can pick it up just about anywhere on the canal and have a hell of a ride.”
“If it wasn’t for this,” Krauthof continued, patting an impressive beer gut bisected by a pair of red suspenders, “I might even give it a try myself.”
Mayor Tom Hanel, no stranger to an occasional surf outing on the Tongue River when he was a lad in Miles City, said the city had “absolutely no liability” in regard to the privately owned irrigation canal, so he was not going “to lose any sleep” over the annual event.
Plus, Hanel said, “These are not some posers. These guys are, like, primo wave dogs. I have no concerns that someone is going to be injured.”
Hanel also pointed out that the event happens only once a year, every April 1, and was of relatively short duration.
“You’d have to be a fool to get worked up about this,” he said. “I think it’s pretty gnarlatious.”
