October is typically the last chance we’ll get to see the Wedge do its thing each year. While most of California is about to hit its stride in the fall months, the fact that the Wedge only breaks on a south swell means the Newport hotspot’s 2022 days are numbered.
“One of the best days I’ve ever seen was like November 18, 2017, or something like that,” photographer and winner of The Inertia’s 2022 Film & Photo Challenge, Owen Biem points out. Understandably, he’s holding out hope that we’ll get one more swell to close the year. Otherwise, Monday will more or less stand as the season closer for 2022. And it was a doozy.
“I think this swell was just solid enough to make everywhere work,” he adds. “The buoys were like 3.8 at 18 SSW so that was plenty of swell for the Wedge, but there was a windswell in the water which made a lot of sandbars go off.”
However you draw it up, the wave is associated with being a closed-out meat grinder even on its best days, doubling board counts in the water more by breaking them in half than actually inviting more surfers. And while plenty of wipeouts were dished out among the crowd, this October swell made the place look slightly different. The crew scored.
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