Ask anyone in the river surfing scene who to link up with if you’re winding through Missoula, Montana, and they’ll give you the same name: KB Brown. The guy is the brains behind Strong Water Mountain Surf Co., a bona fide surfboard manufacturing company that’s nestled at 3,200 feet above sea level. KB acts as the local guide for Vans’ latest episode of Weird Waves with Dylan Graves.
For coastal dwellers, river surfing may seem like a novelty. Better still, a curiosity. But across Europe and right here in the states the river surfing scene is growing at a breakneck pace.
In the way that coastal surfers understand the ocean and their local breaks well, spouting words like bathymetry, swell direction, and tidal push unironically, river surfers know the river. Instead of tide swings, though, they watch flow or water level: something measured by cubic feet per second (CFS)–or the amount of water passing by a given point on the river every second. The terminology shift is enough to make a visiting coastal surfer go cross-eyed, or feel like a fish out of, well, salt water.
Graves is no different here as KB shows him the fine on-river offerings in and around Missoula and nearby Idaho.
