“Even after traveling everywhere around the world, it’s still one of the hardest waves I’ve found to line up and read and predict what’s going to happen,” Russell Bierke once said of this semi-secret, fully expert left in New South Wales, Australia. “Back in the day, I was so hungry for it. Especially when I was younger. We’d just go out there every time. It took a fair few beatings to figure it out.”
“For people who haven’t surfed it, they wouldn’t understand. It’s like next level,” adds Kipp Caddy, another NSW slab fiend.
As referenced above, the 26-year-old from Ulladulla has done some of the best hard-nosed, adrenalized slab surfing in the world, from Ireland to Tasmania to waves you’ve never heard of in his home country. And it’s this wave, a notoriously heavy and localized left slab, that earned Russell a spot in the 2024 SURFER Big Wave Challenge. This entry gives us two angles in one with videos from Jack Bury and Andrew Kaineder, Russell’s longtime collaborator.
Given all of Russell’s experience and talent, it’s telling that this left is his black-diamond route. After all, you don’t often see people knifing 7-foot-plus boards like their pool toys these days. Russell gives props to his father Kirk for helping him get used to bigger boards and handling them in powerful surf.
By all accounts, Russell is a calm, mellow customer, keen to see local bodyboarders have their share of the slabs he visits. But sometimes when a true mutant rears its head, it’s probably best to let him have a crack.
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