Koa Smith, Luke Davis And Friends Surf Panama’s Gorilla Wedge

On the Caribbean coast of Panama, there exists a wave that has humbled surfers the caliber of 4x Jaws Champ Billy Kemper, Cape Fear winner Nathan Florence, and even the dark lord himself, Mr. Robert Kelly Slater.

Silverbacks is notoriously difficult because it blends two surfing’s most challenging conditions: a swinging, deep-water peak (think Sunset) that goes immediately into a below-sea-level slab (think… Australia). 

Suffice to say, it’s a wave that looks perfect from afar but in practice is far from perfect. You could get a good one, maybe even the wave of your life, but you probably won’t.

This fact did little to discourage Koa and Alex Smith, Luke Davis, and Andrew Jacobson from trying their luck on Panama’s Gorilla peak. In the video above, we see their early attempts at riding the chippopotamus into the pizza slice on the Caribbean’s recent “decade swell”.  

On a side note, if you watched the video closely, you might have noticed two other Hawaiian pros boarding a similar-but-different flight path to that of the Smith brothers.

Seth Moniz and Benji Brand threw buckets of shade on their travels plans, saying they “didn’t know where they were going.”

Well, we know where they were going. And what they found. We’ll have a full story on their findings, dropping shortly. Stay tuned.