Munich’s Eisbach wave has flattened, frustrating surfers : NPR

MUNICH — “It was gnarly. Dangerous. Only the most experienced could surf it,” says Jakob Netzer of what local surfers have come to call the “E1,” an ever-churning wave along a mountain stream that flows through central Munich — a swell that non-surfers and tourists know as the Eisbachwelle or “ice stream wave.” 

“And it’s very sad the wave is not working,” says Netzer, staring at where the wave once regularly appeared, just below a bridge that marks the entrance to the city’s English Garden.

In early November, as city engineers finished dredging the bottom of the Eisbach — a two-kilometer-long (1.2-mile) canal that is a side arm of the Isar River — they opened the floodgates to find the Eisbachwelle, typically a 1.5-meter (4.9 feet) high summit of icy river water, had transformed into a small, nondescript whitewater bump along a raging waterway.

“It’s usually three sections,” says Netzer, who has surfed the Eisbachwelle for years. The wave stretches across all three. “On the far side, you jump in and there are these bumps, and then in the middle, you have a nice, smoother place where you can surf, but it’s not easy, because you have to anticipate the sections and know where to make the turns.”