In May of 1963, as the surf craze swept the U.S. and popular images of surfers tempted newcomers into the water in the days before wetsuits were common, LIFE magazine had a message its readers: Surfing was fun but it wasn’t all fun and games. It was also dangerous, especially when it came to the waves off the North Shore of Oahu.
And yet a brave group of surfers sought out the big waves anyway, for what LIFE called the “peril and ecstasy” of the sport’s toughest waves. Enabled by new innovations in balsa wood surfboards that had opened new vistas to surfers in the 1940s, the surfers returned again and again, despite the risks.
Looking at these photos by George Silk, it’s not hard to see what drew the surfers back to the water. Some experienced, what surfer Fred Van Dyke described to Silk as, “the greatest feeling the world.”
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