Attack of The Mutant Waves: Red Bull Cape Fear 2016

You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a RedBull employee that won't tell you that Monday and Tuesday of last week were two of the most nerve-wracking days they've ever endured. And you'd also be pretty hard pressed to find any surfer, whether they were surfing in the event or sitting in front of a telly watching it from the safety of their home, that won't tell you their heart nearly stopped seeing those colossal sets roll through Cape Solander.

That's because Red Bull Cape Fear, Red Bull's annual big-wave invitational surfing event, held in one of Australia's heaviest slabs, was an overwhelming success that perpetually teetered on the edge of disaster. And perhaps that's why it was such a victory.

For the unfamiliar, Cape Solander (aka Cape Fear) is situated on the very tip of the southern end of Botany Bay in Sydney, and there is no other wave in the entire world that breaks closer to a jagged cliff edge. That cliff, that reef shelf that begins essentially where the wave starts to barrel, is called "The Surgeons Table". We'll let your imagination do the work there.

This is the kind of surfing event that doesn't have a set date. It runs when and if the event forecaster sees the correct type of swell headed towards the break – as soon as that happens, the machine starts turning. And that Red Bull machine started turning a few weeks back, when the head forecaster rang up and said "I think I've got something" (he probably didn't do that, but you get the gist). And what he had found was, quite literally, the storm of the century. It was a storm that ripped through Fiji and Indonesia, tearing apart homes and buildings, eventually annihilating the East Coast of Australia, leaving millions in damages. It was also a storm that produced waves at Cape Solander like no one has ever dared surf before.

And that's why, on Monday morning when event contest director Mark Mathews turned up to site, he was faced with one of the hardest decisions he'll likely ever have to make. Do I send these 16 surfers, ranging from late-teen to near-middle-aged, out there in this?

With absolutely no embellishment, I will tell you that someone could have died. In fact, someone probably should have died, and it's a miracle that the worst injury to come out of the two days of Cape Fear insanity was a large cut to a bald head that had to be stitched up in hospital.

Mark, who ordinarily would have been surfing in the event, but couldn't due to a healing shoulder injury, decided he shouldn't be the only one to make this call. So a silent vote was held between all of the surfers. And perhaps the most astounding moment of the entire Cape Fear was this vote, because every single surfer said "Let's go".

So at 11am on Monday, June 6th, the event was given the green light and the first horn blew. For the first five minutes or so, no one went. Everyone looked and had the ski poised to drop them in, but they didn't go. Until Justen "Jughead" Allport*, a firefighter from the NSW Central Coast, did. And for the next two hours, the surf world collectively held its breath.

It's funny because when you watch a surf contest, there's usually one cheer for every good wave – when someone completes an epic ride, or pops of out a seemingly un-makeable tube. In this contest there were cheers when someone took off, because of the sheer insanity of it. And then there were cheers when they popped up from the beating of their life, because we knew they were still alive. The 30 seconds in between those two moments were some of the longest, and quietest, I've ever witnessed in surfing.

After two hour-long heats, the contest was called off for the day because conditions (if possible) were becoming even more dangerous, and the amount of rideable waves were almost down to none. The next day was slightly less terrifying, as the swell had taken a tiny, but noticeable, downgrade. It was still absolutely insane; it just wasn't as obviously impending death.

Every single man in the 2016 Red Bull Cape Fear event showed they have both incredible faith in their talent, and that they also must have screw loose, because no one in their right mind would have charged as hard as these guys. These guys, who aren't famous, who aren't high-rolling pro surfers, who are mostly blue-collar underground chargers, overcame the ocean at its most treacherous. Hell, one surfer shaped his own board for the event. Another surfer used an old board from a different trip a few years back. One surfer had to go to the shops to buy a new wetsuit and paid full price. It wasn't glitz or glamour. It was cajones.

That was validated too, when the world's top professional surfers, Mick Fanning, Taj Burrow, Joel Parkinson and co, sent out Snapchats and Instagrams and Facebook posts from the island bar on Namotu, Fiji. The best surfers in the world, sitting at a World Tour event (which was having a lay day due to flat surf), crowded around a bar television in awe. "@namotu is freaking out on #redbullcapefear," said Mick via Insty. "You're all a bunch of maniacs! Go mad but be safe!!"

At the end of the day it was one of the most unlikely candidates who took home the trophy… 18-year-old South Coast local, Russell Bierke. And he did it in style, too, threading a 10-point ride on a bomb of the day in the final, coming out without a scratch.

"Yeah, that 10 was definitely the highlight of the event for me," Russ tells us. "I thought that wave was actually going to break off the reef and crumble on me, and I was seriously questioning why I was going it, but sometimes you just get the impulse and you think… why am I doing this? But you just keep doing it."

And that probably sums up the event pretty well. You think… why is this happening? But you just can't stop going. And it's because of the collaborative effort between the Red Bull team, Mark Mathews, the surfers and the safety team that Cape Fear was a brilliant, terrifying, breathtaking success.

Until next year, folks.

*It was actually Jughead who was injured and taken to hospital, as his wife and pre-pubescent kids stood on the cliff watching. He suffered a pretty nasty hit to the head, but he's fine. He was even back at the contest site the next day as a spectator.