A months-long effort to restore Munich's famous "Eisbach" wave is being disbanded, the Surf Club Munich has announced. The group cited excessive red tape and a lack of enthusiasm for the project from the city government.
"The administration does not want to regulate surfing on the Eisbach, but to prevent it," the association said in a statement. They pointed to "administrative obstruction" in their mission to bring the wave back after it disappeared in October during a routine cleaning process.
The Eisbach is a small tributary of the Isar river that flows through Munich's famous English Garden city park.
A series of concrete reinforcements underneath the stream in the 1970s led to the creation of a strong current near a bridge in one area of the park.
Local surfing legend Walter Strasser has been credited in local media with coming up with the idea to place a plank at a specific angle where the current was strongest, creating a wave large enough for surfing.
Over the years, Strasser and his wave gained more and more renown in the surfing community, and the area became a hotspot for the sport.
Earlier in December, Strasser told local newspaper the Münchener Abendzeitung that he had tried to work with Mayor Dieter Reiter to restore the wave, but had been met with ambivalence.
"I have so much experience with the Eisbach. I know exactly what the problem is. I could have fixed it within weeks, with very little funding," he told the paper. "But the city told me they didn't need me."
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The Eisbach was also closed for two months after a 33-year-old surfer died in April. After her surfing line became trapped around her leg, she was pulled under the water and stuck underwater for nearly 30 minutes under rescue services were able to reach her.
The strong current had prevented bystanders from coming to her aid.
Although paramedics were able to reanimate her on the riverbank, she died later that same day in a Munich hospital.
The incident was the first such deadly event at the Eisbach, and prompted what authorities called a thorough safety review before the wave reopened at the end of June. A specific cause for the accident was never found, however.
The news that the Surf Club Munich has given up its official attempts to reopen the wave come just a few days after some surfers illegally set it back up with a wooden plank and used it clandestinely over the holidays.
But this construction was not permanent, and authorities have made it clear that surfing is currently prohibited.
Although Surf Club Munich has dropped its study of how to restart the wave on a constant basis, they maintained that the debate would continue despite "becoming political."