One day he’s joking at a local bar about going to Todos and the next he’s sitting in the channel puking up foam from a freak set on the head. Lifeguard and budding surf photog, Jordan Gonzales headed down to Todos Santos last Friday to snap some pictures of friends Bryce and Tj Saeman. These brothers, both skilled and highly competitive when it comes to big wave surfing, invited Jordan to join them on one of their many treks to this notoriously large Baja break. While this swell wasn’t as big as they all had hoped, the day long session did offer some of the cleanest conditions anyone had seen in recent memory.

Jordan packed his new toy, a Canon 50D, and snapped some incredible photos from the chartered boat in the channel:

After grabbing a bunch of shots from the boat and little dazed from the 3am wake-up call & subsequent race out to the famed Baja island, Jordan said he reluctantly got talked into jumping in the lineup with a GoPro in hand. Several waves and GP stills later, Jordan found himself right in the path of a rogue set wave. “This thing must’ve been 25 feet and it landed right on my head,” Jordan explained. It rag dolled him and pulled him under on a vicious rollercoaster ride in the whitewash. “I was hacking up foam and wanted to kill Bryce when he did finally pick me up on the ski. Of course the biggest wave came though right when I decided to jump in the water.” Overall Jordan was stoked to experience Todos on such a rare and remarkably clean & sunny day.

The above photos are unedited, straight from the camera shots. “The water was so blue and the conditions were so calm it didn’t seem like I was at Todos at all.” Rusty Long, Derek Dunfee, Jamie Mitchell, Dylan Graves, Maya Gabiera, Pat & Tanner Gudauskas, Dooma and of course Bryce and TJ Saeman were out there among others. Special thanks to Jordan for sharing his story and photos.