Great Lakes Winter Surfing: Ice Beards, Storm Swells and Frozen Shores

Great Lakes winter surfing is as cold as surfing gets in North America. When autumn and winter storms whip up the lakes, a hardy community paddles out in thick wetsuits into fresh water close to freezing, and comes back with ice frozen into their beards. Matt Nelson, pictured here with his face rimed in ice, is one of them.

How the Great Lakes make waves

There are no ocean swells on a lake. Every Great Lakes wave is made by wind blowing across a long stretch of open water, so lake surfers ride the same storm that creates the waves, not swell that has travelled for days. The best sessions come when a strong onshore wind has built up waves and then swings offshore, smoothing the faces. That window is short: a good swell may last only an hour or two before the wind shifts and the waves fade.

Lake waves also arrive closer together than ocean sets, so surfers often have to paddle through wave after wave with little rest. Fresh water is slightly less buoyant than salt water, which adds drag when paddling, but the boards are the same ones used at sea.

Why winter is the best season

The largest waves arrive with the powerful autumn and winter storms known as the “November Witches”. That means the best surf coincides with the coldest water. During much of the surfing season, surface temperatures average 0–5 °C (32–41 °F), and snow, shelf ice and floating ice are common along the shore.

Surfers wear full winter wetsuits or drysuits with hoods, boots and gloves; in Toronto, a proper winter suit alone costs about $700. Spray freezes on anything exposed, which is how the famous ice beards form.

Where people surf the Great Lakes

• Lake Superior: the largest of the lakes, surfed in December along the northern shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
• Lake Michigan: Chicago has one of the biggest lake-surfing communities, and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, nicknamed the “Malibu of the Midwest”, hosted the Dairyland Surf Classic, the world’s largest lake-surfing contest, every Labor Day weekend from 1988 to 2012.
• Lake Ontario: Toronto surfers ride Woodbine Beach, Ashbridges Bay and the beaches below the Scarborough Bluffs, and Cobourg is another Canadian spot. On a busy weekend, up to two dozen surfers paddle out at Ashbridges Bay.
• Lake Erie and Lake Huron: smaller but active scenes. Cleveland surfers ride Lake Erie through the winter, and the Eastern Surfing Association even held a contest on Lake Erie in January 2013.

Three films from the Great Lakes surf scene

The videos above show three sides of the scene: Super Frozen, Ryan Patin’s GoPro short from Lake Superior; Year End Swell, published by E Wilkie; and an UpNorthLive news report in which winter surfers talk about riding waves on Lake Michigan.

Surf the lakes in winter only with experienced locals: ice, freezing water and short storm windows leave little margin, so learn the breaks in autumn first and never paddle out alone.

For colder still, watch Chris Burkard’s Arctic surfing film, read about a Canadian’s cold-water challenge, or see Michael Muraz’s illuminated Niagara Falls in winter.

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