Cold is a many tentacled thing. It's frigid mouthfuls making your fillings ache, wind slipping into the gaps at your wrists like a stiletto, air that morphs wax into glass, and the prospect of warmth so far away it feels more like a memory than a future.
Header Image: No ordinary jump off. tip toeing through the Ice in Kamchatka. Photo by Guy Williment.
The crew behind FCS's new film sampled it all in Alaska and went back for seconds. Misery loves company so we rounded up a few breaks every bit as chilly; the famous, the barely-surfed, and a couple you'd swear were made up. Here they are, starting furthest away and getting closer to home.
The rubber is your friend. Dylan Graves aboard the Milo. Photo by Alan Van Gysen.
Unstad, Norway
Above the Arctic Circle, a Lofoten cobblestone point tbreaks left and right into a bay where fewer than twenty people live year-round. The water sits around four degrees. In winter you can surf under the Northern Lights; in summer you can theoretically surf all day but only because the sun never quite sets. Pack a six-mil, then pack a second to pull on when the first won't dry.
Reykjanes, Iceland
Black-sand beach breaks and lava-reef slabs an hour from Reykjavík, where geothermal steam drifts off the ground while you wrestle into your hood. The season runs October to March, which is a bitter-sweet way of saying the best waves arrive hand in hand with the coldest weather. Sharp rocks, short days, and a line-up you'll likely have to yourself.
Akureyri, Iceland
A boulder point tucked inside a fjord that wakes up when a big north swell drives down out of the Arctic. Dane Reynolds surfed it in Castles in the Sky and most people still don't know it's there. Cold, fickle, and hidden.
Thurso East, Scotland
A right-hand reef slab off the far north Highland coast peeling fast and flawless over flagstone. It played host to a world-tour cold-water event for years. A January morning here can sit near zero with the offshore howling straight through you, so the wave's perfect and your hands lose all feeling long before the first set arrives.
Nova Scotia, Canada
The Atlantic's idea of a joke, and you're the punchline. The waves fire in blizzard season, so the surf comes wrapped in fog, snow and roads glazed shut with ice. You'll want a four-wheel-drive just to reach the shore, and the patience to dig your way out after your surf. Reef and point breaks, bitterly earned.
Seek and ye shall find. There's always somewhere breaking in Alaska. Photo by Scott Dickerson.
Yakutat, Alaska
The Gulf of Alaska is where the crew aboard the Milo expected cold the rest of this list only flirts with. Yakutat is a fishing village with a handful of resident surfers and waves that run mostly empty, because you're more likely to share the line-up with a drifting chunk of ice than another person. Winter water slides toward three degrees. Powerful, remote, and watched over by nobody.
Kamchatka, Russia
The deep end. On this volcanic limb of the Russian Far East the winter water sits around two degrees and the air at minus fifteen, and only one beach is reachable by road. The rest is military-held or helicopter-only. Black volcanic sand, active volcanoes on the skyline, and a local crew who'll bluntly describe the conditions as painful.
Snow tyres and board bags don't often appear on the same gear lists.
Photo by Guy Williment.
Dunedin, New Zealand
After all that, the South Island feels almost reasonable, which is an extremely Kiwi thing to be. Locals will shrug and undersell it, then paddle out into frigid swell off volcanic cliffs warmed by the thought of good coffee back in town. Empty line-ups, real waves, and a studied refusal to let the circumstances spur a fuss.
Shipstern Bluff, Tasmania
Home at last , but no gentle landing here. Off the bottom edge of Tasmania there's nothing between you and Antarctica but open water funnelling onto this slab of reef. The water hovers near twelve degrees, the Roaring Forties do the rest, and the wave itself mutates into infamous steps as it breaks. Two-hour hike or 30km jet-ski to get there.
Why bother?
There’s no such thing as bad conditions, only bad gear, and the gear is finally good enough to let you. Places asking a lot also tend to give the most back. Empty water, strange light, a coastline framed by your own two eyes instead of a camera lens held by a stranger's hands. Cold is the toll for such prizes. Some gladly pay it, while the rest of us consider the price too high, warmed by our frugality and our 2mm of rubber.