You've heard me say before that I've always been a warm-water surfer, born in Australia and growing up in places like Hawaii and Southern California. But I just have to tip my hat again to my surfing buddies here in Minnesota. They've been getting some nice attention lately. Turns out the New York Times showed up recently at one of their favorite breaks up on the North Shore, and produced this story: Hanging 10 (Degrees) on Icy Lake Superior.
(Photo by T. C. Worley for The New York Times.)
My buddy Bob Tema is quoted in the story. Here's one of my favorite shots of him surfing that same break, Stoney Point, at an earlier time.
(Photo by Brain Stabinger.)
And here's a great winter shot he took of fellow surfer Quinn Carmichael.
The New York Times story was soon noticed by my buddy Jim Moriarty, Executive Director of the Surfrider Foundation, which resulted in him writing a great post called Are You Core? on his "Oceans Waves Beaches" blog, read by a worldwide community of surfers. (Thanks, Jim!)
Speaking of Surfrider, our local chapter is building a lot of steam lately (so to speak!), and we got some further play this past week — actually on two Surfrider Foundation blogs, with this great piece: Shaping Boards at 13 Below Zero. It features photos of my good friend and fellow MN-Superior Chapter organizer, Stefan Ronchetti, in his board shaping room/garage in Richfield, Minnesota. (Photos by Jim Perry, our amazing fellow organizer, who's a cardiologist. Like me, he's not a native Minnesotan, but a lifelong surfer all over the world. Stefan's from the Iron Range and is a financial analyst at US Bank, and also a worldwide traveler — now surfing on Oahu's North Shore.) And this post also made it onto Surfrider's Save Trestles blog. (That's one of Surfrider's major initiatives, to save a world-class surfing break in Orange County, not far from my second home in San Clemente. Stop the Toll Road!)
Pretty damn cool, all this attention for us Surfrider members and lovers of surfing back here in freezing-cold Minnesota! It's been one of the coldest Januarys in a long, long time, actually. Bob Tema told me a few days ago that the big lake is pretty well frozen over, so "no surfing for a while." (Surprisingly, that doesn't happen all that much on Lake Superior.)
One last piece of news. Speaking of our budding MN-Superior Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, I recently entered us in a local competition for nonprofits, to try to win a free web site. (We're so new, we don't yet have one.) 
The competition is called the Overnight Website Challenge, and ten Minnesota nonprofits will be selected (from about 50 entries) to have some amazingly talented volunteer teams of web developers and designers build them a web site in a marathon session held all day and night on February 28, complete with massive amounts of Red Bull and other goodies. In the linked post above, I describe it as "24 hours of pure nerd energy"… 🙂
All lovers of surfing are attracted to the environmental mission of the Surfrider Foundation. If you love oceans, waves, and beaches…and Minnesota's wonderful, lakes, rivers, and shorelines…and believe these resources are worth protecting and preserving, please add a testimonial to our entry page and help our chapter win a free web site! Together, we can have fun and make a difference, too.
I have surfed Lake Superior a couple of times and this last time in late December of 2008 we got some really good waves on the North Shore and shared a lot of great moments with bob surfing and just hanging out at the hotel playing guitar and talking surf. A story was done a couple of days later by Transworld Surf and it is featured on their website called felling Minnesota. Also you can check my website and my daily surf reports for Racine County at http://www.nosaltsurf.com. See you in the water, Burton Hathaway
Burton, hey, thanks for your comment. And also for the pointer to that “Feeling Minnesota” post on the Transworld Surf site. For those who haven’t found it yet, it’s here: http://surf.transworld.net/2008/12/23/feeling-minnesota-2/
You guys did have one *awesome* Lake Superior session on December 15! I had not seen those photos yet. That’s a great shot of you doing your “freshwater slash”.. 🙂 Will definitely check out your site, too: http://www.nosaltsurf.com
cheers,
Graeme
dang… I get chills just looking at that stuff… Great photos!
Living from California, I never really knew that people surfed in cold weather as well as warm. That’s amazing. Great pictures.
Thanks, Rebecca. There are lots of other great photos at http://www.superiorsurfclub.com, a site that’s run by Bob Tema and Brian Stabinger. Though they live in the Twin Cities, they were two of the original, pioneering surfers on Lake Superior, and are among the most dedicated. Another guy who surfed it even earlier than those two is Greg Isaacson.
cheers,
Graeme
I can’t believe it! Look at his jacket covered in icicles! Never seen anything like it, thanks for the post!
Way too many chills for me too.
Awww! That was freakin cold and the cooooooolest surfing photo I’ve ever seen, literally! haha! Great job!