The addictive hellscape of winter surfing on the Great Lakes
“I don’t think of it as treacherous,” said one surfer of battling frostbite, frigid waves and toxic spills. “I think of it as an adventure.”
The addictive hellscape of winter surfing on the Great Lakes
“I don’t think of it as treacherous,” said one surfer of battling frostbite, frigid waves and toxic spills. “I think of it as an adventure.”
By Zachary Nauth, photography by Will KleihegeLake Michigan was the consistency of a slurpee. But that didn’t stop Pat Noyes from trying.
On a below-zero day one winter not long past, with a stiff wind churning up 5-foot waves, Noyes ventured out to Greenwood Beach in Evanston. Clad in a thick, black wetsuit, he clambered over the treacherous shelf ice that covered the beach like an Ice Age glacier. He slid into the water and paddled out, duck-diving under the waves as they broke and crashed over him.
Just a few yards from shore, his 10-foot surfboard leash got hung up on a piece of ice and he couldn’t get it loose. He sat on his board, bobbing in the churning waters as a friend watched helplessly from shore. So many times Noyes has sought and found the exhilaration and menacing beauty of winter waves on Lake Michigan.
On the Great Lakes, after all, a surfer has to pick his spots. Good waves don’t come along every day.
Driving through blizzards, gusting winds, super-chilled water. These are the things that warm the heart of a “laker.” For winter surfers on the Great Lakes, bad is almost always good. The worse the weather, the better the surfing.
“I don’t think of it as treacherous,” Noyes said. “I think of it as an adventure.”
Noyes first tried surfing on a family vacation in Kauai, site of some of the sport’s most exciting surfs. But this is Chicago, and there’s no “Banzai Pipeline” or “Jaws” — and six months out of the year it’s some version of cold — so he’s got to make the best of it.
“It’s always worth it. I’ve never gone in the lake during the winter and wished I didn’t.”
Even when he gets skunked.
Midwesterners surf Lake Michigan because it’s there. They surf in the winter because it’s best. Surfers around here are a tight-knit clan of construction workers, artists, autoworkers, engineers and even retirees — all waiting for storms to spin up at the very top of the 320-mile long Lake Michigan and for the swells to build down south. With one eye on their weather apps, they stay ready, they stay in contact — and they try to not attract the attention of authorities when they drop everything and head out for undisclosed locations. In the words of Mike Turnipseed, an Indiana old timer and retired machinist featured in Noyes’s 2016 documentary, winter lake surfing requires “patience, dedication and preparation.”
“Surfing tends to ruin your life,” Noyes joked, “in particular surfing on the Great Lakes. It is such a demanding thing.”
The curative powers of cold-weather surfing
Mike Calabro grew up in ground zero for winter surfing, in Whiting, Ind., where the wind, swells and waves end their Lake Michigan journey.
Whiting is in the belly of the lake’s U-shaped southern tip, which covers about 50 miles of shoreline roughly from the South Side of Chicago, through the Indiana Dunes to New Buffalo, Michigan. The town of 4,500 residents is home to BP’s largest global oil refinery and is sandwiched between two of the country’s largest steel mills, and the Horseshoe Hammond casino. This is Southend Surf Club turf, discovered by a handful of pioneers who organized this informal group almost 30 years ago. They weren’t your stereotypical West Coast surfer bums, but men who worked in the building trades and plants all over the Calumet industrial region.
Like some of his surfing pals, Calabro was a teenage skateboarder. Driving past the Museum of Science and Industry on trips to Chicago to visit his dad, he saw people surfing.
He didn’t own a surfboard, so at age 14 he traded a skateboard for one. His stepdad loaned him an ancient neoprene wetsuit that Calabro described as a “Jacques Cousteau aqualung” for its bulk and weight. Calabro could barely move in it, and he never managed to stand up on the tiny board.
Fortunately for his surfing interest, his family moved to the Bay Area in his 20s, and he ripped surf in the Pacific Ocean for the next few years.
“It just got more and more addicting,” Calabro said.
When his mom needed care in 2003, the freelance photographer returned to the region, living out of a van and planning to stay a couple of years. Almost 20 years later he’s still here in Andersonville, where he is one of the Southenders, a group that includes his partner and the rare female surfer, and registered nurse, Maureen “Mo” McFadden.
“It’s a bit of a boy’s club, for sure,” said McFadden. “I love stealing all of their waves.
“I love my group of Southenders. I like to talk s*** too. I’m just out to play, and share a beer with friends. They are some of the best days of your life.”
Despite road trips out west to surf, the two say that they can’t shake a “special connection” with the lakes. Calabro echoes others when he describes a feeling of camaraderie, of “going to war together” with your tribe against an unforgiving foe, surviving and bonding.
“It’s like that feeling of invincibility,” said fellow Southender Mike Killion, interviewed in the 2019 short film “Surfing the Rust Belt.” “You feel like you can conquer anything.”
The hazards start with the ever-present danger of hypothermia. There is also getting plowed by other surfers; crashing into floating ice chunks; getting arrested for trespassing or unlawful surfing; ear, eye and urinary tract infections; wetsuit rash; ice cream headaches from frigid water; and pollution from nearby mills and refineries.
There’s all of that, and when the graupel — supercooled water droplets — start pelting your frozen face, there is no denying that “it sucks,” Calabro said. “Holy crap, what the hell are we doing out here?” he sometimes wonders. “You paddle back out and suffer some more.”
But they venture into this hellscape for a reason. In winter, the storms are more intense and frequent; the water is more dense, mimicking some of the buoyancy that saltwater affords. And best of all, there aren’t any crowds to steal your wave or get in the way.
For Calabro, cold-water surfing has also been the cure for bouts of depression, especially in the long Midwest winters, with its gray skies and short days. Going out “awakens” him.
“All the cold and discomfort is gone and there is just the pure joy of playing,” Calabro said. “All the troubles go away. You catch a wave, and all that goes away.”
The aura of an “outlaw” sport
Winter surfing is science, friends and flexible schedules. The science starts with having the right gear.
The Great Lakes surfing season used to end in October. But technological advancements in wetsuit fabric that is thicker and more flexible have made it a year-around sport. A wetsuit works by trapping a thin layer of sweat to insulate the skin and conduct heat around the body. Only the surfer’s face is exposed, creating a genre of Instagram “ice beard” shots. A 6-millimeter hooded suit, twice as thick as normal, with booties and gloves, runs about $500. That’s good enough for a couple hours on the board for experienced surfers.
The coldest part of winter surfing is not during the run, but après surf in the parking lot, and getting the skintight, frozen wetsuit off as quickly as possible. That’s where friends come in, to help.
Other tricks for staying warm include pouring a thermos of hot water into the booties or gloves to warm the extremities, or even relieving yourself in your wetsuit, Calabro said.
Knowing where to go means becoming an amateur meteorologist, and having all the right weather apps at your fingertips. The Third Coast Surf Shop, owned by Southend mainstay Ryan Gerard, features a web dashboard of weather info curated by a professional meteorologist known lovingly as “Dr. Fresh” (given name Ed Russo). It displays a color-coded ranking system from best to worst waves; wind speed and direction; barometric pressure; readouts from buoys on the lake and live webcam views.
“When I was starting out you’d have to read the weather in the newspaper,” said Jack Flynn, a 50-year-old artist from Chicago. “You’d have to drive four hours, and you’d get there and it sucks.”
What makes a good spot depends on the contours of the lake bed, such as whether it has been dredged for ships. Above-water structures like jetties, piers and breakwalls can help form clean waves by blocking east-west winds and creating protected alleys. Surfing begins with waves only a couple feet high, but rad locations can mean head-high waves that carry a surfer 100 yards.
Finding choice spots, however, isn’t easy for those not in the know, and access is tricky with fenced off industrial plants and public lands like the Indiana Dunes with controlled access. That’s not all bad; one of the joys of being a laker is the solitude and lack of competition for waves.
With semi-secret locations known only to a tight-knit group, surfing in the Southend still retains the aura of an outsider, or even outlaw, sport.
Flynn and Rex Flodstrom, a children’s book author and illustrator, became literal “outlaws” when they were arrested years ago for surfing in Chicago; both spent a few hours in jail (Flynn in his wetsuit). Flodstrom’s 2012 case was dismissed after it became a minor social media cause célèbre, and attracted the interest of pro surfer Kelly Slater.
The city legalized surfing at several beaches at the behest of the Chicago chapter of the Surfriders Foundation in 2009 — including Montrose, 57th Street, Rainbow and Osterman in the spring, fall and winter. But in the last year Flynn was flagged down by a police officer while surfing off 57th Street Beach; he still hides when he hears sirens. Southenders argue surfers are an asset not a hazard, making dozens of rescues of hapless swimmers over the years.
The Southend surfers want to make surfing a little less outlaw, and a lot more clean. They kept getting sick surfing, even smelling like gas, in the waters of the Calumet industrial area, said surfer Steve Arnam, a retired marine biologist and Surfriders Foundation consultant. After a series of toxic spills, the Surfriders chapter worked with allies to get U.S. Steel to agree in 2021 to improve its wastewater monitoring and treatment.
In spite of the cold, the murk, and the law, the winter lakers are here to stay. Last October more than 70 stoked competitors traveled to Whiting for the “Lakers That Rip Surf Jam” contest sponsored by Third Coast. Winners received driftwood prizes.
“I’ve surfed all over the world,” Noyes said, “just chasing waves. I always get pulled back to the Great Lakes.”
“You feel a connection with everybody because there is so few of us. In California, in Hawaii, you’re just another surfer.”
Zachary Nauth is a freelance writer who lives in Oak Park.
Corrected: This story was updated to reflect that Rex Flodstrom was arrested in 2012 for surfing in Chicago in winter.