Cold-Weather Surfing with Chris Burkard
Cold-weather surfers are cut from a different cloth. Eager to travel north, these guys dodge icebergs between sets and aren’t afraid to freeze for the perfect Arctic barrel. Photographer Chris Burkard has the heart of a cold-weather surfer but more impressively, the eye to capture these stunning Nordic scenes from places such as Iceland, Norway, and Russia.
Photo: Adventure at its finest. Keith Malloy exploring a glacier the surfer’s way—by paddling through icebergs in Iceland.
Looking for an opening between the ice, Dion Agius prepares to paddle out from Iceland’s raw and frozen shore.
Staring at this landscape the fact that there is a perfect a-frame seems to be overshadowed by everything else. Some of the colors produced by the sky on this trip seemed like an illusion, but when you’re this far in the north atlantic, anything can happen. Iceland
Keith Malloy navigates his way through the ice that lines the shores of Jökulsárlón. It is one of the few breaks in the world where the biggest danger is submerged chunks of glacial ice. Iceland
Sometimes the road traveled was half the fun. Our Land Rover definitely allowed us to go places we never imagined exploring before. Iceland
With Iceland being such a small island the weather patterns are constantly in flux. Swell and storms can move quickly across the country. One day could have rain, the next snow and the next hail. You really have to motivate yourself to get out of a warm car and trek through the elements to the surf.
Chasing the sunset we made our way back up the cliffs over Vik. We hadn’t see the entire trip at this point and moments after setting up camp it showed itself for a glimmer before dropping behind the mountains in the distance. Iceland
A quick fire brings some much needed warmth after a frigid surf in Iceland.
There are very few places in the world where you can find ice on the shores of a beach. Walking around huge glacial ice chunks on the way to the water there was no question this was going to be the coldest session of the trip.
Norway offering more peaks than one can count. From wave peaks to mountains peaks the transition is seamless.