Every single surfer I spoke with in Minnesota knew Hathaway.
Now he spends most of his day loading trucks for UPS. He eventually started his own surf wax company, too: No Salt Surf Wax. Next, Hathaway started running an Internet surf report for the lakes. He won a contest at a nearby wave pool in 2007, where he met fellow Californian transplant Will Wall, who soon became his surf-tripping sidekick. Just after arriving, Hathaway immediately set about wringing every bit of surf lifestyle he could from the lakes.
The waves were overhead, dude, on my very first day here! I was so stoked.” “My first day in Racine, I showed up at the lake in my wetsuit, and some random guy gave me a board to ride. “I was pretty clued in on the surf scene before I even got here,” Hathaway told me. I paused: Could a guy from California really know the lakes well enough to be a reliable swell forecaster? I needn’t have worried.Īs they told us about the possibilities-the prospect of adventurous exploration, the chance to ride never-before-surfed waves-you could see how being a Great Lakes surfer might not be just bearable, but desirable. When I first called Hathaway to suss out the possibility of him showing me around the Great Lakes, I was surprised to learn that he’s originally from Newport Beach, California, had competed as a member of the Huntington Beach High School surf team, and only moved to Wisconsin with his wife in 2006. They don’t come more dedicated than these two. Hathaway and his traveling partner Will Wall gladly drive all night, strap on thick neoprene, and dodge icebergs for even the slightest hint of short-period lake swell. Wisconsin resident Burton Hathaway is easily the most stoked surfer on the Great Lakes. You guys are really gonna score, dude.” He was watching a storm building rapidly just northeast of Lake Superior that was pushing swell toward the lake’s western arm, and he’d been sending me positive updates daily. “The winds are gonna be blowing, like, 50 knots in the middle of the lake. Hathaway speaks with a deep Spicoli drawl, and loves the word “dude” more than anyone I’ve ever met. “Dude, this looks like it’s gonna be the one, dude,” Hathaway told me over the phone just days before I boarded a plane for Minneapolis. As I read the article, I knew right away: This guy smiling goofily and waving at the camera with frozen lobster hands and icicle dreadlocks sprouting from his wetsuit hood, he would be my guide. I first learned about Hathaway earlier this winter while reading an online story about him surfing in Minnesota in minus-50-degree weather. Every day, he fills his page with shots of strangely shaped and weirdly colored waves, most of them in Lake Michigan near his Racine, Wisconsin, home, but he’s hunted waves all over the upper Midwest. Scott Fitzgerald novel, must surely be one of the highest-frequency Facebook users on the planet. Hathaway, with a name like a character from an F. The second thing you’ll learn from the Internet is that nearly all of those possibilities have already been explored and documented by a guy named Burton Hathaway. With enough patience, the right kind of low-yet-optimistic expectations, and a really, really good wetsuit, the possibilities for surf in the Great Lakes are far more plentiful than you’d think. Plus, all five lakes-Superior, Michigan, Ontario, Huron, and Erie-each get surfable waves from time to time, generated by quick-moving winter storms that can arrive from any cardinal direction. Rights, lefts, beachbreaks, reefs, even a classic pointbreak or two The Great Lakes’ wave pantry is stocked with a little bit of everything, fickle as it may be. If you spend much time banging around on the Internet researching Great Lakes waves, you’ll quickly pick up on two things.
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