We strapped our boards onto a white Subaru and drifted through the fog like a ghost ship. The car dipped and wove en route to the coast, between paddocks and native trees. Soon we arrived at a farm gate that guarded the entrance to a point. A ‘No Trespassing’ sign stood by the entrance.

“What do you think, should we go through anyway?” Paul asked.“Let’s do it, what’s the worst that can happen?”

1. Shea discovers a strange sign.

We crept down the farmer’s road and came to...

I crawled in pain out of my wrinkled synthetic sleeping bag, after spending the night on the hard floor of a South Island farm house. Beside me, wet socks, jackets, and towels hung by the heat of a stove, dripping like stag carcasses. I glanced through a window across the room and saw nothing but white outside.

“It’s not clearing up ‘til the day after we leave,” Paul Davidson said with stunned eyes. He sat on a couch next to me in a puffy jacket and knitted cap,...

This photo is from a recent, particularly foggy trip to the South Island of New Zealand. South Island reefs and beaches are some of the first to focus huge Southern Ocean swells as they march up from Antarctica’s frigid waters.

Check out a slideshow from the trip on Poler’s Adventure blog, or our Instagram updates on @arctic_surf.The full story is in the works and will be posted soon. While you’re waiting, download a new Arctic Surf wallpaper for your...

A fragmented island cluster in the North Atlantic is home to some serious surf potential when wave height and period reach deep enough to trip over the sea floor. Perhaps the person in the photo above is admiring the calm channel that beckons him to the wave reeling across the way. Ancient mythology and science both allude to a more glorious past for the isles, before they took on their rugged, broken shape. But’s its the messy outlines that seem to give them...

There’s a new button in the upper left corner of this site, and it links to the new Arctic Surf store. Two items are currently stocked, t-shirts and notebooks. Down the road other things might be included as well, such as maps and zines. Any updates will be posted here.

This month we’re heading back to New Zealand. We’ll start near the top of the North Island and—if all goes according to plan—Shea Foley, Trevor Gammelgard, and myself will make our way down to colder waters. Follow @arctic_surf to see what happens.

1. There are a lot of remote, cold gems in New Zealand. Spots like this might take an hour of hiking to reach, but the desolate lineup makes the trek worth while.

Over the last few years we’ve periodically monitored a weather cam that overlooks a remote point. The break’s topography and bathymetry appear to be perfectly formed, at times resembling the curved cobbles of California’s “Rincon”. With their gazes intently fixed on the warm glow of their computer screens, viewers discovered that sometimes the wave is flat, sometimes it’s windy, and sometimes it’s going off.

1. A recent screen...

The word “fun” doesn’t exist in the Russian language, but Sergei was clearly enjoying himself. It was his military truck that had a shattered window. We were halted in a forest deep within the Kamchatka wilderness. As the rest of us crawled along the truck’s roof to examine our surfboards for damage, he looked up at the window and smiled.

1. Keith Malloy, Chris Burkard, Trevor Gordon, and Sergei examine a coastal map of Kamchatka.

We had spent the last week scouring the...

Much of Iceland’s coastline is accessible by road. That’s one of the reasons why surf coverage of the small island nation has recently multiplied.

But in this clip a group of surfers trek across the western part of Iceland—the fjord region—where there are no roads to the coast. Highlights include crossing a mountain pass during winter with surfboards strapped to a cargo sled. During the journey they discover a silver wave and a people that endure extreme...

When Ernest Shackleton’s boat crash landed on the western shore of South Georgia Island in 1916, his team faced an impossible scenario. They had reached the end of a journey through the world’s stormiest seas, and now the hard part was just beginning: a traverse across the mountain island’s completely uncharted interior.

1. An early Antarctic explorer faces the daily difficulties of living in the cold.

South Georgia Island’s west coast is...