Surfing on Lake Tahoe? These diehards don neoprene and dive in when frigid waves roll

Scott Gaffney, however, was keeping close watch of the lake.

About a dozen times a year, when conditions are just right, harsh winds kick up surface swells on the northern edges of the lake that, if you squint, look like surfable waves at certain stretches of shoreline.

Monday was such a day. By 9 a.m. Gaffney, a 53-year-old ski filmmaker who lives in Tahoe City, knew he wasn’t skiing. Instead, he squeezed into a neoprene wetsuit, donned booties, gloves and a hood, grabbed his 6-foot-8-inch-long board and paddled out into turbulent water at Carnelian Bay.

Scott Gaffney surfs Carnelian Bay during a snowstorm on Dec. 13.

Snowflakes that swirled around the mountaintops dissolved into pellets of heavy sleet at lake level, and the howling winds fired them into Gaffney’s face like icy bullets.

“It just gets driven into your eyeballs. You’re barely able to see out there,” he said.

More for you

Gaffney was one of only a few surfers in the water, and he chased waves for five bone-chilling hours late into the day. By the end, he was alone in the water in a near-blizzard, his eyes on fire from the pelting. He drove home in his wetsuit and went straight to the shower.

“Pretty decent day,” he said later.

Tahoe provides for all kinds of outdoor adventures, but surfing is a rare one. The conditions that produce surfable waves are fickle and infrequent and typically accompany winter storms that get people stoked about skiing. Plus, any place else, the combination of frigid water temperatures, fierce wind and stinging sleet would turn a person away from the water. But in Tahoe, that’s just an average surf day.

“The days when it’s surfable, it’s raining sideways, the (wave) intervals are like 6 seconds. It’s chaos,” said Jeremy Jones, 44, a professional snowboarder in Truckee who first surfed the lake 25 years ago.

“I’ve surfed in Alaska and Iceland and, hands down, the coldest I’ve ever been is getting out of the lake with the wind hitting me,” Jones added. “I’ve learned from Scott that the key is, you suit up at your house and you don’t take your wetsuit off in the parking lot. You just get in your car and drive home.”

Scott Gaffney surfs Carnelian Bay during a snowstorm on Dec. 13.

Lake surfing only comes together about a dozen times a year between October and March, surfers say. Occasionally swells form on pleasant days. But more often they materialize when cold southwesterly wind blasts ripple across the lake, ultimately ushering in inclement weather. Those are the periods of promise, and surfers have to be on high alert when conditions coalesce, knowing they may be short-lived: When the wind dies down, the waves disappear.

“I’ve had plenty of days where it shuts off within 15-20 minutes,” Gaffney said.

Because weather fronts can bring both surf and snow, there are days when a person can surf in the morning and get in laps at the ski resort that afternoon. “It’s surreal and really special,” Jones said.

One of the fun qualities of Monday’s session was that it came together during a snowstorm and lasted all day, Gaffney said. “This season has broken all the rules.”

It’d be a mistake to compare a Tahoe wave to one at, say, Santa Monica. On the lake, waves don’t necessarily peak and peel into nice, shapely barrels so much as roll towards shore in crumbling slabs like wake off a boat. Positioning for an optimal ride can be difficult.

In his two decades studying wave activity on Tahoe, Gaffney says he watches for waves that appear to be peaking — the kind that would draw an ocean surfer’s attention — then aims to ride the waves forming behind them. There’s a mysterious energy transfer on the roiling lake that jumbles the senses of the uninitiated, he said.

“It’s a weird experience that takes awhile for people to get used to,” he said.

But there’s nothing like the sensation of sending a wave on Tahoe, surfers say.

“It almost feels like a bank heist, where you robbed a wave at these random spots,” Jones said. “Then every once in a while, you catch a wave that would’ve been a fun wave at Ocean Beach (in San Francisco) and it’s like winning the lottery.”

Surfers paddling out from Tahoe's North Shore last year.

Many view lake surfing as a novelty. Gaffney is not one of them. “It’s my second favorite thing to do,” he said.

Even though no one lives in Tahoe for the waves, more surfers seem to be showing up across the North Shore when the surf is up. On those days, the parking lot at Sand Harbor State Park might be filled with Subarus with surf racks.

“In the early 2000s, I’d be alone most of the time,” Gaffney said. “But now it can get fairly crowded.”

So he keeps his favorite spots to himself and operates by a few simple rules. First, don’t believe the forecast.

Second: “When you see waves, go get ’em because they might not last.”

Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Twitter: @GregRThomas