Forget the North Shore

Proving that not all surfers are fair-weather riders, some 48 hardy souls will join the freeze fest at the fifth and final Red Bull Ice Break regional contest this week in New Jersey. Last year’s finals in Nova Scotia hit a balmy 16 degrees -- 1 degree with wind chill -- and 32 degrees at sea. Through snow flurries, a few red-nosed spectators watched surfers skim head-high waves and then flee to an Airstream camper or hot tubs. The last crop of this year’s blue-lipped warriors are among 216 contenders in tuneups for colder days ahead. The icy-ocean finalists will compete somewhere between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, sometime between March 15 and May 31. Sound fickle? Well, so are Atlantic waves. All East Coasters, the Ice Break boarders are on call from Labor Day to Christmas for their regional surf-offs in Ogunquit, Maine; Long Beach, N.Y.; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Kill Devil Hills, N.C. and New Jersey. For the finals, the top regional winners tussle with wild-card entrants and last year’s champ, Dean Randazzo, for $10,000 that gets divvied up among the top six. They will be shrouded in 6-millimeter neoprene wetsuits, even thicker booties and lobster-claw gloves that expose only index and pinkie fingers to frozen-tundra waves. How cold is it out there? After a 40-minute round, says spokesman Josh Kendrick, “you lose mobility in your hands and feet -- you can’t open a car door and can’t zip a zipper.” Go to www.redbullicebreak.com.

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-- Ashley Powers