Frozen Tits: The Wisdom of Winter Swimming
Why I spent the winter of my 60th year swimming in really cold water
Vermont’s February air scratches like nails on my pale skin as I take off my deck coat and stand next to the 25-meter pool cut into the ice of Lake Memphremagog in my bee bathing suit and yellow tutu. It is so cold, I’m actually looking forward to immersing myself in the 30.5 degree (-0.8 Celsius) water to get out of this biting breeze.
Sixty yellow plastic bees sway in the Vermont wind at the end of green gardening wires that are sticking out of a towering kebab-like foam beehive that is duck-taped to my swim cap.
I look across to the other lane of the pool and see that Elaine, my swim buddy who also turned 60 in January, is stepping down the wooden ladder into the water wearing her matching ice swimming outfit of our “Bee Sixty” theme. I mirror her movements until we are both standing on the submerged platform, legs immediately numbed up to the thighs.
We get the signal: 3-2-1 Go!
Beehives held high, we breaststroke in tandem through the viciously cold water. I can see ice floes forming on the surface of the water ahead of me as I exhale purposely to calm my heart rate and fight the urge to hold my breath. Swimming in icy water, even for just the 30 seconds or so it will take me to get across, requires physical training and acclimation, but it is also a mental game: can I stand the burning of my hands? Can I control my breath? Can I keep my body moving?
“It’s like swimming in a freshly-shaken martini!” I yell to the heavily-dressed onlookers wearing snowsuits, boots, hats, gloves, and face coverings standing on the frozen lake. Cameras click as Elaine and I smile in our matching red lipstick and red cat eye glasses with 120 bees waving around our heads.
This 25-meter breaststroke is the Hat Competition, the most competitive event of the Lake Memphremagog Winter Swimming Festival. Elaine has been planning this hat, and we’ve kept it top secret, since our team came in second place in 2024 with her fabulous Golden Gate Bridge hat design. The prize? A jug of Vermont maple syrup and bragging rights in the ice swimming world. We are here to win!
Aging & The Cold
The wisdom of cold water lies, I think, in its potential to kill you. Cold shock, hypothermia, and swimming failure are real. Seasoned swimmers have drowned. Cold water demands respect for your one living body and delivers total focus. As I age and become more conscious that my days on this earth are more behind than ahead of me, I’m keen to feel the edges of what my body and mind can do.
During this winter of my 60th year, I swam 60 miles in cold water; I swam six times in a single day on six different days; and I did six 60-minute swims. I completed the Blue Tits 100-Dip challenge. I swam in fresh, freezing, and Baltic water temperatures, including my longest ice swim (50 meters, or two pool lengths, in 1:03:86) in the coldest water I’ve ever experienced (30.5 degrees/-0.8 C) right here in Vermont.
I’ve come so far in my acclimation to cold water and my metal fortitude to endure swimming in it but I still remind myself that this is an extreme sport, and for as much as me and my swimmer friends normalize it, it is a potentially lethal one.
I wasn’t on a high school or college swim team. I didn’t grow up taking cold plunges in Norway. I came to open water swimming through my love of the Northern California coast, of the ocean. I’m just a writer. A mother, a wife, a daughter. I never imagined I would become a later-in-life athlete and ice swimmer.
How? Why? I’ll get to that. But first let’s define “cold.”
What is “Cold” Water?
Shower cold: When you turn on the cold water in your shower in winter, the temperature is likely to be somewhere between 50-65 degrees (10-18 C), depending on where you live. (No, I don’t take cold showers to acclimatize, but I do enjoy turning on the cold at the end of a hot shower and I don’t like my showers too hot).
Ice cold: At sea level, fresh water freezes at 32 degrees (0 C) so the ice in your freezer will be at least that cold, or colder depending on your freezer setting. Take a few ice cubes out and put them in a plastic bag. Start a timer and then hold it in your hand or put it on your forehead and see how long you can stand it. The seawater at the time of the Titanic’s sinking is said to have been 28 degrees (-2 C). Just saying.
To give you an idea of the different perceptions of cold water between the acclimated and the non-acclimated, below I’ve compared definitions from the U.K. based Outdoor Swimming Society (OSS), a great resource for anyone who wants to dip or swim in rivers, lakes, and oceans, and the National Center for Cold Water Safety (NCCWS), a Vancouver-based nonprofit that educates boaters, kayakers, paddlers, and swimmers on the dangers of cold water exposure.
86 Degrees (30 Celsius): Pool temperature
OSS: Arguably unpleasant.
Below 77 Degrees (25 Celsius)
NCCWS: The point at which breathing begins to be adversely affected by water temperature. Lowest temperature of Olympic official competition pools (77-82 degrees).
70 Degrees (21 Celsius) and up: Warm
OSS: You’d think that’d be a good thing, but on the rare occasions that river pools and shallow lakes reach these temperatures during hot spells, there is the odd sense that there’s something missing…. the exhilarated feeling when you get out, that cold water ‘tang’.
70 Degrees (20.5 Celsius): Caution
NCCWS: Treat any water below 70 degrees with caution. The U.S. Coast Guard definition of cold water starts here.
62.6-68 Degrees (17-20 Celsius): Summer swimming
OSS: Lakes and more mature rivers reach this temperature over summer, during hot spells. Still fresh on entry, but comfortable picnic lazy-hazy summer swimming.
60-70 Degrees (15.5-21 Celsius): Dangerous
NCCWS: Controlling your breathing becomes progressively more difficult.
53.6-60.8 Degrees (12-16 Celsius): Fresh
OSS: At this temperature triathlons start operating. In a wetsuit you may find you can swim comfortably for a while, … doable for the brave, and not a problem for hardened open water lovers.
50-60 Degrees (10-15.5 Celsius): Very Dangerous. Life Threatening
NCCWS: Maximum intensity cold shock. Total loss of breathing control. Gasping and hyperventilation. Ability to hold breath is severely compromised.
42.8-51.8 Degrees (6-11 Celsius): Freezing
OSS: Much like Baltic, but not quite so painful, or breathtaking.
Below 40 Degrees (4.5 Celsius): Immediately Life Threatening
NCCWS: Total loss of breathing control. Maximum cold Shock. Unable to control gasping and hyperventilation. Water is so painfully cold that it feels like it is burning your skin.
32-42.8 Degrees (0-6 Celsius): Baltic
OSS: Jumping in is likely to impair breathing in the uninitiated, as breath comes in big jolting gasps and it feels like someone has clamped on an ice neck brace. Water has bite, skin smarts and burns. This is winter swimming. Limbs soon become weak – 25 metres can be an achievement…. That said, the joy of swimming without a wetsuit at this end of the temperature spectrum is the cold water high: the pure exhilaration and rush of endorphins that you get from getting in. Winter swimmers frequently become addicted to it, and it is sufficiently powerful that a 1-2 minute swim can leave you feeling good all day.
The Six Dip Days of Polar Bear
In San Francisco Bay, where I swim year round with no wetsuit based out of the Dolphin Club, the average water temperature from December 21 to March 21 (seasonal winter) ranges from 50.2-52.6 degrees (10.1-11.4 Celsius). Each winter, the club has its annual Polar Bear Challenge to swim a minimum of 40 miles.
Elaine and I decided to swim our birthday years: 60 miles. For me, it required some serious planning to get that many miles in 90 days. Swimming took priority on my calendar and I fretted on how to make up missed miles during holiday travel. If you had told me at age 49, when I did my first 1-mile open water swim, that I would be swimming in the bay before dawn with no wetsuit (not even a neoprene cap!) or doing six dips in a single day, I woulda said you were crazy. But I guess I’m the crazy one now.
It had been Elaine’s idea to kick off Polar Bear on the Winter Solstice (December 21, 2024) with a six-dip day. Then I upped the ante.
“You know, I think we should do six six-dip days during Polar Bear,” I said to her in the sauna after our second swim of the day. Elaine had a whole spreadsheet of turning-sixty goals for 2025 around swimming, hiking, reading, and cultural events that ended in 6s and 60s. She couldn’t nod fast enough,
“Of course! Brilliant, I’ll add it to the goals.”
Swimming 60 miles for Polar Bear wasn’t extraordinary in the context of our open water swimming community. Some club members have swum 75 and 80 miles for their age; others have swum 300 miles or more. Many regularly double or even triple-dip in a day to rack up miles or push endurance.
But a six-dip day was unprecedented as far as we knew.
Honestly, it was a little insane to swim at 6 a.m., 8 a.m., 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m., and 4 p.m.. There was also something quite magical about it, watching the ebb and flow of club members in the water and in the sauna, and seeing the sun rise and then cross the sky over Aquatic Cove and then set again. The water changed for each swim, now calm, now riotous. The water was always cold, around 50 degrees in the morning and getting to 52 or 53 in the afternoon.
Our routine was to swim for 30-40 minutes, then have a hot shower and sauna, and put on a dry bathing suit for the next swim. We bundled up in layers, sipped tea or hot chocolate, ate snacks, and chatted for about half an hour. Then got back in the water and did it all over again. And again. And again.
After 30 minutes of swimming at 50 degrees, my hands and feet get numb and my fingers are barely functional, splaying open in what swimmers call “The Claw.” In the last decade, I’ve learned to swim through the numbness and tingling that used to frighten me by slowly increasing my time in the water. This is acclimation. I've learned that as long as I’m properly hydrated and fueled, I can keep going way longer than I ever thought possible. My fear of getting too cold or tired has become educated.
It wasn’t always so. After my fearless teens and twenties when I swam casually in oceans all over the world, I became paralyzed by panic attacks in the water after I became a mother in my thirties. The ghost of the sneaker wave that almost drowned me at age five haunted me, making my ears ring and the land telescope away as I felt dizzy and seized by a terror so profound that it was all I could do to paddle back to shore under a dark cloud of shame and separation from my soul mate. It was my dark night of the soul for my relationship with the ocean.
When I turned 49, aging came to my aid. I was almost 50, almost dead! There was no time to waste being scared any longer of what I knew I still loved: swimming in open water. The scariest thing in the water was me. With the help of a coach to organize my mind and train my body, my nervous system’s tolerance of the cold water slowly increased. I took on one swim at a time and kept going in spite of my fears until I completed my lifelong goal of having swum Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, all before my 50th birthday.
Even with those accomplishments, I still doubted myself when it came to winter swimming. I had never swum all winter, never swum in the dark, and never completed a Polar Bear. But I was inspired by the swimmers who I saw around me, older than me, slower than me, who chipped away at their polar bear miles and made it.
The Warmth of Cold Water Swimming
The warmth of cold water swimming is found in the community of like-minded athletes, survivors, thrill seekers, and aging swimmers who seek its freedom. We are all a little wackadoodle. A little obsessive. Never sorry we swam.
Friends find the fun in doing hard things. Knowing someone else is counting on me to meet them on the beach at dawn helps me get out of my warm bed at 4 a.m..
Being there for each other during the inevitable “Why the fuck am I doing this?” and “Will I ever be able to do this?” moments are crucial. Wearing matching swimsuits and caps and tow floats and goggles are silly cherries on top. The moments that we stop in the water to chat or marvel at the beauty of a diving pelican or the moonlight on the water are priceless.
My swim pod buddies Elaine Van Vleck and Crissa Williams are sister swimmers who have made me their third. In 2023, Crissa and I swam from Heaven (Angel Island) to Hell (San Quentin Prison), an 8-mile (12K) swim that took us five hours. It was my first taste of training for a marathon swim and I was amazed and pleased to finish. All the old stories I had told myself about what my body could and couldn’t do were suddenly up for grabs. I realized that I was scarily powerful and now that I had learned how to train for a difficult goal, I only needed to decide what I wanted to do. In 2024, Elaine invited me to try ice swimming in Vermont. So all of this swimming madness is really their fault, well, mostly.
BACK TO THE ICE
Newport’s The East Side Pub is the staging ground for the Memphremagog Winter Swimming Festival. Families in snow boots eat burgers and fries next to half-naked swimmers pulling on bathing suits. It’s a steamy mosh pit of Dry Robes, UGGs, and animal onesies (I am a penguin; Elaine is a bear). Nobody blinks. Alcohol is permitted for swimmers only after their last swim of the day. Elaine and I, successfully re-warmed and dressed, sit nursing a Guinness at a round table by the windows overlooking the lake. Swimmers from all over the country and the world are here. Ice swimming is a small but growing community. A group is here after competing in the 6th International Ice Swimming Championships in Molveno, Italy organized by the International Ice Swimming Association, which hopes to made it an Olympic sport.
Most everyone here knows each other, it’s a small world, but if not, they are eager to meet you. I run into an old friend from San Francisco publishing circles, now an accomplished ice swimmer who lives on the east coast. At the bar, I chat with one of the hat competition judges who mentions how much he loved how our bees waved over the water. A hat’s interaction with the water was important, he said. We Had Been Noticed. When I tell him Elaine’s Bee Sixty vision and that’s why we each had 60 bees for our 60 years, he says he loves it even more.
That night is the awards dinner in the East Side’s banquet room. I am digging into some buffet chicken and steamed veggies when my phone pings. A friend saw a photo of our hats in the Washington Post! A local photographer had been here shooting. His photo also went to a Hong Kong website. We had gone viral! Moments later, our names were called. We won First Place for the Best Team Hat!
WHY?
Back in San Francisco, we were the talk of the Dolphin Club sauna. Everyone wanted to know, how cold was it? How did we train? How did we make the hats? Why???
It was fucking cold. Freezing, really. To prepare, we swam in the bay all winter and then did a double-dip one day at Donner Lake, water temp 36 degrees (2.2 C). Elaine designed the hats and we made them from slices of a foam mattress pad, gardening wire, cut up and Sharpie-colored pieces of yellow plastic salad plates, and cut up plastic bags for the wings.
Reading this, I don’t want you to think that I don’t get cold, or that I don’t still doubt my abilities in the water, or question my sanity. The answer to all of the above is of course I do, at times. But I’ve learned two things this last decade from age fifty to sixty: I love doing hard things and I love a shared goal. Camaraderie is a magical courage tonic for me.
I love swimming in cold water precisely because it is hard. It’s hard and I choose it. The water has taught me patience and perseverance and pain tolerance and delayed gratification, all which help make the hard things in the rest of my life, especially the ones I don’t choose, easier to get through.
WHY? Is a question I am often asked about these swim goals and adventures. Why swim six times? Why travel across the country at great expense to swim in ice water for 60 seconds? The short answer is: because I still can.
Turning 60 brings with it the distinct realization of being past the hump day of life: it’s Thursday and I can see the weekend approaching. Sunday is The End. I’ve learned that I don’t want to be comfortable in this phase of aging, I want to be challenged physically and mentally. Doing hard things brings me joy and satisfaction.
Remember that little feeling you got when your friend mentioned some challenge or event or goal and you wondered, hmm, I wonder if I could still do something like that? Go find out. Text your friend and say “I’m in.”
You continue to be my spirit animal Pia. Yes yes yes to swimming because we still can.
I love this essay! Your focus on the emotional/relational benefits of cold water swimming is a refreshing take. I’ve mostly read about medical benefits, like anxiety and inflammation reduction. I believe those takes, but yours here are much more compelling to me. The camaraderie — how could you not build strong ties from experiences like these!?