Icy temperatures didn’t deter those who plunged into the new year at polar bear dips in Port Angeles, Neah Bay and Lake Pleasant.
“Now we know the reason for the freezing. It is to have a great time,” said Dan Welden, one of the 100 people who dunked themselves in the Port Angeles Harbor off Hollywood Beach despite drizzling rain, cold and seaweed at the 21st annual Port Angeles Polar Bear Triple Dip.
People in Neah Bay and at Lake Pleasant near Beaver braved snow on the ground and near-freezing water temperatures to make their dives.
About 15 people ran over the snowy beach near the Neah Bay Senior Center to dunk themselves in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, while some 25 Lake Pleasant leapers — costumed in funky fashions — dove through a thin coating of ice.
Especially cold
Welden, who has participated in the Port Angeles plunge since its first year and who has missed only two in 21 years, said that it was especially cold this year.
“It was pretty calm, but very cold,” he said.
But he doesn’t think that will dissuade this year’s first-timers from returning next year.
“Hopefully they’ll have to do it again,” Welden said.
The event, originally begun by the former Port Angeles Sports Club, has continued through snow and storms, Welden said.
No one organizes the event now.
But Weldon creates certificates — each signed by “Certified Club President Chilly Bunz” for participants.
One of those clutching a certificate in a shivering hand was Camron Holcomb, 5, who said it had sounded like fun, “but it was really cold.”
Asked if he would go in more than once, he responded with an emphatic, “No.”
“I have one more thing,” he said before leaving Hollywood Beach, hot chocolate in hand.
“I think I went into shock.”
One of the regular attendees bobbi fabellano, who said she legally changed her name to all lower-case letters, helped Camron through his first plunge.
“Next year will be my 20th year to go, so I have to do it again next year,” she said.
Port Angeles resident Rich DeCou said this is his seventh or eighth year to take the plunge.
“This is one of the most invigorating, extreme, big ways that people get to experience the great Northwest,” DeCou said.
He plans to return next year with his daughter Mikayla.
“She wanted to do it this year,” he said. “But she is only 2, so we thought we’d wait another year to be safe.”
Tanya Coleman said she has participated in the Port Angeles plunge for only about three years, but that she is no stranger to New Year’s Day dips.
“I grew up doing this in Massachusetts,” she said, “and it gets a whole lot colder there than here.”
She said she went in two times out of the triple dip.
“After two, I had something like an ice cream headache,” she said.
Lake Pleasant
Sonya Hirsh, who started the Lake Pleasant plunge three years ago, wore her now traditional grass skirt.
“We had guys in tutus, and me in my grass skirt and Kermit the frog and a couple of elves,” she said.
Joe Korst of Forks trudged through about 9 inches of snow to splash in the lake, but it is all just part of the experience, he said.
“I’ll be doing it again for sure,” he said.
He told the group that he was “going fishing.”
When he dove under the icy surface, he slipped a frozen fish from his pocket and surfaced with it in his mouth.
“I’ll do something like that again next year,” he said, “probably something just as dumb.”
Neah Bay
While the Port Angeles dippers aim for three dunks in the harbor, in Neah Bay the only rule is to completely submerge oneself in the water, organizer June Williams said.
“The only thing we say is, you have to get your head under water and get all the way wet,” she said.
The Neah Bay group split up afterward to get warm.
Some met later at fellow attendee Polly DeBari’s house for a post-dip meal.
Williams, who began the Neah Bay tradition in 2001, is eager to jump back in next year.
“We are all very much looking forward to next year,” she said.
“And hopefully more people will join us and more spectators will come.”
But not all North Olympic Peninsula residents were as convinced.
On Port Angeles’ Hollywood Beach, first-time dipper Charles Causey, who is originally from Alabama, said he “might go in [again] if my life depended on it.”
“It felt like jumping into a box of ice water and glass,” he said.
“Of course, in 365 more days, I might want to think about doing it again.”
__________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
