Josh and I were instantly hooked after jumping into the freezing waters of Deer Creek that just 5 days after he and his buddy Gordon, who couldn’t join us at Deer Creek, made plans to go to Bountiful Pond and have a go at pushing beyond what we had done.
We met at the pond at 4:30. Josh came with Sabrina and their boys, Gordon brang his wife and kids, and I came alone. We unloaded the ladder and headed toward the first pier where we planned on jumping in. The water was much deeper right off the pier than we thought it would be, the ladder we lowered down barely reached the platform when it hit the bottom. Josh put in the thermometer and after a few minutes got a reading of 41 degrees, 5 degrees warmer than our previous jump.
Four of us were going to be getting in, Josh and his wife Sabrina, Gordon, and myself. We laid out our towels and blankets in preparation. Josh was first and without hesitation jumped and started swimming after about 9 strokes he did a flip turn and headed back. Seconds after Josh had pulled him out and gotten his towel wrapped around him Gordon was diving in and swimming as if it was his daily routine putting his face down and everything! It was really amazing to see him go after it like that, especially for his first time. When he got out and was drying off he experienced what Josh and I did a few days earlier…that addiction to the cold that takes hold of you and he was already planning for the next swim.
It was than my turn. I was really excited to see how it would be to swim in water of that temperature and see what I could do. Going into the swim I only had a couple loose plans of what I would do. Learning from last time I knew that first of all I had to do a ‘water polo stroke,’ doing this would keep my titanium plates out of the water and not cause any trouble. As for the second I didn’t want to push myself too far so I just planned on doing maybe 10 yards. Not a lot but I would be happy to just do that much. I swam out at a decent pace and was cold but it was definitely bearable. I didn’t have any idea how far I had gone but decided to turn back before I got out too far. Upon turning back I instantly felt my pace significantly slow down and after looking at the video it is easily evident that this occurred. I’m not sure if my muscles were tightened from the cold or what the exact cause was but it was an interesting experience. When I got out Josh wrapped my towel around me and I started to get dry. My body wasn’t immediately warm as last time, this time it took me a minute or two to get comfortable. Standing on the platform watching Sabrina jump in I also noticed that this time my feet didn’t hurt like before in fact they weren’t even cold, but my hands for about 20 minutes were very cold and numb. When they unthawed the tips of my fingers were burning and a little painful. I got my gps that I had inside my cap while in the water and it read that I was in for 45 seconds and went 123 feet! I was pretty happy I had reached just over 41 yards but at the same time was a little upset that I didn’t push farther. We can’t wait til next time! This addiction may very well put me in the hospital before I’m through pushing my boundaries…
Gordon, Josh, Sabrina, Jake(Me)
...Gordon has a video he posted on his blog:
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