When Is It Too Cold?

[hummingbird]

When is it too cold for you to go swimming. I have a very low tolerance for cold so it can be 80 degrees and it's too cold for me to go swimming. What's your tolerance level?

[Grandpa]

Years ago, leading a bunch of scouts, I jumped from the boat into an alpine lake. It was a hot day but that glacier fed lake........luckily, my buoyancy popped me back to the surface and I just naturally grabbed the boat and rolled back in. It took 10-15 minutes to get my breathing back to normal. I have avoided cold water swims ever since. I still swim in them but stick to the shallower, therefore, warmer water. Now hot springs are a different matter. I'll take the plunge there when the air temp is single digits.

[Pathfinder1]

Originally Posted by Grandpa

Years ago, leading a bunch of scouts, I jumped from the boat into an alpine lake. It was a hot day but that glacier fed lake........luckily, my buoyancy popped me back to the surface and I just naturally grabbed the boat and rolled back in. It took 10-15 minutes to get my breathing back to normal. I have avoided cold water swims ever since. I still swim in them but stick to the shallower, therefore, warmer water. Now hot springs are a different matter. I'll take the plunge there when the air temp is single digits.

I guess it all depends on the circumstances. Sometimes we would gather at a friend's house for a hot-as-you-could-stand-it sauna. When we had enough of the heat, we would quickly exit to the back porch, use an axe to break the ice on the water in the large wooden tub, and jump right in. You would cool down some, but never felt a bit cold...!!

[firedancer]

I only swim on the hottest of days. Lake Michigan pretty much never reaches swimming temperatures for me, but I might dunk in late July or August.

Grandpa's story reminds me of jumping off our raft into Lake Powell in September - the cold shocked the wind right out of me (it probably wasn't even that cold, but I'm a wimp!) I held on to the boat for a good while before I caught my breath and could go for a swim!

[Gunny Webb]

I dive a lot and about 70 is my cold mark for a wet suit. Below that I drag out the dry suit, below 60 the full face mask comes out also.

[wvbreamfisherman]

For a quick dip- probably around 60 would be my lower limit. For sustained swimming I'd prefer around 70 or higher.

I've jumped into water that was somewhere around 50-55 a couple of times, and that was a shock. It was a very hot day, and I wanted to cool off. A minute or two was plenty!

I've fallen through ice into water up to my shoulders and that takes your breath away! Luckily a house was not far away- by the time I got there my legs and feet were numb.

[DMan]

I like both the water and the air temperature to be pretty warm. Swimming doesn't appeal to me unless I'm feeling hot, so it has to be in the 80's before I go in. Guess I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to that.

[IndianaHiker]

Good rule of thumb for safety form what I have read is that the water temp added to the air temp should be close to 100. This is a guide line for when wet and dry suites are supposed to be needed. My self almost never go swimming. Just don't find it all the fun and get bored very quickly with it.

[ejdixon]

Coldest I've tried has been in the 70s. Haven't dared to swim any colder.

[ppine]

I lived in Washington state in the 1970s, and went out to the Olympic Peninsula. On a rare sunny day I attempted to enter the Pacific Ocean having spent a lot of time in salt water as a youngster. The water was 55 degrees F and that is too cold.

Bought a ski boat in the 1990s. With a wet suit we could ski and wakeboard in April when the mountain lakes were about 48 degrees F. Rafting on the Truckee River in the spring, the water is in the low to mid 40s and I have retrieved many people from the water wearing wet and dry suits that were cold, but okay.

I used to backpack in the Northern Cascades of WA. We were young then and swam in lakes with ice floating in them, but not for long.

People need to dress for immersion when paddling canoes and kayaks especially. That means a wet suit and life jacket a lot of the time. Realize that the human body has some involuntary tendencies when immersed in cold water. The main one is the inhale reflex. Many people drown because they involuntarily inhale a large amount of water upon enering the water. A sheriff's deputy on duty at Lake Tahoe one fine day in May drowned after stepping from his patrol boat to a tender to go ashore. He was not wearing a life jacket. No one really thought was imperiled, and he drowned in about 8 feet of water.

One of the big differences between the eastern and western parts of the US is water temperature. Dress for immersion and wear a life jacket. IndianaHiker is right about the 100 rule. It may not be conservative enough for moving water.