Early Saturday morning, volunteers walked out to the edge of a rectangular hole cut in frozen Lake Memphremagog. They used long rakes to scoop chunks of ice off the top, clearing the pool for competition.
Later that morning, in single-digit temperatures, gleeful swimmers stripped to their swimsuits and dove in, paddling across the pool in a parade of elaborate, sculptural hats: a fishbowl attached to a swim cap, a decorative bird’s nest built atop a bike helmet, a flaming Lady Liberty torch — with real flames! — that one swimmer kept above water the whole way across the pool.
The Memphremagog Winter Swim Festival began Thursday and concludes Sunday. It brought more than a hundred competitors from more than a dozen states, Canada and Ireland to swim off the shore of Newport. Saturday morning featured the hat competition — a festival tradition — before many swimmers returned to the water to compete in the 50-meter freestyle.
Bundled-up volunteers accompanied swimmers at every step and as soon as they exited the East Side restaurant, which served as an indoor home base. (Many put spikes on Crocs or slippers to trek their way to the pool.) Volunteers collected swimmers’ coats in laundry baskets at the edge of the ice and helped them redress as soon as they reemerged. Those who braved the lake generally returned to land beaming.
A specific group of volunteers served as “hookers,” meaning they paced alongside the edge of the pool in pairs, tied to each other with rope, with one person holding a long instrument meant to fish swimmers out of the water should they falter. The second person is there to keep the first hooker from falling into the ice as well.
The festival, which has run for several years, has never had to scoop a swimmer out of the water, said Greg O’Connor, a volunteer from Boston in charge of the weekend’s safety precautions.
“There’s definitely, like, a happy, giggly feeling when you’re in the water,” said Gin Majka, 26, who competed in the Memphremagog festival for the first time this year. “Your endorphins totally overwhelm you.”
Majka dips off the coast of Maine almost daily with a cold-water swimming group.
“You just become really bonded, especially once you do it more and more together,” Majka said of the swimming group. “It’s a close-knit female friendship, and it’s beautiful.”
