Talk:Winter swimming

Polar bears of South Korea

I changed the entry for the Polar bear swim according to the Climate section of Busan. I suppose the water temperature will be higher than offshore in Finland in summer, so have some difficulty accepting that as winter swimming. Sure, most people stop swimming outdoors in late August here, except when having sauna as when winter swimming. There should be ice in the sea or lake for me to count the experience as winter swimming, but I understand people in warmer climates have other standards. I'll try to make the distinction clear --LPfi (talk) 12:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't mean to dilute the Winter swimming subject with non-polar (or non-near-polar) locations. :)

I would suggest changing the title though. Winter swimming (to the lay person) implies swimming in rather cold water. If ice is a requirement then I think the title should reflect that. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:56, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

What I wrote was my spontaneous reaction. After googling around and looking at Wikipedia, I think it is just me (or people around here) being biased – in winter we have ice. The question is whether ice swimming is special enough that handling it together with winter swimming in general would be clumsy, and whether we want to have an article or articles on both.

I now think winter swimming in general should be included here, with ice swimming handled as the extreme case. We need somebody from warmer climates rewriting the lead and writing a section or a few about winter swimming (or "ice bear plunging") in general. The issues are mostly the ones that face me in the start and end of the summer season, but the culture is different.

--LPfi (talk) 08:25, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, to someone from the tropics for example, swimming in a Finnish lake at midsummer would be "winter swimming". ϒpsilon (talk) 08:47, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Also is it worth mentioning the scientific basis of 'ice water' being colder in the sea (i.e. salt water) than fresh water (in a lake). --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:13, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I would answer "yes" to that last question. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)