That's a good educational video to watch, Rob. I watched it last year. Interestingly, when I ran over those rapids back in 2002, I was in the water for at least 15-minutes. The young North Saskatchewan River runs off the Saskatchewan toe of the Columbia Ice Fields a scant 52-kms from where I went under. I had no gasp response when I hit the water and when I finally clawed my way out, I was feeling only a little bit cold. Back in 2004, I had a bad launch during the month of February when the river was still covered with ice except for one 5 km stretch that never freezes over due to thermal pollution. I was in the water for 5-minutes that time and felt quite comfortable. Each time I was wearing a sealed dry top, neo gloves, running tights and ankle booties. I removed myself from the water each time because I was concerned about finally getting cold to the point of experiencing hypothermia but of course, I never came close considering how quickly I warmed up each time. Both times I was quite a bit more fit than your average weekend jogger. I generally do not wear a winter coat here in Edmonton until the temperature falls below -20 C, and there has to be a wind before I will wear the coat. I think Sean has a point about conditioning the body for tolerating more cold than usual. It works! Also, I have a relatively higher metabolism than most folks because of my fitness. My body puts out so much heat that I can barely stand to lean my chin on my hand because my hands are hot. Hot hands = great circulation. All of those years of long distance running (34 so far) and paddling (10 so far) have served me well. Tolerance to cold and fitness play a large part in how the body reacts to sudden emersion in water. I also strongly believe that mental control of the body, including stymied feelings of panic, play a large part in how long a person can stay in cold water. Each time I fell into the river (as previously mentioned), my mind was occupied with survival. The adrenalin reaction helped me to stay warm but it was my lack of panic that allowed my mind to get my body to do what it needed to do to survive. Each time once I was comfortable in the water, I could have stayed there much longer and I knew it. All that said, I went back to the river after my run-in with the rapid. I was 5-kms further downstream from where that incident occurred and I decided to try to walk across a very shallow section of the river in bare feet. I couldn't do it without feeling extreme sudden pain from the cold. In fact, I did not bother to cross the river because the water was so cold. I figure the temperature was close to only 5 C at that spot and that was during a day when ambient temps hovered around 20 C. There was no dire emergency for me to cross the river and the pain my feet felt from the cold caused me to turn back. I know that if I had no choice but to face the cold water again, I could stay in for quite a long time, perhaps as long as 45-60 minutes, maybe longer but I am not willing to test that theory unless I have to. My mind has to understand that the bodies situation is forced and survival is needed, otherwise the mind if not convinced of the necessity and the natural reaction is to back off and stay dry and warm. Another interesting point on the mind/body thought: I have this habit of going outside with only a t-shirt and jeans during the winter if I need to do something out there. Temps could be -30 C but I just put the cold out of my mind and I barely notice it until I am done doing what I need to do. Such control of the mind over the body surely has something to do with self-regulating metabolism, increasing it when necessary (such as sudden cold water immersion) or decreasing it (when doing really long hikes, for example). The fear of sudden immersion is probably enough to cause a physical reaction which might shorten ones ability to stay in the water. If you fight it, you will probably lose the game. If you stay calm and concentrate your mind on actions that generate heat, you will probably think of a way through a situation. I do believe that nothing is impossible, as the Bearing Strait swimmer proved. Next time you feel a freezing cold breeze that makes you shiver, relax, think of it as refreshing and enjoy it.

Excuse the somewhat disjointed thoughts, I am at work trying to make a defective method work better so I haven't got enough time to smooth my comments out.

Robert N Pruden