Pilchuck plunge rules: Jump in, dash out, shiver

Published 10:46 pm Thursday, January 1, 2009

MACHIAS — It’s 11 a.m. on New Year’s and Teresa Ort is ready.

She’s wearing a swimsuit under her sweatshirt, clutching a beach towel and working out just exactly how she’ll negotiate the steel-gray river whooshing past.

Her plan: jump in fast, get her hair wet and scoot as quickly as possible back to a burn barrel.

“You have to get your hair wet if you want the sweatshirt,” explained Ort, a concrete mason from Sultan who owns a Harley-Davidson.

The temperature hovered in the mid-30s and crusty chunks of snow hunkered all around. That didn’t deter dozens of people from stripping to their skivvies — or less — and jumping into the Pilchuck River on Thursday behind Doc’s Pilchuck Tavern.

It’s a tradition that started more than 30 years ago when a few regulars at the riverside tavern took the plunge, said Doc’s owner, Jimmy Young. Everyone just calls him Jimmy.

Over the years, the tradition has morphed into a beer and burn-barrel affair that draws people from far beyond Machias. Those who take the plunge get a sweatshirt, the bragging rights and one really cold dip.

And what an affair to remember.

It all starts hours before, when the bar opens its doors early New Year’s Day and revelers come to visit with old friends, nosh from a potluck buffet and, in some cases, get really sloshed. Some are there for the jumping and some are there for the gawking.

So many showed up Thursday that their cars clogged the gravel parking lot and spilled onto the shoulders up and down the road nearby.

As the clocked ticked closer to noon, Jimmy — the undisputed arbiter of this event — began signaling to the crowd with his horn, a slim, foot-long, aqua blue, Dr. Seuss instrument. The sound bellowed across the surrounding countryside like a hunter calling his hounds.

“They come from all over,” he said, his eyes covered with glasses formed in the shape of beer steins and shaded with a red, white and blue visor.

“They all follow him like the Pied Piper,” said Cathy Erickson of Machias, watching Jimmy rile up the crow.

Was she planning to take the plunge?

“No! Are you kidding?”

Things are done here a certain way, but about a half-hour before the scheduled start of the jump, a few rule-breakers rush the river and jump.

Douggy Dan Curry of Lake Stevens said he did it just so he could be first. The anticipation, the waiting — it was all too much, he said, water still clinging to his puckered pink chest, his feet colder than a chilled Kokanee.

People talk about this event weeks beforehand, he said. Curry looks forward to it. He views it as a fresh start.

“You’ve got to get things off your back,” he said.

As the clock stumbles toward noon, jumpers ready themselves along a wood-chip-lined path leading to the river. The most eager wait at the front of the line, the most reluctant are still around the back of the tavern, guzzling whiskey straight from the bottle.

Someone props up a sign near the river offering “Beads for Boobs.”

Jimmy has made is way down to the riverside with the Seuss horn and gives it a long, deep blow: AHHHHHHHH-WHHHOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM.

The crowd whoops and hollers in response and the jumping begins.

One of the first, a man in long, red underwear, dives in hitting the water belly first. Red underwear man emerges upright and sloshes his way the other side of the river, where he pulls himself up in triumph, long underwear drooping.

In two and threes they leap into the river, some frighteningly head first, some holding hands, some giving the hang ten.

There were old skinny-legged men and round barrel-chested men, women in T-shirts and swimsuits, and teenage boys in board shorts.

Half a dozen men dressed as Chippendale dancers, with black bow ties, white cuffs — and in one case, a itsy-bitsy aqua-and-black Speedo stuffed with dollar bills — hurled themselves into the river.

Once the last jumper has returned to shore, Jimmy yells out to the crowd: “Happy New Year, it’s a brand new year!”

The swimmers wrap themselves in towels and shiver by burn barrels or head into the tavern. Some head to their cars but most stay.

“We’re just getting started,” Jimmy said.

Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.