Crescent’s Aqua Man: Swimmer Masters Huge Lake

Crescent’s Aqua Man:  Swimmer Masters Huge Lake, by Brad LaBrie, Peninsula Daily News, Thursday, June 20, 2002. LAKE CRESCENT--  The Aqua Man, as campers and residents around Lake Crescent called him, was a common sight at the lake for the past month-and-a-half. Aqua Man, 40-year-old Greg McCormack of Diamond Point, came out of the water for the last time on Tuesday after swimming the 24-mile circumference of the lake in segments. To battle the cold of the water, McCormack wore a triathlete’s wet suit with a hood, gloves and funny-looking booties.  The only piece of humanity an observer could see poking out of the suit was his face. He would bike and jog along the roads and trails around the lake wearing his wet suit to his point of swimming entry that day.  The campers and locals, after seeing him day after day, labeled him The Aqua Man. McCormack began his professional-athlete-like fitness regimen on April 30.  Almost every day, with a day off here and there, until Tuesday he would swim from 0.75 mile to 1.25 miles each segment.  It took 32 legs to finish the project. Three miles to finish He had to swim 3 miles on the final day to finish because he caught a plane out of Port Angeles on Wednesday to start his summer job on an Alaskan educational cruise. “I’m exhausted,” he said after that swim. He swam a figure 8 in the lake, mostly sticking to the shoreline.  McCormack started at Barnes Point, swam east day-by-day to East Beach, then to the Log Cabin Resort, along the Spruce Railroad Trail passing Devil’s Punch Bowl to the second tunnel, which is the narrowest part of the lake. From there he swam across the lake to the south shore U.S. Highway 101 side, and went west to Fairholm.  In the last seven swims he went along the north shore next to Camp David Junior Road, and he finished at Barnes Point. The 13-year Washington state resident swam Lake Crescent for two reasons.  For overall fitness and the energy he needed for his job as well as a sense of place. “I needed the energy for the kids,” McCormack said. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day he was a teacher for the Olympic Park Institute, which is located at the lake.  The Institute is a non-profit environmental education site for children. “I can become a better teacher because of my swims,” he said. And he’s a stickler for practicing what he preaches.  He really believes in having a sense of place.  And boy, does he know Lake Crescent now. “It really is a spectacular lake,” he said. “It’s a source of inspiration.  It is one of the most enchanting lakes I have seen in North America.” Trust McCormack when he says that, because he has seen lots of lakes.  He biked 18,350 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, finishing last December.  And he has been a National Park ranger in six different parks, including Mount Rainier, but not Olympic National Park.  A couple of the others were (Denali, Hawai’i Volcanoes, Everglades, Point Reyes National Seashore) and Grand Canyon. Pick-up sticks But some of the most wondrous things McCormack has seen are right here in our own backyard. For instance, Lake Crescent is full of dead trees. “Under water they look like giant pick-up sticks,” he said.  They’re huge, old trees covered with fine sediment and (what looks like moss, a freshwater algae) moss.” They criss-cross along the lake’s shoreline. “They look ghostly,” he said.  “They look like a haunted forest that isn’t alive anymore.” McCormack  had to watch out for logs and big branches on the surface of the lake.  Sometimes, he had to dive under or swim around the biggest ones. His favorite pastime was backstroking under overhanging maples or alders. “It was fun to look up and see leaves hanging over the water,” he said. But most of his attention was in the lake itself.  He wore goggles to look beneath the surface.  At times, he said, it felt like he was getting a river otter’s or Beardslee Trout’s, or possibly a crawdad’s view of the lake. And he saw plenty of wildlife during his morning tours. He saw at least one Beardslee trout, which live only in Lake Crescent and nowhere else, almost on every swim, and he would see schools of about 200 Kokanee trout, a lot of newts, especially on the north shore, crayfish and freshwater clams. McCormack would start his day at 6:30 every morning and be done with his swim and be done with his swim (add:  and report to his morning work meeting) by 8:30. It really wakes you up,” he said.  “It invigorated me, filled me with life.” Each day he would bike (sometimes many miles half-way across the lake) in his wet suit to the spot where he finished swimming the day before.  He would jog along the road or trail for about a mile, then swim back to his bike. When McCormack got back, he would (warm up from the cold water) take a hot shower and be ready for work. His summer job is as a naturalist-lecturer aboard a 120-passenger vessel in the Bering Sea and the Russian Far East, where he will lead Zodiac tours to seabird and marine mammal colonies (and haul-out sites), and give slide lectures on ornithological and marine mammal topics. He will return to Diamond Point at the end of July. The cruises can get a little frustrating for McCormack’s fitness regiments.  He normally gains from 5-15 pounds on these outings, mainly because of the five-course dinners offered every night (not to mention the 7 lunch and 7 dinner desserts every week complimented by mid-afternoon hot cookie breaks). “For exercise I lead shore walks and hikes,” he said.  “I like to do the most strenuous hikes to the top of mountains.” On layoff days he likes to run on the frozen Alaskan tundra. The Aqua Man just doesn’t like to sit still for long.Spread the Adventure!