Swimming the Great Lakes
Once in a while I hear a sentiment that it’s not safe to swim in the Great Lakes. While there are certain conditions in which it is not safe to swim, for the most part, one can absolutely enjoy beach-going and swimming in the Great Lakes.
On summer weekends, beaches around Chicago are packed with visitors on both the sand and in the water. In the Cleveland area, our family has enjoyed beach days in Vermillion to the west of the city and Fairport Harbor and Geneva State Park to the east. One of my favorite summer visits is to Edgewater Beach adjacent to downtown. Last Memorial Day on our day trip to Presque Isle State Park in Pennsylvania, we came across the park’s kite beach, located at Sunset Point between beaches 9 and 10. The site was a charming, idyllic beach scene of colorful creatures and shapes lobbing and soaring above the sand.
There are four main conditions that would make swimming unsafe. One is a universal issue of weather. Just like at any beach or near any body of water, there are times that wind and water conditions could create a hazard. A second fairly universal issue is cold. At certain times of year, all five of the Great Lakes would be too cold for recreational swimming. But in the summertime, Ontario, Erie, Michigan, and the southern portion of Huron warm to a swimmable degree. Superior remains cold through the summer but there are pockets of warmer water along the shore and in coves.
The third issue of pollution and sewage run-off is heightened in the Great Lakes but exists along ocean beaches as well. If the area has seen extremely heavy rainfall, it can overwhelm sewer systems, resulting in the release of wastewater, and in rare cases, sewage, into the watershed or lakes themselves.
The final issue of algal blooms is more specific to a set of conditions frequent in the Great Lakes. Warmer temperatures in combination with agricultural nutrient runoff can cause algal blooms to grow. These are what create the terrible pictures of thick, green sludge from the western basin of Lake Erie. Some of these will create toxins that are a danger to the lake ecosystem, animals and humans. With climate change, more and more regions are facing this challenge around inland bodies of water.
For the most part though, the Great Lakes are safe, swimmable waters with the benefit of being unsalted.
Records seem to agree that there are at least three people who have swam across all five Great Lakes. The first, in 1988, was a Canadian woman named Dr. Vicki Keith who swam all five within a span of 61 days. Dr. Keith was a well-known marathon swimmer and as of 2022 held 16 world records related to her swims.
A Michigan native and ultra athlete named Jim Dreyer completed swims across all lakes between 1998-2005. His first crossing was a 41-hour, 65-mile swim across Lake Michigan in 1998. His final Great Lake crossing was a 60-hour swim across Lake Superior from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Canada.
Mr. Dreyer appeared on the History Channel’s TV show Stan Lee’s Superhuman on which he swam across Newport Harbor Beach towing a 27-ton car ferry. Publicity following this strength stunt swim resulted in Mr. Dreyer swimming across Lake St. Clair from Canada to Detroit pulling a ton of bricks for 22 miles in a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity and its ReBuild Michigan initiative.
Despite his “superhuman” status, it’s notable that Mr. Dreyer’s more recent anniversary attempts to swim across some of the Great Lakes, including 2024 in Lake Michigan, have not been successful due to weather conditions. As I’ve said in prior posts, the Great Lakes really are inland seas and to swim across one is open sea swimming. Not for the faint of heart.
