Lake Attack: challenge to swim every South Island lake
From Nine To Noon
A challenge to swim every lake in the South Island, no matter how cold the water and how hard they are to reach, has brought together a Queenstown swimming club. Members of the Southern Lakes Swimming Club set a challenge to swim every named lake in the South Island. Realising the scale of the project, but also the opportunity it presented for keen outdoor swimmers, they opened it up to all swim clubs in Te Waipounamu.
So far about 90 lakes have be ticked off the list but more than 250 lakes remain to be swum in the Lake Attack Challenge, with swimmers going to extraordinary lengths to reach some of the most remote lakes. It's now the subject of a short film Out of the Pool and Into the Wild, which will premiere at the New Zealand Mountain Film and Book Festival this Sunday. Kathryn speaks with Paul Jaquin, the president of the Southern Lakes Swimming Club who came up with the Lake Attack Challenge, alongside the film's director Marijn Wouters, and Sara Metzger, another keen swimmer in the Southern Lakes Swimming Club.
