A chill adventure: Polar Plunge at Lagoons helps Adventure Club

Less than an hour before The Adventure Club’s annual fundraiser Wednesday, Mother Nature threatened to turn the Polar Plunge into the Solar Plunge.

As donated money totals rose toward nearly $3,000 to purchase outdoors equipment and to cover the organization’s travel expenses, the temperature rose to 50 degrees amid South Beach skies.

“It’s downright balmy,” said club sponsor Andrew Larson, also among the founders of the nontraditional Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School where the group is active.

The Bartholomew County Water Rescue Team dived in first, in diving gear, to keep participants safe.

The event at Larson’s home at The Lagoons in Columbus featured a humorous contrast: a snowy shore, a measure of ice, and a few shirtless, fittingly adventurous male students in swimming trunks. Equally brave female students were decked out in shorts and T-shirts.

Larson himself got into the act by splashing into the waist-deep water from the waterway’s dock. But some of the 18 jumper/divers made their aquatic entrance more dramatic by jumping in.

As warm as the air temperature was, the water temperature was altogether another matter, as ice was floating on the surface, still presenting the participants as “certifiably crazy” as one livestream viewer suggested. Crazy for adventure, perhaps?

To still donate to the cause and the club, tied in with the school’s alternative learning format, go to the Facebook page for Andrew Larson and find the Go Fund Me link on of his recent posts. Or go here: https://gofund.me/9c8fe5b9.