- Filming "Ice Mermaid: Cold Resolve" was an experience of a lifetime.

Just sharing what I love about the state and the waterways, making new friends and kind of going through the emotional journey of filming, but then also sharing a story that is much more relatable to a wider audience that I ever thought possible.

(inspirational music) I got to go to my favorite places in Washington and have other people share it too.

And that's one of the things I love so much about the documentary is that we have an unbelievably beautiful state.

I mean, between the mountains and the ocean and the city, to show it off in a tourist capacity, that this is the place that we as swimmers get to experience every day, come swim with us.

It's was really special to go and share all these places and now to have it go to a wider audience for sharing.

So I started swimming in Michigan when I was really young because of the Great Lakes.

(inspirational piano music) Everybody starts swimming super young, whether it's in lessons or just getting ready safety-wise, to go in the Great Lakes.

I didn't start swimming competitively until I was in high school, which is really late in the world of competitive swimming.

But I didn't discover open water swimming until I was in probably my mid to late twenties.

So this love of sport that I found was not until a lot later in life.

The transition from pool swimming to open water swimming was really different.

It was a little bit of a struggle.

I think for all the, the classic reasons of you don't have lane lines.

You can't see the bottom.

Getting into open water swimming, it was just difficult because it's starting something completely new as an adult that you don't have any experience in.

And I think anytime that happens, it's a little scary.

Putting your face in the water and being afraid of, of seeing stuff or learning how to keep your cool for me, I've really learned to find the beauty of what's under the surface.

I find a lot of joy in looking at the tracks in the sand and trying to figure out, is that a moon snail track?

Is that a crab track?

And looking for all the different little critters that are hiding out in the eel grass.

And then learning about what types of jellyfish there are, what jellyfish hurt, sting, what don't hurt.

The hopeful interaction with a seal or something like that.

(upbeat music) It gives me a lot of joy and excitement where a lot of people get nervous about that type of stuff.

I try to help people when they're first getting into, oh my gosh, I touched a fish.

Or, oh my gosh, there's seaweed.

It's the exact same thing as walking in your backyard and seeing a squirrel or a bird, it's just underwater.

And I wouldn't really say what scares me, it just makes me nervous is really swimming in new locations where there's not a lot of information.

So you have to take time to just sit and evaluate.

It's definitely not something I'd recommend for everybody to go into the mountains, to the swim.

'cause you have to be comfortable, one, hiking, two, getting into the mountain.

But the biggest thing is self recovery and getting out.

So some of my favorite places, though, I absolutely love Mirror Lake.

The underwater topography of the lake is absolutely stunning.

Every single way you turn around the lake, if you skirt the perimeter, there's something new swimming up along the Northern Cascades.

There's a lot of lakes going in off the mountains that are just absolutely stunning because of the mountains around up on the Chain Lakes Loop, there's a couple lakes up there because it's such a remote and beautiful area.

The first ice swim happened a lot quicker than I anticipated it would.

I think a lot of the lessons learned comes after the first event, all the things that you think you should have been told and you didn't because you either, you didn't know what questions to ask, or, I mean, no amount of research is gonna cover everything that you need to know going into an event.

So the most challenging part was really learning from the mistakes I made from the first swim and how to overcome those for future ice swims.

(mellow piano music) Body positivity in the swimming community, while it touches a little bit on everybody, it primarily or predominantly affects women, and myself included, there's always a sense of you're not good enough because, and there's always the reasons.

You kind of have to stop listening to people saying, "You could be better if you did this."

And I had people in the gym where they would see me swimming and I've had them come up to me afterwards in the locker room, hand me a personal trainer card and say, "You know, you could lose about 10 extra pounds.

It would make you a little faster, here's my card.

Come and reach out to me."

For that thing to happen, one in that environment, but also for someone who is training at an elite level for different events, you know, I don't need your business card.

Maybe I don't want to lose weight.

Just because I look a certain way does not mean I do or do not want to do anything.

You know, it happens to everybody.

And I think it's just not talked about a lot.

And so when I came to Alkai, I was in, well, I started in a wetsuit, but then once I got out of the wetsuit, I was in a one piece and I kind of made a bikini pact with a couple of the other girls because we'd seen one other girl wear a bikini.

And it was terrifying that first day to just be, you know, on a beach and be in a bikini and wonder what is everybody gonna think?

And then you kind of think, who's on the beach in March?

I mean, nobody's on the beach in March looking at you and judging you.

The more I was in a two piece, the more I felt how the water affected me and affected my body.

And you could, you could feel the currents, you could feel the tide, you could feel the waves with the boats.

You could just feel the water in a different way.

And it felt, it was another learning experience.

I can't go back to a one piece because I don't want this amazing feeling that I now feel to be taken away from me.

And over time, you know, I got one other person to say, "Hey, you should be in a bikini and you should come join me, you're gonna love it."

And then we had other people asking questions about what it feels like to be in a two piece and not in one piece.

And I think all this energy kind of translated to when we see people in two pieces or one pieces, we're not actually judging them for what their body looks like.

We're people that support each other (inspirational music) as they are for who they are and what they can do with their body no matter what they look like.

A lot of the times when you are swimming or when I'm training, I swim alone.

So filming the documentary and filming with Dan and then, you know, crew members, Hank and Alicia on some of these trips, it was almost like, even though they weren't swimming with me, I had a friend along and I had somebody to do things with.

The documentary is really something special in that it's a celebration for our open water swimming community.

It's, it's just such an emotional movie for so many reasons.

And I hope that this movie really embodies that sense of, you know, community and celebration for everybody.

And if you're not a swimmer, I hope you join.

(inspirational music continues)