A Small Beach Town Is Taking on the World’s Biggest Polar Bear Dip

Birch Bay sits in Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border. It’s not a city. In fact, it’s not even an incorporated town, but an unincorporated coastal community with little reason to expect global attention. Locally known for its long beach, kite festivals, and seasonal rituals, Birch Bay is the kind of place people pass through or settle into quietly.

All of that is about to change.

On January 1, 2026, Birch Bay will attempt to break the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the largest polar bear dip, aiming to surpass 3,134 participants — the number set on December 13, 2025 at Ølberg Beach, Norway. For a community this size, the ambition alone is striking.

The effort depends less on scale than on repetition — on people who return year after year, bringing kids, neighbors, and eventually grandkids with them. Birch Bay’s strength has never been numbers, but familiarity: the same beach, the same cold water, the same faces meeting winter together.

Now in its 43rd year, the plunge began decades ago as a handful of locals running into the water together on New Year’s Day. Over time, it became a tradition passed through families — less spectacle than shared endurance. The scale has grown, but the motivation hasn’t shifted much: doing something hard together, then warming up side by side.

“We’re not even really a city,” said Mary Jane Thompson, Visitor Center Coordinator for the Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center. “We’re a community. And this is about showing how much we can show up for each other and for something bigger.”

For Thompson, the record attempt isn’t about spectacle so much as visibility — proof that a small coastal place can mobilize beyond its headcount. The effort has leaned as much on humor and familiarity as logistics. In one widely shared Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce Instagram video, Thompson had her fiancé dress up as Burr the polar bear and run through town to a Rocky-style training track — punching trees, jogging the beach, and leaning into the community spirit. 

The seriousness; however, is real. Guinness rules require participants to remain waist-deep in the water for a minimum of 60 seconds with no wetsuits or dry suits. If more than 10% of participants exit before the first minute is up, the town will be disqualified. Volunteers act as on-site stewards and referees, medical staff stand by, and every detail — from water temperature to timing — is monitored.

For those who do enter the dip, the experience is less solitary than it sounds. Thompson describes it as collective momentum. When the countdown ends, she said, it feels like “a Braveheart war cry” — a mass of people moving forward at once, fear replaced by noise and motion.

Thompson isn’t sure whether she’ll take the plunge this year. She’ll be working during the event, documenting the attempt with camera in hand. If participant numbers come down to the wire, she plans to join in. She’s helped shape the effort into something less like a stunt and more like a gathering by compiling warming tents, live music, a snowball fight zone, and post–polar dip meetups at local businesses. Families come for the festivities whether they plan to get wet or not. 

World records usually belong to major cities or massive organizations, but Birch Bay’s attempt challenges that assumption. If successful, the record will belong not to infrastructure or scale, but to participation. Even if the number falls short, the effort tells its own story — of a community willing to try, to invite outsiders in, and to turn a cold morning into something shared.

As Thompson put it, moments like this don’t come around often. Whether or not the record is broken, those who take part will remember being there — on a small Washington beach, surrounded by thousands of people, starting the year together.

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