{"id":108095,"date":"2026-01-02T02:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/108095\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T02:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:39:07","slug":"thousands-take-the-polar-bear-plunge-at-barton-springs-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/108095\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands take the Polar Bear Plunge at Barton Springs Pool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/jdedo4i2sqqm9wxc.jpg\" alt=\"Polar Bear Plunge at Barton Springs Pool\" class=\"sr-only\" data-v-4292be72=\"\"\/>  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/video\/fmc-ogleckph7ut07y34\" data-v-4292be72=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Polar Bear Plunge at Barton Springs Pool<\/a> <\/p>\n<p data-v-4292be72=\"\">Thousands of people jumped into Barton Springs Pool for the annual Polar Bear Plunge.\u00a0It&#8217;s a time-honored tradition to wash off the old and dive into the new year. FOX 7 Austin&#8217;s Angela Shen tested the waters and caught up with some friend groups of different generations.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; Thousands of people jumped into Barton Springs Pool for the annual Polar Bear Plunge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">It&#8217;s a time-honored tradition to wash off the old and dive into the new year.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KTBC\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">What they&#8217;re saying:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">FOX 7 Austin caught up with one group of ladies who were very dressed up at the pool.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Debra Flanagan, Jeannie Hopper, Rita Hersey, Martha Bauer, Alexa Riley, and Janis, who didn&#8217;t want to share her last name, range in age from their 50s to their 80s. They met playing mahjong and working at a church kitchen. They also regularly come to the Polar Plunge.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;I hope that the joy that I&#8217;m feeling here today just really has a lot of people look at Barton Springs and want to keep it beautiful and natural and supported. It&#8217;s the jewel of our city,&#8221; Janis said.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The Save Our Springs Alliance, which organizes the event, has the same message.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;The springs are still beautiful, crystal clear, and clean because of the community effort that&#8217;s been made, but the threats are still here. We&#8217;re at almost record low flows, so we have to be protecting our springs and keeping people mindful of being judicious and conservative in their water use,&#8221; executive director Bill Bunch said.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">High schoolers Clyde Cowan, Max Neale, and Diego Shtraikh also took part in the Polar Plunge.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;I always enjoy it. It&#8217;s a good way to start the morning after being up late for New Year&#8217;s,&#8221; Cowan said.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">We asked what their goals are for the new year.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;I&#8217;m actually going to move back to Australia in June, so I&#8217;m trying to hang out with as many people as I can,&#8221; Neale said.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;Trying to cut back on some sugar,&#8221; Cowan said.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;I&#8217;m designing a fashion line right now, and so my goal is to get it done by the end of the school year,&#8221; Shtraikh said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: Information in this report comes from reporting\/interviews by FOX 7 Austin&#8217;s Angela Shen<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/tag\/us\/tx\/travis-county\/austin\/barton-springs-pool\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Barton Springs Pool<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox7austin.com\/tag\/holidays\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Holidays<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polar Bear Plunge at Barton Springs Pool Thousands of people jumped into Barton Springs Pool for the annual&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,4168,1972,223,394,216,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-108095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-barton-springs-pool","12":"tag-holidays","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-travis-county","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}