West coast open water swim events (1-3 miles)

Swimming
1

I’m looking to do some fun “mid distance” (1-3 miles) open water swim events in the US and ideally west coast over the next couple years and haven’t found an easy way to find them (any tips there would be great!) In absence of that, I thought I’d start a thread to help surface some of these. I’m fairly new to the sport, so this may be very obvious to others. Here are a few on my radar:

Fat Salmon Swim - Seattle, WA

Oceanside Pier Swim - Oceanside, CA

La Jolla Cove Swim - La Jolla, CA

Alcatraz Sharkfest - San Francisco

Lake Tahoe Sharkfest - Lake Tahoe

Waikiki Rough Water Swim - Hawaii

Any other great swims you’d add or call out?

Thx!

1 Like
2

Here’s a link to a list, haven’t vetted but looks pretty complete

There are also

-Dwight Crum Pier to Pier - 2 miles Hermosa to Manhattan, first weekend of August

-Swim the Avenues 1.2 mile swim, Redondo Beach. In September I believe \

-Swim for Mental Health - low key nontimed event, any distance from a mile (or less) to 10K, Redondo Beach September

-La Jolla 10 mile relay

-Sharkfest San Diego, Coronado Island

-Naples Island 1 and 3 mile (actually about 1.2 and 2.8 miles :slight_smile: ), Long Beach August

-Newport pier to pier

3

Donner Lake is epic! Hard to get into, sells out in <1/2 hour

4

Besides the ones posted and on the link above, I would add the Seal Beach Roughwarer Swims. They had like 1,3,6 and 10.

5

Here is a list of OWS (with links) in CA this year from June through October courtesy of some dude named Ray: Ray's Notebook: Open Water Swims 2026 — California

1 Like
6

I tried to compile a list of events in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and British Columbia. I need to fine tune some of the dates:

7

Quick update on the PNW list I mentioned: I’ve cleaned up the dates, added more events and details (organizers, distances, timed vs. fun swims), and turned it into a full filtered calendar for 2026! I now have 48 upcoming open water events across WA/OR/ID/BC (plus aquathlon/swimrun multisport events).

https://tri-northwest.com/openwater

If anyone’s got corrections, additions, or wants to share for their race/group, let me know; happy to include! (Retired Microsoft engineer here, built this as a community resource after years of hunting scattered event info.)

8

Check Waikiki Swim Club site.
I think/hope they have N.Shore Swim Series races every 2nd weekend all summer. I’ve done 4 of them. All memorable. Looking forward to The Rough Water someday.

1 Like
9

Coronado 4th of July swim 800m - 3k distances