LAKE GEORGE — Andy Harrington of South Glens Falls said he discovered the secret to dunking himself in a frigid Lake George without feeling so cold.

While people around him at the Polar Plunge kept their warm clothes on until the last minute and then whipped them all off, Harrington removed his coat and shoes early, standing on the snowy beach in his trunks and T-shirt like it was August instead of January.

“I’ve had my boots off for the last 40 minutes. I can’t feel a thing,” Harrington said as he waited on the shore at Shepard’s Beach with his son Josh, 17, and daughter Amanda, 14.

He expected the 33-degree water to feel warm after having his limbs exposed to the 10-degree air.

And it did.

“It was warm when you got in there,” he said as he and Josh dried off after the swim.

“When you got out, it was pretty cold,” Josh added. “I’m looking forward to it next year.”

Amanda, who was covered with goose bumps and visibly shivering even before the trio got wet, headed straight to the car to warm up after the dunking.

Kathi Kokalas, treasurer of the Lake George Winter Carnival, said about 950 people registered for the swim, although more than that actually took the plunge. The swim is one of the carnival events.

Because of so many late registrants, organizers decided to hold two plunges — one at 2 p.m. and the other at 2:30.

“By two o’clock, we weren’t even finished with the line, it was so long,” Kokalas said.

The event was a fundraiser for the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York. A different charity is chosen each year, she said.

Last year only 650 people registered to wade into the lake at Shepard’s Beach in Lake George Village because of a blizzard-like snow storm New Year’s Day, but in 2007 there were 950 participants in the event, Kokalas said.

“This is back to the normal number,” she said.

The air was colder on Thursday than last New Year’s Day.

“It’s a chillier day,” said Elyssa Wheeler, 25, of Queensbury, who got wet for the sixth year on Thursday. “I’ve never seen ice on the edge like this. Last year there was more slush.”

She said the plunge takes your breath away — literally: “You stop breathing when you go in.”

But the cold weather didn’t deter Wheeler or her high school friends Andrew Hunsinger, 25, of Oswego, and Erik Holmberg, 24, of Virgina Beach, Va.

“It doesn’t matter, because we just do it every year,” Hunsinger said.

Holmberg, a first-time plunger, channeled the warming power from a polar bear draped over his shoulders before the big event.

“This is actually a polar bear rug my mom made me a long, long time ago,” he said.

Some people shunned shoes for the plunge, while others wouldn’t go in without them.

“I keep the shoes on,” said Nate Harrison, 21, of Delmar. “The feet get the coldest.”

“I wear old sneakers,” Wheeler said, noting that the frozen, hard ground hurts her feet.

Eileen Willie, 20, of East Greenbush, doesn’t mind that.

“I kick them off,” she said of the flip-flops she wore on the beach before the swim. “I don’t want to lose them.”

Willie couldn’t persuade her family to brave the icy waters with her, but she was prepared before the swim with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and seemed calm about immersing her body in near-freezing water.

“Usually I swim out the farthest, swim around for a little and come back,” Willie said. “I’m not warm until I’m all the way home and dry.”

Jerica Hicks, 15, of Argyle, couldn’t even wait until the official start to get wet.

Well before people went into the water, Hicks and two of her friends totally immersed themselves in the water.

“I wanted to live on the edge,” Hicks said after the experience, as she sat bundled in a pink robe.