Until Valhalla!

The Vikings were great seafarers and conquers of new lands near and far. In some respects I feel myself and some of my friends are the Vikings of swimming looking to conquer new bodies of water across the globe.

In January this year my friend Jeff and I settled on our “swim” (well…basically one of our swims 😉) for the year. It would be a new and different experience for both of us; a long lake swim, a tandem swim, swimming at altitude, brisk water temps and swimming between two states. We decided on Lake Tahoe, in particular the Vikingsholm swim that is 10.6 miles across the lake ending in beautiful Emerald Bay at Vikingsholm castle.

While both of us are consistently in pretty decent swimming shape we knew that if we were to become Vikings and conquer this swim we needed a solid 3 months of focused training. We created a shared document that tracked our individual weekly progress to our monthly training goal. Training separately, Jeff in Santa Barbara and me in Bend we may have been a bit competitive (Jeff may deny this) however I found it interesting that if one person swam 100m or so above the weekly goal the next week the other person would swim 200m above the goal for good measure.

Of great interest and concern was the record breaking snow pack in the Sierra Nevada mountains this year. In some reports it was 257% greater than average. This is very good for the drought in California. Most important, what would it mean for open water swimmers as Lake Tahoe is notoriously know to be a bit “brisk”? It’s hard to overstate the how often we checked the water temp of Lake Tahoe.

Our date for the swim was on Monday July 24th. By mid-July water temps were looking like they were going to be in the mid to high 60’s. Very respectable. Jeff, did a lot of cold water acclimatization in the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara so he was well prepared. I did a bit at Elk Lake and took some cool showers. The fact, is I have bit more meat (insulation) on my bones than my USMS nationally highly ranked friend.

We got there on a Friday so we had two days of training swims to adjust to the altitude and water temps before our early swim on Monday. Tahoe City’s Commons Beach was the meeting spot for our two training swims. The water temps were 67-68 degrees-very doable. One of my strongest memories of the training swims was how vast the lake was and how the blue the water is.

Home base was Obexer’s established 1911 in Homewood, CA. It was bit rustic however it is directly across the street from the marina where we had to meet the boat at 3:15am. A perfect location. Bears are apparently quite prevalent in Tahoe and Obexer’s had an interesting way to keep bears off the front porch.

After an early dinner with our intrepid support team, Shannon and Shawn along with the traditional burying of the vodka for good luck we hit the hay early as it was an early bell (2:45am) the next day to meet the boat. Tomorrow we would become Vikings!

We organized our swim with Pacific Open Water Swim Co. and their sister organization Swim Tahoe. We found them to be very professional, organized, attentive to detail and safety. We would highly recommend them to others. As expected Captain Sylvia met us at the dock promptly at the appointed time. In no time we were motoring across the lake with star filled skies to Cave Rock, Nevada for the start.

Arriving at Cave Rock in the dark we got ready, greased up and had final instructions from Sylvia.

We jumped in the water, it was a very welcome and tepid 70 degrees and swam to shore.

Once we cleared the water we chatted and made last minute speedo adjustments. Channeling Vikings we quietly uttered “until Valhalla” to one another and then shouted the great Norse war cry “TYR” and we were off.

It was sooo cool to be swimming in Lake Tahoe in the dark and stillness of dawn. The lake is vast with a surface area of 191 square miles. It is estimated to be 2 million years old with deep blue water and one of the purest water lakes in the entire world.

For roughly 2 hours +/- we were making great time and cruising side by side with feeds every 30 minutes as the new day dawned.

And then…Odin (god of all Norse gods) spoke…

…and he spoke with a vengeance at about 5 miles (basically, the the Nevada and California state line) that turned calm waters and smooth sailing into 15mph headwinds and into a chop that made the lake into an utter washing machine.

Shannon and Shawn were positive and encouraging during our feeds and told us that the water had a lot of texture. It was evident that the balance of our swim was going to be a good ole Viking slog fest.

The narrow-ish entrance to Emerald Bay never seemed to get closer. We kept our heads down (kinda) and stroke after stroke we eventually got there. While we were in the homestretch we still had at least another 1.5 miles to go. In the Bay we started to cruise again, well at least it felt that way, as it wasn’t so choppy.

In the middle of Emerald Bay there is Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe. Once we swam past Fannette we could see the beach and Vikingsholm…Valhalla!

We swam (crawled) up the beach with surprising little fanfare from passerby’s, cleared the water line and gave each other a big high five🖐️. We were Vikings!

From start (planning and training) to finish (the swim itself and post celebration) this adventure was such a fun and positive experience. There are three things that really stand out to me. First, the importance of focusing on the journey and not just the destination. Second, to be thankful for all those that support us from coaches, fellow swimmers, event organizers and most importantly the immensely patient “support crew” that live with us day in and day out 😘. And lastly, as my friend Jeff says, “you can do anything no matter how hard it is, if you have a good friend to help you see it through!’

On to new aquatic conquests! TYR!!!

Ok-I can’t help myself. With a 1400 plus day streak on Duolingo it must come with a special location tracker in the app. This was an ejerció the day after our swim 😳. Creepy.