Swimmer goes the distance
Emily Von Jentzen removes her goggles as she begins to walk onto shore at Boettcher Park in Polson after swimming across Flathead Lake Saturday evening. Von Jentzen, the first woman to swim across Flathead Lake, started her swim in Somers, completing the feat in 18 hours and 26 minutes.
Von Jentzen is overcome by emotion and exhaustion as people around her congratulate her on her accomplishment.
Von Jentzen gets a hug from Tiffany Stebbins (left) and Stebbin's three-year-old daughter Karmyn Flanagan, to whom the swim was dedicated to. Flanagan was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia last November. Von Jentzen swim raised money to help cover the young girl's medical payments.
Family friend Amanda Ormesher points out in the distance to indicate to Tiffany Stebbins where she should be looking through the binoculars to see the pair of boats floating alongside Von Jentzen. Next to Stebbins is Amber Christopher.
After a long day in the water Saturday, Kalispell swimmer Emily von Jentzen became the third person — and first woman — to swim the length of Flathead Lake.
Von Jentzen reached the shore of Boettcher Park in Polson at 10:49 p.m. Saturday after swimming for 18 hours, 26 minutes. Officially she covered 28 miles — although von Jentzen said the actual mileage is probably closer to 33.
A crowd of about 50 people, including an ill Missoula girl to whom the swim was dedicated, greeted von Jentzen in Polson.
She started her swim around 4:20 a.m. Saturday, but her day actually began hours before. Von Jentzen, a 27-year-old triathlete and recently hired Flathead County deputy attorney, had gone to bed around 10 p.m. Friday.
Two hours later she woke up for a bagel and peanut butter.
“My pattern is before a big event to wake up four hours before and eat,” von Jentzen said.
After her snack, she went back to sleep until 3 a.m., when her brother took her from her Kalispell home to the dock in Somers Bay where she would begin her swim. Her sister and father were already there to get the boat set up.
“At 3 o’clock in the morning, it was the first time in nine months that I thought to myself, this is kind of crazy,” von Jentzen said Sunday. “People have been saying it to me, but that was the first time I thought it.”
When she arrived, her sister hurried over to her. “Don’t freak out, but we’ve got a little problem,” she told von Jentzen.
The boat key was missing. Wild Wave Watercraft Rental had donated the boat, but von Jentzen doubted they’d appreciate a 3 a.m. call for help finding a key.
After a frantic search, they finally found it, but the delay meant von Jentzen started her swim about 20 minutes later than planned.
The early morning was a little cool, so von Jentzen started the swim with a Neoprene shirt over her sleeveless wetsuit.
“The first three miles were really good,” she said. “It wasn’t really cold.”
Difficulties came between mile four and mile 10 or 11, von Jentzen said.
“I was having a bit of a dispute with my navigators about where I should be in the lake. They were trying to get the shortest route possible, but ... it was my understanding that I was heading toward the center of the lake,” von Jentzen said.
Not knowing exactly where she was in the water was confusing and mentally challenging, she added. “It was hard for me because I’m very much somebody who needs to know what I’m doing before I do it.”
The route von Jentzen took kept her relatively close to the shoreline. Between the wind and getting off course despite help from GPS, she thinks she swam about 33 miles — well above the 27.3-mile length she’d anticipated.
The added miles kept her in the water longer. When she reached the halfway point, von Jentzen had already been in the water about nine hours, and she knew there was no way she was going to make it to Polson under the 15-hour mark.
She worried that by the time she finally made it to shore, no one would be left to witness her feat. She also worried that 3-year-old Karmyn Flanagan, for whom von Jentzen did the swim as a fundraiser, would be long gone.
“She’s so little. She’s got a bedtime,” von Jentzen worried.
On Sunday, after icing her sore shoulders and recuperating from the previous day’s hard work with cinnamon rolls and a “Grey’s Anatomy” marathon, von Jentzen didn’t minimize the struggles she’d faced the day before.
“It really was just kind of like life,” she said. “There were dark spots that were really bad when I really didn’t know how much farther I could go.”
Those dark spots came around mile nine, again between miles 17 and 20, and finally in about the final four miles of the swim — until the lights at Polson began to make the end seem like reality.
At one point finishing seemed impossible. Simone Musbo, a member of her team, jumped in the water next to von Jentzen and asked what was wrong.
“My shoulders hurt so bad!” she told him. Then she started to cry.
When she finished, Musbo encouraged her to keep going.
“OK, now you’re done. Take a deep breath. You’re stronger than that. Let’s keep going,” he told her.
It was support from people like Musbo that helped von Jentzen finish.
“There were hundreds of people rooting for me. If they weren’t there at the lake, they were glued to their computers because my sister was updating my Facebook page,” she said.
Having a purpose greater than herself helped as well, von Jentzen said. She had first heard about Karmyn, who has acute lymphoblatic leukemia, when she saw a flier about the little girl at the Missoula Staples store. That’s when it occurred to von Jentzen that her swimming expedition could be used as a fundraiser for Karmyn.
“When I started to get discouraged, I kept coming back to Karmyn,” she said. “Had I been doing that just it see if I could do it, I wouldn’t have finished maybe.”
It wasn’t until von Jentzen finally reached Boettcher Park that she got to meet the little girl who’d helped her make it through the long day. People helped von Jentzen out of the water; her legs weren’t working well, and she needed help onto the grass.
Then everyone backed away while Karmyn and her parents, Earl Flanagan and Tiffany Stebbins, came over to meet her. They’d been waiting for the swimmer for hours.
“It’s surprising for someone to go all out for someone they’ve never even met before,” Stebbins said while waiting for von Jentzen to complete her swim.
Karmyn was shy, von Jentzen said, and seemed intimidated by the cameras around them.
But von Jentzen had a gift for her.
“I had picked up a heart-shaped rock my sister had found in Somers and taped it under my swimsuit,” she said. “I untaped it and said, ‘Karmyn, this went the whole way with me,’ and gave that to her.”
In return, Karmyn gave von Jentzen a collage of photos of her and her brother. Then she brought the swimmer flowers. Then she left and returned with licorice; “she thought I looked hungry,” von Jentzen said.
Von Jentzen was hungry; her mother brought her a milkshake, which she downed in a few gulps. She devoured a couple of hamburgers on the drive back to Kalispell, but by the time she got home around 1 a.m. Sunday, all she wanted was to shower and go to bed.
Von Jentzen woke up at 7 a.m. starving and in pain. But after her mom helped saran-wrap bags of ice around her shoulders and she ate the cinnamon rolls a friend had brought over, Von Jentzen felt better.
That’s when the real fun began, she said.
“I got to go back through my phone and see all the voice mails and text messages and Facebook posts people left,” she said. “It’s overwhelming, the number of people waiting to hear the next update.
“It was so awesome, so absolutely awesome.”
Readers can learn more about von Jentzen’s Flathead Lake swim on her blog: http://50kforkarmyn.blogspot.com.
Donations for Flanagan may be sent to von Jentzen’s Missoula post-office box: P.O. 3601, Missoula MT 59803.