Kalispell swimmer conquers Lake Chelan

CHELAN —  Slowed by high wind, choppy waters and extreme exhaustion, Emily von Jentzen of Kalispell completed her nonstop swim of Lake Chelan at 3:51 a.m. Pacific time on Friday morning, nearly 36 hours after starting the challenge Wednesday afternoon in Stehekin.

The feat is believed to be the lake’s first nonstop swim.

The 28-year-old attorney and triathlete said her epic swim of nearly 50 miles to raise money for a 5-year-old Kalispell girl battling life-threatening cancer was much tougher than she could have imagined.

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” von Jentzen said in a Friday morning phone interview while sipping a milkshake after a few hours of sleep.

She said strong winds came up on the lake after midnight, slowing her progress and sapping her strength.

She made it just within the west end of Chelan city limits, but decided to call it quits after starting to hallucinate a few miles from her planned destination at Don Morse Memorial Park, which had closed for the night.

Von Jentzen had estimated she would complete the swim in 28 hours or less and finish by 8 p.m. Thursday. It took nearly eight hours longer.

“The waves were coming at me. I was swimming as hard as I could and not making any progress. Lake Chelan made me work for every inch of it,” she said.

Von Jentzen said she had started arguing with her sister on the support boat about being off course. She was seeing things and thought she was close to the shore while still a half mile out.

“My sister wanted me to get on the boat right then, but I told her no way. But I did go to the closest shore. It was a little bit scary. I definitely didn’t have four more miles in me,” she said. She had gone without sleep for 48 hours by the time she got out of the water. An EMT checked her out after the swim and found her vital signs to be in good shape.

Von Jentzen battled choppy waters at the beginning of the swim near Stehekin as well. The water was also much colder than she expected. She estimates the water was no warmer than 58 degrees. She added layers of neoprene along the way to warm up and asked for something warm to drink Thursday night. Her support crew was able to flag down a larger boat that provided hot water to make her some soup.

“Tomato soup never tasted so good,” she said. Von Jentzen said she thought about Katelyn Roker, the Montana girl battling Stage 4 neuroblastoma, whenever her strength began to waver.

“Katelyn doesn’t get to choose whether she has cancer or not. She doesn’t get to pick when she has to go in for a treatment,” von Jentzen said. “It helped me to associate with what she is going through. She’s my inspiration.”

Katelyn and her parents were on the support boat for a while Thursday to cheer von Jentzen on.

Von Jentzen hopes her swim will raise at least $10,000 to help with Katelyn’s expensive experimental treatments that are not covered by her parents’ insurance.

Donations can be made through von Jentzen’s blog, alakkeforkatelyn.blogspot.com. Von Jentzen raised a similar amount for another girl battling illness last summer by swimming the 30-mile length of Flathead Lake.

Asked what her next challenge might be, von Jentzen said she wouldn’t even think about new challenges until she recuperated from her Lake Chelan swim. That could take several months.

“This lake did not want to be conquered,” she said. “There’s a reason why no one has been able to do this.”