“Sufficiently cold and treacherous for her purposes”

Myrtle Huddleston’s Lake Tahoe crossing tested her mettle and her ability to adapt to challenges on the fly

Most open water swimmers have at least one story of a swim gone wrong – where the weather didn’t cooperate, the tide changed too early or too late, injury or illness cancelled progress. There are any number of mishaps that can bring about the end of a swim. For some, these challenges are insurmountable. But for others, such misadventures spur them on while earning them notoriety for their grit and gumption in facing down long odds.

According to a 2010 article on Tahoetopia.com, part of a multi-media information network devoted to all things Lake Tahoe, one particularly gruelling instance of a swim plan gone wrong took place in 1931.

That summer, the Tahoe Tavern Hotel had put up a $700 prize for the first person to swim across the lake’s width. Locals thought the lake was un-swimmable, the Tahoetopia piece notes, because they “believed the clear, cold water would not support a human body. That erroneous perception came from the fact that the bodies of drowning victims were rarely recovered. Water temperatures near freezing prevent tissue decomposition and the buildup of organic gases. Bodies that sink into the dark depths of Tahoe rarely float back to the surface.”

A 7 September 1931 piece in TIME magazine noted cryptically that in addition to Lake Tahoe’s nearly 6,500 feet of elevation, which makes breathing more difficult, “something in the icy, mountain spring water affects the membranes of the nose and causes choking.”

But for 35-year-old Myrtle Huddleston, a single mother and beauty salon owner from Mattoon, Illinois, Tahoe offered an irresistible challenge and an attractive prize. The TIME story went on to note that despite the warnings, “Mrs. Huddleston examined Lake Tahoe, decided it was big enough; she tried its water, found it sufficiently cold and treacherous for her purposes.”

Trans-Tahoe

The unflattering TIME article, published under the title “Sport: Fat Lady of the Lake” describes how Huddleston’s swim unfolded, starting with her “waddling into the water at Glenbrook, Nevada at 7:45 one morning” while wearing an “unbecoming one-piece bathing suit and a coating of grease.”

Her aim was Tahoe City on the other side of the lake, 10.5 miles away (though contemporaneous accounts list the distance as being anywhere between 11 and 16 miles).

No matter how the swim was measured, most sources agree that “almost immediately, she began to encounter difficulties,” TIME reported. “The old man in her pilot boat misdirected her. A wind blew her eight miles off her course. Her goggles began to leak, water to blind her. After the first eight hours, she suffered from acute nausea and pains in her arm. Twice she fainted but, on recovering, prayed that the torture of cold might not be added to her obstacles.”

Tahoetopia added some additional colour: “The lake was calm for the first few hours, but during the afternoon, the southwest wind picked up. The crewmen in the three escort boats positioned their crafts to block the waves, but Myrtle was still blown seven miles off course. Hour after hour she battled the brutally cold waves that threatened to break her will.”

Then, somewhere near midnight, “Myrtle increased her stroke, pulled away from her rowboat escort, and disappeared into the darkness. Myrtle had no idea that she was swimming alone in water 1,000-feet deep. Fortunately another boat found her just before dawn, feeling ill and discouraged. She had been swimming for more than 20 hours.”

Though she was nearly ready to give up, Tahoepedia reports, “her son Everett, sitting in a rowboat, called out, ‘Mother, hold fast. We are only two miles from shore.’ His encouragement renewed her vigor and soon Myrtle could hear the cheers and laughter emanating from the large crowd assembled on the Tahoe Tavern pier.”

Finally, 22 hours and 53 minutes after launching the swim, Huddleston walked on shore near the Tahoe Tavern where a stretcher was waiting. She laughed at the prospect of needing medical care and “walked into the hotel to claim her $700,” where, as TIME reported, “she said she regarded her Lake Tahoe swim as greatest of her aquatic achievements.”

An enduring career

Huddleston was no stranger to swims not going to plan. Nor was she a foreigner in the land of eye-bogglingly audacious endurance feats. During her first major swimming event, Wrigley’s Ocean Marathon from Catalina Island to mainland California in 1927, which she undertook mere months after first learning to swim in order to lose weight, Huddleston managed to last for more than 20 hours before exiting the water. She was the last woman left in the race.

Undeterred, Huddleston returned three weeks later and became the first woman to complete the iconic 20.5-mile crossing. During her 20-hour, 42-minute effort, she was bitten by a barracuda but also spurred on by the shouts of her 11-year-old son Everett, whose educational costs motivated her attempt. Though no prize purse had been offered, the Associated Press reported Huddleston expected “to realize a large revenue from motion picture, vaudeville and advertising contracts as the result of her conquest.”