STATELINE, Nev. – Stateline resident Linda Flaherty stood on the sidelines in 2017 cheering for her husband in the Pan-Mass Challenge. The annual event brings thousands of cyclists together on the east coast to put miles under their tires to raise money for cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Linda is now what the Pan-Mass Challenge calls Living Proof, a community of riders and volunteers who have undergone or are currently undergoing cancer treatment.
She was on the sidelines in 2017 because she had just finished her final treatment from the institute for breast cancer. It was there when she said to herself, “You know what? I’m going to ride this next year and for as long as I can.”
Lisa has ridden the challenge every year thereafter and is gearing up to ride it again on Aug. 4 with her husband, Gerry Flaherty.
As a survivor, she celebrates the opportunity to ride each year. “I get to do it again, yay!”
This will be Linda’s sixth year riding and Gerry’s seventh. They found the care, and doctors at Dana-Farber exceptional, along with the treatment Linda had undergone back in 2017. “We decided that it was a good cause to devote our time, energy and donations to,” Gerry said.
Gerry Flaherty and Linda Flaherty have attended the Pan-Mass Challenge since 2017. Provided
They’ve participated in a variety of different routes the challenge offers, which can be anywhere from 25 to over 200 miles. Since their first mile, the couple has raised around $30,000 between self and friend donations and matches.
The Pan-Mass Challenge itself is 45 years old and recently crossed $1 billion in lifetime fundraising for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
One of Linda’s most vivid memories came from a year when they completed one of the longer routes. A section along the route was lined with posters and placards of kids and patients currently undergoing treatment. Some of the kids were even out there themselves, cheering on the cyclists.
“You realize why you’re doing this,” Linda says, sometimes stopping and crying with them.
Gerry and Linda, who recently got back from hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, always plan their adventures around the challenge.
“The way that things are today with so many issues dividing people,” Gerry says, “it’s an amazingly positive unifying event that just makes everybody feel good.”
He says the event gives back in terms of community connection and the spirit of helping others. For a few days after each ride, he finds himself floating on a cloud of positive energy received there.
The two are members of the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition. Some of Gerry’s favorite rides are Fallen Leaf Lake, Baldwin Beach and Upper Truckee.
On Sunday, August 4, the couple will take off near Babson College, just outside of Boston, and begin their 50 mile ride for cancer research.
HOMEWOOD, Calif. – Warren Elliott is now reunited with his family after going missing for six days in the Tahoe wilderness. Cheering and claps greeted the helicopter that touched down bringing Elliott to Homewood after he had been found.
He was seen hugging his family in the now tattered and torn blue t-shirt he was last seen in. “Thank you, thank you,” he says to onlookers and rescuers while wiping his eyes.
“It brought tears to our eyes to see the reunion,” Placer County Sgt. Sage Bourassa said, noting his family thought he might not make it out alive.
Elliott went missing on Friday, July 19, after leaving for a hike between 2-3 p.m, from a group conducting trail rehab ahead of the Jeep Jamboree.
He told the sheriff’s office that he is familiar with the area, but says he began walking in the wrong direction when he decided to walk back to the area they were camping in Rubicon Springs.
After days of 10 agencies from across the state searching, rallying between 50-100 searchers each day, National Guard helicopters, dog teams, and drone operators, Elliott was found by a fisherman.
Elliott had flagged the fisherman down at Hell Hole Reservoir Wednesday morning, July 24.
That’s about 9 miles as the crow flies from where he was last seen near Cadillac Hill, but officers suspect he probably walked close to 30 or 40 miles zigzagging. He had gone up a large mountain and back down the other side.
The fisherman used a satellite radio to notify the sheriff’s office of Elliott’s location. A California Highway Patrol helicopter extracted him and transported him to the command post at Homewood Mountain Resort.
Bourassa said Elliott refused medical treatment and just wanted food and water at Homewood. That’s where he ate granola bars, fruit, grapes, a sandwich and drank water and juice. It was the most he had eaten in six days.
Provided / Placer County Sheriff Office
Having left for the hike with no food, Elliott found berries to eat and drank from a river. “We’re very impressed by him,” Bourassa said and added they were glad he didn’t give up. “That’s a lot of days to go without food.”
Law enforcement recommends you stay in one place if you find yourself lost. This makes it easier for them to find you. In this case, Elliott had moved quickly and moved outside the perimeter. It’s reported he kept moving because he didn’t think anyone was looking for him.
Bourassa said, “He wondered if he could get through but his mindset was to make it through.”
Editor’s note: Tahoe Daily Tribune reporter Brenna O’Boyle contributed to this article.
LAKE TAHOE, Nev. / Calif. – Sylvia Lacock likens open water marathon swimming to meditation. “You can only focus on your next breath.”
That’s important when the finish line is over 21 miles away, often taking more than 10 hours.
The board member of Lake Tahoe Open Water Swimming Association has witnessed hundreds of swims, many for the association which ratifies and sanctions swims on Lake Tahoe. The organization does this by escorting, and observing the swimmers, ensuring rules and regulations are adhered to. This summer, more than 60 swimmers from all over the world—Mexico, Colombia, Poland, Ireland and the U.S.—have signed up to swim Tahoe.
“Everybody comes to it with a different motivation and a different passion,” Lacock says “and it’s just amazing to watch it unfold.”
The association keeps a record of the swim times for the three courses commonly swam on the lake.
The Vikingsholm course takes a swimmer the 10.6 miles from Cave Rock to the historic castle at the end of Emerald Bay.
A 12 mile course from Homewood, Calif, to Glenbrook, Nev. covers the true width of the lake.
And the third course, a 21.3 mile course from Camp Richardson, Calif., to Incline Village, Nev. is by far the hardest and longest sanctioned swim the association regulates on the lake, covering the length of Tahoe.
Swimmers who complete all three are added to a fourth category, earning their Lake Tahoe Triple Crown certificate and their combined course times are added to a list.
No matter which course, each time Lacock pilots a swim, she’s a part of something very personal. “You get to see people be vulnerable and put their very best out and even surprise themselves.”
Hearing a swimmer’s guttural sobs as they reach shore and watching a swimmer kick it into a surprise gear towards the end are just a couple of the swimmer experiences Lacock has witnessed.
“Sometimes you watch them fall apart a little and have to regroup,” she says.
There are times when Lacock and her boat crew find themselves in tears as a swimmer reaches the end of a swim.
“You never really know what that person has maybe been through and why they’re swimming,” she says, “we’ve had people swimming who have maybe recently lost an aging parent, lost a spouse.” Sometimes it’s a medical battle and the lake is their place to let it all go.
One recent Tahoe length swimmer, Sofía Cárdenas Arroyo, is often questioned why she marathon swims. “‘You don’t get anything from doing this,'” she recalls many people saying.
There are no monetary rewards. In fact, she says, you usually spend money to do it.
“But it’s worth it because I get to connect with him again,” she explains. Marathon swimming is how she reconnects with her dad who passed away seven years ago.
That was around the time she started swimming. During some of his last days she told him about her desire to swim and he responded with support and cheered her on.
Conversations with her father is what gets her to the shore when her muscles are hurting and she’s feeling fatigued. “I’m feeling tired dad, please give me the strength to finish this,” she’ll say.
“You feel like you get that talk with him and it’s really worth it. Everything is worth it.”
The Mexico City swimmer has conquered the Catalina Channel, Manhattan channel and many other swims. Next year she’s scheduled to swim the English Channel, where she’ll take her dad with her too. “It feels like we are still traveling with him,” Cárdenas Arroyo says, who tells her loved one, “This time we’re going to England or this time we’re going to Tahoe, dad.”
Cárdenas Arroyo swam the 21.3 mile length starting at Camp Richardson at 7:48 p.m. on July 12, swimming overnight and arriving in Incline Village just over 13 hours later at 8:53 a.m., July 13.
Sofía Cárdenas Arroyo swam the length of Tahoe July 12-13. Provided / LTOWSA
Swims typically take place after July 4 through the middle of August. Before that, the water is often too cold as swimmers aren’t allowed to wear wetsuits (cap, swimsuit, and goggles only) and the lake is too busy with the holiday. And in August, the afternoon winds and storms typically pick up, so the association has about a month and a half window each year to pilot swims that are often scheduled a year out.
So far in this year’s swimming window, they’ve already had around 20 swimmers complete at least one of the courses. This has included Tina Neill of Hawaii who was the first person to backstroke the length of the lake, which required her enter and exit the lake backwards to be official.
Niell’s neice, Tara Halsted, who swam for Standford, did the very same thing just a few days later in under 11 hours, beating her aunt’s time by over three hours.
Lisa Yamamoto, born and raised in Carson City, swam the Vikingsholm course July 14 and then swam Tahoe’s length the very next day. Having done the width swim last year, this completed her triple crown, placing her as the fastest combined time for the triple crown to date.
These swims are just getting started. As of July 22, there were still about 20 more swimmers lined up for the month and another 27 in August. Lacock has seen open water swimming in Tahoe and in general grow in recent years, coinciding with the pandemic. “Because all of a sudden people couldn’t swim in pools,” she explains.
They turned instead to the outdoors. The sport’s growth has also come from aging triathletes who can’t do the runs or bikes anymore, but want continue endurance training.
Tahoe has increased in popularity due to its existence on multiple triple crown lists. There’s the California triple crown, which comprises the Catalina channel, Santa Barbara Channel and the Tahoe length swim. Lake Tahoe also appears on the Triple Crown of Lake Monster Swims which is on the list for its famed Tessie, alongside Nessie and Memphre at Loch Ness and Lake Memphremagog, respectively.
These Tahoe swims typically aren’t a swimmers first. Lacock says the association often asks for a swimmers’ experience and access to cold water since there are concerns and risks with this level of swimming.
“You don’t know what can happen,” Lacock explains, “Anything from a cramp to a cardiac event.” At high elevations, swimmers are at risk for swimming induced pulmonary edema as well.
For safety, all these swims are escorted by a boat with a licensed captain. Simply swimming next to a kayak, she says, is dangerous.
Many come outside of July and August to train for open water swims and acclimate to the cold. The association provides resources and safety recommendation for this as well. Recommendations include anything from not swimming in front of a marina, staying 10-15 feet from the shore, to using a tow float.
Tahoe often leaves a lasting impression on the swimmers. Lacock hears from many that they plan on returning to the lake to visit and vacation.
The Lake Tahoe Open Water Swimming Association provides more information and ways to participate in the sport even if you’re not swimmer, like being an observer or crew member. That information is on their website, tahoeopenwater.org.
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