Rewind '23: Extreme athlete reflects on his extraordinary swim

We've selected some of our best stories of the year and are bringing them to you over this festive season.

These stories encapsulate the inspirational, uplifting, quirky, or the just downright fun that makes Kelowna10 so different.

-

Through the crucible of two previous attempts, and the latest 71 hours and 12 minutes immersed in the water, Nick Pelletier has etched his name in history.

He’s now the second person to ever swim all of Okanagan Lake.

As he reached the Penticton shores recently, having started in Vernon, unyielding determination carried him to his moment of glory, greeted by jubilant supporters; and a sigh of relief.

“I've had this project on the go for four years and each of the past two times it ended in failure,” he told Kelowna10 almost two weeks since the amazing achievement. “It’s just been on my mind for a while. So, it's a big weight off my shoulders.”

Chicken heads and machine gun arms

The swim wasn’t without its challenges that included a lack of sleep. Pelletier started suffering from hallucinations.

“Your brain will see lights and shapes and colors and just kind of get lazy and think, ‘what's the easiest thing that makes sense in the moment’ when you're looking at stuff,” he explained. “I saw beavers with machine gun arms and that obviously isn't what it is. I saw a semi-truck on the water, my sport boat looked like a semi-truck driving, and I saw chickens in some of our crew members heads, just stuff like that.”

The journey to recovery following the extraordinary effort earlier this month, started with a trip to the hospital, where medical tests and treatment were administered for a toe laceration. After that, came an indulgent 18-hour slumber.

Now, his focus is on the restoration of his body to its peak vitality, as it sustained some serious wear and tear over the gruelling 72 hours.

“My shoulders are still pretty cooked, my ankle is pretty messed up from just treading water while eating for so long. Your body doesn't usually do that for 70 hours,” Pelletier said. “My lips are still messed up from the sun. Sunburn like blistering.”

All the physical and mental stress were worth it: he was collecting money for the Canadian Mental Health Association Kelowna and has raised a whopping $42,000.

New challenges ahead

Amidst all the hype and excitement surrounding his amazing feat, Pelletier has a long list of things he’d still like to do, while using the Okanagan Lake swim as a baseline to reach even higher goals.

“I’d like to run around the whole Okanagan Lake. I think that'll be cool. I've done half of it from Kelowna to Vernon and back. But I definitely have other international things I want to do,” he said. “I’d like to cycle around the world in one shot. I'd like to swim around an island mass in Hawaii or something.”