GoPro : Employees Swim To Keep Lake Tahoe Blue GoPro Employees Swim To Keep Lake Tahoe Blue

Community

Sep 20, 2019

The following words are by Kianna Miller, Space Planning Specialist, and Kielan Crow, Senior Mechanical Engineer, two of the GoPro team members who swam across lake Tahoe as a fundraiser to protect the lake's ecosystem.

The TransTahoe Relay is an annual open water swim realy race that spans the roughly 10 miles from Nevada to California in 60-degree Lake Tahoe water, with no wetsuit. You read that right, no wetsuit. It takes a fairly adventurous person to tackle an event like this but, lucky for us, there is no shortage of adventure in the hearts of GoPro employees. Our team of six epic employees partnered with GoPro for a Cause to take second place in the Blue Boat division, raising more than $11,000 for The League to Save Lake Tahoe (aka Keep Tahoe Blue); a non-profit organization whose mission is to save the Tahoe ecosystem.

In the weeks leading up to the race, the six of us received an equal amount of support and crazy looks around the office. With each Hi-5, donation and wide-eyed look of confusion, our excitement intensified. Before we knew it, we were jumping into 'Dev's Dinghy' (our awesome co-worker's boat and our escort across the lake) on a chilly July morning with a few coolers of Coors Light and stomachs full of butterflies.

We traded off swimming 30-minute legs, getting as far as we could within that time frame. At 29 minutes, the next swimmer would jump, slip or belly flop into the water to make the exchange.

Even the long-time athlete agreed they'd never been on a team as unconditionally supportive and stoked as the group we had on the boat. Breathless from 30 minutes of high altitude and frigid water swimming, teammates would hop back into the boat and immediately start cheering for the person who had just tapped in. You can't train for that kind of endurance, that extra ounce of breath to cheer on a teammate comes from the heart, not from weeks in a pool.

As we chased the sun across Lake Tahoe, from Nevada to California, it became very apparent that this was it, this moment is exactly what GoPro does. GoPro frees people to celebrate the moment, to capture the present while being fully immersed in it. The GoPro family truly lives and breathes the stoke we share with the global community. We push each other to be creative, to take risks, to challenge ourselves. We are honored to be part of the crazy, beautiful and unconditionally supportive GoPro family.