U.K. adventurer and swimmer Ross Edgley recently set a Guinness Book, a world record by swimming 510 kilometres in about 60 hours non-stop from the north end of Lake Laberge to about 100 kilometres from Dawson City. 

Liam Parfitt was in one of the support boats for the journey. 

“It was long,” he said. 

Parfitt said there were four boats accompanying Edgley on his journey. 

“It was pretty light and easy at first and it proceeded to get heavier and heavier and longer and the intensity of the decisions that were being made progressively got more heavy as we pressed towards the end, because he’s in mortal danger, basically, at the end of the swim.” 

Parfitt said the danger increased for Edgley as he passed the White River. 

“The water gets pretty murky. He’s in a wet suit, not a life jacket. So (if) he passes out and goes under the White River, where is he? He’s gone.”

Parfitt described Edgley’s endeavour as “quite a remarkable journey of science and sort of brute-headed stubbornness.

“He’s put together quite a good team and you can tell that he loves what he’s doing. But underneath all of that it’s underpinned by this refusal to give up.” 

Parfitt said Edgley started hallucinating toward the end of the swim. 

“When you haven’t been asleep for 50 hours-plus, you start to lose your way.” 

Parfitt said Edgley was “mostly just doing his best to stay awake. He has to swim to stay warm; he’s so tired. “Nothing really makes sense at that point in the journey. And the support crew’s all completely exhausted too, so you’re trying to navigate through a team of people who haven’t slept for two and a half days. It ends up getting a little bit intense.” 

Parfitt was following Edgley and had to feed him as he made his way down the river. 

“Every half an hour, we’d have to approach Ross and give him something to eat.” 

Edgley had a doctor, his wife and brother deciding what to feed him. 

He was given a water bottle with warm water mixed with powdered materials like chicken noodle soup. Parfitt said Edgley was also given electrolytes or “pretty much anything that would be giving him some kind of nutrition.” 

The water bottle was on a rope, so when Edgley was done, he would just throw it in the water. 

Edgley, who was wearing a wetsuit, had a particularly tough time staying warm in the early-morning hours. 

Parfitt figured Edgley was swimming hard about 90 per cent of the time, only slowing down to feed himself, which only took about 90 seconds. 

Parfitt said he could tell that Edgley’s team had been working together for a long time. 

“What was interesting was the mix of various Yukon locals, and the uncertainty about how much longer he could go. Because you’re pushing the boundaries of every layer of human determination. 

“You just don’t know when he’s gonna pass out or die, for that matter. Because when he comes out of the water, his blood pressure drops right away. It’s a very, very, very high-risk moment for the first hour when he comes out of the water, where he can go into cardiac arrest.” 

Parfitt said he’s never participated in something like this before. 

Edgley was given a steady dose of caffeine and Tylenol to help keep him going. They also had to repair tears in his wetsuit along the way on the go. 

There were three Guinness Book of World Records representatives on the journey. 

“They actually added a layer of professionalism to it because they’ve been around this type of thing before,” related Parfitt.  

Parfitt said Edgley was “pretty stoked” when he broke the record. 

“He was a surprisingly optimistic and positive person right to the end. But I think you have to be able to stay in the water that long; you have to really control your emotions.” 

Parfitt summed up the experience as “surreal”. 

When asked if he and the other Yukoners thought Edgley was a little crazy, Parfitt replied, “Oh, yeah. But I like crazy.”