Swimming 140 Mies Across Lake Powell with Shane Schieffer

Wild Ideas Worth Living

REI Co-op

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shane Schieffer is an endurance swimmer who spent more than 15 years dreaming of a full length swim of Lake Powell, the desert reservoir stretching from Utah into Arizona. In September 2025, he became the first person to complete it, covering 140 miles in 11 days while towing 215 pounds of gear. The route carried him through a remote landscape of sand colored canyons, rock formations, and isolated shorelines.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think there's a life-affirming adventure that that takes everything you love,
0:09.0	tests your capabilities, sticks you into it deep where you're going to have to find out
0:13.2	what happens to your mind and your body when you're really up against a large task.
0:18.5	And I just think it's a glorious way to spend part of our lives and
0:23.2	to find out something about ourselves and develop new things within ourselves.
0:32.9	In September of 2025, Shane Schiefer became the first person to swim the entire length of Lake Powell.
0:41.1	That's 140 miles and 11 days, towing 215 pounds of gear.
0:47.3	Lake Powell is a reservoir that cuts through the desert from Utah down to Arizona.
0:51.8	On both sides of the lake, sand-colored canyons rise above the water,
0:56.6	which is dotted with rock formations and sandbars. It's a remote, beautiful place that Shane
1:02.7	dreamed of swimming across for more than 15 years. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is wild
1:08.9	ideas worth living, an REI Co-op Studios production,
1:12.7	presented by Capital One and the REI Co-Op MasterCard.
1:18.4	Shane is a chronically curious outdoorsman with a background in business, film, and endurance
1:24.0	sports. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, which is the perfect home base for an active
1:29.2	lifestyle. Although he had plenty of experience river guiding, camping, and climbing, Shane had always
1:36.3	wanted to go on one definitive wild adventure. Shane Schiefer, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
1:47.2	I'm glad to be here.
1:48.1	You've been tinkering with adventure since you were a kid and you swam as a kid.
1:52.7	Is that correct?
1:53.9	Yeah.
1:54.5	It was really when I came out to see you for college that I started testing myself.
	...

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