Swimming the Bering Strait — A Birthday Into History
July 19, 1993
For his 58th birthday, Ted didn’t ask for a cake.
He asked for the coldest, loneliest stretch of water on Earth.
He wanted to swim the Bering Strait.
Just a few years earlier, legendary cold-water swimmer Lynne Cox had stunned the world by crossing those icy waters in nothing but a swimsuit. She had the body type built for the cold — natural insulation that most people simply don’t have. In 45-degree water, the average person can lose consciousness in minutes.
Ted was not built for the cold.
But he was built for challenges that didn’t make sense.
Years before, while running across Siberia, Ted had met Joe Oakes — another man with a taste for the impossible. One phone call brought their dreams together.
“You’re thinking Bering Strait?” Joe asked.
“So are you?” Ted replied.
That was all it took. Two men. One idea. One stretch of water that had stopped countless others.
Swimming Through Time
The Bering Strait isn’t just cold — it’s complicated.
It lies between Russia and Alaska, with two tiny islands in the middle: Big Diomede (Russia) and Little Diomede (USA). Between them runs the International Date Line. Start from the Russian side and you literally swim from tomorrow into today. Finish in an hour, and you’ve technically gone back in time.
The distance between the islands? Only 2.7 miles.
The conditions? Brutal.
Water temperatures hovered between 40 and 45 degrees. Currents shifted without warning. Weather could change in minutes. And the logistics of getting permission from two governments, coordinating rescue teams, and even reaching such a remote place were almost as daunting as the swim itself.
This wasn’t just a test of endurance.
It was a test of planning, diplomacy, and stubborn belief.
The Edge of the World
Getting there felt like a journey to another planet.
Ted and Joe flew from Seattle to Anchorage, then to Nome. From there, a small plane carried them to Cape Prince of Wales. The final leg? A mail helicopter to Little Diomede Island.
On that helicopter ride, Ted was handed an unexpected assignment: hold a crying baby on his lap for the flight. Somewhere between extreme adventure and small-town kindness, Ted found himself part of the chain of life in one of the most remote communities in America.
Little Diomede was only three miles wide, home to about 200 Inuit residents. Life there was harsh. Old wooden homes stood against constant wind and cold. Jobs were scarce. Walrus hunting remained a traditional way of survival. Along the beaches lay the stark evidence of that life — tusks valuable, meat essential, nothing wasted.
Ted quietly observed it all.
He had run across Siberia before and thought, in many ways, conditions there seemed easier than here on this windswept rock in the middle of the sea.
The Swim That Had Never Been Done
No one had ever swum from Siberia to Alaska — from Asia to North America.
Until Ted and Joe.
The distance may have been short on paper, but in those waters, it felt endless. Every stroke burned against the cold. Every breath reminded them how far they were from warmth, from comfort, from anything familiar.
This wasn’t a race against others.
It was a race against time, temperature, and the limits of the human body.
And for Ted, it was a birthday gift no one else could give him.
Because for Ted Epstein, the point was never how far something looked on a map.
The point was whether it had ever been done —
and whether he had the courage to try.
Into the Ice: The Swim That Crossed More Than Water
The crossing almost didn’t happen.
Ted and Joe had one small boat, two local tribal leaders helping them, and a stretch of ocean known for cold that could stop a heart. To make it fair — and safer — Ted suggested a coin toss. Joe won. He would swim first while Ted stayed in the boat as lifeguard. Then they would switch.
German kayakers had been stranded there for a month, waiting for a weather window. The day Ted and Joe arrived, the sea did something rare — it went quiet.
Villagers gathered along the shore to watch. The men were warned: go now. By the next day, the strait would likely return to its violent self. Waves. Undercurrents. Chaos.
But that day, the water lay almost still — dark, glassy, and 39 degrees.
There was just one problem.
They didn’t have Russia’s permission to be there.
They went anyway.
Armor Against the Cold
Ted dressed like a man preparing to step into another world.
Neoprene gloves.
Two hoods.
Swim boots.
Two wetsuits layered together.
He coated his body in lanolin and sandwiched plastic between the suits, trying to trap every possible bit of heat. Later, he would say if he ever did this again, he’d want a custom-built suit — thick, heavy neoprene protecting his chest, back, and neck like armor.
He also tried to outsmart the ocean.
A snorkel.
That lasted about five minutes.
Even in calm water, the waves crashed over him, flooding the tube. He rolled onto his back, sputtering and blowing water out like a broken machine. Finally, he ripped it away and tossed the idea aside. From then on, he relied on nose clips and one of his three pairs of goggles — all of which fogged at the worst times.
To make matters harder, Ted’s neck and shoulders still ached from a car accident just three weeks earlier.
And yet… he swam.
Joe had prepared like a scientist of survival — gaining twenty pounds for insulation, training in the frigid Pacific, swimming six days a week. Ted had not trained nearly as much.
Still, when it was his turn, he slid into the Arctic water.
Alone in the Gray
Waiting in the boat during Joe’s swim, Ted had already grown chilled to the bone. When he entered the water, the cold felt like a thousand needles at once.
Because his eyesight was poor, a fifteen-foot tether was attached from his leg to the boat. Within minutes, it tangled. Another idea abandoned.
Now he was truly on his own.
Ted struggled to hold a straight line. Pool swimming hadn’t prepared him for open water navigation. The crew shouted directions over the wind:
“More to the right!”
“A little left!”
His calves began to cramp. Then his thighs. His shoulders throbbed. The cold crept deeper.
But stroke by stroke, he kept moving.
Over two hours later, Ted reached the other side — nearly the same time it had taken legendary cold-water swimmer Lynne Cox to swim the strait in the opposite direction.
The Real Story
When people later asked Ted about the swim, he would shrug.
“The swim itself was uneventful,” he’d say.
The film footage? Uneventful.
But that wasn’t the story.
The story was the journey — the isolation, the cold, the risk, and the people who lived at the edge of the world.
Anchorage felt modern to Ted.
Nome felt like stepping into the 1890s.
Farther north, villages of Native Alaskans lived without running water. Toilets emptied into buckets beneath the floor. Life depended on cooperation and survival.
On Little Diomede Island, Ted felt like a guest… and a prisoner. He relied entirely on the goodwill of others for food and water. No one left until the island elders gave permission.
The swim crossed more than a strait.
It crossed cultures.
Time.
Comfort.
And the thin line between human limits and human will.
Stranded at the Edge of the World
Crossing the Bering Strait was only half the battle.
Getting home was its own survival story.
Little Diomede was beautiful, remote… and isolating. Boats didn’t run on schedules — they ran on weather, promises, and whatever price someone felt like charging that day. Days passed. Plans fell through. The cost of leaving kept rising. Gas was five dollars a gallon — a fortune in that isolated corner of the world — and basic supplies in the tiny stores cost five to ten times what they did back home.
Ted wasn’t one to sit and wait. He found a phone and started making calls to nearby islands, trying to track down someone — anyone — who could take them off Little Diomede at a fair price. Eventually, he reached a boatman he had met before and negotiated a pickup.
That night, Ted and Joe stayed in Cape Wales in a six-by-ten-foot room that cost forty dollars each — no running water, no toilet, no blankets, no sheets, and layers of grime. There was no choice. Ted bargained the price down to twenty dollars apiece. Even discomfort was something to negotiate.
Before leaving, they were honored by the village. The local elder invited them into his home for dinner. Ted called Vivian to share the news: they had done it. She spread the word, and soon newspapers across the United States were reporting the incredible swim. The villagers celebrated in their own way — traditional dances under Arctic skies, honoring the two men who had crossed icy waters between continents.
But the Arctic had one more test.
Ted heard on the radio that a major storm system was moving in. If they didn’t leave soon, they could be trapped for days — or longer. At 2:00 A.M., Denver time, Ted called Vivian again and asked her to contact their friend, Judge Sherman Finesilver. Within hours, the judge had reached out to the U.S. State Department, helping arrange an urgent departure.
Still, the escape itself was anything but easy.
A small boat pushed off into rough seas. The north wind kicked up five-foot waves that slammed into the hull. Water poured in. Ted and Joe bailed furiously, soaked, exhausted, but determined not to let the journey end in failure now.
At 4:00 A.M., they reached Cape Wales — cold, drenched, and spent. They stumbled into the local washeria, fed coins into the machine for 25-cent hot showers, then stuffed their wet clothes into the dryers. With no strength left, they curled up and fell asleep beneath the folding tables.
A few hours later, a bush plane carried them away from the Arctic edge of the map and back toward civilization.
This chapter of Ted’s life came from a birthday conversation recorded by Vivian the day after he returned home, and from Joe Oakes’ book With A Single Step. Joe would go on to achieve his life goal of circumnavigating the globe through adventure.
Ted, meanwhile, carried home something just as valuable:
Proof that even at the edge of the world…
he would always find a way forward.
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