Turner’s ‘jog’ down reservoir complete

He did it.

Mike Turner on Saturday morning successfully aqua jogged the length of the Hungry Horse Reservoir.

The Columbia Falls 77-year-old did a little faster than he expected. It took him nine days total.

Turner didn’t complete the trip from stem to stern. First he jogged to the head of the reservoir from Canyon Creek and then later, he jogged back downstream, finishing at Abbot Bay Saturday morning.

He said the worst stretch was from Crossover to Devil’s Corkscrew, where he ran into high winds and high waves.

The only way to navigate that stretch was to walk the shore on his tippy toes, so he could use his feet to push against the waves.

All told, he went about 39 miles or so.

Turner thanked all his support staff.

“I had a great crew,” he said.

He started aqua jogging in 1991 after a bad fall as part of his therapy for his injuries. He said he was back to work in six months. Then he had a car wreck a few years later, and aqua jogging got him back on the road to recovery again.

The jogging is accomplished by a special buoyant belt that keeps the jogger upright in the water. He paddles with his hands and jogs with his legs. The water is typically frigid, so he wears a wet suit.

He said he recently got a calling from God to aqua jog the length of the reservoir, so he decided to do it as a fundraiser for the Columbia Falls Fellowship Alliance Church, of which he is a member.

He wanted to raise some funds toward a better pickup truck at the church’s Dickey Lake Bible Camp. The truck is on its last legs, he noted. Any additional funds will go toward the church’s mission to help the Tarahumara people in Mexico.

He said as he was jogging, folks would come up to him and ask him what he was doing. Once they found out, they’d hand him cash. He figures he raised about $500 that way alone.

A GoFundMe page has also been set up at: https://gofund.me/42bf9f80

To date it had more than $8,000 in donations.