15-year-old attempting California Triple Crown
SAN CARLOS — At the age of 10, Angel More held the record for youngest girl to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa.
Her sights this summer are set on something tougher: the California Triple Crown of Marathon Swimming.
The 15-year-old junior at Menlo School in Atherton dove into open water off Santa Catalina Island at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday and roughly 14 1/2 hours later reached dry land on a rocky beach off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes at 12:59 p.m. on Monday.
“While I was swimming I didn’t feel that tired, I felt like I could continue going,” More said. “However, it was the longest time I’ve been in the water and as soon as I got out I was tired. It was hard for me to get back into the water and go back to the boat.”
In August of 2017, she swam the Santa Barbara Channel, a stretch of just over 12 miles from Anacapa Island to Oxnard.
All that’s left to complete the California Triple Crown is a 21.3-mile swim across the lengthwise axis of Lake Tahoe, which she will attempt on Aug. 24.
“That would complete the bucket list,” said Evan Morrison, 38, her marathon swimming coach in San Francisco. “It would be a pretty amazing achievement. She’d be by far the youngest to have done that.”
The 5-foot-4 dynamo from San Carlos joined the Otter Swim Club at the age of 5 under the tutelage of head coach Fred Farley at Carlmont High in Belmont.
She’s not the fastest swimmer in the pool, falling short of qualifying for the Central Coast Section swimming and diving championships last month in the 500-yard freestyle and 100 breaststroke, her preferred events.
Instead, it’s her perseverance that stands out.
More took the plunge from Alcatraz to shore for the first time as an 11-year-old and has done it 50 more times since.
“She has the soul of a marathon swimmer,” Morrison said. “It’s not just a lot of physical training in the pool and open water, but just the steel-trap mind to persist and endure for a long time and kind of work through pain and fatigue to keep going until you reach the other side of the channel.”
She dabbled with triathlons for three years and in 2014 attempted to become the youngest girl to climb Mt Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest mountain outside of Asia.
“The thing is with hiking you can sit down and rest, but I do not like the altitude and I don’t like walking at night that much, so I would say hiking is harder for me,” More said. Sea level seems to suit her best. It’s just not a genetic trait she shares with her father.
“I personally cannot swim at all,” Hermant More said. “I cannot swim to save my life.”
For Angel, her life currently revolves around open water and marathon swimming.
She wakes up at 3 a.m. every Thursday to meet her coach at Aquatic Park in San Francisco for a two-hour swim while Morrison monitors her on a kayak.
“Not many people understand what it is and what effort it takes to do it,” said More, who swam 30 kilometers per week to train her most recent endeavor.
“I like to expand my comfort zone and just do things that are challenging for me,” she added. “Sometimes I don’t necessarily enjoy swimming it, but at the end I feel very accomplished and I feel like I did something good.”
Her first marathon swim took place at the age of 13, soon thereafter undertaking a 12-mile roundtrip between Santa Cruz and Capitola.
On top of mountain climbs in Africa and South America, the list of international open-water swims extends to England, Sweden and South Africa — each requiring special permission due to her age — plus Chile.
“My mom found this list of a bunch of the top open-water swims in the world and we love to travel as a family,” More said.
A seminal moment in her life occurred prior to her attempt in 2014 to climb Mt Aconcagua.
During a trip to Guatemala it dawned on More just how much the kids were no different than herself or her sister, they just lacked the same opportunities.
Since then, she’s raised almost $40,000 for the nonprofit Children International, which her family has supported since she was born.