Summit For Someone climbers coming from all over the U.S. (and Canada!)

Every year, it’s fun for us to watch where our Summit For Someone climbers are coming from — Western states where mountain climbing is more common, and other states where the highest “mountain” is about 1700 feet above sea level (my home state of Iowa!). When we get a little over halfway through our registration, I like to put together a map to see where the most “people with big hearts who want to climb big mountains come from.”

In 2011, we have the first two SFS climbers in my memory coming from Alaska, as well as three from British Columbia. Interestingly, we also have three climbers coming from Savannah, Georgia. Our biggest states, as usual every year, are California, Colorado, New York, Washington and Texas. Here’s the full list:

California – 11
Colorado – 8
New York – 8
Washington – 8
Texas – 5
Georgia – 4
Massachussetts – 4
Maryland – 4
British Columbia – 3
New Mexico – 3
Ohio – 3
Pennsylvania – 3
Virginia – 3
Alaska – 2
Nebraska – 2
Oregon – 2
Wyoming – 2
Iowa – 1
Kansas – 1
Minnesota – 1
North Carolina – 1
New Jersey – 1
Rhode Island – 1

Interested in a climb? Call Brendan at 303-271-9200, ext. 403 or e-mail him at brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org.

-Brendan

Mexico Volcanoes 2010: Two summits, 5 climbers, 35,568 feet, $37,939 raised

With the successful summits of 18,418-foot Pico de Orizaba and 17,158-foot Iztaccihautl, our last climb of the 2010 Summit For Someone season is over. Our climbers, Jason Cahill, Kyle Gerecke, Brandon Kibby, JP Latkovic and Bret Siciliano, raised almost $38,000 for Big City Mountaineers through their efforts! JP shared with us this video of their expedition, capturing the whole trip:

For information on our 2011 Mexico Volcanoes expeditions, click here, or e-mail Brendan at brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org.

-Brendan

How much do we love Mike Hong’s SFS fundraising page?

Just a sample from Mike’s incredibly elaborate Summit For Someone donation page:

My personal gift to you for making a donation at each corresponding level:

$25 – I will give you a super-awesome high-five
$50 – I will give you a super-slow-mo exploding fist-bump
$100 – I will add your name onto my summit/climbing helmet in a special “donating the benjamin$!” section
$250 – I will expertly photoshop two animals of your choice together
$500 – I will name a room or space in my apartment after you and affix a commemorative plaque
$1,000 – I will let you shave my head or i will shave my head on your behalf
$5,000 – I will teach my dog dash to play the piano in your honor (seriously)

* all sponsors/supporters/donators will have a place on my summit helmet somewhere!

-Brendan

An SFS speed record on Mount Whitney

(photo by Kurt Wedberg, Sierra Mountaineering International)

We schedule our Summit For Someone Mount Whitney climb for four days, but in 2010, we had a team do it in one day.

At the time of year Summit For Someone climbers head up Whitney, late April, we call it a “full-on mountaineering experience,” with two successive days of moving camp higher, snow, rock, and 50-pound packs, to a summit day on the highest peak in the Lower 48 — 14,496 feet. And one more day to hike out.

Last year, we had a group of highly motivated folks from North Carolina and Texas tromp up the whole thing in one day, a first for us, and for Sierra Mountaineering International, the guide service we’ve used on Mount Whitney (and a bunch of other climbs) for almost the entire history of Summit For Someone.

I got an excited phone call from SMI Founder Kurt Wedberg a couple days after the group got down off the mountain, and Kurt was amped up even more than his usual enthusiastic self (I tell people we love to work with SMI because you get the feeling Kurt loves his job just as much today as he did his first day in the mountains). I could try to relay the story in a few words here, but Kurt tells the story the best, complete with photos, on the Sierra Mountaineering International blog.

Our Whitney climbs this year begin on April 17 and April 27 (and are still scheduled to take four days, despite last year’s performance). Questions? E-mail Brendan or call him at 303-271-9200, ext. 403.

-Brendan

‘I definitely think I’m tougher than I thought I was’

I took a small video camera on my BCM expedition in the Wallowa Mountains this past July, with teens from the Youth Employment Institute in Portland. I’ve done this the past two trips I’ve been on, and interviewed each of the teens, if they were willing, and it’s become some of the best one-on-one time I have with each of the guys. My friend (and BCM donor) Tommy Riley, who works in audio visual at the Art Institute of Chicago, agreed to put all the footage together in a video for us (and given the amount of wind noise in the original footage I sent him, I think he worked some miracles here).

I told this group of guys — Trae, Jahlon, Dumari, Kumari, and Quincy — that I was impressed with how mature they were at 15 and 16 years old, and that they had their stuff together a lot more than I did at the age of 15.

On our summit day, when all the other teens were having a snowball fight, I looked over and saw Kumari pensively looking out at the view of the Wallowa Mountains spread out below us. I didn’t know when I interviewed him later that day, and I asked him at the end of the interview if he had anything else to add, that he was going to say “It’s been one of the best times of my life.”

That made my epic 8-hour flight from Denver to Portland worth it.

And when I interviewed Trae later, I realized that during our weeklong trip, he had learned something that took me more than a few climbs to figure out: “When I get challenged, I get frustrated and just give up. But here, I didn’t really have that choice. We’re on a mountain — where am I going to give up to?”

-Brendan

A map of all the Summit For Someone 2011 mountains!

Our Summit For Someone intern, Bryan, (who just happens to also be an aerospace engineer) put together this great map of all the mountains on our 2011 Summit For Someone schedule — click on the photo (or here) and you’ll be taken to a clickable, scrollable version of the map:

Map geeks in our office (such as myself) are maybe just a little too excited about this.

-Brendan

I Have the Greatest Job in the World*

*Or Maybe Just the Outdoor Industry

Shilpen Patel is an oncologist in Seattle, and in December 2009, he called me with a few questions about participating in Summit For Someone, specifically about the fundraising commitment. I told him the fundraising isn’t what I’d call “easy,” but if you put some effort into it, you’ll be surprised how many people will support you, and how good it will make you feel.

Shilpen signed up, and 20 weeks later, he had met the fundraising goal of $4,000 for his Mount Rainier climb. His total ended up at $4,509.

It must be tough living in Seattle, under the shadow of one of the most famous mountains in America, and wondering what it’s like up on the summit. On August 14th, Shilpen went up with his Summit For Someone team and found out. A few weeks later, he called to chat with me about Summit For Someone 2011. I asked him how his Rainier climb had gone, and he said

“It was better than I ever imagined it would be.”

That sentence made my month. I smiled into the phone when Shilpen told me a group of participants on his climb had gotten along so well, they came back to Shilpen’s house in Seattle afterward and stayed over for a night on the town.

Stories like that make me happy I do what I do. And videos like this one, from SFS Rainier Women’s climber Sara Lingafelter, whose emotions at about 7:20 in this video show what it’s like when you get to the top after all those months of fundraising and training:

I help people climb mountains, and live out their dreams. Those people, in turn, make incredible things possible for a bunch of city kids who don’t have the advantages many of us had growing up — the teens on BCM’s weeklong expeditions who sometimes have fathers in prison, gang members recruiting them, or think their best option for the future is getting pregnant as soon as possible. And on our expeditions, we get to watch these teens experience silence for the first time, or see the Big Dipper for the first time, or dig deep and find what it takes to keep moving forward toward the summit (just like we do sometimes).

Longtime BCM trip leader Jack Sasser (left) and me, about to climb Vestal Peak in southwest Colorado, Labor Day 2010.

My official job title is “Summit For Someone Manager,” and I talk about climbing mountains to people almost every day – gear, training, and even fundraising. I love sharing what I’ve learned in the mountains, little secrets like using tyvek envelopes to carry crampons in my pack, or why I think stretching your calf muscles can prevent altitude sickness, or what (junk) food I eat at high altitude instead of all “energy” bars or gels. I climb on the weekends so I can be a legitimate source of information for our climbers – of course, I’m not going to say my “research” isn’t fun.

I had almost no experience raising money before my first day at BCM, but in the past two and a half years, I’ve taken it upon myself to get some of that experience, which hasn’t been all bad. I’ve climbed Mount Shasta with three good friends, bicycled across America with another good friend, and walked the Grand Canyon from rim to rim, all to raise money for BCM and to realize what it takes to bring in a few thousand dollars in small donations. Some people have bake sales, and some of us can’t bake so well – so we climb mountains or go on long bike rides to support what we believe in. Which, in my case, is that the outdoors can change someone’s life.

I always say that even if I have a bad day at work, at the end of the day, our teens still get to go out and have a week in the wilderness. And, 100-some people with big hearts get a shot at climbing their dream mountain every year.

-Brendan

Questions about Summit For Someone? E-mail Brendan at brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org or call him at 303-271-9200, ext. 403.

Summit For Someone 2011 Registration is Open!

The biggest news we have in 2011 is not that you can climb a life-list peak like Mt. Rainier or Mt. Whitney and help under-resourced urban teens get into the outdoors — it’s that we’re cutting our deposits in half, until Nov. 1. From today until then, you can join a team of people with big hearts looking to climb big mountains on any of our 26 climbs, and pay only a $500 refundable deposit to reserve a spot.

In addition to the epic climbs we’ve always offered — Rainier, Whitney, Shasta, Hood, the Grand Teton, Pico de Orizaba, and more — we’re adding a 3-day traverse of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range and three dates on Kilimanjaro, the crown of Africa. For a full list of dates, and information on how to register, visit www.summitforsomeone.org.

Questions? E-mail Brendan at brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org or call him at 303-271-9200, ext. 403.

-Brendan

Summit For Someone 2011 climbs announced!

Wanted: People with big hearts to climb big mountains in 2011! Here’s a link to our schedule of charity climbs benefiting Big City Mountaineers — registration opens on *October 1. Mark your calendar!

New for this year: Kilimanjaro and the Presidential Traverse!

And, we have tons of spots on Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta, Mount Whitney, the Grand Teton, Mount Hood, Pico de Orizaba, and more.

*Unless you’re on our mailing list, in which case we’ll let you register on Sept. 28. Click here to join our mailing list.

-Brendan

‘He saw himself as a failure. We saw him as someone who could lead the other teens to success.’

At BCM, some of us like to keep count of “program days,” “improvement in developmental assets,” and other measurable things. I like stories. Like this one, from Bernie, our Chicago Regional Program Manager. Here’s what he experienced on one of his trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area this summer:

Youth Outreach Services is a new partner this year. I had the pleasure of getting to know five boys from the agency. Four of them are struggling with substance abuse issues. None had been camping or experienced anything like the BCM program. Two of the older ones really took to the experience. It triggered some deep thinking about their lives. Getting away from the city life, the noises, the friends, cell phone, iPod, showers, beds and so much more combined with exposure to some of the most pristine wilderness this country has to offer has a way of hitting the pause key. At first, the guys were tentative and admitted they didn’t know if they could be successful on the expedition. They are not used to being successful. We had identified John (name changed) as a potential leader. He saw himself as a failure – we saw him as someone who could lead the other teens to success.

John and Dequan (both friends) had to quit smoking on the expedition. Already good friends, they would ask for some time together so they could talk about what they were experiencing, share struggles and support each other. By day 5, our journey was progressing well. The guys were learning a lot and had many accomplishments under their belts. After we had dinner and the storms had cleared through, they once again asked for some time together to talk. When they came back, they asked to talk to me privately. They seemed really serious and I was wondering if they were going to raise a concern or complain about something. John took the lead and said that they originally thought I was being tough on them to give them a hard time. During their discussion today, they decided that I was expecting a lot from them because I cared for them and wanted them to do well. Tears were in their eyes at this point and they each asked for a hug. John said he had never had anyone treat him that way before. Home was all about being berated and torn down. He felt rejected and neglected by everyone. We didn’t do that. We praised his successes and gently encouraged him when he fell short. We believed in him. They went on to recount what they referred to as four wasted years of drug use. More tears flowed as John told me today was his Dad’s birthday. His dad isn’t in his life, but he thinks about him often. Especially on his birthday. Today was a tough day for John. As the tears continued, there was another hug. John didn’t want to let go.

BCM is about connecting. Connections happen in all different ways. Just being quiet while paddling together can be a moment of connection. Sometimes the connection is more dramatic like the one I had with John. Even if there weren’t any other successes, the few moments with John and Dequan makes everything worthwhile.

John went on to rise to the bar we set for him. He won the Leadership award for the expedition and tied a youth record for longest canoe portage. Not bad for a failure.

-Brendan