SFS Mount Rainier 2008 video

We just found out about this video through SFS climber Stuart Smith’s Facebook page — I believe it was shot and produced by Jason Richter on last year’s Mount Rainier 1 climb. If you’re looking for 8 minutes of video to get you excited for your 2009 SFS climb, I think this is it!

Mountaineering fitness – Advice from a guide

Not Brent Okita -- three of the guys on one of our 2008 SFS Mount Hood climbs goofing around on the summit.

Brent Okita, Veteran Senior guide for Rainier Mountaineering, Inc., has guided for RMI since 1986, and has 363 summits of Rainier under his belt, as well as 17 straight summits of Denali. So he knows a thing or two about being in good shape in the mountains. Brent has written “Physical Fitness – A Guide’s Perspective” on the RMI web site, and as he explains:

Whether my goal is preparing for Everest or simply keeping this middle-aged body together – I think I have “the best” plan for training for climbing big mountains. And it’s simple.

For RMI’s full Physical Fitness & Conditioning guide, click here.

Raffle tickets bring in the bucks

flickr.com, alykat

Shasta 1 climber Jed Matcham e-mailed me to let me know how his fundraising is going — he’s a firefighter with the Benicia, Calif., Fire Department, and enlisted his co-workers, Ric Netro and James Ensley, to climb Mount Shasta with him this summer. It appears they’ve hit a fundraising goal mine with a pretty simple raffle idea: Sell $5 raffle tickets for a chance to win $500.

Jed said he personally has collected $3,000 so far, and wrote:

I bought 2000 tickets online at www.kwiktickets.com for under $100 and had them in my hand within a couple of days. They are custom printed, and very professionally done. They are very easy to sell! We collected enough to cover the $500 prize in the first day. We will eventually sell between $9,000 and $10,000 worth of tickets, enough to make sure that all 3 of us reach our goal! We are just selling face to face, and have had great success going door to door in residential as well as commercial areas, and standing in front of the local store works well also.

SFS climbers in the news

SFS climber Matt Alberti in the Lincoln Journal-Star

In Denver, where our main BCM office is located, lots of folks climb mountains. But not nearly as many do it for charity. And in lots of places our climbers come from, it’s a very unique endeavor. We’ve seen quite a few of our climbers in their hometown newspapers, or on news web sites, as of late. Here are a few of them:

-Matt Alberti, Mount Hood 3
Davey man hopes to tackle Mount Hood to help at-risk teens

-Ryan Carter, Mount Rainier 4
Climbing for a cause: Folsom Prison guard takes hobby to new heights

-Andrea Hilderbrand, Mount Hood Women’s Climb
Andrea Hilderbrand: An unconventional life

-Stephanie Maltarich, Mount Shasta 2
Summit for Someone: One woman’s climb could help 300 teenagers

-Kurt Patterson, Mount Hood 2
Above and beyond … WAY above

-Monica Schandel, Mount Shasta 1
Woman’s climb helps children to new heights

SFS 2009 T-shirts are here!

We got a bunch of boxes shipped from JanSport this morning, piled with Summit For Someone T-shirts for all our 2009 climbers. We’ll try to start getting them in the mail as soon as possible, along with a bunch of other “thank-you” gifts.

I was somewhat consulted on the design of the T-shirts, and all my input was, of course, ignored, and we ended up with maroon shirts instead of the Kelly Green I voted for. I think it’s better that people don’t listen to me when it comes to fashion matters.

If you’re climbing with us in 2009, e-mail me your T-shirt size ASAP!

Sponsors team up to outfit SFS climbers

While Summit For Someone is a fundraiser just like the Race For the Cure, we can’t exactly ask our participants to show up in a pair of running shoes and some shorts and expect them to do well. With the help of a bunch of sponsors, we’ve put together a pretty good system to outfit SFS climbers.

SFS ‘09 sponsors include:

Mammut, who provides Tripod helmets (modeled by Chris El-Deiry in the BCM office) and other gear. Glacier, Alpine Rock and Expedition climbers will all receive a free Tripod helmet as part of their gear package.

A vertical marathon for SFS

Kyle coming down the courthouse steps. (Photo by Aaron Picar)

Here’s the first idea that combines fundraising and training, courtesy of SFS Mexico Volcanoes climbers Jordan Duncan and Kyle Gerecke of Cape Girardeau, Mo.

This account is courtesy Kyle and Jordan’s friend, Aaron Picar:

A couple good friends of mine, Kyle Gerecke and Jordan Duncan will be climbing the 18,410-foot Mount Orizaba and 17,158 “Ixta” in Mexico to raise money for Big City Mountaineers.

Put ‘March Madness’ to work for your SFS fundraising

(Not this year's actual bracket)

Every year in March, someone in your office comes around asking if you want to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket, and pick the teams you think are going to the Final Four, for a chance to win a bunch of money. Well, Lee Perlman, of Denver, a 2009 Summit For Someone climber, gave me the idea to use the NCAA Tournament as a fundraiser for SFS.

I haven’t done this, but I think most of us are smart enough to figure it out. Make a bunch of copies of the NCAA Tournament bracket, which will be online this Sunday night (March 15), charge an entry fee of $10, and distribute half the total entry money as prizes (to the top 1, 2 or top 3 finishers), and donate the other half to your SFS climb. Just a heads-up, the tournament will start Thursday, so your deadline for participants to turn in brackets should be Thursday morning or Wednesday evening.

Training: ‘Mountain Climbing Fitness for Flatlanders’

John Little and Jermaine Gonzales, of NeverStopClimbing.com, are taking on a pretty courageous task. As they ask on their website,

Can two horrendously out of shape guys get fit, learn how to climb, and tackle some of the world’s highest mountains?

We are about to find out.

Hopefully most of us who signed up for Summit For Someone aren’t “horrendously” out of shape, but if you need a little inspiration, check out John’s piece, “Mountain Climbing Fitness for Flatlanders.” John’s lost 95 pounds since last June, and he’s got some great firsthand experience finding ways to get in shape from the not-so-mountainous locale of Houston. Like me, John’s a big fan of stairs.

Big City Mountaineers is on Facebook

As of today, we have a Facebook page. Previously, we’ve been on the site as a group and as a cause, but after some discussions, we decided we might have enough interesting stuff to actually register as a person on Facebook. I’ll be adding content and updating our status as much as possible. If you’re on Facebook and we haven’t added you as a friend yet, find us! We’re registered as “BigCity Mountaineers” (no space between “Big” and “City”) because Facebook wouldn’t approve the correct spelling.