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2010 Summit For Someone climbs announced

Registration for Summit for Someone 2010 begins October 12  — but you can check out our climb schedule now! Space is limited — we have fewer than 200 climb spots available on 30 climbs.

New for 2010:

• Climbs of Devils Tower – one of America’s most recognizable icons
• A Mount Rainier Women’s Climb, led by two-time Mount Everest summiter Melissa Arnot
• A 5-Day Beginner Mountaineering Course in Rocky Mountain National Park, presented by Colorado Mountain School
• Continued climbs up America’s classic peaks including Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, Mount Shasta, and the Grand Teton

To check out this year’s schedule, head to www.summitforsomeone.org.

Want to be added to our list to be eligible for early registration on October 5? Click here to e-mail Brendan.

Help a climbing legend, win a day with another climbing legend

When Big City Mountaineers and Mammut put together a raffle called Pitches With Pros last year, climbing icon and author Steph Davis was one of our most enthusiastic participants, donating her time to climb Castleton Tower with raffle winner Abbey Leroux.

Now, Steph has put together another fundraiser along the same lines — this time to help climbing legend Layton Kor, who went on an incredible spree climbing new routes in the American West in the 1950s and 1960s, putting up classic lines that still prove themselves as rites of passage to today’s traditional climbers.

Kor is in need of a kidney transplant, and Steph has teamed up with photographer/writer/climber Stewart Green to raise money to help pay Kor’s medical expenses. For a $25 donation, you can buy a chance to climb Castleton Tower’s Kor-Ingalls route with Steph, or climb a different Layton Kor climb with one of a host of elite climbers: Conrad Anker (South Face of Washington Column, Yosemite), Tommy Caldwell (Kor’s Flake, Lumpy Ridge), Jimmy Dunn (The Cruise, Black Canyon of the Gunnison) or Eric Horst (Kor routes in the Shawnagunks).

To buy a raffle ticket, visit www.laytonkorclimbing.com.

Should this be a 2010 Summit For Someone climb?

-Brendan

A different kind of donation

I chat with Rainier climber Lee Perlman on the phone every once in a while about his fundraising progress, and training, and he told me this story about a friend of his who didn’t donate cash to BCM, but helped Lee out in a way that would allow him to climb Mount Rainier without having to worry about his dog. Here’s what Lee said:

My friend Dan Lipschultz, owner Out U Go Pet Sitting & Walking, got wind of my Summit For Someone climb and wanted to help. Knowing I would be out of town during my climb, he offered free pet sitting while I was gone. The past 6 months of fundraising have been a very humbling experience for me. So many family and friends have reached out, reached into their pocket books and helped me reach my goal. Dan and the fine folks are no exception. Dan’s generosity is a shinning example of local company doing good in the community. Big ups, Dan.

-Brendan

Early, no-risk registration for 2010 Summit For Someone climbs is open!

The official rules:

The Early Application allows climbers interested in 2010 to sign up and begin raising funds with no risk. Climbers will be able to sign up on July 15th 2009 for a generic ‘SFS 2010” climb and begin solicited donations via a personalized and secure fundraising platform. Climbers choosing this option receive an extra 3 months to raise money. At the end of this time climbers will need to commit to raising funds in full, becoming a layaway climber or dropping form the SFS program.

On October 14th, 2009, pre-season climbers will have three choices for continuation:
1) Move from Pre-season to “Layaway.” Meaning they continue to raise money without being assigned to a climb until they reach $1250. Layaway climbers are not eligible to climb Alaska or Rainer. They can climb in 2010 or 2011.

2) Move from pre-season to full climber. Place a $950 deposit on file and pick climb of their choice. No restrictions. Participated in a 2010 climb.

3) Drop from program – Donations raised to date will NOT be refunded under any circumstances.

To Apply:
1. Climbers will apply at www.summitforsomeone.org. When prompted to pick a climb the only choice at this time should be “SFS 2010”
2. You will be sent a waiver and liability form. Please sign and return these in order to be confirmed as a Summit for Someone climber.
3. Once you are successfully registered you will be given a webpage and can begin soliciting donations.
4. A $50 non-refundable deposit must be on file before you are set up with a personal fundraising page.

Rules & Restrictions
The pre-season button has no risk attached to it. However, a climber will be expected to move in to one of the three buckets listed above in October of 2009.

Questions? E-mail Brendan at brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org.

-Brendan

Time for a special ‘thank you’

In my fundraising efforts this year, I had almost 80 different people donate to me, in amounts from $10 to $250. Way before our climb, my co-SFS friends and I knew we’d have to come up with a nice thank-you message for all our donors. We spent the morning of the first day of our climb in the Stage Door coffee shop in Shasta City, drawing “THANK YOU” in black marker on a thick piece of paper. Jayson carried it all the way to the top of Mount Shasta, and we took turns posing with it.

When we got back, all I had to do was order 80 custom-made thank you postcards, locate all the addresses for my donors, address all the postcards, buy stamps for them and send them. 25 days after summiting Mount Shasta, I mailed all my thank-you cards. Total cost?

• 80 postcard stamps at the U.S. Post Office: $22.00
• 82 photo postcards with a personalized photo and message on them, shipped to me from Snapfish.com: $81.62

If you’d like to do something similar, and need help figuring out how to access your list of donors and their addresses, please let me know: Brendan@bigcitymountaineers.org.

-Brendan

SFS Shasta 2 summits!

Our group of 6 climbers and two guides summited Mount Shasta at 7:40 a.m. on Sunday morning, after 6 hours of climbing the Avalanche Gulch route. We spent roughly 8 months fundraising, 5 months training, and in the end, raised $25,100 for BCM and got 6 climbers to the summit, a big metaphor for the kids on our summer program trips (which, coincidentally, started going out in the field this week).

Our group included:

• Jessica, from Arlington, Va., (originally from Chicago), who also summited Mount Rainier in 2007 with Summit For Someone
• Zach, from San Francisco
• Jayson, from Denver (originally from Burlington, Iowa)
• Robb, from Denver (originally from New Hampton, Iowa)
• Steph, from Denver
• SFS Climb Coordinator Brendan, from Denver (originally from New Hampton, Iowa)
• Natalie Matveyeva from Shasta Mountain Guides
• Jason Champion from Shasta Mountain Guides

We spent two days slowly working our way up to our high camp at about 10,000 feet, waiting for good weather — Shasta was intermittently covered in clouds, rain and snow throughout the first day of our trip. Our guides decided to take us up a different route than originally planned, as the Avalanche Gulch route is easier to navigate in bad conditions. Sunday morning, we were up at 12:30, climbing through a whiteout by 1:40, and on top by 7:40. After a few minutes enjoying the sunny summit by ourselves, we plunge-stepped and glissaded back to Horse Camp and hiked out to the trailhead by 2:15.

We couldn’t have asked for a better group of climbers and guides to hang with for three days. Click “Keep reading” to see some photos of the climb.

Giving it hell for a half-mile

You won’t hear many people recommend bicycling as training for mountaineering — it’s not very similar to hiking uphill at high altitude with a pack on your back. But it’s how I get to and from work (and the grocery store, and the library, and dinner with friends, and coffee shops, and REI), and I am not a gym person, so it’s my twice-daily opportunity to get some exercise before and after sitting at my desk in the BCM office, getting flabby all day.

So for about three and a half minutes every morning on my way to work, I hit this hill, in Cheesman Park, and I pedal as hard as I can. I’m usually wheezing and gasping for air by about 2/3 of the way up it, legs burning — not unlike the feeling of trying to hike up a high-altitude ridgeline or snow slope. It’s only 115 feet of elevation gain over a half mile, but on a bike, you can never beat a hill. You can only get up it a little faster.

A good piece of advice for mountaineering trips

Our Longs Peak climbers had a conference call with Jill Salva of the Colorado Mountain School last night, and Jill was, of course, full of useful information. One of my favorite tips she shared was pretty simple and obvious, but I think something most of us might not think of when it comes to mountaineering: Start packing a week in advance of your trip. Less stress, fewer forgotten items, no hassle the night before you have to get on your flight trying to cram one more piece of gear in your pack.

If you’re like me, you don’t have a guest bedroom — I start piling everything I need on one spot on the floor of my apartment. You’ve probably got an extra room in your house that you can pile gear in for a week. It’s nice to go through everything with a checklist in hand to visually confirm you have everything you need. If you do all of this well in advance, there’s no panicking — even if you suddenly realize you’ve lost your headlamp, there’s time to borrow one, or order another one.

If you need a gear list to print off for your SFS climb, here they are:

• Mount Shasta
• Mount Hood
• Mount Sneffels Mountaineering Course
• North Palisades Peak
• Longs Peak
• Gannett Peak
• Mount Rainier – Emmons Glacier
• Mount Langley
• Mount Rainier
• Mount Shuksan
• Grand Teton
• Mexico Volcanoes