How Climbing Mt. Rainier Became About More Than the Summit: The Story of Climb for Casen

I grew up hiking and backpacking in Washington, so the mountains were always part of my life. But the moment I actually caught the climbing bug—like really caught it—was sitting on the couch watching a documentary about Everest with my dad. Something about it just got under my skin. The scale of it, the commitment, the idea that a person could point themselves at something that massive and just go.

I knew I wasn't climbing Everest anytime soon. But Mt. Rainier? That felt like a place to start.

While I was deep in training mode—learning the technical skills, building the fitness, figuring out what I was getting myself into—I heard about a boy in our community named Casen. He was battling a rare skin condition that required extensive medical treatment, and his family was carrying a weight that no family should have to carry alone.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. Here I was, preparing for this big personal goal, and there was a kid right in my own backyard who needed help. It felt like an obvious thing to do—turn the climb into something bigger than myself.

So that's what we did, and Climb for Casen was born.

Working with Casen's family and our community, we put together a fundraiser tied to my Rainier summit attempt. We got the word out—local news picked it up, radio stations ran with it, newspapers covered the story. People showed up in a way that genuinely surprised me. By the time it was all said and done, we had raised over $12,000. Casen got his treatment, and he's thriving today.

As for the climb—I made it to the summit.

Standing up there, looking out over Washington, I kept thinking about how different that moment felt compared to what I had imagined when I first started training. I thought reaching the top would feel like a personal victory. And it did—but it felt like so much more than that. It felt like something we had done together, our whole community, for a kid who deserved a fighting chance.

That's the thing about combining a goal with a cause. It doesn't make the goal smaller. It makes it mean something that lasts longer than the summit photo.

Climb for Casen was the first time I understood that in my bones. Every project since—the clinic in Idaho, the treks ahead in Nepal—has been built on that same idea. You have something you love. Someone out there needs something. Find the overlap and go.

That's really all Trek for Hope is. That's where it started.