Current Trek:
Supporting Children Entering Emergency Foster Care
Field Dispatch: Nepal 2026
Mission
Everest Base Camp Trek & Wilderness Medicine Elective
Operative:
Hunter Stutz, Second Lieutenant USAF Medical Corps, Medical Degree Candidate
Charitable Partner:
Objective:
The Susan Cox Powell Foundation—Charlie's Dinosaur Program
High-altitude medical training. Global awareness. A little dinosaur with a big mission.
Every expedition needs a purpose. This one has two.
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This year, Hunter heads to Nepal for a wilderness medicine elective—a rigorous, hands-on stretch of training focused on high-altitude medicine and remote emergency care. The kind of medicine you can't learn in a lecture hall. The kind that asks what you do when the nearest hospital is a two-day hike away and the air is too thin to think straight.
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The route: Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp, ascending through some of the most demanding terrain on earth, at elevations where the body works against itself and clinical judgment is the only tool that never runs out of oxygen.
This is the medical training. But it's only half the mission.
The Cargo:
Tucked into Hunter's pack alongside his medical kit is something that doesn't show up on any official equipment list: a small stuffed dinosaur named Charlie.
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Charlie belongs to the Susan Cox Powell Foundation and their outreach program, Charlie's Dinosaur—an initiative created in cooperation with the Cox family following the tragic and heartbreaking loss of their daughter Susan Cox Powell, and her two young sons, Charlie and Braden.
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Charlie's Dinosaur exists because of them, and for children like them.
The program assembles backpacks filled with the things a child suddenly needs when the unthinkable happens: bedding, clothing, toiletries, school supplies, and a toy. These backpacks are handed directly to children by law enforcement officers at the moment they are removed from unsafe or abusive homes and placed into emergency foster care—often with nothing but the clothes on their backs and no time to say goodbye to anything familiar.
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A stuffed dinosaur in a backpack won't fix what broke. But it tells a child, in the clearest possible language, that someone was thinking of them before they even knew they needed help.
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Follow along as Charlie's Dinosaur makes its way through Nepal—Hunter will be sharing photos of Charlie throughout the trek, from the bustling streets of the city to the silence of the high mountains. Every photo is a chance to share the campaign, spread the word, and push the donation total a little further. A small dinosaur, a steep journey, and an even bigger reason to keep watching.