Man Skies Vertical Rise Of Mt. Everest To Help Children
By Jeff Todd
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (CBS4) - A Colorado professional skier continuously skied the vertical rise of Mount Everest on Tuesday night.
"It's for the kids," Chris Anthony said.
Anthony, a Colorado native, now runs an organization focused on giving kids outdoor experiences.
"All of those opportunities to get the kids out of the classroom, into the environment and a multiple different ways - I need funds somehow," he said. So Anthony held a fundraising ski-a-thon.
"He's trying to ski as many vertical feet as he can. Donors have pledged money depending on how many vertical feet he does," said Sadler Merrill, the owner of an indoor ski training center in Centennial called Snobahn.
"It's essentially a treadmill. It's a revolving slope. It's covered in a one inch turf, and it ranges in pitch from eight to 22 degrees," Merrill said. "At maximum speed, he can ski the equivalent of 21,315 vertical feet in an hour."
Anthony skied for 82 minutes straight, equaling the elevation of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet.
"The reason I'm doing this, is that I have a youth foundation here in Colorado, and it's about bridging kids to experimental opportunities. Since I'm a skier, I've been able to bridge quite a few of them from the classroom to the mountains and onto skis," Anthony said.
Recently Anthony took a classroom of kids from Aurora to Loveland Ski Area for a day of lessons. He's hoping to raise more money for similar trips.
"All of them were peering out the bus windows just saying 'where are the mountains?' They'd never been there before. And that's a sad state when you live 20 miles from the mountains and they've never been to the mountains," Anthony said. "Just the fact we can introduce the kids to the outdoors in our environment in the mountains, that alone is super important."
LINK: Chris Anthony's Youth Initiative Project
Jeff Todd joined the CBS4 team in 2011 covering the Western Slope in the Mountain Newsroom. Since 2015 he's been working across the Front Range in the Denver Headquarters. Follow him on Twitter @CBS4Jeff.
