The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Looking back at decades of growth and support
By Katherine Nettles
A major fundraising and celebration for local nonprofit Living Journeys is approaching this weekend, with a kickoff dinner soiree on Friday night followed by the 25th annual Summit Hike on Saturday, July 27. While Friday’s soiree is sold out, the hope is to get more participants involved on Saturday’s hike and to keep spreading the word about the organization’s role in the Gunnison Valley as a foundation of support for cancer patients and their loved ones.
Event organizers and founders are reflecting on how much Living Journeys and the annual Summit Hike events have grown in both need and scope over time. Living Journey’s executive director Julie Reid describes the Summit Hike’s importance to the community as both a chance to connect with each other through participation, and as a major fundraiser helping the organization provide meals, transportation, support groups, individual and family therapy, encouragement and in some cases financial support to those dealing with cancer.
“For over 25 years Living Journeys has been a beacon of hope for our community members and their families, providing a lifeline during their most difficult days, giving them support to heal,” says Reid.
The weekend of events begins with a first-ever dinner soiree and auction at the base of Mt. Crested Butte on Friday night. The event will include cocktails, live music, dinner catered by Summit Hike founder and Living Journeys co-founder Dana Zobs’s catering company, Crested Butte Personal Chefs, followed by a live auction, a candlelight tribute to honor cancer survivors and their loved ones and special remarks from long-time Living Journeys supporter Emma Coburn and Living Journeys co-founder Mary Mike Haley.
No more tickets to the Friday soiree are available, but the following day there is plenty of room for participants to sign up for the Summit Hike for brunch, a hike to the top of Mt. Crested Butte and a post-hike celebration.
“The Summit Hike event is a special day to honor and remember our loved ones affected by cancer. It is a day when community comes together with a celebratory brunch for all to enjoy, with music and connection. The Summit Hike is not to be missed; the views are breathtaking, the camaraderie is heartwarming and the celebration at the end is beyond special,” says Reid.
Community origins
Zobs founded Living Journeys back in 1999, at a time when there were no cancer support groups or even cancer treatment resources available in the Gunnison Valley. It was also a time, she notes, when doing adventures as a way to raise funds was not so common as it is now.
Zobs was inspired to start the Summit Hike as she was coping with three big losses of loved ones to cancer in a very short time. “I lost three people in a year-and-a-half,” she remembers. “We lost my mom’s mother, father and younger sister (who was younger than I am now).”
All that tragedy was a big reality change for Zobs, she says, at a time when she had been otherwise enjoying a great life in the paradise of CB filled with biking, skiing and work.
“Suddenly my perfectly fun life in CB was not so simple and I felt very alone,” she recalls. She found an organization (now called The Breast Cancer Fund or BCF) which was doing a ride across Alaska to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, and although it wasn’t a direct match to the kinds of cancer in Zobs’s family, the concept resonated.
“I needed an outlet and new people to connect with that understood my story,” she says. That well-timed group ride got her engaged in fundraising with a group of strong women who were all living with cancer in some way or another.
When she got back to CB, she decided to create a mountain climbing event in Mt. CB to benefit the BCF as well, given the resort offered a road up most of the mountain, emergency vehicles, ski patrol, a chair lift, food service, “and a whole community of motivated people,” says Zobs. She rallied the ski patrollers like Shelley Chancellor and Krista Hildebrandt and a few others among the ski resort staff.
The event raised $50,000–$75,000 in the first couple of years, and within a few more years Living Journeys emerged as a nonprofit organization.
“More importantly than the funds raised it created a place that all of us who have struggled with cancer, supported family, and lost family could be together in the place that we love,” says Zobs. “Our support of each other was so prevalent on that day and getting to the top of Mt. CB meant so much more than it ever had before.”
This was in 1999. “I feel like anyone I heard about with cancer back then was a death sentence,” says Zobs. “We were a town with no cancer group, no cancer nonprofit, no cancer resources at the hospital. Now, we have so many resources in the valley, and more in Colorado, but the town has grown significantly too in 25 years. So, there’s a greater need for Living Journeys in general.”
While the early days of supporting the community entailed about 10 Living Journeys clients, Reid says they now serve about 150.
The number of clients and supporters throughout the past 25 years has grown, too. Sponsors throughout the community range from individuals to families to businesses. Groups of teachers and staff at the Crested Butte Community School always turn out a large group of hikers, as do numerous other small businesses.
Julia Kidd is both a CBCS teacher and a business owner. She and her husband run Hargrove & Kidd Construction, which has for years supported Living Journeys and this year is sponsoring a teacher table at Friday’s soiree. Among others, the teachers will honor Sarah Smith, who passed away from cancer a few years ago. “Some of us who worked with and loved Sarah will be there to celebrate her life. We just want to continue to honor her and say her name,” says Kidd.
Rob Mahedy has lived in the valley since 1996. He is a carpenter and among other things, has been a board member of CB Mountain Bike Association for 20 years. “Like so many others in the valley, I enjoy doing things in the outdoors. I’m a big hiker, a birder, a skier and a biker. I’m also a mountaineer,” he says of his many solo missions worldwide. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer about two months ago, and says the support he has gotten through Living Journeys and its many collaborations has been meaningful. “June 3 was my first surgery,” he reports, followed by another on July 9 to remove an aggressive, fast-growing malignancy. He is about to begin chemotherapy next month, and thanks to a financial grant Living Journeys recently awarded to Mahedy and boxes of fresh food from Mountain Roots in collaboration with Living Journeys, he will be able to take time off work to focus on his treatment.
“I’ve definitely been feeling the love of our community,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what differences we have, people support each other.” Mahedy admits that as a soloist mountaineer, “This is my first time ever really asking for help. It’s a major life changer for me.” He will be at the Summit Hike as well, and speaking at the soiree on Friday night. He plans to do the final mile of the Leadville 100 marathon alongside Pat O’Neill next month as well, if he is able after his first chemo dose.
There are dozens of other stories to share, some of survival, some of heartbreak and many of current clients who are deeply moved to have the backing of such a powerful support system as they navigate treatment. Many of those stories will be told this weekend, whether in small hiking groups, while sharing a meal or standing at a microphone.
Zobs likens the Summit Hike itself to a day of collective community therapy. Her friend Mary Mike Haley, who co-founded Living Journeys with her, is a therapist specializing in trauma and Zobs says Haley really encouraged people to seek therapy and support their mental health as well.
“Whether you talk about it or not, some people cry at the summit—we do,” says Zobs. “We spend a lot of time here in CB talking about sports and being active. But there’s hard stuff too. It’s like setting yourself up for facing something in your life. It’s hard to talk about for some people. And the work that Living Journeys does is so important and so unique to those being affected by cancer. This is a place where we can talk. It’s direct support—it’s what you need right now.”
Sign up
The Summit Hike registration was looking about average at the beginning of this week, according to Reid, but the hope was for a big push to cross into making an even bigger impact.
“I’d love to see even more support for Living Journeys,” shares Zobs. “None of us want to need it, but we do. The more support we gather, the more people we can serve.” She noted that many grant applications to Living Journeys get turned down or granted only half of their request. “We would love to be able to say yes more,” she says.
“It’s crazy,” Zobs revels of the 25th anniversary. “I feel really proud. The most important thing is that it’s still happening. We have grown, and we’re hearing of more people. So come out and hike for the summit,” she urges. “It’s a special day and it feels like an important day to stop and honor all of us.”
More information can be found at https://livingjourneys.org.
