Able to climb tall buildings in a single morning
February 10, 2009
By Christopher Huber
Max Sussman hopes to climb the Columbia Tower in less than 10 minutes. Contributed
It was a shock to everyone.
In 2002, Sammamish youth Trevor Price lost his battle with leukemia just months after finding out he had it.
“It happened very quick and was kind of a shock to everyone in our community, especially to me,” said Eastlake High School senior Max Sussman, who was one of Price’s closest friends.
Friends, family and community members helped Trevor fight the disease, but no doctor or treatment could cure him of one of the leading disease-related killers of children. That’s why Sussman is climbing one of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi next month — to help find a cure.
“Having to watch one of your closest friends suffer from something like that made me want to make a difference,” Sussman said. “And I didn’t want anyone to go through something like I did at that age.”
On March 22, Sussman, along with members of his ZenRock Fitness team, will race up the stairs of the Columbia Center in Seattle as part of the 23rd annual Big Climb. The event benefits the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. That’s 69 flights of stairs, 1,311 steps and 788 feet of elevation gain, according to the event’s Web site.
This will be Sussman’s seventh time traversing the steps, so he’s got a good idea of how long it will take.
“My goal is to break 10 minutes,” Sussman said.
Thus far the team has raised $2,237, which is the sixth most among the event’s approximately 400 participating teams. Sussman, who has made the fundraising efforts part of his senior project at Eastlake, is, thus far, the event’s top individual fundraiser, having raised more than $1,800 by himself.
He said the team’s goal is to raise $20,000 by the climb date.
To raise money for cancer research is one thing, Sussman said, but to also physically exert yourself for a greater cause brings more satisfaction.
“I really like when you get to the top … and how exhausted you are afterwards,” he said.
Event staff are anticipating nearly 6,000 individual participants this year, said Big Climb campaign director Wilma Comenat. For years, the event consisted of a mixture of firefighters climbing the stairwells with 50 pounds of gear and members of the general public hustling around them. It would generally bring in about $200,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Comenat said.
It became too crowded as the event grew, so organizers turned it into two events — the Big Climb and the Scott Firefighter Stair Climb, which happens at the same place March 8, Comenat said.
“It has definitely grown over the past three or four years,” Comenat said.
Nowadays, the Big Climb hauls in more than $1 million per year, she said. All of the proceeds go to the organization’s home office in New York, and are divvied up to research and care centers across the country. Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance receive significant amounts of the proceeds, Comenat said.
The Big Climb originated in Seattle, but now has events happening in Dallas, as well as Houston, Chicago and New York, which are still in the planning stages, Comenat said.
To register for the race, to donate to the ZenRock Fitness team, or for more information about the Big Climb, visit www.bigclimb.org.
Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com. Comment on this story at www.sammamishreview.com.
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