Last week, Laura Willumsen, Karen Kern, Ted Williams, Todd Lepley and Nick Cobler met at the Cathedral of Learning as they do every Sunday, strapped on heavy backpacks and climbed the 36 flights of stairs to the top of the Oakland landmark.
Then, they did it all over again six more times.
So, why not just take the elevator?
Because when one lives in Pittsburgh and is training to climb some of the world's highest mountain peaks, it helps to be a little creative.
Willumsen, Kern, Williams, Lepley and Cobler all work in marketing and are better known among family and friends as Team Pittsburgh, the first regional team of the national Climb for Hope organization. This June, Kern hopes to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, while the other four members will attempt to climb Cotopaxi in Ecuador in January.
En route, they hope to raise $50,000 to help fund research being led by Dr. Leisha Emens at Johns Hopkins University into a vaccine for late-stage breast cancer.
"Last year (Climb for Hope) raised $150,000 and that amount was able to fill in the gaps in federal funding and Dr. Emens was able to add a third trial and accelerate her research by six months," said Upper St. Clair's Willumsen, who was part of Climb for Hope's expedition to Cotopaxi last year. "That makes you feel warm and fuzzy."
Warm and fuzzy is not what the group will feel on top of Cotopaxi, at 19,388 feet above sea level. It is one of the world's highest active volcanoes.
The group will spend six days acclimating and doing smaller training hikes before traveling to the climbers' hut at 15,744 feet. The next day they will begin their push to the summit at midnight and spend the next eight hours hiking to the top of the glacier, a climb that is not technical but does require a harness, ropes, ice axes and crampons.
In Africa, Kern and her group will establish their first camp at 10,000 feet and spend the next five days hiking before making a midnight summit attempt that ends with more than a mile of hiking above 19,000 feet. It will be at least a 12-hour day.
Both climbs will be run through Baltimore-based Earth Treks, founded by renowned mountaineer Chris Warner.
Willumsen's trip up Cotopaxi last year was her first major climb.
Three years earlier, Willumsen wasn't even exercising regularly let alone climbing mountains, but she experienced what she calls a conversion while climbing glaciers in the Cascades with her teenaged sons.
She was 47 years old.
After she returned from the trip, she hired a trainer, started lifting weights, competed in her first triathlon and then her first half-marathon.
"People who knew me a couple years before were like, 'Who are you?' and I wasn't quite sure myself," Willumsen said.
When Willumsen first heard about Climb for Hope late last October, the trip was less than three months away, leaving little time for training and raising the required $5,000.
"But I had this intense conviction that this was something I needed to do," said Willumsen, whose sister has battled breast cancer twice and is at high risk herself, having had her fourth biopsy just last week.
Kern was a good friend and colleague and became Willumsen's fundraising campaign manager. Williams, another colleague, designed her Web site and helped with printed materials.
Willumsen raised over $10,000.
This year, Kern decided that she, too, wanted to climb after she heard there would be an expedition to 19,340-foot-tall Mt. Kilimanjaro as well as one back to Cotopaxi. Kern read Ernest Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro in eighth grade and has wanted to climb the mountain ever since, despite having never climbed a mountain before.
"The Climb for Hope campaign has riveted me," said Kern, who will turn 52 years old on Kilimanjaro. "I can't remember many other things in my life galvanizing me in this way."
For Williams, the decision to join Willumsen on the trip this year was simple.
"One of my best friend's wife died two years ago of breast cancer and I'm climbing for her," said Williams, 42, from the South Side. "And I have two daughters and I don't want them to ever have to go through that."
Pitching in
The five members of Team Pittsburgh are hoping to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research in honor of the 50,000 women who lost their lives to the disease in the U.S. last year. They still have a long way to go. Donations can be made on their Web site, climbforhope.org and at REI in the South Side Works. They are also having a fundraiser with information as follows:
Where: Mullaney's Harp & Fiddle, Strip District
When: 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14
What: Happy hour and silent auction, with music by Corned Beef and Curry. Bid on a variety of items from restaurant gift certificates to sports memorabilia.
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