Mail by Runner 165: One of Our Summit Challenge Ambassadors is Doing it in Winter

We have a number of ambassadors carrying Summit Challenge forward this year, and we wanted to introduce one of them to you.

Sean Toms is a ski patroller at Big White in British Columbia, Canada. That context matters. While most of us taking on Summit Challenge are doing it in the New Zealand summer, Sean will spend March in the mountains doing something the season won't allow the rest of us: boot packing couloirs in the snow.

A couloir is a steep, narrow channel cut into a mountainside. Boot packing means hiking it on foot, upward, without the benefit of a lift. If you want a sense of the terrain Sean is working with, he's shared a reel of it here (or click the image below). For someone working as a ski patroller, the mountains are already his workplace. Summit Challenge just gives that time in the hills a different purpose.

Sean's plan is to complete as many couloirs as he can across March. Conditions and weather will have a say. But he's committed to the month, and to raising funds for children's education and healthcare in the Himalayas.

We'll share more as March progresses. For now, we wanted you to know he's out there.