When it rains…
...it pours success.
This year marks our 2nd annual Climb the Peak for MS Event. What started as a simple attempt to raise funds to find a cure for MS in 2023 by working with the Walk MS: Your Way Campaign. Turned into something much, much bigger. We created an event in our local community to raise awareness of this incurable disease and raise funds to find a cure in my lifetime turned into something much bigger. It turned into a following! Something that people were looking forward to and wanting to help build and grow.
The planning for an event like this starts in January and this year our focus was on sponsors. We needed some. It takes money to grow an event like this and make it everything that it is. Founding and organizing an event like this is no small feat and financially it was a bit of a heavy lift in its first year. That said, I reached out to our local businesses early and often and unrelentingly. With their help, I was able to not only fund the event materials, hats, participant/volunteer t-shirts, but also new lollipop fliers to mark the trail, rent the inside of the building to keep us cool if it was hot or dry if it rained.
A huge thank you to this year's sponsors:"
This year we did things a little differently, we took advantage of the entire year to help raise awareness of not only Mulitple Sclerosis but of the event itself. We held a car wash at a sponsor location, Edmunds Hardware, and washed cars, trucks, Jeeps, and a moped, for donations only. We raised $575 in one day.
We then joined the Henniker Homegrown and Homemade event on Mother’s Day weekend and raised over $1600 playing ‘Pluck A Duck’ and giving away fun MS swag.
Everyone was encouraged to register early and create their donation pages share them on their social media and raise their funds. Awards and prizes were given out to folks who raised and reached certain goals. Not just from the NMSS but from the climb itself. This was made possible by having sponsors this year!
The weeks before the event are the most stressful for me as things have to align and come together quickly. One is the press, which we are still working on how to best reach our local news stations and newspaper/online outlets. I also started watching the weather because the weather changed the entire setup and use of the facility space. This year it looked like the rain wasn’t going to move out in time for our morning event and I made the call to rent the indoor space off the patio.
WMUR allowed us to have a short promotional spot that would air two days before the event and I took it.
The day had come, I was prepared, the volunteers were amped and ready to go. And oh the rain was most definitely coming down and here to stay for the entirety of the event.
I must say that I am thrilled at the smiles that arrived to the event, both volunteers and participants weren’t about to let a little rain dampen any of the efforts and hard work that went into this event.
We set up tents, we moved the live raffle and finisher shirts and cupcakes inside and made the best out of it.
There were 3 main highlights of the day for me. As I mentioned I founded this event last year and have seen it through start to finish each year. To see it all come together makes me not only even more determined to find a cure, but humbled by the support of my friends and community and proud of myself. I am living with MS and allowing it to fuel my fire inside to push each and every day to help find a cure, in my lifetime.
Back to my 3 main highlights:
The NMSS sent Katya Larsen, my Walk MS: Your Way Staff, and Lieson who helped provide me with the support I needed to pull off this event. She connects with me often to make sure I have tax ID codes, letters on the NMSS letterhead, team count, and money totals and that everything is functioning as best it can. She was there to be certain this 2nd year ran smoothly but also to make some pretty big announcements. She took the opportunity to share about what an MS Ambassador is, what they do, and the potential they have once trained. She went on to share my story and how far I have come and then stated that in the 3 years that Walk MS: Your Way campaign has been running, the Climb The Peak for MS event is the top fundraising event in the nation/country. With the help of my community and all those who support me have raised over $50,000 for the NMSS to help find a cure.
My Jeep club not only supported me by donating themselves, some went above and beyond creating donation pages of their own and helping to raise funds, but 17 of them showed up with their Jeeps to help promote the new life I am now leading. Due to MS I no longer can climb the high mountains. I have modified my Jeep to be able to get me to all the adventures I need and she has turned into my ‘accessibility tool’, some have walkers, wheelchairs, I have started using a cane /walking stick but I also have a Jeep. They recognize me, they support me and they are my tribe! Together they raised over $6000 to find a cure! I am honored to part of such a group of ladies that supports not only ourselves and the proper use of our Jeeps, but our communities and the things that are important to each of us.
And definitely not least, my parents drove 4 hours to surprise me in the pouring rain and show their love and support for me. Not a day since my diagnosis has gone by that I didn’t feel their love and support and they showed it by just showing up. For knowing that this is an incredibly big deal to me. That I am putting everything that I am and have into this event because I want a cure in my lifetime! I want to one day be able to say, I HAD MS once!
And those are only my highlights! I am going to share all the event photos with you in the gallery below because there were so many smiles. Those of our sponsors, those of our participants, (even after climbing the peak in the pouring rain, they finished with smiles), we had tons of pups showing their excitement as well.
At the end of that specific day, June 9th, 2024 I was able to announce that we had raised over $29,000 towards research in finding a cure for MS. I also announced that our event for next year will take place on June 8th, 2025, same great mountain, same great cause!
I hope to see you all there, please be sure to reach out with questions, if you are interested in sponsoring we are most definitely interested in promoting you, if you want to donate to our live raffle or start your own team, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Check out the event gallery below and the full gallery here by our amazing photographer.
And again, a huge shout out and thank you to our sponsors!
