MOUNT CRESTED BUTTE — Near the summit, scrambling over loose chunks of igneous rock, Rob Mahedy stops and stretches tall, his hands to the heavens.
“Can you believe this?” he shouts, turning toward the iconic laccolith that stands sentinel over the East River valley. “How lucky are we?”
It’s been a little more than two years since Mahedy noticed blood in his urine and doctors found a tumor in his bladder. The tumors have spread, from his lymph nodes to his lungs. A longtime resident of the valley, the accomplished mountain man has barely missed a step during two years of chemo and immunotherapy, spending weeks on expeditions to the summits of technical peaks in Nepal and Alaska.
He certainly hasn’t lost any appreciation for his home.
“It’s just so amazing,” says Mahedy, climbing with a group up the steep Guides Ridge on a brilliant Sunday — and his 60th birthday — as part of the 27th annual Summit Hike hosted by Living Journeys, a group that supports Gunnison County cancer fighters and their families.
Mahedy — a 30-year valley resident that one friend calls “the Laird Hamilton of Crested Butte,” a storied mountainman reflection of the legendary waterman — had only told a handful of his friends about the cancer diagnosis in the spring of 2024 when Living Journeys called him and told him there was help waiting if he ever needed it. They could send meals. Drive him to appointments. Help around his remote cabin where he takes care of the historic Cement Creek Ranch. Even give him money to carry him through treatments.
At first he ignored the offer. The youngest of six kids and a mountain man who relishes the challenge and quiet of solo wilderness missions, he would go it alone. But as the chemo trickled, his solo campaign ebbed.
“I was like, you know what, I need to learn to ask for help,” he says, tracing that humility and acceptance to a critical alpine skill: knowing when to turn around and head down.
A friend launched a GoFundMe campaign. A metalsmithing pal crafted wrought-iron hearts — called Hearts for Rob — for garden art. Through Gunnison Tough, another group supporting cancer fighters in the valley, second homeowners from Oklahoma and Texas would come get him and drive him to chemo treatments in Montrose or even Aurora.
“In their nice Cadillac Escalades. That was the first time I ever felt heated seats,” he says with laughter that fills his homestead cabin on the banks of Cement Creek.
Now he’s cajoling comrades with cancer, alongside Living Journeys, convincing them to embrace the community of supporters waiting for their call.
“I tell them they don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “There is a system set up and ready to help.”
That system started with a breast cancer fundraising hike up Mount Crested Butte in 1999 organized by a local 25-year-old restaurant worker named Dana Zobs. She was navigating her own journey with cancer, watching several people in her family succumb to the disease, and she saw a need for not just supporting the ailing, but also their families.
Living Journeys in the last six years delivered $900,000 in direct support to locals and their families, provided 16,500 meals, paid for 30,000 miles of travel for cancer treatments and provided 1,600 hours of counseling. The Summit Hike in recent years has grown into a weekend, with 250 donors rallying for a banquet that raises several hundred thousand dollars for the community-focused cancer mission.
The Living Journeys Summit Hike – more than 400 people hiking to the top of the 12,162-foot Mount Crested Butte with hand-scrawled names on placards pinned to their packs – is all about “energetic support without having to say any words,” Zobs says.
“We are all here and we know we are all here for each other and this is the day a year we all show up,” Zobs says.
Just knowing that the community support is there helps Tina Kempin, a 25-year resident of the Gunnison Valley who is also navigating bladder cancer. She started doing the Summit Hike more than a decade ago when her sister was diagnosed with leukemia. Now she’s leaning on Living Journeys.
“You just feel it up there,” she says. “You feel the love. The community Living Journeys fosters is so huge. Just knowing that you are not alone, it just gives you such hope.”