Bigfork firefighters to compete in national competition

By MIKE RICHESON

Bigfork Eagle

Members of the Bigfork Volunteer Fire Department will again travel to Seattle for the Annual Scott Firefighter Stairclimb on March 4. Firefighters from Bigfork also competed last year.

Katie Edwards, Summerlee Luckow and Tim Paige will compete in the event, which requires firefighters - in full gear - to get to the top of 69 flights of stairs as fast as possible. Alli Reines will accompany the team to work as the bottle changer at the 40th floor.

The competitors climb the stairs - all 1,311 of them - in the Columbia Center, which stands as the second tallest building west of the Mississippi. Overall vertical elevation gain is 788 feet.

Edwards, who is also the first female captain for Bigfork, said the team started training for the event in December. They run stairs twice a week at the fire station and work out four times a week at the Montana Athletic Club.

The stairclimb event is the largest firefighting competition in the world and acts as a fund-raiser for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Last year the climb raised $355,000 dollars. More than 1,000 firefighters from the United States, Canada and even New Zealand compete.

The Bigfork firefighters are still raising funds for the trip. Any individual or company that offers a $50 donation receives a T-shirt. Donations over $100 earn a company’s color logo on the shirt.

Edwards, who completed the climb in 28 minutes last year, said the event completely exceeded her expectations.

“I thought it would be kind of a mean competition, but it’s not,” she said. “There is lots of camaraderie between teams.”

She also said that meeting the cancer patients and survivors is an inspiration.

Anyone interested in donating money to the team for the stairclimb event should contact the Bigfork Fire Department.