The Ski Colorado Breast Cancer Awareness Tour is coming to a mountain near you. On Sunday, six Colorado natives will set out to ski all of Colorado's twenty-seven resorts in the span of eight days in an effort to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer prevention.
"Our target population is the younger active population in Colorado, and we want to show them how active living and a holistic lifestyle can be a preventative measure for breast cancer, as well as ultimately raising funds for the Colorado Breast Cancer Coalition," says Mackenzie Bell, a co-founder of the tour.
Armed with the tag line "Ski Bumps. Fight Lumps." the tour will be hitting up to five resorts a day. It will park a pink vinyl-wrapped RV, which was donated by Windish RV Center, as close to the lifts as possible and distribute educational material while accepting donations. The fake breasts will help people feel the difference between healthy boobs and those with lumps.
"We hope that will get the young people out," jokes Bell.
The tour began as an ambitious idea amongst friends and quickly turned philanthropic.
"We were all living in Aspen and decided we wanted to ski all the resorts in Colorado and wanted to do it within a week," says Bell. "We decided if we were going to do something fun we should tie it to charity. A couple members of our group have family members affected by breast cancer, so we decided to do it for breast cancer."
The group started planning in October and decided to partner with the CBCC, which aims to end breast cancer through advocacy, education and access to quality healthcare. Bell, along with Page Kelley, Jeremy Rubingh, Allie Shafner, Alison Friedman and Laura Yale set up a web site, Twitter account and Facebook page to promote the tour, and have already raised over $10,000 for the CBCC.
It helps that Colorado Ski Country USA and Vail Resorts donated ski passes for the group to all the resorts. The tour also secured other sponsors to help pay for trip costs.
The group will be accepting donations at each stop and also running "Dedication Laps," in which someone who has lost a loved one to breast cancer can donate whatever amount they want and a group member will either wear their name while skiing a run or post it on a message board at the base of the mountain.
For information on the tour schedule, or to make donations, go to the Ski Colorado Breast Cancer Awareness Tour web site.
