Man Climbs Sears Tower 4 Times for Charity

Very few of us will willingly go up 103 sets of steps -- but 22-year-old Nick Wirsching did. Four times in a row, in fact.

By . Posted on November 17 2008

How many flights of stairs will you climb voluntarily? One? Two, if you’re trying to lose weight? Three or four, under great duress, if the elevator happens to be broken?

Very few of us will willingly go up 103 sets of steps—but 22-year-old Nick Wirsching did. Four times in a row, in fact.

The stunt may seem insane, but Wirsching’s quadruple climb of Chicago’s Sears Tower wasn’t for nothing: the young man had committed to climbing to the top of the tower to raise money for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. He’d only planned to make the climb a single time, but, he told the Chicago Tribune, “I climbed to the top and thought, ‘You know, really, I’ve got nothing else to do.”

So Wirsching made the trek three more times that day, taking the elevator down to the ground floor before making the return trip. His impromptu stunt helped him land a recordbreaking amount for the Cancer Research Foundation. And while Wirsching’s climbing skills may be comparable to Olympic-level atheletes, the shoes he wore are definitely not: Wirsching completed all four trips in run-of-the-mill Crocs.

Filed under: Heroes,

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