Solar Valley man seeks to become initial NFL player to climb 7 Summits

Sun VALLEY, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — A Sunshine Valley resident is achieving for the stars, practically. He’s working to grow to be the very first and oldest NFL participant to climb the highest peaks on each continent, recognised as the 7 Summits.

All inside a days time, Mark Pattison is teaching to climb Mount Everest and 1 of the tallest mountains in Asia.

The 59 yr-aged shares his journey with KMVT from the greatest stage of football, to staying a single of the best mountaineers.

It is 7:30 a.m. and Mark Pattison and Jim Mora are instruction at Bald Mountain.

“I’m typically chasing on the way up, on the way down, he’s prepared to go,” spelled out Mora.

The pair have been teammates at the College of Washington, just before likely in unique instructions.

Pattison went on to participate in for the Raiders, Rams and Saints as a extensive receiver. When Mora started his coaching profession, that spanned about 30 several years, before retiring in 2017 as the UCLA head coach.

“One of the issues that has been seriously amazing is when you set so significantly hard work into the teaching and grinding up the hill, I’m so fortunate that my ideal mate Jim Mora is right here residing fulltime in Sunlight Valley,” Pattison claimed.

Mora and Pattison moved up 3 years in the past and use River Operate to teach, especially when they skin up the mountain

Mora added, “he’s completely ready to go. and is concentrated, has a large task and also obtained a little something that gives him a bigger objective.”

That better intent is Pattison’s quest to complete the Seven Summits and elevate revenue for Larger Floor.

Pattison was supposed to climb Mt. Everest in 2020, but individuals plans modified due to the pandemic.

“In partnerships with Greater Floor, the NFL, the Raiders and quite a few other incredibly generous contributors, we’re up more than $50,000 correct now,” Pattison claimed.

“Such an remarkable advocate for creating guaranteed people today have an understanding of the great importance of sports and recreation and encouraging men and women rehabilitate and reintegrate into their communities,” explained Increased Ground director Kate Dobbie.

Though Pattison scales mountains, his daughter Emilia is having on her individual Everest, epilepsy. Final 12 months in a panel discussion, the University of Arizona junior shared her story of a in the vicinity of demise experience from her seizures.

Emilia Patterson explained, “I landed encounter down and I was not respiratory, and if my roommate did not go away the area at the time she did, I wouldn’t be alive.”

Pattison has finished six of the Seven Summits, the toughest so considerably? Denali.

“The to start with year I experimented with it, we bought pushed back again by -80 diploma weather, that was hard and tough and I did not want to shed my fingers in toes,” Pattison exclaimed. “So we arrived again and did it once more in 2018.”

In a little over a month, he’s using on Everest, and Lhotse, the tallest and fourth tallest mountains in the globe.

“Holy cow! What he’s about to do in a thirty day period and what an incredible position model for all of our members at Larger Floor, be it our little ones with disabilities to our grown ups and our veterans,” Dobbie stated.