Climb every mountain

Jonathan Sprague/Redux

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Sam Fox ’09 cleared 2.1 meters in the high jump in his days on the Yale track team, but he’s aiming a lot higher this summer. In a $1 million fund-raiser for Parkinson’s disease research, Fox left New York in June for a 14,000-mile, three-and-a-half-month hiking and biking trip around the country; he will climb the highest peak in each of the contiguous United States. Four years ago, he ran from Canada to Mexico, also to raise money for Parkinson’s disease. Fox’s mother has had Parkinson’s since 2000. “Because she’s always been tough, she’s taught me to be tough in my way,” says Fox, “and I feel a healthy pressure to make her proud out here.”