Reaching new heights: Meet 1st known openly LGBT person to climb 7 Summits

Entrepreneur is 1st known openly LGBT person to climb 7 Summits.

Cason Crane, a mountaineer, and now founder and CEO of Explorer Cold Brew, says founding a company during the pandemic was not the "pandemic pivot" he anticipated. "I was driven by my obsessive love of cold brew coffee, and honestly, like being stuck at home during the early days of the pandemic wanting that sort of fancy specialty coffee shop type experience that I couldn't get any more. In addition, I was staying up all night, and I didn't have a way of modifying or sort of selecting my caffeine levels with the cold brew. So, I created it," he told ABC News. While Crane says the pandemic was a transformative year for him personally, he's no stranger to challenges. Crane is the first known openly LGBT person to climb the Seven Summits. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his mother in 2008 at age 15. Since then, he has climbed mountains in the United States, New Zealand, Russia, Switzerland, France and Argentina. He is the founder of the Rainbow Summits Project, which ties together his passion for climbing with his advocacy for the Trevor Project, an organization which seeks to stop suicides in LGBTQ youth. The Rainbow Summits Project hopes to raise awareness and funds by climbing the highest peak on each continent, commonly referred to as "the Seven Summits."