Jenn Drummond of Park City, Utah, summited Denali with her son Jacob in June and is now asking people to write 10,000 thank-you notes before the end of November. The campaign is named for a mentor, Todd Passey, who died in a ski accident before she had thanked him. Close to 700 cards were written at two launch events in Salt Lake City and Park City.
10,000 cards by the end of November
Jenn Drummond of Park City, Utah, has set a target of 10,000 thank-you notes written before the end of November. The campaign runs alongside her app, Somedays, which is built around getting people to act on goals they keep deferring. Cards are logged on the Somedays website once they are written. Groups holding card-writing parties are asked to post them with #LiveSomedays or to tag @live.somedays on Instagram.
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The invitation is to write to a coach, a teacher or anyone who made a difference. Two parties opened the count, one in Salt Lake City and one in Park City. Close to 700 cards had been written in person by midday, and those are being collected and mailed, KSL reports.
The mentor the campaign is for
The idea came from a death. Drummond's mountaineering mentor, Todd Passey, died unexpectedly in a ski accident before she had thanked him for his influence on her. She told KSL that her children suggested inviting the whole community to write rather than writing cards themselves, and that the 10,000 figure came out of that conversation.
On the number, her words to KSL were direct: "I believe that if we get 10,000, Todd is going to be able to feel it up in heaven." She also described gratitude as something that compounds once people start noticing it, and said the writer of a note gets as much from it as the person who opens it.
June on Denali
In June, Drummond reached the top of Denali with her son Jacob. KSL describes that summit as closing a run of three peaks on three continents inside 60 days, which she counts as a record. Fox 13 describes the same June summit differently, as making her the first woman to climb both the highest and the second-highest peak on every continent.
KSL also reports that she already holds two Guinness World Records titles, and that in 2023 she became the first woman and the second person to climb the second-highest peak on each of the seven continents. The two 2026 descriptions of what the Denali climb completed sit side by side in the coverage and have not been reconciled into one claim.
Denali is the high point of North America and one of the 7 summits, which puts it on two different lists at once: the highest peak of each continent and, for anyone chasing the second-highest, a neighbour to it. Route and season detail for the mountain is in our Denali guide. The list of people recorded as having climbed the highest peak on every continent is at finishers, and the background to the challenge itself is on our 7 summits page.
Climbing began at 40
Drummond had no climbing background before she turned 40. Fox 13 reports that she started after a semi-truck hit her SUV. She is a mother of seven. Besides roping in with Jacob on Denali, she has climbed Mont Blanc with three of her sons.
Her story has had a wide run in American media. Fox 13 lists appearances on TODAY, GMA3 and The Jennifer Hudson Show, along with coverage by Forbes and CNN.
Where she tells beginners to start
For people in Utah who think they left it too late, Drummond points at the Wasatch rather than at anything expensive or far away. The two starting points she names are a guided snowshoe outing and a free avalanche awareness class. Both are winter activities close to Salt Lake City and Park City, and neither requires technical climbing experience.
That is a reasonable first step for anyone, and it is the step most often skipped. Avalanche awareness courses are the cheapest useful education in the sport, and in many mountain regions they are run free by local forecast centres. Our FAQ covers the altitude questions that come later, when the hills get higher.
The video
The KSL report embedded with the article is titled "The road to 10,000 thank you notes" and was published by KSL News Utah. It covers the launch of the card-writing campaign. The upload date is not stated in the coverage.
Where to follow it
Drummond's own sites are jenndrummond.com and livesomedays.com, the second of which hosts the card log. The count runs until the end of November. For climbers reading this who are working on their own list of peaks, the operator listings by mountain are at operators.
This story is part of This week on the 7 summits: 19–25 October 2026, the week's news in brief.
Header photograph: Mount Denali or McKinnley.jpg by zqvol, CC BY 2.0 (licence), via Wikimedia Commons.