Michael Greer, a current Arizona resident and father of five, seeks to climb 100,000 feet in a single activity — a feat nobody has ever done, according to his research — and is doing it all at Y Mountain.

He started Thursday and aims to finish Monday. Along the way, he is raising money for the Televerde Foundation, which helps rehabilitate incarcerated women, and for two people he’s close to who are facing serious medical challenges.

Within the past year, his sister-in-law, Kelli West, was diagnosed with a rare cancer, and his trail running friend, Aaron Jensen, has stage 4 terminal cancer.

“I had a friend once tell me, if you could raise even 100 bucks to go towards something good by doing what you love, why wouldn’t you?” Greer said.

The original plan at the start of the year was to run five 200-mile races to reach 1,000 miles to promote the causes, but he missed one of the races due to injury.

So Greer found arguably the most painstaking way possible to reach 1,000 miles instead. He has to hike the Y Trail and its approximate 1.2 miles of trail and roughly 1,076 feet of elevation gain 93 times, for a total of 215 miles and 100,000 feet of elevation gain. By 1:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, he was at 150 miles and 65,770 feet of elevation gain.

Greer said he has received a lot of support from people along the trail, which is in part why he chose to hike Y Mountain. The trail was crowded Saturday prior to the BYU football game Saturday, which made for a fun environment.

“Utah’s great, people are great,” Greer said. “People take a genuine interest in what you’re doing. If you ever want to feel good about yourself, come hike or run this, because you’ll have little kids giving you high fives, and adults telling you great job, and everybody’s smiling and being friendly. It’s a great place.”

Sunday at dawn, he had just gotten back down the mountain and was ready for a break. He sat out on a blanket at the foot of a support vehicle fatigued and hungry, waiting for food to arrive before he would take a nap.

Nevertheless, he was in good spirits, eager to discuss his charity causes.

He said he often hears the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” When it comes to West, he said the question becomes, “Why do horrible things happen to the best people?”

“She’s one of the best, always super positive, just a shining light, mother of two and was diagnosed with a really rare cancer, and it’s just turned their lives upside down, and it sucks,” he said.

For Jensen, Greer’s doing everything he can to support his family in a dire situation.

“It’s really a matter of trying to enable them to enjoy the time he has left with his family and set them up, so they’re not riddled in debt and everything else after he’s gone,” Greer said.

The running campaign originally started with the Televerde Foundation, which equips incarcerated women with the tools they need, whether that’s fixing their teeth, teaching them money management, or finding them a place to go after prison.

“They’re people that have potential,” Greer said. “And  unfortunately, they don’t get a lot of opportunity in prison, and then they come out with no skills, older, no money, and they’re felons. It’s like, what do we expect you to do?”

He said that anywhere from 35-65% of incarcerated women are back in jail within three years. However, less than 1% of women who participate in the Televerde program go back in that same time frame, he said.

Greer said when he first started running the 200-mile races this year, he thought he was going to serve as inspiration to his sister-in-law, trail running buddy and the women a part of Televerde. Instead, the opposite has happened. They’ve inspired him.

“Every time I’m like, I have pull the plug, I can’t do this, I think about someone in prison, or this guy’s dealing with cancer — and they don’t get to just turn it on and off like I do,” he said. “And so every step of the way through all the five runs they’ve held me accountable to it.”

Greer set aside a few days to climb this weekend, despite it coming at a chaotic time in his family’s life, because they’re moving back to Utah from Arizona next week. But with mild November weather and the year running out, this was the time.

His wife, Kellie Greer, took a break from packing to come out Saturday afternoon, and will be part of his support staff through Monday.

“I love that he is so willing just to think of others,” she said. “He wants to do this for foundations and for people, and he doesn’t have to, and he could just run for himself, but to put a cause behind it makes it so much more meaningful.”

A GoFundMe for Jensen has raised $15,140 with a goal of $212,000. A GoFundMe for West has raised $7,257, with a goal of $8,000. A fundraiser on Zeffy for the Televerde Foundation has raised $43,612 with a goal of $100,000.