Carla Olson was a twentysomething Michigan native who visited Phoenix, fell in love with the desert, and decided, just like that, to move here. She'd barely been in town a year when she began working on a project to bring the desert's harsh splendor to her fellow outdoorspeople: the Phoenix Summit Challenge.
Matt Mignanelli
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The idea? An event in which hikers would scale the highest points in seven mountain preserves over a single weekend. The roster included Camelback Mountain, Piestewa Peak, and South Mountain — and that's only the beginning. (For "ultra" climbers, the challenge was to scale all seven, a total of 36 miles, in just 24 hours. Yes, "ultra" climbers are, by definition, insane.)
Olson, who works at outdoor retailer REI, lined up that company as a sponsor. The city, as co-sponsor, agreed to provide shuttles for crowded parking lots and extra park rangers.
In its inaugural year, 2005, the challenge drew 350 people. In 2006, registration was capped at 800 people — and they filled every last spot in 90 minutes.
Sounds like a hit, right?
Not at Phoenix City Hall.
When Olson, now 31, got in touch with the parks department this spring to plan the 2007 challenge, the staff told her that the city wasn't interested. It had decided to put its resources into hosting a special "family-friendly" event at South Mountain instead.
Okay, Olson said, how can I do this without the city?
You can't, the staffers said.
Now, this is all very odd. In both years, the challenge had been a bona fide smash: no heart attacks, no brawling on the trails, no bad press.
But the story gets weirder.
Olson appealed to the city's parks board, asking it to intervene with the staff. After she finally got on the agenda and pleaded her case in June, the board instructed staffers to meet with Olson and work something out.
That conversation went nowhere. (Both parties agree on that, although pretty much nothing else.) And after that one meeting, Olson heard nothing from anyone at City Hall — until she got a letter from the city attorney.
The city was threatening "legal action" if Olson continued to advertise the event. It was also objecting to the application she'd filed to trademark the phrase "Phoenix Summit Challenge."
But here's the really weird thing.
The city has now decided that it's going to host the challenge, after all. It's just going to do it without Carla Olson.
So, the city tried to stop the event. And then, when Olson begged it to reconsider, it did — but kicked her out.
"They're stealing it," Olson says, simply. "If they changed the name and tried to put something like this on, I'd be okay with that. But what they're doing, in essence, is putting on my event."
An event, that just a few months before, they were intent on killing.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me, too.
I was convinced there must be an explanation for all this, so I called Kathi Reichert, a deputy director in the parks department. With my conversation with Reichert and a stack of records, I was able to confirm much of Olson's tale. Yes, the city did initially oppose this year's challenge. Yes, it's now changed its mind; it's hosting the event.
And, yes, it really is threatening legal action. Nice!
Reichert, to her credit, wasn't defensive about any of this. She did her best to give me some context — I'm just not sure I buy it.
Basically, the city argues that the Phoenix Summit Challenge was never Carla Olson's event in the first place. It says that a park ranger had the idea first, and that he and Olson approached the city together to pitch it. (Olson says the joint pitch is true, but only because she'd approached the ranger to sell him on the idea.) The city believed it was sponsoring the challenge with REI, not with Olson as an individual. So, this spring, when Olson registered an LLC and that entity asked for the permit, it got concerned.
"It has been a city event," Reichert firmly says, repeating a line that has popped up on just about every city document referencing the challenge in the past month.
Olson tells me she decided to form an LLC only because she'd bought a house. She finally had an asset; she thought she should protect it from liability.
There's plenty of evidence that Olson is not delusional — she really was the point-woman on the project. She registered the Web site's URL more than two years ago. She held the mailing list. And, in e-mails to the city, REI made it clear that it considered Olson, outside of her role as an REI employee, to be the event's promoter.
By the city's own admission, it's already heard from "18 to 20" hikers who say they won't do the challenge if Carla Olson isn't involved. I've talked to a few of them, including the man who initially contacted me because he was so concerned about what was going on. Most of them didn't know Olson going into the event. But they were so impressed by her attitude and her skills in running it that they're now speaking up.
