David W. Crane (father) Isabella de la Houssaye (mother) David Crane (brother) Bella Crane (sister) Oliver Crane (brother) Christopher Crane (brother)
Cason Crane (born December 2, 1992)[1] is an American entrepreneur and endurance athlete.[2] In 2013, he became the first openly gay mountaineer to scale the Seven Summits.[3] In 2023, he competed on season 1 of the USA Network competition show Race to Survive: Alaska with his sister Bella Crane, finishing in third place.[4]
Crane attended Princeton Day School through his eighth grade year, along with the rest of his siblings. In 2011,[6] he graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Connecticut, where he competed in a number of sports.[7]Hecame out as gay at the age of 14; both his parents and his school were supportive, although he experienced bullying by classmates on occasion.[5][8] After deferring for two years to travel to Lebanon and Israel and climb the Seven Summits, Crane joined the Princeton University Class of 2017,[6] majoring in history.[5]
Crane summited his first mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro, as a 15-year-old freshman in high school with his mother. He described it as a "gateway mountain" which piqued his interest in mountaineering.[9][10] As a junior, following the suicides of Tyler Clementi and one of Crane's friends, he was inspired to raise awareness about suicide among LGBT youth through mountain climbing. This led him to start the Rainbow Summits Project, with the goal of climbing the Seven Summits—the highest mountains of each continent—in order to raise funds and awareness for the Trevor Project.[10]
By the beginning of 2013, a year after starting the Rainbow Summits Project,[9] Crane had successfully climbed five of the Seven Summits: Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount ElbrusinRussia, Cerro AconcaguainArgentina, Carstensz PyramidinIndonesia and Vinson MassifinAntarctica.[7] On May 21, 2013, he reached the summit of Mount EverestinNepal, guided by New Zealand climber Lydia Bradey, the first woman to summit Everest without using supplemental oxygen. Crane's successful ascent of Denali in July 2013 at the age of 20 marked his completion of the Seven Summits,[11] making him the first openly gay man to have done so.[12] By the completion of the project, Crane had raised US$135,000 for the Trevor Project.[11][13]
