Cason Crane

Cason Crane (born December 2, 1992) In 2013, he became the first openly gay mountaineer to scale the Seven Summits. 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.

His parents both engaged in endurance sports and motivated him and his siblings to join them as part of their challenging activities.

He lived in Hong Kong between the ages of one and six before returning to the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. His younger brother Oliver Crane is an adventurer and rower.

Education Crane attended Princeton Day School through his eighth grade year, along with the rest of his siblings. In 2011, he graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Connecticut, where he competed in a number of sports. He came out as gay at the age of 14; both his parents and his school were supportive, although he experienced bullying by classmates on occasion. After deferring for two years to travel to Lebanon and Israel and climb the Seven Summits, Crane joined the Princeton University Class of 2017, 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. making him the first openly gay man to have done so. By the completion of the project, Crane had raised US$135,000 for the Trevor Project.

In 2014, Crane served as the International Marshal at the Ottawa Capital Pride Parade in Canada.

More recently, Crane was a consultant at Bain & Company and founded cold brew company Explorer Cold Brew.