The Light That Carries On

Sarah Crump may have passed from this life too soon, but she’ll have a presence at Menogyn forever

In August 2000, it was finally her turn. Sarah Crump would follow in the footsteps of her dad and her two older siblings, Becky and Dan, setting out on her first YMCA Camp Menogyn adventure.

At the age of 13, after just completing seventh grade, Sarah’s first trip was to Rose Lake via the beautiful but daunting Stairway Portage. Just as so many Menogynites had done before, her group stopped halfway for lunch on a large, flat rock overlooking the lake — and with that moment, a new chapter in Sarah’s life 
had begun. 

Sarah’s father, John Crump, had worked at Menogyn as a guide in the summer of 1973. That one summer was life-changing, and John passed on his memories from the trail and his love for the outdoors to his children. Of the three, Sarah was the one who took to Menogyn most passionately. She went on Menogyn canoe trips every summer, with progressively longer and more challenging trips — culminating in 2005, the summer after her senior year of high school, when she completed a 43-day Femmes du Nord trip.

After graduating from high school, Sarah studied geology at Carleton College. She chose geology largely because it aligned with her Menogyn experience: doing field work and learning more about the earth while working and studying in the outdoors. Some of her academic work included studying sediments from lake bottoms, extracting plant DNA, documenting plant life from 125,000 years ago, and studying pre-Ice Age vegetation. Sarah published meaningful work that helped people understand climate and climate change.

During her college summers, from 2006-10, Sarah was back at Menogyn working as a trail guide. Each year, she led longer and more challenging trips, just as she had previously done as a camper, culminating in leading a 40-plus-day Femmes trip into the tundra of the northern Canadian wilderness.

Hannah Larson was on both Sarah’s Nor’Wester and Femmes trips and served on staff with Sarah from 2007-10. She reflected on her time working with Sarah and said:

Sarah’s light seemed to shine on everyone she met. She made hosts of friends and always had some new, fun adventure in mind. She was a sincere and dedicated trail guide who had a positive impact on dozens of campers over her summers on Menogyn staff.

Sarah was an instigator of constant fun and silliness on our Femmes 2005 trip, including “spirit days” like “Lion King” Day or Prom Day, where we would don ragged tutus and bandanas as we paddled down the river. She brought our group the card game 500, which became a nearly everyday activity inspiring fierce competition. She was also incredibly strong and tough, sterning our large canoe through wind and rapids, portaging through the tundra, or keeping the group’s spirits up on tough or especially buggy days.

I still can’t believe how much she packed into her 35 years and how many people she touched.

These attributes continued to shape Sarah’s next steps in life. After completing her PhD at the University of Colorado, she moved to UC Santa Cruz to do post-doctoral research with Beth Shapiro, PhD, an internationally known ancient DNA scientist. While there, in January of 2022, Sarah interviewed for and was offered a very competitive assistant professorship position at the University of Utah — her dream job. Sarah had big plans for her future.

As Sarah began to prepare for this next great chapter in her life, she and her partner, Nordin, purchased a house that following April. The very next day, they received a shocking call that would have stopped many people in their tracks.

On that day, Sarah received news that she had an aggressive form of colon cancer. While the call was a shock, it didn’t slow Sarah down as she continued to pursue her dreams. She began her job in July and prioritized the things that brought immense joy to her life: camping, swimming, climbing, skiing, and doing field research.

Later that fall, on Oct. 8, after just three months in her new job and while undergoing chemotherapy treatment, Sarah delivered a ground-breaking presentation at the Geological Society of America’s international conference in Denver on her research team’s work in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming. This presentation showed that her team was able to document a sudden drop in the temperature approximately 14,000 years ago in the Teton mountains — a degree of change which had only previously been documented on the Greenland Ice Sheath — supporting the theory that this temperature drop broadly affected the entire Northern hemisphere across America. 

A month later, on Nov. 18, 2022, Sarah passed away.

Much of Sarah’s life was dedicated to care: care for her family, her friends, the outdoors, the animals, and the land’s resources. Menogyn inspired much of this focus, which she then carried on into her career and the final days of her life.

As Sarah thought about her life and the legacy she would leave, caring for others and the environment again shaped her choices. With close support from her family, Sarah established a graduate research fellowship, providing salary and tuition for one Colorado University-Boulder graduate student each year. She rallied friends and her social network around the launch, and so far, over 1,300 donors have helped her raise $400,000, solidifying the fellowship and ensuring that the role would have stability and funding.

In addition to creating the fellowship, Sarah valued passing on what Menogyn had given her, so the family established the Sarah Crump Memorial Endowment to enshrine Sarah’s bright light and ensure that her legacy would impact many others who would come after her. 

Just as John Crump’s Menogyn stories inspired Sarah’s Menogyn journeys, Sarah helped shape many others’ Menogyn experiences — both as a fellow camper and a trail leader, and now through her legacy endowment.

While any single Menogyn adventure may feel like an isolated experience, each journey is a thread that binds this community together, year after year, from one generation to the next. Sarah’s life so perfectly captures that Menogyn spirit. While her life was short, the impact that she had and continues to have is far-reaching, and her legacy will be a light that shapes many more Menogyn stories for many years to come, perhaps even inspiring some of the future’s next best scientists and stewards of the environment.

Sarah Crump Memorial Scholarship

In 2025, the first recipient of the Sarah Crump Memorial Scholarship will benefit from her legacy of giving. Applicants were asked to share the impact Menogyn has had on their lives and why they want to return. One camper shared, “The roadblocks I’ve overcome through this program are something I am truly grateful for. You’ve helped me through difficult times, and I always leave with a better outlook on life. And in moments of loneliness, I always seek the memories of laughter from camp, the one place I feel most authentic.”

Learn More About the Scholarship