Athlete Ryan Moody sets his goals high — literally.
This summer, Moody plans on setting a world record by doing a 50-inch box jump while nearly 20,000 feet above sea level at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
When Moody’s coach, Damon Stewart, first suggested the challenge, Moody said he didn’t know if it would be a possibility. Even though Moody is an experienced box jumper who has broken nine world records, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the chance to go to Africa.
But four years later, in April 2016, Moody went to Africa to speak for the Young Presidents’ Organization. Coincidentally, he flew above the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and took a picture with his phone, a moment that changed the course of his life.
“When I did that, it all hit me, and I was like, ‘You know what, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to make this happen,’” Moody said.
Moody immediately knew he wanted his jump to benefit something beyond his already-impressive resume. He remembered listening to Elizabeth Smart speak on child sex trafficking the year before.
“It set inside of me so heavily, and I just could not piece together why another human being would want to subject a child to something like this,” Moody said. “I had no idea that it was so common.”
Soon, Moody said, everything in his life began to point to the issue of child sex trafficking. He began to meet people who created documentaries about the issue and later learned about Operation Underground Railroad, a Utah-based charity that rescues children from sex trafficking.
Between June and October, Moody will seek to raise awareness for child sex trafficking by doing a box jump on Mount Kilimanjaro. He also plans to donate all the extra funds for his expedition to Operation Underground Railroad.
Moody calls his project “Expedition Change.” He hopes that this will be the first of several expeditions to raise awareness for child sex trafficking. Eventually, he wants to invite recovering survivors to join the expeditions.
“We don’t want this instance to be a flash in the pan,” Moody said. “We want it to be something we can build on over the years.”
Moody, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believes the doors that have been opened and the people he’s met who have made his expedition possible are not coincidental.
“It would be really difficult and somewhat silly to deny that divine intervention has not played a massive role, if not the entire role, in me getting to this point,” Moody said.
“It creates an even greater fire in me to do everything necessary to make this happen, because at the end of the day, me jumping gives me a record, but it’s so much more than just jumping on a box.”
Many of the experiences that led to Moody’s expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro began as difficult trials. Even though he’s been athletic his whole life, Moody started box jumping in 2008 as a form of rehab following a severe snowboarding accident.
Two years after the accident, which broke off part of his right femur and required surgery on his knees, he broke his first box jumping record for Guinness at a CrossFit gym in Utah.
“That just kind of started an organic blossoming that I could never have expected in my life,” Moody said.
The snowboarding accident led Moody to teach at 400 CrossFit gyms across the world on six continents and 28 countries. It also led to opportunities speaking to children, youths and adults around the world, and now, his expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro.
“One of the things that screws us up the most is the fact that we plan it out a certain way in our head, and when it doesn’t go that way, we allow it to affect us on a very big level,” Moody said of faith's role in his journey. “One of the beautiful things about the gospel is that we’ve been given all the tools that we need to combat anything that comes our way, be it small, be it massive.”
Until he leaves on his expedition this summer, Moody is focusing on fundraising, mental preparation and physical training.