He’s the youngest person on record to have crossed the Gobi Desert on foot – from May to July 2011. He spent 52 days facing biting winds, sandstorms and ice-cold nights, knowing that life was on a knife-edge and feeling that he had never felt “more human”.
He then spent the winter in the far west of Mongolia in the Altai Mountains amid eagles and wolves, learning about the nomads’ rapidly disappearing way of life.
After that Christopher Schrader and two others rode across Canada to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. Not some little country like Luxembourg, Belgium or Switzerland. They chose Canada.
These days, Schrader, 21, an alumnus of Lee Po Chun United World College, is studying East Asian Studies at Harvard University. But he continues with his expeditions, and he has brought that taste of endurance to sheltered Hong Kong young people while giving the trips and a race in Hong Kong a philanthropic edge.
“When I was doing all these expeditions a lot of young people asked me how I found the resources,” says Schrader from Harvard ahead of a day of lectures. “There was clearly demand. Young people in Hong Kong want to make a difference to things they care about. I knew not everyone had time to walk across the Gobi Desert. How could I give people in Hong Kong a taste of endurance?”
In 2010, while still at school in Hong Kong, he and friend Aaron Sekhri organised their first 24 Hour Race. It was the inaugural event of Schrader’s Youth Endurance Network, which helps students think up their own projects for charities they care about.