Queenstown’s chronic congestion’s finally led to something good.

It was while sitting in southern corridor traffic about a month ago Cook Brothers Constructions’ Hayleigh Glass came up with the idea to create a 24-hour treadmill fundraising challenge for their staff.

“So then I rang the regional manager, Josh Gibbons … and he said, ‘OK, who are we going to fundraise for?’

“And I was like, ‘I don’t know, I’ll get back to you.”

Inspiration struck again when she drove past the Frankton fire station, and noted the number of callouts volunteers have attended so far this year.

“These are the people who turn up on your darkest day — like, you don’t want to see them … they drop everything, and they’re there.”

Glass then spoke to The Mill’s general manager, Carly McCarthy, who “just had the biggest grin, and was like, ‘let’s do it’”.

So, from 8am tomorrow, more than 40 Cook Brothers staff will take turns to keep one treadmill at the Frankton gym going, while a second treadmill will be operated by friends, families, supporters and trade partners.

By 8am on Saturday, Glass is aiming to raise $20,000, to be split between the Arrowtown, Frankton and Queenstown volunteer brigades.

She’s almost halfway there already — the Givealittle page, l1nq.com/x4rphnh, had raised over $8200 by Mountain Scene’s deadline yesterday.

Glass says there’s also a bunch of silent auctions which have already raised about $3000, there’s a raffle and a charity spin class happening at The Mill at 5pm.

A coffee caravan’s turning up tomorrow and Saturday morning, Red Bull has come on board, and Smoke & Pickle will be on site for dinner tomorrow night.

Additionally, there’ll be five challenges happening throughout the day, pitting construction industry reps against each other, one of which will challenge them to complete the full Firefighters Skytower Challenge — 1103 stairs — on stairclimbers, while another will involve a form of circuit, with participants required to complete 500 skips, representing the number of callouts the Queenstown brigade attended last year, at each.

Glass says the response from her team and the wider community has blown her away.

“I’ve been so humbled by people’s donations,” Glass says.

“The only cost is probably just my time — what a community we have.”

tracey.roxburgh@scene.co.nz