Santa looks on as climber harnesses up for climb at OVERhang Friday evening. Photos 250News

Prince George, B.C. – The Salvation Army is certainly coming up with some innovative ideas for it’s “new and improved” Tree of Lights campaign.

The Army’s Bill Glasgow says “we decided to have family events every week to keep the buzz happening and this week OVERhang Climbing Gym allowed us to let people come in and climb with Santa for a $5 donation.”  So if people bought a  bulb at the Coast Inn of the North or on sight at the event, OVERhang donated the $5 to the Salvation Army and the person making the donation got to climb with Santa.

And the event turned out to be a great success with group after group of climbers, so young, some not so young, teaming up with St. Nick to scale the various climbing surfaces and joke (photo right) that maybe a diet might be in order for the guy in red prior to a strenuous night on December 24th!

Bill Glasgow says the Tree of Lights campaign has so far raised $8,938.40, not including money raised at the Santa climb on Friday.  The Kettles have raised $92,972.88 and Glasgow says “the kettles are actually ahead of where we were last year.”

He adds “I’ve had to tell people (volunteers) that we’ve had the unfortunate, or the fortunate problem of having no places to put them right now.  There’s some days where there’s only one or two hours in a week that’s not filled right now, so we’re very lucky.”

“We can always use volunteers, but we’ve been blessed with a lot of people who are helping out.”