CLIMBER BLOG: Jimmy Chin
Why I joined SOTSK
Like water ties all of us as together in our everyday lives as one of the most critical resources in the world, it ties this team that was brought together…
When I first got called about SOTSK, I wasn’t initially interested. In our core community, Kilimanjaro isn’t something professional climbers aspire to climb. When I told my friends about it, most of them rolled their eyes, so I kind of brushed it off. I also normally set January aside to be home and ski since I spend so much of the year on expeditions around the world.
But then Kenna called me and everything changed. I’d never met him, knew nothing about him and took him at face value. He was just another guy, in a man-to-man conversation.
I was moved and impressed by his humility, passion and sincerity. And that’s hard to do over the phone when you’ve never met someone. Especially since I had my bullshit radar on high. There are a lot of causes out there and a lot of places to put your efforts. Before SOTSK, water efforts weren’t anything I’d ever focused on. But what hit me listening to Kenna was that he was clearly passionate about creating positive change. And when I began to understand what he was trying to do and how he was going to do it, I told him I was in.
I’ve been fortunate to shoot with some of the greatest climbers, skiers and alpinists all over the world. We’re a small, tight-knit community of core adventurers who function at an extremely high skill level. If they were playing mainstream sports, they’d be garnering multimillion dollar contracts, but they do what they do whether they’re getting paid or not. It became my calling to share their incredible feats with people who otherwise would never see them. To show the human potential and the human spirit. To capture the human potential in, literally, another landscape.
I signed on to SOTSK because I realized that this effort wasn’t so much about the climb. It was about gathering a diverse cross-section of people who speak to cross-sections of communities. There are a lot of causes where you’re preaching to the choir. I saw the genius of bringing together so many different kinds of talented people to show how this cause connects everyone. And what drew me in was the idea of a small group that could create great change.
I’ve always believed great changes come from the vision of a few individuals.
Everyone’s out of their element and I’m so impressed with how everyone dealt with the challenges. It tells me a lot about why they’re successful in the other parts of their lives. It’s been great to see in how many ways and how easily this diverse group of people were able to connect…to see the great spirit and passion that all these people live by and how by putting them together, they’re truly greater than the sum of their parts.
- Jimmy Chin
