CLIMBER BLOG: Lewis Kay

Why I joined SOTSK

Jess’s publicist recommended us to the SOTSK team. I was skeptical but went to Joanna and asked her what she thought about it — she was instantly enthusiastic so we took the meeting. It was obviously a for a good cause but so much of what we do is not based on helping people or global issues and there’s only so much time in the day. Then we met Kenna. He’s a great speaker and is incredibly inspirational and passionate. We fell head over heels for the project and knew we had to do it. SOTSK became a full-time gig right away, with us working very closely with Brooke & Shannon to pull all the pieces together. We tried to bring some of our other clients into it, but no one bit.

I’ll be the first to admit, the whole thing was very out of character for us. Before agreeing to work on the climb, I never exercised…but I started getting up in the morning and running. And it lead me to thinking about other things…I’m getting to the age where I realized I had to start taking better care of myself. And out of those thoughts, came a really personal reason for wanting to do the climb — I have a 3-year-old son. And I wanted to do something impactive for him so that he could look back one day and see that I did something hard and stuck with it.

I was really struggling on the climb to the summit and I kept thinking that I had to get to the top so that when my son was 20 years-old one day, he couldn’t say that I quit and didn’t make it. I was also thinking about Rocky 2 where Rocky got his ass kicked for 14 rounds and then was losing in the 15th round but came up with one last punch to beat Apollo…and as I was nearing the top, I took one last shot and fell into Nick’s arms at Stella Point!

So I made it to the summit by spending the last couple of hours going back and forth thinking about my son and Rocky 2. And now for the rest of my life, I can use making it to the summit as an example to my son of sticking with it when life gets tough.

- Lewis Kay