A life-changing climb

As Bob Kuykendall planned his trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, he made a lot of choices to look out for himself.

He wanted a cheaper flight, so he opened the trip up to a few more people so that they could qualify for a group rate. 

He wanted to bring extra luggage and found out they could if they were transporting items to orphanages. 

When he left for Kilimanjaro in May 2017, it was with a group including his son Cade Kuykendall, eight other climbers and suitcases filled with soccer balls, cleats and socks to be donated to Treasures of Africa, an orphanage.

“Only because I needed to help myself,” Kuykendall said. “It’s so typical of, kind of, life.”

Kuykendall admits that at first, all of these decisions were made to improve his trip. But looking back, he said, the things he was not expecting ended up being the things that were life altering.

Before the climb, when concerns such as packing the right thermal clothing layers abounded, Kuykendall said the trip to Treasures of Africa brought him a reality check. 

“When you meet those kids in the orphanages the day before you do this climb on this incredible mountain, it makes you realize that there are people with real hardships,” Kuykendall said, adding that his son got emotional after leaving.

“The point is it’s kind of opened my eyes to a constant awareness of how people constantly drift back into a very self-focused world,” he said. 

Sometimes that focus is for a big trip. Other times it’s because of health issues. But a lot of times, Kuykendall said, people choose to focus on their own struggles and ignore those around them. “Unless we’re directly relevant to each other, we just cross each other’s way,” he said.

He recognized this again when climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro with a group of eight strangers for about eight hours a day for more than a week. Kuykendall said he was struck with how much everyone opened up as they shared their own stories and struggles, and they relied on one another, Kuykendall said.

“When we face obstacles in our life, we get so consumed with that and you kind of forget that there are people you’re working beside or standing beside or see every day that are facing challenges of their own,” he said.

Even after the climb, that message continued to resonate. 

“It really hit us hard that we need to do more, and this mountain is kind of key,” he said. Mount Kilimanjaro and “the climb” became a symbol for overcoming struggles, Kuykendall said.  

This May, about a year after their trip, he combined those symbols with a desire to give back, and Team Mountain INC became a 501(c)3 nonprofit. 

Its goal, Kuykendall said, is to take another group to Kilimanjaro in 2019. That group, however, will be full of individuals looking to raise funds for their own charity.

“Our mission is to recognize and support those who recognize and support others,” Kuykendall said. “We want this to be this perpetuating relationship of, ‘We recognize you’re doing something good, and we want to help you.’”

People who are looking to raise funds can come to Team Mountain, through which they will receive business cards and a spot on the Team Mountain website supporting their charity, Kuykendall said. 

The goal of hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, he added, is also a way to gain more attention and possibly donations. Team Mountain, in turn, will also help donate to individual climbers’ trip costs, Kuykendall said, in part thanks to partnerships with a guide company in Africa and Yogurt Mountain. 

In addition to the 2019 trip, Kuykendall said he hopes to spread the message from Philippians 2:4 — “not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” — that others are facing their own struggles, but by lending a hand, everyone’s situation might be able to improve.

“In taking time to help one another, they might gain something on their own,” he said.

Team Mountain INC has multiple fundraisers planned for the next year, prior to a “penciled in” date of May 2019 for its next trip, but details were not available as of press time. 

For more information about Team Mountain, go to teammountain.org.