The final 2022 Spainhour Summer Summit Challenge.

I had originally planned to take Kezek up Mt. Stone, a formidable peak in its own right, but on a whim I gave him three options: Mt. Stone, Mt. Bretherton, or (the highest peak on the eastern Olympic skyline, and by far the hardest) The Brothers. Naturally, he chose The Brothers.

We hiked up from camp at (lower) Lena Lake at 7:15 AM and didn’t get back to the truck till. 9:30 PM.

Along the way, we only saw four people doing summit attempts, all on the way out, none of whom made it to the top We saw two of them back at camp when we returned and one of them (wearing an Ironman shirt, mind you) congratulated Kezek and confessed he didn’t think he’d be able to make it. He also speculated that Kezek, at ten years-old, was probably the youngest to ever do it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. But I wasn’t surprised he did it. That boy has determination built into his constitution.

At one point near the top Kezek started to get discouraged. The sun was relentless, we had had to backtrack a few times in sketchy places (due to my navigation errors ), and most of all he had a pounding headache. He was entering into the essential mountaineering experience—being small and out of control…and in pain. But we have a big God who is in control, so I put my hand on his forehead and begged Jesus out loud to take his headache away from him (I was getting pretty desperate to boost his morale, because things seemed to be deteriorating rapidly, so I really was begging). Sometimes it’s hard to imagine Jesus caring about one boy’s headache when nations are at war and people are dying and all the rest, but we asked and Jesus answered. Kezek’s headache went away, and it went away in such a way that he knew it was an answer to prayer. That was the turning point of the journey. Jesus is always the turning point of the journey.

#spainhoursummersummitchallengecomplete