The Speaker from September 30, 2021

Our Greatest Guest Day speaker for September 30, 2021, was Scott Holder with “Lessons Learned from the Highest Peaks in the World.” Scott is a long-time Santa Rosa Sunrise member, a partner in the financial services firm Edward Jones, and a high peak climber extraordinaire. Scott is married to Tricia, has two daughters (one of whom was married last week), and is an avid pilot and outdoorsman. In 2010, at age 45, Scott decided to climb the highest peak on each continent (the “seven summits”) before his 50^th birthday. He almost made it but was ultimately denied the opportunity to summit Mt. Everest when a massive earthquake tore through Nepal killing 10,000 people, including 18 people in his camp.

Scott’s high-peak climbing days began while he was in an airport in Boise looking for something to read and found Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” about the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. Scott, who admits to being slightly goal-oriented, decided to climb all seven peaks in 5-years. He started with “small” mountains like Mr. Rainer, Mt. Shasta, and Mt. Orizaba in Mexico before taking on the seven summits. Scott mentioned that one of the most amazing parts of his journey was learning about the cultures around these mountains, but the life lessons he learned during his expeditions were even more exciting.

He tried to climb Mr. Denali in 2010. It was very hard, very cold, and he failed. He contracted bronchitis on the slope and did not summit. He thought he was ready for it but he did not anticipate the difficulties. He discovered that he needed world class training. Scott learned that ‘failure is ok – not learning from it is not ok.’ Scott redoubled his efforts and took on Aconcagua after working with personal trainers and taking super long bike rides. Aconcagua, in Mendoza Province, Argentina is the jumping off point for this 23,838-foot mountain, the highest in the Americas. The trip to the summit takes 18 days; you have to go slowly, and you have to do a lot of backtracking. You climb up to thousands of feet, dig a hole and bury your food and equipment, go back down to base camp, and then go up again the next day! Scott’s lesson: Progress is not Always FORWARD! And, Scott reminded us of the immortal words of – checks notes – Frank Zappa: “Without deviation from the norm, forward progress is not possible.”

Scott climbed to the summit on 6 of the highest mountains in the world. He planted the Sunrise Rotary flag at the top of each of these mountains. And, his efforts resulted in a variety of donations for Rotary’s polio eradication efforts, including his $1 per step fundraiser for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, which brought in donations of $20,000!