As co-founders of K2 Adventures Foundation, Kristen Sandquist and Kevin Cherilla use nature to spur personal growth.

FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE | 35 T here is a painting in Kristen Sandquist’s office. Hand- painted from four photographs, it shows her working with children at an orphanage, holding the hands of a young boy, guiding a team up Kilimanjaro and standing triumphantly on top of the summit. The painting was a gift after summiting Kilimanjaro for the 15 th time. (Sandquist has since summited the tallest freestanding mountain in the world a total of 25 times.) “I love it. It symbolizes everything Tanzania for me,” she said of the painting. As Sandquist tells it, she never set out to trek one of the Seven Summits or start a career as a mountain guide. She was a former teacher and mother with a philanthropic heart. But that was before she met Kevin Cherilla. In 2009, Cherilla, an international mountain climbing expert, was taking eight blind individuals to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and needed someone to help with fundraising. His goal was to pair each blind person with two sighted people as a team, and all money raised would go to the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix. Sandquist agreed to help with fundraising, but her role BY KAREN WERNER Helping people has long been a theme of Kristen Sandquist’s career — but never more so than at K2 Adventures Foundation Power Up quickly evolved. A woman on the team wasn’t showing up for training hikes and Cherilla asked Sandquist to consider taking her place as a guide. Sandquist had never camped and rarely hiked. She’d never dreamed of using the bathroom outside. Still, she was game and asked how long she had to prepare. Fifty-two days later, Sandquist and the group landed in Tanzania. The hike was an epic success. Over several days, the team climbed over 19,000 feet of elevation. Every member made it to the summit, four world records were shattered, and they raised more than $400,000 for blind and visually impaired Arizonans. But the trip was life-changing for another reason. “When we landed in Tanzania, Kevin had set up a meeting for all of us,” Sandquist said. They were delivering Braille writers to a local orphanage that housed 24 blind children and meeting the kids who would benefit from them. “We walked around this orphanage, and it caught me very off guard,” Sandquist said. “It changed me completely. I fell in love with these kids.” The historic trip was a jumping-off point for Sandquist. COVER STORY