Banded Peak October Community Pint: Kinship - K8 Mountaineering

For the entire month of October, $1 from every pint sold of Kinship in the Banded Peak Taproom will be donated to K8 Mountaineering.

About K8 Mountaineering:

Geographical community they serve:

K8’s current members are majority from Alberta, Canada (Calgary, Edmonton, Leduc, Brooks). They also have members from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. From time to time, they come to the Rockies to climb with the group.

Mission and commitment to the community:‍

Their mission is to help our members access the mountains and become self-reliant in their pursuits. It is a support system for Filipinos wrestling with the emotional and psychological toll of resettling through the healing power of the mountains. They are actively engaged in mountaineering whether hiking, scrambling, climbing traditional/sport, ice climbing, alpinism, and other general mountaineering activities.

K8 also organizes "Family Camping" which is open to all members of the group together with their families and relatives. The group is actively involved with the community volunteer and mountain rescue mission. K8 continuously invests in the younger generation by introducing them to the outdoors and providing them with basic experience in climbing such as organizing rock and ice clinics.

K8 saw a gap between Filipino immigrant mountaineers and the Canadian climbing community concerning the skills, knowledge, experience, and equipment needed to perform climbing safely and comfortably. They envisioned filling that gap so Filipino immigrants could continue their passion for climbing and achieve their dream of climbing the Canadian Rockies. However, with the costs of providing day-to-day support to family back in the Philippines, the idea of spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on mountaineering gear is a distant dream for many of us. Nine years ago, their founders started the journey with trekking poles and backpacks. They work and develop a community for these mountaineers where everyone has the freedom to learn the outdoors. K8 as a group is a contribution and sharing of knowledge from every member. Helping one another and growing together.

K8 is open to everyone who wishes to join the organization. They have developed a cycle of activities all year round where everyone can enjoy the outdoors as well as their families. As one of the core values of K8, they firmly believe that mountaineering is for all walks of life and can transcend the perceived limits of different cultures and ourselves.