Essay: The Geography of Risk

There is a kind of quiet courage that does not get much attention.

It is not the kind expressed in triumphant summit photos. It is not loud. It is not flashy. It does not raise it’s arms at the top. It continues. It holds steady. It endures.

Enduring courage is what Kyle Lefkoff lives by.

I met Kyle through the mountain guiding world. But it was during this conversation that I began to understand how deeply the mountains shaped his view of everything he cares about: climbing, capital, mentorship, time, and place.

He grew up as an outsider. A Jewish kid in the 1960s Deep South. He was intense and curious in a world that often rejected both. He found relief in two contrasting places: books and the granite of Stone Mountain. As he taught himself climbing from Royal Robbin’s classic: Advanced Rockcraft, the racist owners of Stone Mountain drilled and chiseled to create a memorial to the leaders of the Confederacy. Kyle named his final climb there “The Three Losers” in reference to the figures hewn into the mountain, and soon thereafter, climbing at Stone Mountain was banned entirely.

Bearing witness to others of contrasting values, the experience of falling in love with climbing, and that sadness of loss of climbing at Stone Mountain untethered him. And as he came into manhood, he awakened to the fact that Atlanta, Georgia, would not make space for who he was. So he left. He went west. He found Boulder, Colorado.

Boulder was not the biggest opportunity for the precocious University of Colorado business school graduate. But it was the only place where he could be both a serious climber and a serious venture capitalist. He did not want to choose between them. He wanted to live both lives fully. That decision shaped everything that followed.

He joined the 1986 American expedition to K2. That season became one of the deadliest in the history of mountaineering. Kyle was there. He had a front row seat to the discussions and decisions that brought everyone on his team home alive. And it changed the way he approached risk in every part of his life. He stopped thinking about outcomes as destinations, and he started thinking about getting everyone home. The journey home passed through the outcome, the point of success as they defined it. While coming home meant starting it all again, pushing the flywheel faster by applying more high-performance human capital and more capital of the classic kind. Starting companies, investing in companies, building companies and selling them was not a linear path but a circle, a cycle. A cycle that created successes and failures, but most importantly, it created momentum.

He built Boulder Ventures in this spirit. His guiding lights were: Patient capital, long-term partnerships, and authentic relationships formed through shared effort. He stayed with Array BioPharma for twenty years. He helped it grow, stumble, recover, and finally succeed. He never left. He saw it through.

Eventually, there was enough human and financial capital to create the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE), a gift to the climbing and skiing community. That alone will shape and save numerous lives long after he is gone. That is where momentum creates a legacy bigger than any one man.

As we spoke, Kyle kept returning to one idea: where matters. Not just in a geographic sense, but in a personal sense. The places we choose shape us. And the commitment we make to those places determines what we can build. At the end of our conversation, I asked him if the 15-year-old Kyle could know everything that the 65-year-old Kyle now knows, and what he would do differently. His answer, I’m sure you’ll agree, is truly astonishing.

I have come to believe that true gift is not his success in either climbing, guiding, or venture capital. His gift is integration. He chose a terrain and a community of people that fit who he is entirely. And he stayed with it. He built within it. He invited others into it.

He never left his mountain.

The rope is still not on the ground.

And Kyle Lefkoff is still climbing.