Chandler Kees joined the SSC teens class at 13 years old. Nearly everyone from that original group eventually stopped coming. He never did — except for the year he spent welding pipeline on the North Slope of Alaska, 84 hours a week, six days a week, in minus 40 degree darkness.
He came back at 22, started Keys Metalworks, and now makes custom furniture, ski benches, and structural metal work out of a shop in Sandpoint. He’s 23.
This is a conversation about what almost a decade of consistency actually produces, what Alaska teaches you about the things you don’t want to do with your life, and why some people are just quietly wired to figure it out.
