About the Authors

We were both in the Basic Alpine Climbing Course with The Mountaineers and met on an alpine climb of Sahale Peak in the North Cascades. Our first date was snowshoeing at Artist Point, near Mount Baker about six months later, and we’ve been together ever since.

We took the Intermediate Alpine Climbing Course through The Mountaineers (a year long course focusing on advanced alpine rock, ice, and mountaineering skills), learning to lead trad multipitch climbs, advanced glacier travel, and rescue techniques. That summer we climbed a ton of alpine peaks together, including Mount Rainier.

In October, we purchased and built out our van for weekend and week-long roadtrips trips. We continued to build it out in 2020 while living in Seattle, and took it on a lot of adventures. It was supposed to just be our “starter van” but we ended up keeping it and live out of it today.

After several years of saving up, we quit our full-time (corporate & nonprofit) jobs to take a year off of work to travel and adventure. That February we flew to Patagonia where we spent over a month hiking and backpacking in Chile and Argentina.

Once we returned from South America, we moved into our van full-time and spent the next 10 months vanlifing around the Western US and Canada. During this time we explored California, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona for climbing, hiking, and canyoning.

Garrett proposed on a backpacking trip with friends at Mount Assiniboine in the Canadian Rockies. We spent fall in Canada for larch season, and then headed down to California for time climbing in Yosemite and the Southwest.

We planned for just one year, but we were making it work with our budget and decided to keep going for another year. We started with two months in Europe climbing in Spain, hiking in Madeira, and then came back to the van for another tour of the Western states and more time in Canada.

After spring in the Southwest, we headed back "home" to Washington for summer, and got married on the summit of Liberty Bell in the North Cascades (a technical alpine rock climb). We turned it into a two day climb, sleeping on the summit to get married at sunrise. 

We took a 4 month long honeymoon traveling, climbing, and scuba diving in SE Asia. We spent a month in Southern Thailand, 2 weeks in Vietnam, several weeks in Malaysia, and 2 months in Indonesia on Bali and Gili T. 

We returned to the US in the spring and spent time in Washington and BC for most of spring, summer. During that time we climbed Washington’s most remote volcano, Glacier Peak. We then spent the summer backpacking and climbing in the North Cascades and Squamish & Whister, BC.

Back to Banff and the Canadian Rockies for our third fall there. We backpacked to Berg Lake and did a lot of larch hikes. Then we headed back to Washington for our Core Enchantments backpacking permits where we climbed Prusik Peak during larch season. After fall, we decided to stay around for winter and spent time in the PNW for skiing and house sitting.

From January through March, we did long term house sits in Washington, Squamish, and Oregon so we could be out of the van and get to ski at Mount Baker, Whistler, and Mount Hood. Next up we are heading back down to the desert for spring climbing season!