I was incredibly fortunate to grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had a pretty average childhood, but was also very lucky to begin traveling from a young age. I think the first vacation I remember was on the Big Island in Hawaii, and I’ve been in love with those islands ever since.

I was a competitive swimmer in my pre-adolescence, and that, combined with my love of the ocean, led me to get my SCUBA cert when I was thirteen years old. I don’t think I truly realized at the time how lucky I was to be scuba diving in Fiji and Hawaii as a teenager. But, I credit scuba diving to the beginning of my insatiable desire to travel, and always wanting to see what is out there in this big, beautiful world.

Hiking came into the picture later, once I moved to Seattle, Washington to attend the University of Washington for college. Hiking is definitely a “cool” hobby to have in the PNW, and there is a lot of opportunity for enjoying the beautiful cascades. Once I had a car and knew about the WTA and how to look up hikes, I was absolutely hooked. I saw Mt. Rainier on nearly every sunny day from campus, and that mountain is what kept my soul alive.

I never really thought about backpacking until I needed a biodiversity credit to graduate. And I had the opportunity to do that in a program that took me to the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in the middle of Manu National Park in Peru. I could not have told you the last time I’d been in a National Park in the USA, let alone in a foreign country, but the next thing I knew, I was on a two-day boat ride to this field station with nothing but a backpack filled with gear I had just bought at REI. It was, by far, the most outlandish thing I’d ever done at that point in my life. Only to be eclipsed by swimming in a lake filled with piranhas and caiman on that very same trip.

That trip to Peru changed my life. I learned about biodiversity, climate change, Leave No Trace, and healthy ecosystems. I graduated from the trip as an environmentalist, something I didn’t call myself before. So while I might have gotten the travel bug as a kid getting to go to Europe, Mexico, and Fiji on vacation, Peru really changed the game in terms of what I valued in life.

And the rest is history. I found out about the Pacific Crest Trail, and couldn’t shake the thought of attempting a thru-hike, especially since life wasn’t really going as planned at the time. And, amazingly, I completed the trail. It was the proudest moment of my life (yes, it did, and still does, mean more to me than my very expensive college degrees). I don’t know if any other experience or thru-hike will come close to what the PCT was for me, but I’ve been on the hunt ever since.

I began blogging about my weekend adventures back in college, mainly to collect the pictures I was taking and pair them with my thoughts, and share them with my friends and family. I’d taken a year of photography in high school and really enjoyed taking photos - especially portraits of my friends - but never considered myself anything more than a hobby photographer. I started to write more about my hikes and travels and decided to put these guides out there because they were things I wanted to know before going to those places myself!

I continue to write and share what I learn about backpacking, gear, and more, in hopes of inspiring more solo women to embark on their own dream journeys and live an inspired, fulfilled life of adventure.