2023 Byline Roundup

You’d think my skin was as thick as Kevlar with as much rejection as I’ve endured over the years in my freelance writing career and book publishing journey. But 2023 ended up being deeply soul-sucking in the ratio of my article pitches to published articles. In an attempt to rationalize (to myself) why I have…

Currently: July

Currently living/working: We are in the trenches of a very typical Alaskan life: juggling multiple jobs in the long twilight days of latitude 64. Justin guided 16 trips this month! All while squeezing in a press trip and a smattering of cleanings when he could. Meanwhile I guided 14 trips!! And I took on the…

Currently: January

Currently living/working: Petsitting/Writing/Virtual Library Presentations/Cleaning. That’s basically the summary of our work this month—a little of everything, but a lot of staring into the glowing screen.  Current mood: This month, we spent an amazing 8 days in Hawaii (blog posts coming), where we eschewed the to-do list and stayed out of touch with calendars and…

Food Testing and a Giveaway!

I’ve written blog posts about the world of gear writing, and even though I’m doing less and less of this type of coverage, I just wrapped up a “Best of 2022 Foods” article for Backpacker, and thought I’d dive into the behind the scenes, plus let you know about a giveaway a few of the…

Gear Testing 202

I wrote a “Gear Testing 101” blog post back in 2018 about how we penetrated the world of gear writing back in 2013, and the ins and outs of the business, but I thought it’d be fun to revisit some details. As Justin & I wrapped up 2020, I realized about 70% of our workload…

Denali Gear Check: SPOT X

In case you missed it, Justin mentioned in his last post that he is planning to climb Denali (again) in May 2019!!!! Inevitably, there will be lots of details regarding that prep—especially gear—over the next several months. This past weekend, in fact, he spent time out in Rocky Mountain National Park clearing the cobwebs by…

Gear Testing 101

Justin & I wear many different hats, and one large one is Gear Testers for Backpacker Magazine (and a prototype tester for a few brands).   We get a lot of questions surrounding this. How did you become gear testers? What the heck does that mean? Is that really a job? Do you get paid? I…

Currently: October

Currently living/working in: We finished teaching the kids at Fenton Ranch Oct. 12, so from now through March, we wear the main hat of property caretakers. This entails greeting weekend guests (faculty/staff of the school who can reserve the main house as a benefit), doing maintenance projects and general upkeep, along with a few bigger projects.…

Fall in New Mexico

We finished another environmental education session at Fenton Ranch Oct. 12 and now our main job is to watch the property for the school. Fall is a perfect time to complete outdoor projects around the 5 acres of land and prep for the winter. As our wood-burning stove beckons to be stoked every morning already,…

Denali Gear List

Fellow gear junkies, get excited. This post is all about gear!!! But first, a few other details.  Justin and Bobby (Bolt) flew to Alaska today for the long-awaited attempt to climb Denali.  The boys are climbing with RMI Expeditions. This is the same guiding service we used to climb Rainier and that Justin used to climb Shuksan. There are…

Midpoint Gear Review

We had hoped to get this up in Wellington as we finished the North Island, but better late than never! As we said in previous posts, we consider ourselves lucky when it comes to gear. We’ve met a lot of hikers on the TA who are unhappy with their gear (mostly because they want to…