My Background

I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, NY and now live in Rochester, NY. Starting at a very young age, my parents used to take me, and later my younger brother, on car camping trips to Letchworth, Allegheny, and Watkins Glen. I always enjoyed going on short day hikes and just exploring the outdoors. When I was in high school we started taking yearly trips to Lake George, NY which was my first experience in the Adirondacks. While there, we would take a few short hikes of maybe a mile or two but our Lake George trips were more mostly focused on boating, swimming, cliff jumping and having fun on the lake.

When I was a senior in high school I signed up for a half year course called Wilderness Wise. It was an awesome class that unfortunately isn't offered anymore. It covered many of the basic principles needed for the outdoors such as leave no trace, wilderness first aid, selecting your gear, navigation, etc. It also included 3 trips to test our learned skills:

• An overnight canoe trip in Allegheny
• A weekend camping trip to West Virginia to go caving and whitewater rafting
• For our final exam, a 5 day trip to the Adirondacks which included hiking 2 high peaks the first day, my group did Tabletop and Phelps, followed by a 4 day canoe trip from Long Lake to Lower Saranac Lake

This is where I developed my love for the Adirondacks and the whole wilderness experience

I graduated from RIT with a degree in Information Technology. During my time at RIT, I continued to take wilderness oriented classes:

• An Adirondack snowshoeing class where we snowshoed to Avalanche Lake from the Loj
• A canoe camping class where we canoed from Blue Mountain Lake to Racquette Lake over a weekend
• A canoe/backpacking class where we canoed from the town of Cranberry Lake to West Flow and then backpacked out to Wanakena

All these classes helped fuel my love for the Adirondacks and last March I decided I was going to make it my goal to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks. I now have 6 High Peaks under my belt and am hoping I can accompish hiking the remaining 41 peaks within the next 10 years, or maybe even sooner.