About Me

Hello! Here is a brief backpacking and recent life history: I was a Boy Scout while growing up in Sacramento, CA and was introduced to backpacking through Boy Scout trips. During college I worked at REI and I was inspired to go on a solo backpacking trip in Desolation Valley near Lake Tahoe. Although I enjoyed the trip, I distinctly remember saying to myself that there is no way I would ever want to do a long-term, long-distance thru-hike. A week was plenty. Nevertheless the thought of doing a thru-hike continued to float around in the back of my head. When my roommate Dave Dobervich at UC Berkeley announced that he wanted to do something adventurous, like ride his bike across the country, I jokingly asked if he’d like to backpack across the country instead. Much to my amazement he said yes. He still said yes several weeks later (convincing me he was serious) so we started planning a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. In August of 1999 we hiked the John Muir Trail to see what we were in for. Unfortunately, Dave hurt himself and ended up deciding that he did not want to thru-hike the PCT. I had already invested too much in planning the trip, however, so I decided to do it solo. In May of 2000 I started hiking from Campo. I hiked a total of about 1,800 miles through California and Washington (I did a flip flop after running into a forest fire—long story) before I got injured and reluctantly had to get off the trail. You can read about my PCT hike here.

It was insanely frustrating not to have finished the PCT, but I had a great time during the months that I was on the trail before I got hurt. I learned a lot, and I met some great people, including “Prehistoric” Tony Nitz and “Pigpen” Jesse Gilbert, who will be hiking the CDT with me. While Tony, Jesse, and I were hiking near Yosemite we made a pact—within 5 years we would hike the CDT.

In the meantime I decided it was time to start thinking about the future and I applied to law school. I enrolled at Duke in a joint-degree program at the Duke Law School and the Nicholas School of the Environment. During orientation at the Nicholas School I met a wonderful grad student named Meryl Eschen. She was foolish enough say “yes” when I proposed 2 years later (on a backpacking trip, of course), and we are getting married in 2006. She will be updating this website with my progress and journal entries.

While I was slaving through law school I stayed in touch with Tony and Jesse and we began planning our CDT thru-hike. I worked for a fantastic law firm called Van Ness Feldman, in Washington D.C., during the summer of 2003 and the firm was nice enough to offer me a position starting after I finish the hike rather than at the normal September starting time. That freed me up after graduation to hike and postpone the bar exam until February. I graduated in May and started my CDT planning in earnest. The rest will be written in my journal entries…