I’m an outdoors enthusiast, mechanical engineer, climber, and love the mountains. I grew up in the flatlands of Minnesota, played hockey, baseball, golf and spent extra hours in my high school wood shop whenever possible. With grandparents in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado, I took many trips, whether solo or with the family, out to the Telluride area a few times a year and developed an eternal attraction to mountains.
I took up rock climbing midway through my studies at the University of Minnesota. At nearly the same time I received a fantastic scholarship (Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship), which relieved my family and I of the large burden that are student loans. Along the way a good friend of mine living in the Evans Scholar house had the idea to travel to South America. I agreed, like anyone tentatively agrees to take a trip anywhere.
Soon thereafter another friend of mine got me interested in taking a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) mountaineering course, to build a foundation of alpine and glacier climbing technique. NOLS is a world leader in wilderness education and runs programs ranging from weekend-length first aid certifications to year-long courses in Alaska, Patagonia and the Himalaya.
I located a 5-week mountaineering course in Patagonia, and my traveling buddy and I decided to center a 5-month backpacking and climbing trip around the NOLS course after graduation from the UMN. I documented that trip on my other WordPress site, South America, but the premise was simple: We learned to live comfortably out of backpacks, carrying tents, white gas stoves and hitchhiking from one town to the next with excess food in case we got stuck. I knew right away that I wanted to continue this minimalistic lifestyle, or some offspring of it, as often as possible in my future.
Like every craftsman in the year of 2016, I wanted to build a tiny home on wheels. I thought long and hard and even hand-drafted camper trailers during long bus rides and hitch hikes. After some post-secondary travels in Europe, I finally returned home in search of engineering jobs. The only problem was this; there aren’t any mountains in Minnesota. I knew I needed to branch out and seek work in the Rockies, but traveling is expensive if you’re paying for lodging and dining. I also wanted a vehicle that would allow me to camp comfortably, 365 with a friend or two, have storage for skiing and climbing equipment, and if possible, have aesthetic characteristics.
Cedar Truck 