Lucy

Instructor

Lucy grew up in Ohio but currently calls Boulder, CO, home. Lucy attended four trips as an Adventure Treks student, traveling with us to the Pacific Northwest, California, and Peru. She also completed our Leadership Summit capstone course. While in school at CU, Lucy spends a lot of her time hiking in the Rockies and collecting water samples to see how climate change affects alpine lake systems. She’s also worked as a lifeguard and has an AIARE avalanche certification.

Previous Adventure Treks include Pacific Northwest Adventure, California Challenge, Peru Expedition, Leadership Summit

Education

University of Colorado Boulder, pursuing bachelor’s degree in environmental studies

Certifications

Wilderness first responder, AIARE level 1 avalanche

Favorite hobbies

As the weather gets warmer here in Colorado, my free time is mostly spent outside either mountain biking, climbing, or hiking. Mountain biking has been a new hobby I’ve recently gotten into, and I’ve been trying to keep myself from going over my handle bars :). Moving to Colorado has been one of the biggest reasons I’ve expanded my hobbies so much because the access to the outdoors here is so vast! I love being able to spend my free time expanding my knowledge and skill sets.

Favorite outdoor achievement

One of my favorite outdoor accomplishments was summiting Longs Peak in October! Longs Peak (14,256 feet) requires some technical scrambling/climbing to reach the summit. We woke up at 1:30 am to reach the trailhead to start hiking by 2 am; this hike is about 15 total miles and 5,500 ft elevation gain, so we had a long day ahead of us. As we began our hike, it was a clear night full of stars and a big bright moon, but from the weather report we had studied the day before we knew we had a tight time frame to reach the summit because thunderstorms were predicted for around 9 am. About 5 miles into the hike is when the technical section starts, and you begin hiking on rocky sections with a lot of exposure. As we began this portion, the sun was rising and it was probably one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen! The final section before the summit of Longs is called the “home stretch” where you have to climb up this big rock slab. This was one of my first times doing any sort of hiking like this, so it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. But we all made it to the summit at 8 am with clear, blue skies and a beautiful view! We started our descent, and soon the clouds started to roll in. We knew we had left at the perfect time because once we were halfway down the mountain, it started raining on us and we could tell it was thundering with lightning at the top. As we were running down the trail trying to escape the rai, we were all ecstatic about safely completing the ascent of Longs!