Laura Gaines

A three-year Adventure Treks student, Laura returns to Adventure Treks for her second season as an instructor. Laura spent this last year working as an instructor for Trails Carolina, a wilderness therapy program in North Carolina. She also worked two summers as a trip leader for Camp Pinnacle, where she led backpacking, canoeing, and whitewater rafting trips for kids and teenagers. While in college, Laura served as a naturalist center intern for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and studied abroad in Lima, Peru. Laura hails from Raleigh, NC, and is fluent in Spanish!

• Education: North Carolina State University, bachelor’s degree in environmental science
• Medical certification: Wilderness first responder
• Favorite outdoor memory:Going backpacking for the first time as a 16-year-old with Adventure Treks in California’s Shasta Trinity Alps. I had never understood how huge and magnificent the wilderness could be until I stood on top of a mountain and looked over the valley below. I had never felt so moved and so small, and I have been seeking out that feeling ever since.
• Favorite outdoor achievement:I hiked to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in 2017 with some of my Adventure Treks friends (from when I was a student). To this day, it is one of the scariest and most rewarding things I’ve done.
• Countries visited: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru
• Favorite hobbies:I love working with youth in the outdoors. In my free time, I love hiking and backpacking!