Jeff grew up backpacking with his family in the Pacific Northwest. It was far from ultralight backpacking, but loading up 50 pounds each and hiking 3 miles to a lake to fish and camp for the weekend. At 2 years old Jeff got giardia on one of these trips, and on another he had so many mosquito bites the daycare thought he had chickenpox.

Backpacking went right along with fishing, building log rafts, and catching crawdads. The first thru-hike was when Jeff was 20 on the PCT, and since he has gone on to set 16 trail speed records and hiker over 30k miles.