Carly M

Group Lead

Carly spent most of her childhood climbing trees and building forts in the woods of Wisconsin. If she wasn’t wandering in the woods, she was riding her bike to the park with a baseball glove between the bicycle seat and her bottom and a basketball under her arm. These passions carried with her through college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she went back and forth between her love for biology and her love for animals. She finally decided on a degree in Zoology and after graduation, quickly packed her car and moved to Colorado to begin new adventures. There she spent all her time hiking up mountains, snowboarding down them, climbing rocks, and rafting rivers.

She spent 2½ years volunteering at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center where she helped take care of wolves, foxes, and coyotes that could no longer survive in the wild. She’s worked as a whitewater rafting and a rock climbing guide. She’s also worked for the Bureau of Land Management as both a Trail Crew Volunteer Coordinator, where she organized groups of volunteers to build hiking, biking, and horse trails. She also served as a Field Biology Technician, where she did surveying and monitoring of several animal species throughout Colorado. She spent a summer in New Zealand wandering from one backcountry trail to another, rafting over waterfalls, and volunteering for their Department of Conservation on a trail crew and also at a native bird sanctuary. Although the study of the world and its creatures is a deep passion of Carly’s, she found a new love in guiding and teaching youth while she worked as a Trail Crew Leader with Mile High Youth Corps. She decided to try a different direction in life. One that she feels is more meaningful and challenging, where she is able to share her enthusiasm for the outdoor world and all she has learned from it.

In Carly’s free time, she will be wandering the world, either backpacking, climbing, rafting, or snowboarding.