Hey! It’s great to meet you, I’m Jesse. If you happened to want to know more about me and this website, you have found the right place. Now let’s get right into it.

I’m a proud Canadian, born and raised in the prairie city of Calgary. From a very early age, I’ve appreciated the stability and beauty that this amazing country has to offer, along with its many wonders, namely the Canadian Rockies. I’ve also had a perfect childhood, with two loving parents, whom I am eternally grateful for. Ever since I was three years old, I attended a local private school with small classes, where I met my childhood best friend, who I had endless playdates with for many years. I also had the privilege of traveling to many countries from a young age, namely visiting great friends in Bermuda and family in England. From as far as I can remember, I’ve also been spending time outdoors with my parents, either in the woods by our house, on camping trips, but mostly hiking and snowshoeing in the Rockies. Ironically, I would always have to get dragged out on our family hikes and snowshoes, but I soon began to enjoy it, and since the mountains are practically in our backyard at just under an hour away, it was the perfect scenario to introduce me to what I now love doing.

A snowshoe to Boom Lake from early on.

From essentially the start of elementary school, I was swimming competitively with a local club, where I would meet Ezra, Ferris, and Matthew, whom I am still great friends with. The peak of my swimming career was qualifying for the Alberta Provincial Championships, and is something that I am proud of not because of its significance, but because of the hard work that it took to get there. All in all, I think it’s safe to assume that I had an amazing upbringing, and with so many great memories. Soon after getting deeper into swimming, the pandemic struck, and that is the point where I like to think of my childhood chapter ending, with the struggles of real life beginning.

The news of pool closures was devastating. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to swim at all, which meant that I wouldn’t have anything to spend my time improving, and I honestly wouldn’t have anything to do at all for that matter! That didn’t really last long though, because as soon as the snow melted from our backyard, I bought a plastic outdoor pool that was just big enough where I could attach a bungee cord and swim in place so that I could keep my feel for the water.

I started to swim in our pool in early April of 2020 in 10° Celcius water.

With that, I also bought weightlifting equipment for our basement in order to keep in shape and make sure that I kept improving for when I’d get back to swimming. A little bit after we had set up the pool, at 13 years old, I completed my first and only marathon up to date with my dad. It took about 9 hours of walking to complete the entire Skoki Loop, plus some out and backs to claim the marathon distance of 42.2km. This led into Ezra joining my dad and I, as well as Aron and Christine for a cave exploration at Ing’s mine (The Ice Caves) later in the summer. This trip quickly turned into Ezra and I claiming our first mountain summit together, making it fitting that Moose Mountain is the logo for our website.

Looking back at the summit of Moose Mountain.

From that point on, I was hooked. I completed 13 more summits before the end of 2020, most with Ezra, and this really began my peakbagging conquest.

The following year brought yet more change. I began at a big, public high school in the fall of 2021. To say it was very different would be an understatement. Going from a private school of under 100 students in the high school program to a school with over 2000 for the three grades was quite the change. I initially went for the IB program, but ended up getting a lot more than just that. I met many new people, and also ended up going downhill for quite some time, whether due to their influence or my own is irrelevant. One thing for sure is that the teenage years sure are full of experimentation. I’ll leave that up to you to interpret how you would like. Anyways, in 2021, I managed to bag 29 peaks, which is still my record year, but hopefully not for long.

There were no views from the summit of my first Canadian Rockies 11000er, Mount Temple.

Grade 10 proved to be tough and my grades went down further than I’d anticipated, so I began to have to actually work to keep them up, whereas in junior high everything came exceptionally easy. Going into Grade 11, I bagged my 11th and last peak for the 2022 year as I began to date a lovely girl for a few months. The relationship ended quickly and left me worse off than I was before. For about six months around that time period, I had no peaks bagged, and unfortunately that was likely making my mental health situation worse. In the spring of 2023, I got into some big trouble caused by some poorly thought out teenagerish decisions, but I wouldn’t end up really learning my lesson until a bit later.

My real turning point was a vacation in the summer leading into grade 12. The destinations were Paris, Malta, and England, with the majority of the time being spent in Malta. For background, my mom is half British, half Maltese, which meant we would be going back to a place of our heritage. We would also be meeting seven other family members there for what would likely be one the best seven days that I’ve ever had. It was on this trip that I feel like I really gained a level of consciousness and reflection that I’d never had before, and it was likely the original source of me changing the course of my life back around to where I am headed now.

The wonderful streets of Malta’s Capital, Valletta.

As soon as I got back from the vacation, I ended up cutting most of my bad connections, returning to weightlifting everyday at a gym by my house, and putting my focus back on school. I also found that I had a lot more free time after decreasing my phone usage and time spent out of the house, so I began dabbling with day trading and business, which led to putting a major focus on self-improvement. I got back into doing some scrambles in the fall and clocked in 11 summits for 2023, most of which were in the fall. My first semester of grade 12 marked my first semester of high school where my grade average increased, and it did significantly at that. During the next semester, I planned on doing even better, I had to redo math and had chemistry left, so I was determined to take it to the extreme and see how high I could get my grades. Starting into 2024, I began reading books, and really began reflecting on what I wanted my life to be. Everything good that I heard from successful online mentors (David Goggins, Alex Hormozi, etc.), I began putting into actions, and I really began to find a philosophy that I often use which is: “Desire through feeling and thought is great, but the only thing that really matters for achieving your goals is your actions.” It’s quite a simple saying, but it has really helped me immensely. Once I began implementing that, among everything else that I could, I began to see results by the end of the semester. During that six month period, I lost 30lbs, getting back down to a very healthy weight, bumped my math grade from 60 to 96, hit an incredible 99 in chemistry (something I only would have dreamed of before), and began my day trading journey. From April to July of 2024, I also worked as a dishwasher, but the high stress environment and bad sleeps eventually got to me, so I called it quits. Almost immediately after, I got back into the mountains, hopefully for a final time, and went as much as I possibly could for the entire summer.

The whole Alpineering Atlas project started on July 7th, 2024, when I asked Ezra if he’d be interested in creating a blog about our adventures with me. He agreed immediately, and it soon spiraled into more work than you can possibly imagine. As with daytrading (which I’ll still be practicing for a while), I know that this is something that I really believe in, so I really enjoy putting time and work into these things that are sure to play a big part in my future. For Alpineering Atlas specifically, I also know that it is something that is bigger than me, and will benefit others in more ways than I can see at this moment.

Now, let’s get into some more specifics about the website. Ezra and I have different, but complementary skill sets, which is most of the reason why we teamed up to build this thing. Our shared vision of this Alpineering Atlas is essentially that it provides information for alpineering (an activity that involves traveling through mountainous terrain).

An example of an alpineering activity on the Rockwall Trail (backpacking in this case).

This website and future business will be based around “showing the alpineering lifestyle, while giving you the tools to make it a reality” and that’s really all there is to it. Whether we’re providing free value or selling something of value, the goal remains the same, and we will always be focused on providing that informational value above all else.

As for the actual mountain trips themselves, which are the main content on the website right now, it’s tough to balance documenting, being in the moment, and achievement while out enjoying my trips. On the one hand, I want to just go out and hike, scramble, and climb and just relax with a view all by myself, for as long as I can. Another part of me wants to get the best photos and videos absolutely all the time, and yet another part of me wants to push faster, farther, and higher. The balancing act is never ending, but nonetheless, I manage to do it. One thing for sure is that if one of these aspects gets prioritized too much, the whole thing kind of falls apart. For this reason, I will always do the trips that I want to do, I will for sure be doing some crazy trips as fast and as hard as possible, and I will do my best to document everything along the way. All this with the goal of showing it to you and giving you the tools so that you can experience what I have with the mountains, whether it’s on a one time trip, or if it turns into a lifestyle, I really believe that being out in the mountains or in nature in general has the potential to people’s lives. It has for me, so I truly hope that we can make that happen for you as well.