Meet Renee Patrick | Long-Distance Trail Consultant

We had the good fortune of connecting with Renee Patrick and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Renee, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I had been developing the long-distance hiking route, the 750-mile Oregon Desert Trail, for seven years, and at the same time had been hiking trails and creating resources for them because what I wanted didn’t exist. I was also offering other long-distance trails advice and volunteering to help them create hiking materials. I realized all that I was doing could be a service offered to all trail organizations, and there wasn’t anyone else in the backpacking community offering the type of skills and service. I had the passion, the skills, and saw the opportunity.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a graphic designer and a creative thinker. I also went to graduate school for museum exhibition design. At the time I wanted to create engaging and interactive museum exhibits that visitors would learn from. When I started to shift my thinking and professional goals to working with hiking trails, I came to realize that developing a long-distance trail was like creating a museum exhibit. I was curating a hiker’s experience of a three-dimensional landscape, and helping them learn about the flora and fauna, the public lands, the culture and the indigenous presence in the places they were hiking through…I was designing an experience. My actual graphic design skills helped tremendously in this work, I designed the guidebook, maps, town guide, logos, and more. I was able to have an idea physically create it and then test it in the world with my hikers.

What sets me apart might be my desire to make a difference with my design thinking and creativity. If I’m working 40ish hours a week, I want that work to mean something and to be part of the positive changes in the world. My work needs to have a purpose behind it to be truly fulfilling.

These few blog posts I wrote really capture how I came to be where I am now: https://sherahikes.com/2021/11/14/turning-thru-hiking-into-a-career-by-renee-she-ra-patrick/

Next Steps in my Quest to become Professional Hikertrash

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We would go to the mountains to hike 🙂

But first good food: we’d hit a few of my favorite restaurants, have some wonderful glasses of wine, and pack up some delicious treats for our backpacking trip. But first we might float the Deschutes River that flows past my house in Bend, Oregon, and visit the farmer’s market.

Then we’d head up into the Three Sisters Wilderness and backpack around South, Middle and North Sister, about a 50-mile loop. Part of the trail coincides with the Pacific Crest Trail, so we might pack some extra goodies to pass out to any thru-hikers we might see on their journey from Mexico to Canada. We’d camp beneath the volcanos and share a sip of whisky before sleeping out under the stars.

We might even hike back to Bend, it’s only about 30 miles from town, and trails can take you all the way into the middle of the city. We’d arrive ready for tacos and a margarita at a wonderful taco stand down the street from my house, and then take the most wonderful showers and go for a dip in the soaking pools at a wonderful hotel downtown.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Teresa Martinez is the executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. As I was transitioning into the next phase of becoming a trail professional back in 2014, she became an inspiration for me. I met Teresa at an Outdoor Retailer show before my thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail. She brought me on as their first hiking ambassador, and I worked with her in a variety of ways during that time and I saw all that she was doing to build the new organization from the ground up. She led with compassion and kindness, and had an incredible drive to create a vision for the 3,000-mile trail.

Website: https://www.longdistancetrailconsulting.com/, https://sherahikes.com/

Instagram: @wearehikertrash

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-patrick/

Image Credits
Renee Patrick