Summer’s Bio

Summer is a 23-year-old Dartmouth graduate and aspiring outdoor educator and wilderness trips instructor. Raised between Central Florida and Cary, North Carolina, she didn’t consider herself an outdoors person until moving to New Hampshire for college, where she fell in love with hiking, paddling, and backpacking through the Dartmouth Outing Club. Her freshman year, she became a flatwater and sea kayaking leader for Ledyard Canoe Club, dreaming up and leading multi-day backcountry expeditions to the Apostle Islands, New Zealand, and Canada throughout the next three years. During her final term, she canoed 220 miles down the Connecticut River to the Atlantic Ocean with 25 other seniors, kickstarting her dreams to pursue even bigger backcountry challenges like the Vermont Long Trail, PCT, and Northeast 115. Since graduating in June 2025, she has worked twice on Moosilauke Ravine Lodge crew (a Dartmouth rite of passage), completed a five-month fellowship with an environmental education nonprofit in the Galápagos, and backpacked across mainland Ecuador and Guatemala. In summer 2026, she is leading groups of high schoolers through the Sierra Nevada as a trip leader for Overland Summers, and she plans to attempt her first ever thru-hike on the Long Trail afterwards from mid-August to mid-September. This scholarship will help fund the biggest expenses for completing a 20-30 day thru-hike of the Long Trail, primarily food and gear.