Team Spotlight: Becky

Who are you? Give us some highlights from your past

I’m Becky, or if you catch me on trail, Gandalf! I’m a two time thru-hiker (the AT and PCT), extremely average trail runner (I did place second in a trail marathon once, admittedly of 4 women), and all around nature enthusiast. My background is actually in environmental science education but after my Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 2017, I started doing freelance outdoor writing as a way of staying connected to a community I missed and that snowballed until I ended up at Cnoc. My AT thru-hike was very much out of the blue - it’s hard to say exactly what was the initiating spark - but the outdoors has been a part of my life since I was little, as a lot of my first memories are of car camping with my parents all around my home state of California and spending a week coated in the micro dirt PCT hikers are so familiar with.

Tell us about a very memorable trip outdoors from the last few years 

While I’ve hiked both the PCT and the AT in the last five years, I point to my AT thru-hike as the hike that drastically changed my life and will always go down as most memorable to me. While here on the west coast people really sleep on the AT - and I acknowledge the PCT has views for days! - I remember the AT incredibly fondly. It changed how I viewed myself and what I was capable of and turned my whole life focus to the backpacking world. I think my happiest place might be sitting in an AT shelter, listening to rain plinking the metal roof above me and watching the forest turn the most vibrant shade of green imaginable in front of me.

What do you do at CNOC?

I’m Cnoc’s Maketing Manager - which means quite a few things, but mainly I run our social media accounts, write our blogs (scroll down to see more of my work), and send out our newsletters. Since we are a small company, we all have a tendency to wear quite a few hats, but mostly my mission is to make as many folks know about Cnoc as humanly possible. I’m also the customer experience manager! When you communicate with Cnoc in any way, you’re usually chatting with me.

What is a running project you are working on at the moment that no one knows about yet?

My big goal for 2023 is to create a new Cnoc ambassador program! I’m excited to partner with some cool folks while they’re on their own outdoor adventures. 

What is your favorite kit that we make?

I’ll throw my love to the Vesica. Between my AT and PCT thru-hikes, I put a lot of brain space into making my backpacking set up create less waste - it really frustrated me that I created so much more trash out in the woods enjoying nature than I did at home in my day to day life. One of my biggest achilles’ heels has always been Smartwater bottles as they’ve always been my main method of water storage. I often attached my Sawyer to the bottles themselves and the constant squeezing would start to break down my bottles over time. They would get so beat up over the course of a thru that I would retire them every couple hundred miles or so, so while they weren’t exactly single use plastic, I was still dumping them pretty frequently. I use Vesica’s as my clean water storage now and not only do they eliminate my use of a quickly disposable plastic, they also smoosh up conveniently in my pack when not in use and allow me to set up an easy gravity filter when I’m feeling too lazy to squeeze without the need for any burping.

What’s an interesting (or not-so-interesting) non-CNOC factoid about yourself that is important to who you are as a person?

Banana slugs are my favorite animals and I often find myself sharing unasked-for facts about them with people. I was a banana slug for Halloween this year. I resonate with banana slugs.