Meet the team

Here are some brief bio’s of the team.

David Olson is a 23 year old mountaineer and CSU student from Virginia. He has been climbing since he was 16 and has traveled and climbed around the world. He has spent extensive time in South America including a 72 day NOLS expedition in Patagonia. He has spent most of his life in Alaska where he works for Denali National Park doing maintenance and helping with search and rescue.

Douglas Lesch is a 21 year old Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism student from Chicago who has hiked and climbed in the Colorado and Wyoming region. Having arrived in Colorado three years ago, he has since established himself as a Nature Center Coordinator for an outdoor Christian camp in the Sierra Nevada as well as teaching Environmental Education at Bobcat Ridge. The youngest member on the team, Doug has also played hockey for CSU for the last three years.

Matthew Olsen was born in 1986 and grew up in the small town of Eaton, Colorado, just east of Fort Collins.  He is currently studying International Engineering with an emphasis on electrical engineering and a minor in German, at Colorado State University.  He thoroughly enjoys doing triathlons and plans on doing a half Ironman in the fall of 2009.  In the summer of 2008 he completed his National Outdoor Leadership School Mountaineering course; which took place in the Chugach range in Alaska.  He has many aspirations and wants to do expeditions to places such as the North Pole and Antarctica some day.

The old man of the team, Brian Kraus is an alpinist and mountain skier from Colorado born on the first Earth Day. This self taught mountaineer has traveled and climbed around the world and spends most of his time in his backyard mountains and their sister companions’ north in Canada. He is a Geospatial Scientist for the USDA who has studied both Geospatial Science and Engineering at CSU. An avid bicyclist around town, he enjoys all aspects of the alpine world both rock and frozen, and looks forward to climbing Denali in 2010.