Josh grew up in rural Pennsylvania as an unsettled youth with a penchant for athletics, and the military became his ticket out of town. Joining the Navy in 2005, he was bound for BUD/s to become a SEAL. On his second deployment, while his platoon was snowed in for a month in Afghanistan, all he could do was look at the peaks around and imagine snowboarding down them. These peaks brought back a desire from his youth spent going riding every day after school, and Josh decided when his enlistment was up, he would move to Colorado and pursue a life in the mountains.
Josh has since become a mountain guide, and splitboard mountaineer. He divides his time between taking wounded veterans into the mountains, expanding his organization Mission Memorial Day, and pursuing his own mountain objectives. In 2016, Josh and his Mission Memorial Day team carried flags to the tallest peak in North America, Denali, at 20,320ft. These flags were inscribed with the names of almost 500 fallen soldiers who didn't make it home from conflict in service to our nation. Then in 2017, Josh smashed the record for climbing and skiing/riding all 54 14,000' peaks in Colorado, accomplishing the feat in just 138 days. In doing so, he is now the only person to ever ski/ride from the summit of each peak in a single ski season, and he hopes that his accomplishment will show his fellow veterans that they can attain the fulfillment they once had in the military by chasing down audacious goals.
