About the Author

Since childhood, Lizzy Wenk has hiked and climbed with her family in California’s Sierra Nevada and throughout the southwestern U.S. During frequent spring, fall, and winter forays into Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico she has hiked and backpacked in nearly every southwestern national park and monument. The canyon landscapes, and especially the Grand Canyon, entice her out of California again and again.

She spends her summers in the Sierra. There she has completed biology research, including her own Ph.D. thesis research on the effects of rock type on alpine plant distribution and physiology, hiked extensively for leisure, and has recently been gathering trail data for several Wilderness Press titles. Obsessed with exploring every bit of the Sierra, she has hiked thousands of on- and off-trail miles and climbed more than 500 peaks in the mountain range.

Until recently a resident of Bishop, California, she currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband, Douglas, and daughters, Eleanor and Sophia. There she is beginning to explore Australia’s remarkably wet and vegetated slot canyons.