Dylan has spent three seasons in southern Patagonia of Chile working for Eleven’s Rio Palena Lodge, exploring rivers and lakes via rafts, jet boats, and helicopters in the Los Lagos region. He was one of the key fishing scouts for the lodge.
He holds a variety of certifications such as; Wilderness First Responder, Swift Water Rescue, LNT Master Educator, AIARE Level 2 Avalanche.
When Dylan is not guiding, he is archery elk hunting in Colorado, chasing redfish on the gulf coast or running whitewater. One thing most people don’t know about him is that he has an extremely green thumb and grows a mean vegetable garden during his guiding season in Gunnison.
"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Henry David Thoreau
"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Henry David Thoreau
He has completed ski descents of classic ski-mountaineering lines such as the Ford-Stettner on the Grand Teton in Wyoming, the Landry Line on Pyramid Peak in Colorado, and the Gibraltar Chute on Mt. Rainer. Drew loves to travel with his skis. He has led successful expeditions to the Icefield Range in the Yukon, the Kluchevskoy Group in Northeastern Kamchatka, Dhaulagiri I in Western Nepal, and several peaks in the Manang Himal.
In the summer he guides rock climbing, mountaineering, and mountain biking across the mountain west. Learning to climb with his father at a young age, he’s grown to completeseveral big wall ascents of El Capitan and other walls in Yosemite along with doing crag development up and down Arkansas River Valley. He developed a love for whitewater as a child, raft guiding up to class V whitewater in the Royal Gorge where he eventually became a certified raft guide trainer.
To round out his experience as an outdoorsman. Drew was a competitive mountain biker as a child, competing in 24-hour mountain bike races. Now instead of racing in circles, he can be found riding long distances searching for the next flowy descent. He also spent a season wildland firefighting in Southern Oregon.
After a semester at Nols, he took up jobs in the boundary waters canoeing and backpacking. In his twenties he moved on to Hawaii and started sailing and spent the rest of that decade mucking around on boats all over the world. He sailed back to Seattle and attended Culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu.
His 30s brought him back to Colorado and back into the Rockies where he returned to his roots of climbing, now mixed with a passion for water and good food. Most days you can find him in a boat, on a rock or over a fire cooking at one of Eleven's properties.
- ACA swift water Instructor 1
- 100 ton USCG Open water
- Merchant Mariner Credentials
- WFR
- Beer supertaster
the Rockies of Colorado to the rainforests of Chilean Patagonia.
Originally from Tupelo, Mississippi, he moved to Gunnison, Colorado to study Wildlife Biology, Outdoor Leadership, and Spanish at Western Colorado University and managed a 450 acre wild game ranch in the Gunnison Valley. Post-graduation he traveled to the jungles of Lanquin, Guatemala to startup a rafting company, led sea kayak/snorkel tours in Puerto Rico, and spent many Southern Hemisphere summers guiding raft trips down pristine Patagonian rivers in Chile.
In 2018, he joined Irwin Guides and Eleven where he greatly enjoys being a part of the excellent products and service that these great companies provide. You can meet him guiding on the river, on the trail or at the rock crag.