Kelly Randell

Name: Kelly Randell

Sierra Club Leader Rating: Provisional

WTC Position: Staff Instructor

WTC Student Year: 2019

WTC Leader / Instructor Since: 2020

Wilderness Biography: I have several friends who had taken WTC in 2015 and raved about it every time we went backpacking, but I always seemed to miss the window for applying. After meeting Neal at the end of 2018, I joined LBSB Group 3 in 2019 and had an absolute blast during the course (and finally learned how to use a compass properly). It was exactly the awesome outdoor community I’d been looking for—I met so many amazing, experienced people, and WTC provided the ideal opportunity to continue learning how to be competent and confident in the outdoors. Several WTC and private outings later (including mixed snow and rock), I was totally hooked. I made it into the Sierra Club’s Advanced Mountaineering Program (AMP) class in Fall 2019, and wanted to keep the fun going, so here I am!

Wilderness Biography: I have been an avid lover of all things outdoors since the first time I saw the Milky Way in Sequoia National Park on a family road trip around age 6. I’d never seen so many stars in my whole life and stood there in the darkness transfixed for over an hour, surrounded by the pungent scent of pine and listening to the night sounds of the forest. We weren’t a camping family, but twice yearly trips to Yosemite and yearly National Park road trips instilled a deep love of the natural world and a desire to cherish and protect it. From soaking wet car camping on the Llyn Peninsula in Wales to my first backpacking trip along the Manaslu Circuit Trek in Nepal, I’ve been lucky enough to visit some beautiful mountains. But my native California Sierras hold a special place in my heart—among their spires under a clear winter sky, I feel the same way I did that night in Sequoia. I’ve since traded my sneakers for La Sportivas and added ropes to those sketchy childhood climbing adventures, but the joy is the same. The wilderness is a spectacular kind of magic.

Interests: Backpacking, climbing, mountaineering, photography, writing, paddle boarding, running, astronomy, music, off-the-beaten-track traveling

Something unique about me: I speak Danish and Welsh and love to geek out on obscure minority language etymologies. While these may not seem to be the most useful languages in the world, they did help me navigate back to my hostel in a tiny town in southern Serbia after a Romani brass music festival using directions from a Bulgarian living in northern Germany and a Montenegrin working in Cardiff, neither of whom really spoke English.