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Sep 8, 2026 : Livvy WThru-Hiking Culture
This Thru-Hiker Carries a 3.5-Pound Laptop and Works Remotely From the Trail
For some hikers, a zero day means sleeping in, eating everything in sight, and forgetting that email exists. For Eric “Laptop” Weld, it means eight hours of remote work.
Sitting on a rocky outcrop as the sun begins to creep over the horizon, Eric “Laptop” Weld looks like any other backpacker enjoying a quiet morning in the woods.
There is, however, one major difference between Laptop and the average thru-hiker: his laptop is open in front of him, and he’s working.
Laptop has built an unusual version of an adventurous life. Since leaving behind a 25-year career and transitioning into semi-retirement, he has hiked, biked, and traveled around the world — all while working remotely on the laptop he carries with him everywhere he goes.
He has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and Colorado Trail, section-hiked the Long Trail and New England Trail, crossed the United States by bicycle, and taken on a 5,000-mile cycling journey from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Bali, Indonesia (not to mention countless smaller adventures) while still squeezing 15-20 hours of paid work into every week.
Laptop also happens to be my dad.
From Runner to “Aging Adventurist”
My dad didn’t always dream about carrying a laptop down the Appalachian Trail. For 45 years, running was Laptop’s preferred way to get outside, until a chronic back issue eventually forced him to shift gears. Around the same time, he began cycling more, semi-retired from his longtime career at Smith College, and started thinking seriously about what he calls a life of “intentional adventure.”
I can’t take full credit for my dad’s adventurous lifestyle, but his introduction to backpacking did come somewhat indirectly through me. When I first hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2018, he joined me for three days. Jumping in with a group of thru-hikers who’d already been traveling hundreds of miles, he pushed hard, covering roughly 30 miles in those three days.
After that section, he noticed that he didn’t feel the pull to thru-hike that many people do after a short stint on trail. “I came back from that saying ‘I’m never thru-hiking the AT,’” he says. But this must have been his first brush with Type II fun (i.e., fun that only seems like fun after the fact), because a mere three years later, he changed his mind.
Laptop hiking up Mt. Katahdin’s Knife Edge
After biking across the United States as his first major post-career adventure, he found himself craving more. “I thought, I have to do the grandfather of all adventures,” he recalls. And that, of course, was the Appalachian Trail.
The only problem: he still had a part-time job. My dad works approximately 15 to 20 hours per week as a journalist for a trade publication, writing articles for a monthly magazine. He also serves as president of the Massachusetts Urban Conservancy, where he works to acquire and restore small parcels of land for biodiversity and pollinator habitat. He also writes a monthly column called “Aging with Adventure” for theDaily Hampshire Gazette.
The journalism job is fully remote, which is what made it possible to even consider working and hiking at the same time. At first, his boss wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. But eventually, he gave the green light, and Laptop was born.
Beginning his cross-country cycling trip
Making It Work
Figuring out the logistics of carrying a computer on a thru-hike was, unsurprisingly, super complicated.
So many extra factors come into play when working while hiking. On top of typical thru-hiking stressors, Laptop had to juggle deadlines, meetings, battery power, internet connection, weather, waterproofing for his delicate electronics, and the extra weight of his work setup as he made his way through the mountains.
On the Appalachian Trail, Laptop settled into a rhythm that worked for him: hike for about four days, then take a full day off to work in town. Because of this, his zero days weren’t the most restful. He would have to find a hotel room or local library, charge his devices, and spend roughly eight hours of the day working. While planning out his hikes, he always factors in when he can stop along the way and find enough wifi to be online for the job. “There’s a lot of just making it work,” he says.
These tiny little trail towns aren’t always the most accommodating for what he needs. Sometimes, “making it work” would mean a hotel room. Other times it meant a library, even typing at a tiny children’s table while story time happened nearby.
“I love local libraries,” he tells me. “I’ve probably visited more than 500 local libraries.” Indeed, Laptop has worked from libraries so frequently that they have become an unexpected highlight of his adventures. He’s gotten to know the range of rural libraries more intimately than most.
“I’m not sure most thru-hikers would want to do this.”
At times, Laptop simply works from the trail. If a story doesn’t require research, he’s able to sit in his tent or in a shelter and type without needing an internet connection. On occasion, he has worked from his phone’s hotspot, too. “It’s not ideal,” he admits. “I’m not sure most thru-hikers would want to do this.”
That may be an understatement. Most hikers find their way to the woods specifically to escape emails, Zoom calls, deadlines, and the persistent feeling that someone might need something from them.
For me, being in town with wifi during a thru-hike creates a mound of stress. Just having to respond to the text messages and phone calls I’ve neglected while on the trail is enough, if not too much, for me. Summoning the amount of brain power necessary to crank out writing tasks and meetings on a zero day is beyond me.
Every Ounce Counts: How Much Does a Remote Work Setup Add To Your Base Weight?
Every backpacker knows the golden rule: every ounce counts. Yet, Laptop’s computer adds roughly 3.5 pounds to his setup. It’s the sacrifice he’s made for his type of adventuring.
3.5 pounds may not sound like much to someone who has never spent eight hours walking uphill with a backpack. But to a thru-hiker, it’s enormous. Needless to say, Laptop has never fallen for the ultralight craze that has swept the thru-hiking world.
His base weight sits around 22 pounds without the computer. Once he adds his work setup, water, and a few days of food, his fully loaded pack can reach roughly 35 pounds. “I do feel it,” he says. “Sometimes when I day hike without my laptop it feels so light.”
There are trade-offs elsewhere, too. Cold soaking food, for example, is one compromise that helps keep his overall system manageable. Still, Laptop isn’t pretending that carrying an office on your back is ultralight. He knows exactly what he has signed up for.
Fitting a 20-Hour Workweek Into a Life of Full-Time Adventure
The physical weight of the laptop is only part of the challenge. The time and energy it takes to maintain a part-time job while hiking is a burden in itself. Laptop works 15 to 20 hours per week, on the trail and off. That means he has to fit roughly two eight-hour workdays per week into each adventure. In addition, his job requires two meetings each week, which tend to dictate where he needs to be, and when.
“I have to plan routes around where I’m going to work,” Laptop says, unlike many thru-hikers who plan rest days based on when their bodies are tired or which towns would be most fun to visit.
The arrangement has worked remarkably well. In fact, throughout all his years of doing this, he’s only missed one deadline. It happened on a two-day boat trip in the South China Sea; he didn’t have a single bit of wifi, and the deadline landed during a meeting scheduled between 1 and 5 a.m.He felt terrible about missing it.
Meanwhile, his boss has been surprised by how seamless it has all been. Laptop has made a point of not expecting special treatment because he’s traveling. If a meeting is scheduled at an inconvenient hour, he attends, and if a deadline needs to be met, he meets it. The goal, he says, is to make the arrangement as unnoticeable as possible.
Once, he even went on an adventure without telling his boss, and his boss didn’t notice. For Laptop, that’s one way he defines success in this lifestyle. “It’s my way of life and I have a responsibility to the job,” he says.
On his Southeast Asia bike trip, on the Nam Ou River in Laos
The Lows Are Low, but the Highs Are So High
So, why do it? Why carry a laptop through the woods when you could simply leave it at home? One answer is money. Working allows Laptop to continue funding his adventures in real time. But the other, less apparent reason is that it provides him with a sense of balance in life. After decades of desk work, he no longer has to choose between outdoor adventure and sitting in an office.
When his body feels tired from hiking, he gets to exercise his mind. When his mind feels tired from working, he can tire out his body. Laptop really appreciates that writing keeps his creative muscles active, which has always been an incredibly important part of his life. But at the same time, he needs physical movement to feel satisfied.
“I can’t just sit at home,” he says. “Working allows me to adventure, and adventuring is the point,” he says. Laptop describes his lifestyle of outdoor excursions as taking him to the extremes. It involves plenty of hard, brutal challenges, but then the highs are so high.
“Being at home feels like living life somewhere in the ‘4, 5, 6 range.’ Adventure, on the other hand, can take you to the ‘2 and 3 and 9 and 10,’” he explains. To him, that’s the definition of living a full life.
From Tierra del Fuego to Northern Japan and Beyond
Laptop typically goes on roughly one big adventure per year, with smaller ones sprinkled in between. After kicking off his semi-retirement with cycling across the entire USA came the AT, then thru-hiking the Colorado Trail, then cycling from Vietnam to Indonesia. He has also section hiked the Long Trail and the New England Trail, thru-biked the Empire State Trail across New York and the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, and biked in a massive group ride across Iowa.
Right now, he has a long list of future adventures. Some are already planned, while many are still a ways off. One he’s been working on over the years is high-pointing the US states. He has 12 high points left to cover — mostly the hardest ones out west, which will be challenging expeditions on their own. He just kicked off a vanlife journey to complete several of them.
Laptop aspires to bike from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Tierra del Fuego, Chile, next winter, and to thru-bike the length of Japan from north to south. His next big thru-hike will be the PCT. And who knows, he says, maybe he’ll even do the CDT to complete his Triple Crown of hiking. Of course, the more journeys he takes himself on, the longer the list grows.
And all the while, over thousands of miles of trudging through mountainous terrain by bike and by foot, you better believe he’ll be carrying his laptop.
Hiking While Working: Don’t Try This at Home (Or Do)
Laptop says he would recommend this strategy to others, but only with a long list of conditions and qualifiers. One of his main worries would be time.
“If you want this type of hike where it’s stilted, not pushing in a short time frame, then it can work,” he remarks.
He also says it highly depends on the flexibility in your job. His writing job gives him a lot of leeway in what time of day he works. He also points out that many conditions have to line up for this kind of lifestyle to work. It’s not common; between the two of us, we’ve only heard of one other person who carried a laptop on a thru-hike.
When Laptop imagines a life where he doesn’t need to continue receiving a steady income, it sounds nice. He fantasizes about having even more freedom while he’s out there, with the trail in front of him being the only thing to think about.
Stressing about professional tasks isn’t exactly what you want to have on your mind when you make it to the top of a ruthless climb with a beautiful view. But for now, it’s what he does, and the tradeoff is worth it to him. He’s made the best of it.
Being OK With Being Alone
Laptop emphasizes that most of his adventures involve more solitude than thru-hikers typically expect. On thru-hikes, hikers often find a tramily and stick with it, hiking in a group for the majority of the trail. But while maintaining a part-time job, it’s exponentially more difficult to stay in rhythm with the average hiking group. It’s not that Laptop hikes slower; it’s that the schedule is abnormal. The hike-fast, then take-a-break-every-few-days-to-work timeline doesn’t work with most tramily dynamics.
Laptop reveals that most people he talks to about his lifestyle say that they’d love to do it, except they don’t want to be alone. Luckily, my dad loves his alone time. He’s always been independent and needs his time away from people. Indeed, he suggests that many people have a higher capacity for solitude than they think.
Words from the Wise: Advice for Thru-Hikers Aiming To Work Remotely at the Same Time
Laptop has five pieces of advice for anyone wanting to try working remotely while adventuring.
- Plan your trip but don’t overplan it. Set a rough path, but don’t get too caught up in getting to certain places at certain times.
- Research where you’re going. Especially in places you are less familiar with. You need to know what kind of access you’ll have to wifi, outlets, etc. But on the flip side, don’t over-research so much that it leaves little room for flexibility.
- Estimate how much money and time you think it’ll take, and thenat leastdouble it. Especially with money. There will be so many unintended expenses.
- If you haven’t yet done an extended hike or bike, know there will be really hard times. Just expect that. Get in the mindset that if it’s just discomfort, you push through it. The difference between achieving a goal and quitting out of pure discomfort can really change your life.
- Breathe, and enjoy where you are.
“You have to find ways to get through when you’re not doing exactly what you want.”
Laptop often wonders why he can’t settle into a more “normal” life where he just stays in one place, works his job, and lives in comfort and stability. Perhaps it’s the way he was raised, or perhaps it’s simply who he is.
He loved raising his kids — my brother and me — inWestern Massachusetts. As many parents can attest, that period of his life was an adventure in itself. But it was hard to not be moving.
So after decades of responsibility and working full-time, he feels like he’s finally living a long-overdue life of adventure. He believes that all those years of stability and stagnancy were exactly what brought him to what he’s doing now, and for that he could not be more grateful.
Sometimes, he says, “you just have to find ways to get through when you’re not doing exactly what you want to do.”
There’s a life lesson in this. Laptop did not wait for perfect conditions to start chasing the life he wanted. He did not wait until he had enough money saved up to never work again, or until the mortgage was paid off, or until every single responsibility disappeared. Instead, he rented out his house, threw his laptop in his hiking bag, and got out there without hesitation.
He feels strongly that the privilege of waking up somewhere he’s never been before is well worth the 3.5 extra pounds of laptop on his back. It’s simple math, really: the laptop pays for the adventure, the adventure makes the work worth doing.
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