Chad is an avid outdoorsman who lives in Colleyville, TX. After spending 30 years serving the flying public as an Air Traffic Controller he decided to hang up the headset, leave the dark radar room, and get outside. He now serves as the Water Programs Coordinator at a large nature center. After a lifetime of hiking, he realized that it was time to give back to the trail system that he has enjoyed so much and began volunteering for AHS. He has done multiple trips and became a Crew Leader in 2014. His favorite place to hike is basically anywhere that he can see water. Besides hiking, he enjoys canoeing, fly fishing, woodworking, and wood carving.

Phil Meinert has been participating in volunteer vacations since 2002. He has now done 17 volunteer vacations, 10 of them as the crew leader. Phil has lived over 50 years in Colorado Springs and is a retired systems analyst and bank data processing executive. He considers Arkansas as his first home state and has done 5 of his trips at the Buffalo River. His favorite backpacking location is the Venable Falls trail near Westcliffe, CO.

My first Volunteer Vacation trip was in March and was planned to be a break from the Colorado winter with a nice warm  trip to Arizona.  After backpacking ten miles through the rain, sleet and snow the group experienced freezing temperatures every night. That was so much fun that I decided to keep doing them.