Meet Chris Boyer

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Boyer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.

Hi Chris , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resiliency from consistently doing things that suck. For the last 25 years of my life, seeking out challenges or traveling to obscure parts of the world has provided me a broadened perspective of who I am and what my place is in the world.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am currently a Captain for a fire department in Northern Nevada. I live in Truckee, a ski town in the Lake Tahoe area. I was a Wildland fire Hotshot for 10 years and a smokejumper in Yellowstone National Park. I have competed in numerous triathlons, trail running races, mountain bike races, adventure races, have swam from Alcatraz twice, and recently completed the famous Death Ride in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I also have climbed one of the seven summits, Aconcagua, a 23,000 foot peak in the South American andes as well as a couple other 20,000 foot peaks outside Ecuador. I have skied across the Sierra Nevada mountains and the French alps, both adventures taking 7 days. Surf travels have taken me to Baja, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Morocco, and Indonesia. I am married with a son and a dog, a chipoodle. I like to read and dabble in the ukulele.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

All of the traveling and difficult challenges that I have taken part in, have provided me tremendous humility and perspective. I appreciate each day and love the world we live in and the things we get to do. The three qualities, skills, or area of knowledge I possess include humor, grit, and creativity. I love to laugh and never try to take myself too seriously. To be able to do what I do as a firefighter for 20 years you have to have a certain level of grit and ability to overcome adversity. I am very proud of my ability to be creative as a person. I do a lot of teaching and currently coach my son’s Little League team which both demand being able to adapt and improvise on the fly.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

I love reading so I love this question! The very first few books that I read that probably influenced me the most I read back to back while a sophomore in college. The first one was Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and the second one was Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Into Thin Air encouraged me to take up mountaineering and ignited a passion for adventuring that still burns to this day. The social challenges depicted in that book also directly apply in dealing with the multitude of dynamic personalities in the fire house!

In my opinion, there is no better leadership book than Endurance, the story of the Ernest Shackleton voyage in Antarctica. The leadership lessons are endless and the challenges the crew overcame to all live to tell the story is nothing short of remarkable.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: The Boyerman