Live your dream and share your passion

Welcome to the blog of Steve Behaeghel, a 1980 born old Belgian outdoor geek. On this blog, i will try to write about the adventures i make with my beloved wife Katrijn and our wonderfull girl Lotta around the globe, and give common outdoor suggestions/tips/tricks for other likeminded people or just for whom is interested in it.

Most of our backpacking hiking trips get us to some remote wilderness areas around the world where we are trying to escape the hectic western lifestyle for weeks or even months in a row. We started hiking in 2004 and developped into multiple day backpacking by end 2005. Our first ever overnight backpacking trip was a 4-day winter trek into the freezing Belgian Ardennes…

We have a fetish for Patagonia and the Arctic. We’ve been on multiple long-time (thru)hiking/backpacking trips into Patagonia (14 months spent in the region in total, spread over 5 trips), been on several (winter) trips into arctic Scandinavia, hiked for 2 months in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska, explored some of the world largest glaciers in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan, climbed some 5000’ers and a 6000’er in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia, in 2011 we did a wonderfull 3-week wild trek on the eastern coast of Greenlandand and in 2012 we walked half of the Great Himalayan Trail in the Nepali Himalaya during our 2012-2013 gap year.

We prepare ourselves for those “big” trips by testing out our gear and training the muscles in the European Alps, or closer to home in our garden of the Belgian “Ardennes”. At home we go running (esp. half-marathon), swimming and bouldering for keeping in shape.

Since begin of 2012 we added a 2-person packraft in our outings.

Lightweight Philosophy

Over the years we have continously been thinking about enlightening our way too heavy loads. Lighter loads mean less calory burning, more enjoyable, healthier and safer walking. We do not want to become super ultra lightweight aficionados, but just want to enjoy our passion in a more comfortable way.

An important remark on the latter is, that we are not in a continuous quest of changing gear over and over, following the UL-trends. Our cabinet does not protrude with different gear for any kind of situation nor destination. We strongly believe in an ecologic and durable lifestyle. By flying to those remote destinations does not help to lower our footprint, but we try to compensate in our daily life, by trying to live light, not only on the trail…

Hope you like our tales, suggestions  and pictures and we are more then willing to help you out on preparing for a similar adventure into the wild.

What are you doing for a living?

We both have a master in Industrial Engineering from the Katholieke Hogesschool St. Lieven, in Gent, Belgium. Katrijn is head of department IT at the adult education school “Het Perspectief” in Gent. Steve will start teaching applied informatics in the third degree of a secondary school near home.

The backpacking family anno 2016.