Guides
Our guides' experience, dedication, and enthusiasm make them ideal ambassadors for your destination. They chart the course, finesse the details, and speak the language (English, as well as the local language). They also possess a truly rare skill, knowing when to let serendipity and inspiration take the lead.
Heather Harding
Heather Harding has been guiding for many years on both Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where she lives, and in the canyons and plateaus of the Southwest, where she earned college degrees in biology and Southwest Studies. Heather brings a world-wide background of whale research and Waldorf teaching to her guiding. During the winters, Heather leads People to People tours in Cuba with her partner and frequent co-guide Eric Kessler.
Eric Kessler
One of our most veteran guides, Eric Kessler has guided for CW for over twenty years! As a wilderness traveler during his college years, he began his explorations of the Southwest and has been drawn to the region ever since. First running field studies programs in Utah’s National Parks, Eric has guided walking tours in the canyons for over 10 years. When not guiding, he pursues his parallel photography career documenting the planet’s native peoples and ecosystems and has a particular interest in the fragile and sometimes elusive presence of water in the desert areas he loves. Eric often guides with his partner and CW guide Heather Harding.
Tim Smith
Although Tim Smith’s vocation is teaching, his passion is the outdoors. Currently he divides his time between Vermont where he resides, and the Southwest where he spends his free time hiking the canyons and mesas. A self-taught naturalist, Tim truly looks forward to sharing his passion for the Southwest with CW guests on our Utah tour. Tim can be found hiking, canoeing, snowshoeing, or skiing during his free time.
Clint Fries
Clint Fries has been guiding adventurers and sharing his curiosity, love, and stewardship for the natural world for over two decades. His own sense of adventure has led him to accompany groups in locations ranging from Big Bend National Park, to Alaska, and the Arctic. In addition to guiding walking tours in Utah, he enjoys spending time with his family in the home he built on a windswept bluff outside Flagstaff, Arizona.
Carolyn Beecher
Carolyn Beecher has guided, hiked, backpacked, and canyoneered in the Utah canyon country since the mid-1970s, appreciating the geological drama and the cultural remnants of first people’s lives. Although this part of the west lures her frequent visits, Carolyn has made her home in MT where she guides our CW Glacier tours since they were first offered in 1999. Through the winter she makes her living in the map business and caretakes a piece of land in the foothills of the Mission Mountains near Flathead Lake.
Marsha Holland
Marsha Holland is a professional guide and historian with a background in forestry, mapping, search and rescue operations, and motherhood! She lives at the foot of Bryce Canyon with her husband where they raised their two sons. Marsha is a good listener, prioritizing both fun and safety in her guiding. During the school year, she works as a substitute teacher in Tropic, Utah. She is also a Master Naturalist in desert environments with a lifelong interest in exercise and nutrition. As a founding member of the Bryce Community Foundation, she supports healthy southern Utah communities.
