Jonathan Coupal

Camping Nerd

Jonathan grew up in the Finger Lakes has lived with his wife and family in WNY for 30 years, and while he started camping with his family as a child he began backpacking in earnest with a trip to the Adirondacks when he was 17 years old. After a small hiatus from backcountry camping when he had small children, he began pursuing his passions for the backcountry with his son through the local BSA, where he still trains new scoutmasters on outdoor trip planning and is a backpacking and camping merit badge counselor. Besides plenty of camping, backpacking, snowshoeing, skiing, kayaking, and canoeing in the Allegheny and Adirondack regions with family and friends, Jonathan has backpacked hundreds of miles in the Pacific Northwest, including a 6-day thru hike of the Wonderland Trail on Mount Rainier in 2021. Jonathan and his wife also enjoy bikepacking and bike touring, and in 2022 he completed the GAP and C&O trails from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. You can hear Jonathan’s passion for outdoor adventures in his own voice on the “HYOH Podcast”, a podcast about hammock camping which he co-hosted from 2015 until 2020. Jonathan is also the VP of Security and Infrastructure at ITX Corp, a software development company that he helped start 25 years ago and operates with a team of over 250 amazing professionals.