Geoff Faerber '98 has built tepees, bridges, and a framework for adventure in the wilderness of southwestern Montana.
It was cold and windy. Sometimes in the high country the seasons decide to skip fall and head straight for winter. I was swinging like a pendulum 80 feet above the ground, dangling from a thin light-blue climbing rope. Scared enough to feel my stomach in my throat.
In the past two days I had ascended to 13,770 feet over boulders, up rock walls, through vertical granite chimneys streaked with ice to the wind-scarred summit of Grand Teton Mountain. I stayed on the summit for half an hour, wishing I could stay forever—but no one ever stays that long.
So, at the edge of a 100-foot granite overhang, my slow ascent gave way to rapid descent in the form of my first-ever rappel—a dangling-dropping-swinging-swaying-body-swing-over-boulders descent.
I woke up the next morning with sweat-hardened climbing gear still plastered to my body. I peeled off the gear, pulled on fresh clothes, and headed out to the laundromat where, with a bundle of grimy climbing clothes clenched to my chest, I ran into my boss, Geoff Faerber ’98, owner of the Flying Pig Adventure Company. I told him of my climb and harrowing descent.
Geoff is an enormous man with thin black- frame glasses. He squints his eyes and throws his mouth open wide to laugh. He has a penchant for swapping stories, and after enjoying mine, he tossed one back that was twice as big as my own (roughly proportional to the size difference between Geoff and me).
In the closing days of his Wabash career, Geoff and his buddy Kevin Gearhart ’98, had begun taking extended trips to Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky, where they practiced rappelling from the top of 100-foot Half Moon Rock. As Geoff was lamenting that their exciting adventure had become dulled by routine, they encountered two ex-Marines who suggested a new technique. Called Australian rappelling, the method involves clipping a climbing rope into the back of a harness, running, then plummeting full speed face first toward the ground. Geoff recalled diving through the air, rope whirring through the loop of his thumb and forefinger, stretching his six-foot-plus-frame, and seizing leaves from the outer branches of an oak tree, before finally braking his fall five feet from the ground.
Geoff got done telling, squinted, and laughed. It was a moment that typifies Geoff for me: shared respect for a completed expedition, followed by the honest openhearted offering of one of his own experiences—a challenge and encouragement to achieve even more. Geoff has built a life of adventure, and he encourages others to inhabit it with him.
Two years after his graduation from Wabash, Geoff migrated from Indiana to Montana and worked odd jobs around Gardiner, a small tourist town just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park. He spent his first Montana winter skiing into the foothills of the Absaroka Mountain range, inhaling the silence of a hibernating landscape, and building a tepee by hand from the native lodgepole pines.
The tepee became his winter home. While others clamored for the comfort of the cities and central heating, Geoff enjoyed an isolated haven in the harsh Montana foothills.
Come summer he peeled the canvas off his cone of skinned pine trees, packed up the tepee, and headed for town. In the following months he began kayaking the Yellowstone River, soaking up the river as he had inhaled the mountains. Geoff’s intimate and growing knowledge of the mountains and rivers combined with a bit of business savvy would eventually lead him to the vision of creating a rafting and adventure company. The company would provide him with a livelihood, while giving him the opportunity to motivate others toward adventure.
Geoff approached his new idea the way he approached rappelling—in a high-speed, head-first, freefalling dive. He headquartered his business in the shell of an old pawnshop—an ideal location directly above the river, at the top of a steep hillside with magnificent views into Yellowstone. Then he began building the framework—renovating the storefront, constructing a deck slat by slat, and digging trails into the steep riverside hill behind the store. Parallel to the trail he also constructed a 100-foot metal zipline for lowering rafts down to the river (an innovative system that saves time, and transportation costs, and provides incomparable convenience to customers).
Finally, he went about building the business—a business that has doubled during my three-year stint and has grown to include options for whitewater rafting, horseback riding, wildlife safaris, vacation rentals, and a camp store, which sells outdoor apparel and doubles as a hub for the rafting operation.
Geoff’s desire for close-knit company has resulted in an Indiana-to-Montana pipeline, with four Wabash students and three Indiana natives working at the Flying Pig in the past several seasons. All this from a man who, he admits, had "never been on a raft before I started this company."
The company name reflects his passion.
"People have been using the expression ‘when pigs fly’ for years to poke fun at people who have big ideas and big dreams," Geoff says. "The irony is that every great achievement started as a dream, and the most successful people are those who are able to make their dreams a reality."
His adventure business has made dreams a reality for many.
His Web site proclaims: "Flying Pig is dedicated to encouraging you to go beyond what you think you can do!"
And Geoff’s upbeat attitude has created a thriving company.
While he welcomes success, Geoff refuses to let business become his sole obsession; he dwells in a life that is more important than the company he created.
Geoff needs space to be alone in. He craves private moments, a desire that led him to Montana, where the sky is full of empty, where rivers and creeks drown out voices and there are mountains and hills to hide behind.
Geoff gains strength through the quiet intensity of isolation, and his home affords him that. He lives 18 miles from Gardiner on the banks of Rock Creek in the foothills of the Gallatin Mountains; his house is enclosed by hills. Behind the house two trails wind down a sagebrush-studded ridge before dropping into a darkened crease between the hills. The trails twist through pine needle shadows, follow the downhill flow of water, and meet at the edge of Rock Creek. The creek is crossed by a bouncy (but sturdy) cedar plank suspension bridge—another hand-built Faerber creation. Across the bridge nestled into a bend and sitting on the bank is Geoff’s original winter tepee and a single wooden chair. I imagine he sits in the chair for hours watching Rock Creek, letting his mind wander into the piles of white in front of boulders, losing himself in the slack spots behind rocks where the flow slows and spins, then finding himself reflected in the glassy stretches where the surface is unbroken but the current remains in constant motion.
Rock Creek is spring fed. It flows from its headwaters in the hills past Geoff’s wooden chair, between massive boulders, beneath fallen trees, under a gravel road, then into the Yellowstone. The creek pours its rock-blue waters into the fish-brown river.
Across from this confluence sits a public access site where, seven years ago, Geoff and three friends slipped into two tandem sea kayaks and began paddling downstream. They were fulfilling Geoff’s plan to follow the flow of the Yellowstone into the Missouri, into the Mississippi, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico. They were raising money for the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Corrymeela Community, an Irish peace organization.
Geoff, Woody Miller, Nate Paulson, and David Bradley spent three months paddling rivers that together drain roughly half our country. They were tested by the windswept lakes that form the upper Missouri and by run-ins with barges. But they completed the journey, got good press from Backpacker magazine, and were able to donate $150,000 to youth programs in the process. Then the two 22-foot white kayaks were raised vertically and strapped to the front of the Flying Pig store, where they stand to this day, an ever-present inspiration.
Geoff has an uncanny ability for turning his passion for adventure into enriching experiences for others, a talent that can be traced back to the five summers Geoff worked as a counselor at an outdoor education camp
in Michigan. At Camp Miniwanca he saw the many ways outdoor experiences could improve a child’s quality of life. He made a commitment to outdoor education, which he honed by leading trips for the American Youth Foundation, and maintains to this day.
He pursues his conviction through Adventure Camp, an outdoor education and recreation program for local schoolchildren, which he co-created and runs with his wife and Flying Pig co-owner, Liza, the daughter of the district’s forest ranger.
"Liza grew up in the most beautiful places in America," Geoff says. "She was on skis when she was three, and she’s been backpacking most of her life." A special education teacher in Alaska before Geoff met her, Liza has a commitment to outdoor education that is just as strong.
Their camp provides a great service to the Gardiner community and affords Geoff’s adventure-driven mind a creative outlet outside the bounds of his business. Yet, Geoff’s passion for promoting outdoor experiences extends beyond children.
This past summer he booked a rafting trip with a group of 30 students and mentors from the Iowa Department of the Blind. Geoff appointed me lead guide for the trip and encouraged me to test my limits. Initially, guiding a boat of blind rafters seemed a daunting task, but once I hit the water, everything changed. Our yellow rubber rafts bucked through rapids and then coasted into flat water, enthralling the students.
Deprived of sight, they commented on the different textures felt through their feet as we floated from rolling waves to choppy water. They forecast, based on sound and with incredible accuracy, the size of oncoming rapids. Without the comfort of visual foresight their responses to splashes were magnified—each drop of water became a breathtaking sensation. I was humbled by this new mode of perception, which made me deeply and intimately aware of a river I had rafted hundreds of times before. Several students had been terrified at first, but at the end were elated by the rush of awareness and their enhanced sense of self-sufficiency. We found ourselves content, caught in this trip Geoff had planned, participating in the enriching, self-magnifying experience of an outdoor adventure.
Geoff builds tepee, bridges, and businesses with his hands, adventures and experiences with his head. His constructions create opportunities for successive growth. First, each creation is a challenge for Geoff to master. Then it becomes a benefit to be passed along to family, friends, and employees; finally, it enriches the lives of customers and the community. It is a flow of life reflected by the waters he lives on—an incessant creek offering itself continuously to the current of the rolling river.
Geoff Faerber has built a sturdy structure in the foot-hills of southwestern Montana, a framework for adventure he shares, a framework I have come to inhabit—sometimes with my stomach in my throat, sometimes with elation, but always with gratitue.*
Read more about Faerber’s work at www.flyingpigrafting.com