Our Story
Once it’s burned up, you won't get anymore—daylight, that is. And so much more.
Burning Daylight Expeditions was born in defiance of the well-worn mantra, “Do it while you’re young.” We’re no strangers to creaky joints, life’s responsibilities, or its inevitable plot twists—but we believe self-discovery and boundary-pushing adventures don’t come with an expiration date, or even a designated start time.
At Burning Daylight Expeditions, we’re grounded in one simple truth: every day is a day of your life. So how do you want to live it?
Some days are spent glued to a keyboard, stuck on hold with insurance or airlines. Others are for grabbing drinks with old college roommates—or getting eaten alive by mosquitoes in the most breathtaking meadow you’ve ever seen, a place that once lived only as a screensaver.
Life is full of things we have to do, things we probably should do, and the things we only dream about—unless we choose to burn daylight and make them happen. So swallow the what-ifs, and bring an empty jar—because this sunshine can be bottled, carried with you, and savored long after the sun has set.
Experience
With a combined 25 years of experience leading backcountry trips and working for dozens of outdoor education and guiding companies around the world, we realized something was missing. We couldn’t find a company that fully aligned with our belief in disconnecting from the digital, reconnecting with the present, and pushing ourselves to try hard in the wilderness.
An expedition with us is rooted in curiosity—about what that unnamed lake on the map looks like in real life, how to bake the perfect backcountry cheesy biscuits, and a willingness to ask bigger questions like: What does it mean to make the most of a day?
Because life is happening in every moment—whether we’re paying attention or not. We want to practice that awareness with you: how to make the most of a day, whether you’re walking down a grocery aisle or across an alpine meadow.
The only way to truly know us is to burn daylight with us. In other words, share a cup of coffee with a once-stranger—sleep still in our eyes, hair matted beneath one of two well-worn hats, and almost too excited to tie our shoes. When you're too tired to be anything but yourself—that’s when we’ll really know each other.
In the meantime, after one too many slices of humble pie, we wrote each other’s bios...
Meet Heather Ekstrom
Born to a New Yorker and Illinoyer, Heather grew up in North Carolina and went to school at UNC Chapel Hill (go tarheels) but owes her education to the wild plants that be and a never ending stream of podcasts.
From a young age, Heather has looked for any opportunity to spend as much time as she could running through the forest. What started as a way to push herself to see how fast and far she could run, has now turned into a lifestyle of covering miles measured in mountain passes in a day. When not running or identifying and pressing wildflowers, Heather spends much of her summer season leading backpacking trips from the Alaskan tundra to the remote Utah canyonlands. Her love of the mountains and the people in them is contagious and it’s not uncommon for her to become your pen pal after a trip in the wilderness. When you feel like you’ve burned enough “daylight”, Heather is just getting started.
meet brock gudeman
Originated 1990 in Tucson, Arizona and developed in the Sierras circa 2008 via living out of the family Astro Van.
His younger desert self wouldn’t believe it, but Brock wakes up most mornings to surf, even in the foggiest of frigid swells. When there are trails he runs, when there’s old wood he builds something, when the fish are biting he casts. Brock less adapts to his surroundings and more seizes them, embracing the moment, and when he was growing up it was climbing. He picked up climbing around the age of 15, tying knots on his brothers’ harnesses while comparing it to the diagram in the book. Following the novel idea of nature as the teacher, he went on to study Outdoor Education at a small school in the North Carolina mountains where he was also introduced to sweet tea and rhododendron forests. Brock continued to climb and hone his craft as an instructor for the following decade, working for dozens of companies around the US, Australia, and China. After meeting Heather and her musings, he began to expand his horizons beyond climbing and has since fully embraced the *thrill* that comes from watercoloring next to a stream, fishing at sunrise, and adding vegetables to quesadillas.
