Our Story
Tardigrade Outdoors founders
Jason Lucero and Nancy Jacoby
The Tardigrade Outdoors story is essentially a love story—a love of nature and wilderness, a love of backpacking, a love of fairness and equality, and of course, the love of two people for each other.
We met in early 2008, and despite living on opposite coasts of the United States, we quickly grew from acquaintances to friends and friends to prospective backpacking partners. We decided to meet in Yosemite and take a three-day backpacking trip together in August 2008. A few more visits and one cross-country relocation later, our backpacking and personal partnership became a reality, and we founded Ardeth in early 2010 in Chowchilla, a small town in Central California's San Joaquin Valley. Life happened and now we're reforming into Tardigrade Outdoors.
We started Tardigrade Outdoors to produce an array of lightweight and high-quality gear that offers a variety of solutions to those who want to reduce their pack weight as well as their impact on the environment and others. Our core values of buying local, paying a living wage, avoiding animal products, and practicing environmental sustainability help to provide the alternative to the one-size-fits-all approach to getting people into the backcountry. We also want to share information and expertise in hopes of inspiring others to take to the wilderness for the first time or make their backpacking trips more comfortable and enjoyable. Above all, we are simply passionate about backpacking, in love with the adventures and opportunities it offers, and enthusiastic about sharing conversation with others who travel lightly in the wilderness or think that they might want to give it a try.
We are conveniently located near both the central Sierra and California's coastal ranges. This region includes Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks as well as numerous national forests and wilderness areas that are our playgrounds as well as our testing grounds for Tardigrade Outdoors products and services.
Thank you for your interest in our company and your desire to explore and protect the great wild places of the earth. Here's to traveling lightly and wildly!
Jason Lucero & Nancy Jacoby
We met in early 2008, and despite living on opposite coasts of the United States, we quickly grew from acquaintances to friends and friends to prospective backpacking partners. We decided to meet in Yosemite and take a three-day backpacking trip together in August 2008. A few more visits and one cross-country relocation later, our backpacking and personal partnership became a reality, and we founded Ardeth in early 2010 in Chowchilla, a small town in Central California's San Joaquin Valley. Life happened and now we're reforming into Tardigrade Outdoors.
We started Tardigrade Outdoors to produce an array of lightweight and high-quality gear that offers a variety of solutions to those who want to reduce their pack weight as well as their impact on the environment and others. Our core values of buying local, paying a living wage, avoiding animal products, and practicing environmental sustainability help to provide the alternative to the one-size-fits-all approach to getting people into the backcountry. We also want to share information and expertise in hopes of inspiring others to take to the wilderness for the first time or make their backpacking trips more comfortable and enjoyable. Above all, we are simply passionate about backpacking, in love with the adventures and opportunities it offers, and enthusiastic about sharing conversation with others who travel lightly in the wilderness or think that they might want to give it a try.
We are conveniently located near both the central Sierra and California's coastal ranges. This region includes Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks as well as numerous national forests and wilderness areas that are our playgrounds as well as our testing grounds for Tardigrade Outdoors products and services.
Thank you for your interest in our company and your desire to explore and protect the great wild places of the earth. Here's to traveling lightly and wildly!
Jason Lucero & Nancy Jacoby
About Jason
Thinking real hard and taking notes.
I've been backpacking for most of my life. I've lived as a rockclimber, surfer, backpacker, bum. I love the outdoors and when I started to seriously consider what my dream lifestyle would be, I came to realize that it would be building awesome gear that I haven't been able to find for a community and lifestyle that I love. I've been customizing much of the gear that I had been buying or building what I could not find. I enjoy kayaking, gardening, reading, helping animals and cooking. But, I'd enjoy just about anything with Nancy around.
"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman
"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman
About Nancy
sI'm a newcomer to backpacking but have had the good fortune of spending nearly 50 days in the wilderness of Yosemite National Park since my first backpacking trip there in August 2008. I've always loved and spent time in the outdoors, and I learned a bit about "roughing it" when I was growing up: All of my family's vacations were camping vacations. We car camped our way up and down the east coast from Maine to Florida and west to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana.
I loved every aspect of camping with my family, from the packing and planning to making camp and waking up in scented forests filled with plants and wild animals of all kinds. Although traveling in a station wagon loaded to the brim (including the spare tire compartment!) with gear and provisions for a family of five was hectic at times, a certain calm always seemed to settle over us once we got into camp. And to a little girl, even a numbered campsite at a state park was high adventure.
During my college and graduate school years, I had little time or inclination to go camping, but I began returning to it after I finished school. I was living in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, where scenic gorges, state parks, and a national forest beckoned me back into the woods. I bought a tent, some gear, and a pair of snowshoes to follow the lure. When Jason and I met, I was just beginning to discover the Adirondacks with some backpacking friends in Saratoga Springs. They already had me convinced that I'd love backpacking; my trip to Yosemite a few months later proved that they were right.
I've backpacked in four seasons in the Sierra, and I'm always game for an outing, be it a weekender or a week long. Besides being a lot of fun, backpacking fits neatly with my conservationist ethics and my deep respect for the natural world.
When I'm not in the backcountry or busy working with Jason in the day-to-day operations at Tardigrade Outdoors, you can find me out on a run; looking after my large family of cats, rabbits, and birds; gardening; reading; or cooking vegan food. I love laughter, animals, classical music, and community, and I have a strong desire to help make (and leave) the world a more hospitable place for all living things.
I'm incredibly interested in the experiences of other women who backpack as well as those who have recently discovered the joys of backpacking, so drop me a note sometime and share a little about yourself. I'd love to hear from you.
I loved every aspect of camping with my family, from the packing and planning to making camp and waking up in scented forests filled with plants and wild animals of all kinds. Although traveling in a station wagon loaded to the brim (including the spare tire compartment!) with gear and provisions for a family of five was hectic at times, a certain calm always seemed to settle over us once we got into camp. And to a little girl, even a numbered campsite at a state park was high adventure.
During my college and graduate school years, I had little time or inclination to go camping, but I began returning to it after I finished school. I was living in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, where scenic gorges, state parks, and a national forest beckoned me back into the woods. I bought a tent, some gear, and a pair of snowshoes to follow the lure. When Jason and I met, I was just beginning to discover the Adirondacks with some backpacking friends in Saratoga Springs. They already had me convinced that I'd love backpacking; my trip to Yosemite a few months later proved that they were right.
I've backpacked in four seasons in the Sierra, and I'm always game for an outing, be it a weekender or a week long. Besides being a lot of fun, backpacking fits neatly with my conservationist ethics and my deep respect for the natural world.
When I'm not in the backcountry or busy working with Jason in the day-to-day operations at Tardigrade Outdoors, you can find me out on a run; looking after my large family of cats, rabbits, and birds; gardening; reading; or cooking vegan food. I love laughter, animals, classical music, and community, and I have a strong desire to help make (and leave) the world a more hospitable place for all living things.
I'm incredibly interested in the experiences of other women who backpack as well as those who have recently discovered the joys of backpacking, so drop me a note sometime and share a little about yourself. I'd love to hear from you.
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