Lisa became the Denali Basecamp manager at 32 years old and served 22 seasons managing the camp at the foot of North America’s tallest mountain. Collectively, she has spent nearly four years of her life living on the Kahiltna Glacier, becoming a well-known and beloved fixture in the camp among the tens of thousands of climbers and sightseers that she welcomed to the glacier during her tenure. As the manager, Lisa was tasked with maintaining a glacier runway airstrip, providing vigilant weather observations for the air services bringing climbers and sightseers to the glacier, and occasionally, she assisted the National Park Service in coordinating numerous rescue operations.

In 2015, the National Park Service presented her with the Mislow-Swanson Denali Pro Award for her contributions to safety and mountain stewardship, and, like two of the famed prior basecamp managers, Frances Randall and Annie Duquette, there is a formerly unnamed mountain standing above camp that now unofficially bears her name.

Lisa has been a climber for more than twenty-five years. In Alaska, she has made ascents of the Mooses Tooth and several smaller peaks, survived a stormbound late winter attempt on the seldom-climbed Mount Russell in the western Alaska Range, and accompanied the National Park Service on a patrol to 14,000 feet on Denali, and a backcountry patrol of Denali’s lower Muldrow Glacier. She has rock climbed throughout the mountains and deserts of the American southwest, and has also trekked and climbed in many countries, including Argentina, Chile, Nepal, Costa Rica, and New Zealand. In recent years, she most prefers rock climbing in warm environments, scuba diving, and traveling to exotic locations with good food. Lisa is also a Licensed Massage Practitioner, operating a small practice in Talkeetna, Alaska, her home for most of the past twenty-seven years. She presents multimedia slide shows about her job at basecamp for large tourist groups in Alaska.