So I just hiked the Pacific Crest Trail

Still alive, baby, still alive!

There is a non-zero chance that you’re reading this in your email inbox right now and wondering two things:

1. What in the world is this email?

2. Who the hell is Dennis Gavrilenko?!

After a moment’s thought, you may think a third thing:

1. Oh wait, that dude? I completely forgot that he even existed.

Well folks, welcome back to Interosity! It’s been a long 6 months since the last article back in April, but I’ve been up to a lot of exciting things since then and am excited to share them with y’all.

For starters, I graduated from UCLA back in March. That’s right, diploma secured! Four fantastic years of college finally wrapped up this year, and I honestly couldn’t be more proud and happy with how those four years went. I got especially cooked academically by the end (meaning all desire to do classwork plummeted off the deepest, darkest cliff imaginable), and I spent most of my time the last quarter hanging out with friends, exploring UCLA’s campus, ranking the deliciousness of every sorority’s brunch, hosting Blokus board game nights, curating an art gallery in my hallway, and just generally enjoying being a college senior. 11/10 recommend.

Then, after a wonderfully relaxing week-long spring break in Hawaii with my family, I flew to the UK for a month-long trip around the British Isles. I’ve for some reason had a lifelong fascination with British culture and just the Isles in general, and it’d been a dream of mine for ages to do a big trip there. Fortunately, a few of my study abroad friends from Paris (Ben, Emma, Joe!) were either finishing up their bachelor’s degree or completing a master’s in the UK, and combined with my Scottish roommate Finlay’s family/friends in Edinburgh and my Italian friend Federico, I had plenty of people to travel with and visit all over. It was a phenomenal April.

After that, I flew back home to California, relaxed for about 3 days, and then promptly flew to San Diego with my girlfriend to start a 143-day thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2650-mile-long backpacking trail from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. It was unimaginably beautiful, crazy hard, and fantastically fun. I could spend all day writing about the UK trip and the absolute adventure that was the PCT, but that would take too… oh wait, I have! All that’s on my personal travel blog, which you can check out here. (I like to keep my personal travels and more general essays separated between that blog and this one so they don’t dilute each other)

After coming back from backpacking for 5 months, I spent another week relaxing at home before flying (again) to Hawaii (again with my girlfriend), this time to do a 10-day work stay on someone’s farm. Unbelievable experience, cannot recommend enough. I also became a pro hitchhiker.

And now, I’m back home more permanently! I have two more months of free time before I start working full-time in January at BCG SF, and I’m honestly loving the time off. I wake up every morning with coffee and hours of reading, and then work on fun side projects all day; I’m learning to play the accordion, and just started working on an app idea I was brainstorming during my thru-hike. I also get to play with my brother every day, which is an absolute highlight (he’s building a PC at the moment and selling lots of stuff on eBay… to fund the build).

So that’s it for now! Stay tuned these next few months for some more essays I’ve been drafting recently, and stay curious. Happy Trails!

Assorted pictures from the past six months, left to right and up to down from top left: at LSE's ball with Emma; in Ireland with Federico; with Joe and Ben in London; final UK trip map; at graduation; atop Mt. San Jacinto with a 13 lb watermelon I hiked up from Idyllwild; atop Mt. Whitney with Zoe, Brooke, Pablo, and Flo; PCT southern and northern terminus high-five; with nēnē geese in Hawaii