about hobnail
Hobnail Trekking Company, LLC., was born during the blazing Tennessee summer of 2016 after Mark Johnson, a communications director at the time, happened to unexpectedly meet an Everest Region Sherpa who was in the U.S. to promote the Nepali trekking industry.
Mark and his wife, Holly, had set the Everest Base Camp trek as a bucket-list goal years before but were unsure how to achieve it. Six months after Mark’s chance meeting, Hobnail Trekking was born.
Today, Hobnail Trekking has expanded into several other destination countries and continues to offer only the highest levels of service and trekking expertise. We firmly believe that epic adventures should be available to anyone with the passion and courage to try them.
About Mark
Hi, there! Mark, here.
You could say that I took the circuitous route to ownership of an international adventure travel company. After growing up on a North Carolina Christmas tree farm in the Appalachian Mountains, I spent 15 years as a musician and singer-songwriter before pivoting into a career as a freelance writer, magazine editor, and communications director for a large wildlife conservation nonprofit in Tennessee.
During these years, Holly and I had developed a keen interest in trekking in Nepal — specifically, to Everest Base Camp — but dismissed the idea as something entirely out of reach for “normal” folks.
On August 17, 2016, I found myself in need of transportation to my auto mechanic’s shop in Nashville, so I downloaded the Lyft mobile app and requested a ride. I was shocked when the driver who picked me up turned out to be a Nepali Sherpa. This chance meeting would lead to the creation of Hobnail Trekking Company six months later.
We had no idea that Hobnail would develop into what it’s become, and that we would meet so many great people. Amazing!
Since November 2018, I’ve written and published two books, the first of which has become standard reading for anyone interested in the Everest Base Camp trek. Check them out below.
“Blow the Man Down: How I Navigated the Sailboats and Station Wagons of the Music Business”
Holly and I live in Kingston Springs, Tennessee. We have three kids — Sam, Ava, and Pete.
About Holly
Hi, this is Holly! Here’s a little about me:
I was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, DC, and spent weekends at my family’s place in the country, fishing, riding bikes, and swimming in lakes with leeches. (No, really. YUCK!)
I graduated with a degree in Public Administration and Political Science and received my Master’s degree in nonprofit management. I worked with refugees for 21 years, and in 2008 was named State Refugee Coordinator for the State of Tennessee.
In my work with refugees, I had the good fortune to meet thousands of people from all over the world whose circumstances were far different from my own but brought them to the same place – Nashville, Tennessee. Some of those refugees hailed from Nepal. In early 2020, I left my long-held position for the opportunity to focus on Hobnail and freelance work from home.
I didn’t spend much time thinking about Everest until reading the 1997 John Krakauer novel, “Into Thin Air,” later made into the motion picture, “Everest.” This book captivated me in a way that no other book had ever done. I found myself dreaming, several nights each week, about Mt. Everest. After I insisted Mark read the book too, we were both hopelessly hooked.
The story mentioned Base Camp, and I remembered reading about a friend on Facebook who had made an EBC trek. Having no desire at all to climb the mountain, I thought a trek was a fascinating idea and quickly entered it into my section of “Mark and Holly’s Bucket List,” a real live document that still exists on my Google drive. (I put it in Mark’s section, too, without his knowledge, because of course I’d want him to come with me!)
Shortly thereafter, I put the trek out of my mind, believing that my Facebook friend had a) tons of money, b) expensive gear, c) was in fantastic shape (she was a marathoner, after all), and d) did this kind of thing all the time – all things I thought were required for an Everest Base Camp trek, and unfortunately, all things that I did not have. All of those assumptions were wrong.
Imagine my surprise the day I received an excited phone call from Mark that began like this: “You’ll NEVER believe who just gave me a ride to the mechanic’s shop!”
Hobnail Trekking has been the most amazing and wonderful surprise of our professional lives. I hope you’ll consider traveling with us because I’d love to meet you!
About our strange name
When we launched our company, we chose to call ourselves Hobnail Trekking Co. for several reasons.
We wanted some type of a retro, vintage name, and in the world of mountaineering and trekking, nothing is more retro than hobnail (or hobnailed) boots. Hobnails are essentially nails driven into the soles of military or work boots to provide traction on snow and ice. For soldiers and mountaineers, they were standard issue for literally thousands of years up until around the 1950s. Roman soldiers, for example, wore hobnail sandals in certain situations. (That sounds incredibly uncomfortable, but whatever.)
George Mallory, the English climber who may have summited in 1924 but died during his descent, wore hobnail boots. We choose to believe that it wasn’t Mallory’s footwear that led to his demise, but just a really bad decision to try to climb Mt. Everest in 1924. (That’s one of Mallory’s actual hobnail boots below.)
Mallory notwithstanding, we like the idea of being associated with something that is solid, dependable, and provides traction in uncertain conditions.
We also just liked the sound of the word “hobnail.” It’s cool, quirky, and memorable. Don’t you agree?
Mark & Holly Johnson
Lukla, Nepal, 2018.
