Wes moved to London to attend university, working nights as a bartender in order to make ends meet. That work eventually took him to The Frontline, a member’s club for war correspondents, where Wes encountered successful writers, photographers and videographers for the first time. There, he struck up a friendship with Marie Colvin, an American foreign affairs correspondent who was assassinated in Syria by Bashar al-Assad a few years later. Wes still makes a martini one way only: how Marie taught him.
While working nights at The Frontline and attending classes during the day, Wes began his career with an internship at Intersection, a fashion magazine. Wes worked his way up to deputy editor at that magazine, and launched his own spinoff title, Intersection Motorcycles. After his visa to live in the United Kingdom expired, he moved to New York to launch that magazine’s American edition, and an advertising agency serving automakers and related businesses. Wes would go on to fulfill a childhood dream to become a car journalist when he was hired as Gawker Media’s first road test editor. There, he helped manage the team that would eventually grow Jalopnik into the most popular car website. Wes went on to launch his own motorcycle website, Hell for Leather. That brought him to Los Angeles, where the powersports industry is based. Wes sold Hell for Leather to a private equity firm for shares in a new consumer website he then built.
While working at that startup without pay or health insurance, Wes was involved in a motorcycle crash that resulted in severe injury. Losing everything to medical bills, including the ability to walk, was a hard lesson in the harsh realities of this country’s health care system.
Wes regained his health through the slow, deliberate process of self-administered physical therapy. It was during this time that Wes rescued his first dog, Wiley, and pivoted to the outdoors with the launch of his website Indefinitely Wild, which he published in partnership with Gawker Media.
Wes used the first few months of revenue from that site to reimburse the loans from friends that had enabled him to keep a roof over his head while he was injured. Struggling financially and physically all at once was a powerful reminder that not everyone has friends capable of bailing them out. Shortly after recovering, Wes created a partnership with the Los Angeles Youth Network in which he mentored unhoused LGBT teenagers on career and fitness development, and took them hiking, climbing, and camping, and to perform volunteer labor in national parks, across southern California.
As the lawsuit Peter Thiel used Hulk Hogan to file against Gawker Media began to destroy that company, Wes took Indefinitely Wild to Outside Magazine, where he’s worked as the outdoor lifestyle columnist for the last decade. Wes has used Outside’s national platform to fight the theft of public lands, educate the public about the science of climate change, and expose the corruption of politicians seeking to harm the environment and public access to the outdoors.
Wes met his now-wife in late 2016. They rescued their second dog, Bowie (like the knife) six months later. In order to be closer to Virginia’s family, and enjoy easier access to the outdoors, they moved to Bozeman in 2018. Wes proposed on a hike in the Gallatins that July. Shortly after, they rescued their third dog, Teddy, from Malta. After decades spent moving around the world in search of their forever home, the couple have now found that together here in Montana.
The pride flag Wes and his wife fly outside their house in Bozeman is the topic of a viral speech by Michigan state Senator and candidate for United States Senate Mallory McMorrow.
Wes was born in Kennesaw, Georgia to a family from North Carolina. His parents worked the kind of dedicated public service jobs now denigrated as “wasteful” by President Trump. Wes’ mom was a special needs teacher, something she put to good use helping her son recover physically and neurologically after he fell ill with bacterial meningitis. Wes’ dad put his life on the line and sacrificed his long-term health in order to serve his country and provide for his family working hands-on with explosive ordinance as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense.
His dad’s career took the family first to northern Virginia, then to rural England, where Wes attended a Department of Defense Dependents School on an American Air Force base. During his senior year, while working as editor of the school’s small newspaper, Wes realized that the children of enlisted parents were being disciplined more severely than children whose parents were officers. Tracking disciplinary actions across his final semester, Wes argued in an opinion piece that such practice resulted in unfair penalties for working families. The school’s principal was fired shortly after Wes’ story published, the practice was corrected, and a lifelong appreciation for the importance of journalism was born.
Wes is an Eagle Scout, and achieved Brotherhood membership in the Order of the Arrow. Wes has continued his involvement with that organization as an adult, volunteering as an Assistant Scoutmaster.
Wes credits his love for the outdoors to his dad, who spent any time he was able to find away from his duties in the federal government teaching Wes backpacking, canoeing, and camping, all over the world. After suffering exposure to shockwaves, poisonous chemicals, and injuries throughout his career in service of the American people, his father now suffers from dementia and deteriorating health. Wes considers the ability to enjoy a creative career around the outdoors a privilege made possible by sacrifices made by people like his dad.
Wes has expanded his work into helping local Montana brands achieve exposure in national media. Wes makes regular appearances across a wide range of podcasts, shows, and documentaries, which he uses to advocate for causes like animal conservation, public lands, gun safety, and the rights of his friends in the LGBT community.
Wes has organized outdoor expeditions on six continents, contributes to magazines like Wired, Playboy and Outdoor Life, and works as a precision driver in car and motorcycle commercials. Wes’ testicles are a subject in Glenn Beck’s most recent book.