Garret has been a filmer for Kona over the years, trying to keep pace with riders sprinting alongside them with his gimbal, but this is his first year as an ambassador.
Over the past two years he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that spread to his liver and lungs. He has gone through four rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and eight surgeries to have all the cancer removed. After 6 months of clean scans through winter and spring, another tiny spot emerged in his lungs and he is spending this summer back in chemo with the plan to do some powerful radiation in fall to kill it once and for all.
You would never know Garret had cancer if you met him. He lives life with a full-send mentality, and has remained getting after it in the outdoors, backcountry skiing some of Snoqualmie Pass’s finest lines in winter, and ebiking up a storm in summer. He loves his Kona ebikes maybe more than anyone, because they enable him to shred even when he feels like shit from treatment. His latest adventure has him high in the sky, chasing his dreams of flying, since he took up paragliding as a “yolo” gift to himself during cancer.
You can say hi to Garret at Laconia Market, a small grocery store and cafe at Snoqualmie Pass that he and his wife Kirsten opened this year. He will probably excitedly stoke you out on your adventures, since he’s on his 5th coffee of the day.
