ABOUT BILLY
Billy W. Mitchell goes by the trail name Gecko and is the owner of the YouTube Channel Gecko's Trails. He is also the owner of Ravenshire Creations, a company that deals in photography, photo-art, graphic design, and writing. He also writes articles for Hub Pages.
Although he was born in the big city of Houston, Texas, Billy and his family moved onto a 127 acre plot of land in the middle of the piney forests of southeast Texas north of the small town of Silsbee. His mother always accused him of having an incurable case of wanderlust because she could never keep him indoors. He was always out roaming the forests and dirt back roads.
After graduating from Silsbee High School, Billy joined the United States Army and served as an infantry soldier in the 10th Mountain Light Infantry Division while stationed at Fort Drum, New York. He got to visit places such as Germany, Puerto Rico, Honduras, and Panama. Whether they were marching through the Black Forests of Germany, the mountainous jungles of Panama and Honduras, or scorching deserts of Death Valley in California he got to see some of the most beautiful terrain imaginable from a perspective that few others ever will. This opened him up to the wonderful world of hiking in a very real way.
A few years ago, while down a rabbit hole on YouTube, Billy stumbled across the thru-hikes of Joe Brewer, owner of Backcountry Banter, and Dixie, owner of Homemade Wanderlust, and his life was changed forever! He had to experience these trails for himself: the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails. While researching for the gear he would need for these journeys, he noticed that on all of the website he visited he would have to click through a veritable tree of links to get to the items he was looking for. He remembers wishing that there was a site he could go to where he could just click on a site category and there they all would be. He decided then and there to make that happen, so Thru-hiker's Warehouse was born!
