Penney has a highly eclectic resume. She was a competitive dancer and figure skater before turning to fine art and earning a B.F.A in painting and drawing. After several years of gallery shows and traveling the world, she studied botany, clinical herbalism, and nutrition with some of the top teachers in the country and also built a career in specialty coffee. From sourcing green beans to roasting to training competition baristas, she's dipped her toes in all of it. Ever the student, she also went to school, at various points in time, to learn to write code, bake bread, and teach yoga. Eventually, her decade-long obsession with rock climbing (indoors, outdoors, anywhere!) led her in a roundabout way to testing gear and writing about it — and something clicked. She couldn't get enough, loving both the challenge of determining the best way to test things and the reward of writing about it to provide a solid source of information for the public. Penney now works full time for GearLab and resides in South Lake Tahoe where you will find her skipping down a trail with her doggo and husband, sweating it out on her yoga mat, or in the kitchen drinking wine and cooking.
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