The singer/guitarist and 2016 graduate of the Lake Placid High School left 13 months ago for Girdwood, Alaska, a resort town within the municipality of Anchorage. He returned home this week but plans to depart in a few weeks to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,659 -mile trek that stretches from the Mexican border to the Canadian border through the states of Washington, Oregon and California.

He got the idea after listening to stories told by his friends, Jason Christman and Emily Rose, who have hiked it before.

“They couldn’t stop talking about it, so I figured, ‘What the hell?'” he said.

Saulpaugh left Alaska last fall for a job in California that fell through, so by chance he wound up in Bend, Oregon, where he liked it so much he decided to stay. Within a day, he found a job and a house in which to live.

“The music scene in the Bend area is phenomenal,” he said. It’s a place where he “found community” and is “super tight with a lot of good circles, professional and personal, so I’ll be excited to come back there time and time again.”

Having worked in Lake Placid at Starbucks on Main Street, Saulpaugh wasted little time finding a job as a barista in Bend where spent his free time networking other musicians in the area. While checking Facebook about six weeks later, he found out that Christman and Rose were on their way out to live there as well for reasons that had nothing to do with him; they were unaware he was even there.

“I saw a Facebook post a month and a half after I moved there saying that they were on their way driving out. So I reached out, and now we’re all great friends,” he said. “Funny how things work out. It’s a small small world.”

As if traveling to Alaska and Oregon wasn’t enough, Saulpaugh began a brief trip back to Alaska before heading for home, he said, “but it got cut short in Little Fort, British Columbia, where my engine kicked the bucket just as I was ascending into the mountains.”

After saying good-bye to his ’99 Chevy Astro, Saulpaugh hitchhiked to the nearest airport, got a connection to Vancouver and made it home Tuesday, May 1. He only plans to stay in Lake Placid for a few weeks before heading to the southern trail head of the Pacific Crest Trail.

For this particular leg of his journey, he’ll leave the guitars back in favor of the smaller and lighter ukulele.

“My pack is already going to be heavy,” Saulpaugh said. “For five months of hiking through some of the most intense and beautiful terrain in the country, just a uke will do.”

He plans to return in the fall to begin recording original songs.

“My musical styles are a mix of acoustic folk, jazz and soul with a twist of live improv looping,” Saulpaugh said. “Growing up, I quickly grew a love of music being raised on the greats such as Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Amy Winehouse and many more.”

Among the many more include his father, well-known pianist and former Lake Placid police chief Mike Saulpaugh, a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and eldest brother Dan, who graduated from the School of Jazz at The New School in New York City majoring in jazz guitar performance and composition.

These two, he said, “pushed me to start pursuing a more serious career as a musician.”

Around the area, Saulpaugh has performed at Smoke Signals, Bitters & Bones, Mes Amigos and SubAlpine Coffee. He also hosted and organized his own music festival.

“My junior and senior year of high school I created, hosted, and organized the Big Green Shin-Dig consisting of local vendors, climate education and live music comprised of sets by The Greenbeans, myself and Annie in the Water. The first year brought roughly 200 people and the second year brought roughly 500 enjoying a night of fire and music on the Olympic Oval,” he said.

After hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and finishing his recording project, Saulpaugh plans to listen to that inner voice telling him, “Go west, young man,” and return to Bend, Oregon.

“The goal at this point is to foster beautiful experiences with friends new and old and continuing this idea of fostering community on my travels,” he said. “Many thousands of miles, faces and places make for the adventure of a lifetime. I’ve been playing it day by day for the past year and I wouldn’t trade the struggles and triumphs for anything at this point. The good times are just starting and I’m excited to see where the music will take me.”

People can track Saulpaugh’s hiking trip, as he plans to document it on a blog titled “Indigo Plateaus.”