Topics of Expertise: Hunt, fish, ski, backpacking, mountain biking
Years in This Expertise: 10
Number Of Products & Number Of Hours Expert Has Tested: 500+ products, 2000+ hours
Experience
As an Army brat, Park and his family lived in 8 different places including Chicago and Texas before settling in Upstate New York where he grew up playing lacrosse and soccer and hunting and fishing the Finger Lakes Region.
After college, he lived below the poverty line as a cub newspaper reporter for the Syracuse New Times for 4 years before earning his M.S. in IT and Journalism from Syracuse University. He then jumped to magazines, working at Men’s Health and freelancing before starting a video production company working for media and brands including Reebok, Nutrisystem, USA Today, PBS and others.
For the past eight years, he’s returned to primarily writing, covering sports and testing and reviewing gear in the hunt, fish, ski, and outdoors categories. He’s lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Breckenridge, Colorado where’s he’s lived since 2010 with his partner Aniela and two cats, Wilma and Lois.
Career Highlights
Won a national investigative journalism award for investigating the Rio de Janeiro bathroom U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte supposedly destroyed (he didn’t)
Skied the closed Sochi ski area with Olympic athletes after the Games
Surfed during a hurricane off Oahu’s Eastern shore (didn’t die)
Interviewed UFC fighter Jon Jones about turning over a new leaf days before he’d be arrested in New Mexico
2009 Hawaii State Watermelon Eating Champion
Filled 6 of 6 big game hunting tags in Colorado in 2022
Education & Certifications
Education: M.S. Information Technology + Journalism, Syracuse University
Club or Association Memberships: Summit County Chair, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
Awards or Recognitions: 2016 Associated Press Sports Editors’ Award for Investigative Writing, 2019 Webby Award – Website Best Visual Design
Previous Publications: Men’s Health, USA Today, Field & Stream, Shape, Popular Mechanics
A Word From Justin Park
I started writing for newspapers when I graduated college because I realized I could get paid to learn about things in the world that interested me. Not much has changed since then. Most of my writing today focuses on my passions: hunting, fishing, skiing, backpacking, and the outdoors generally.
I’ve covered two Olympic Games, Super Bowls, the NBA Finals, and national politics, but my writing today is centered on my hobbies and passions. I love sharing my experiences with the gear I use in my everyday life so readers can learn from my testing and mistakes, spend less time shopping, and spend more time outside doing what we all love to do. I spend my free time skiing, hunting, mountain biking, and lots of DIY home improvement projects in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains which are an ideal testing ground for the products you can read about here on GearJunkie.
