RightOnTrek: Backpacking entrepreneur relocates business to Whitefish

Victoria Livschitz was balancing a career in Silicon Valley and raising three children when she found an escape from the pressures of daily life — time spent outdoors.

“That kind of stress catches up with you,” she said. “I needed something different.”

She began going on backpacking trips and discovered long distance through-hiking trips.

“It literally changed my life,” she said.

As Livschitz began exploring her newfound passion and talking with friends out on the trail, it made her examine why more people weren’t out there exploring. An entrepreneur with a background in technology, she began to examine the barriers those who haven’t grown up in the outdoors face.

“I knew that many people visit national parks, but why don’t they take the next step and hike in the Grand Canyon and sleep under the stars,” she said. “So I thought, what if I made it a lot easier for people by creating a company that would unlock the great outdoors.”

Along with a group of friends Livschitz created RightOnTrek, and in October she relocated to Whitefish moving the business with her.

“I wanted to find ways to spend time outdoors without giving up my career,” she said. “It was important for me to have an outlet for me to be good at my job and family. It was about self-care.”

RightOnTrek aims to make outdoor adventures accessible to new hikers and lifelong outdoor enthusiasts with all-inclusive backpacking vacations. Through its website, the company has a list of itineraries for potential hikes based upon location, length and difficulty. Once selected, the company sets out the logistics of the trip such as what permits might be needed and gear that is required.

The company also has gear packages and assists hikers in packing their backpack to make sure they have the gear that’s needed for the trip.

“We prepare the gear for you because it can be technical in what you need, but also gear is expensive to purchase,” she said.

The third piece of the puzzle, Livschitz says, is food. RightOnTrek recently launched the meal plan portion of its offerings. Through research the company has designed optimal backpacking menus with nutritious food that is lightweight, but is also cost effective.

“We rethought the meals,” she said. “Traditionally the freeze-dried meals people eat were designed for disaster recovery, not for backpacking. The food leaves a lot to be desired for flavor and nutrition.”

So RightOnTrek took the technology of ultralight stoves and created meal plans that could be cooked on the trail and would be much more healthy and better tasting. Most people who backpack also want the food to be inexpensive, so Livschitz says the goal was also to ensure that the meals were the least expensive per calorie of anything on the market.

Meals can be customized for number of days on the trail, and by dietary needs or preferences, and then it's packaged with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and snacks for each day.

Livschitz says the trips, gear and meals are all tested by those behind the company.

“We literally eat our own food,” she said. “We use our own products. We think about how much better of an experience we can make.”

Most of the trips on RighOnTrek are located in California where Livschitz resided previously. When the wildfires hit California last summer and that combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Livschitz was staying in Seattle when she decided to explore areas of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming where she had never been before. After visiting Whitefish she knew she had found her new home.

She says now that she’s in Montana she’s already getting out in Glacier National Park, and expects to expand the trip list for RightOnTrek.

“The end goal is to really cover the entire world with these services,” she said.

For more information, visit https://rightontrek.com/