José Miguel was born in Costa Rica and from a very young age, accompanied by his father, he traveled thru the natural corners of the Rain Forest. He moved south with his family to Chile, where as a teenager he started climbing the mountains close to Santiago. He became an architect, but his passion to the outdoors brought him back to mountains, where he worked in outdoor adventure education programs, taught classes for under graduated schools and nowadays runs rescue courses in Chile and Argentina and manages the operations for a mountain school in Santiago, where he teaches LNT courses and other mountain skills.