Catalyst: An Arctic Caribou Odyssey in Alaska’s Brooks Range
Challenge yourself physically, intellectually, and emotionally in Alaska’s Brooks Range, where a backcountry caribou hunt tests your resilience, builds lasting skills, and deepens your connection to the land and yourself.
Program Description
As long as humans have existed, we have spent time alone in wild places, hunting. Catalyst is an opportunity for students to touch the deepest roots of what it means to be human. Doing so, though, requires challenge, mental resilience, physicality, discomfort, walking the edge of failure (there is no guarantee), teamwork, real consequences, ceremony, and ultimately, initiation into adulthood. Because of this, because of all of this, the rewards are so much greater and longlasting.
Catalyst is a 10-day backcountry caribou hunting expedition in Alaska’s Brooks Range with renowned Alaskan hunting guide Andrew George and master educators Jason BreMiller and Ian Ramsey who will shepherd you through a powerful experience grounded in the acquisition of hunting skills and the internal journey that accompanies the hunt. In the heart of Alaska’s Brooks Range, you will participate in every aspect of a spot-and-stalk hunt for a bull caribou. You will fly into Fairbanks and drive to Coldfoot where we will hop a bush plane deep into the Alaskan backcountry and spend the next ten days steeped in the life of the hunt: glassing, tracking, stalking, shooting, listening, learning. If we’re fortunate enough to kill a caribou, we will quarter, pack out, and consume the meat together. Not everyone will have a chance to pull the trigger, but we will endeavor to harvest a caribou AS A GROUP, in the same spirit that our ancestors hunted collaboratively and for the benefit of the whole.
And we'll do so much more than hunt, going deep on topics like local natural history, Athabascan and Inupiat subsistence traditions, the impacts of arctic drilling and road development on herd migrations, and what the science says about predator/prey dynamics between caribou, wolves, and grizzlies. In the end we’ll wrestle around the campfire with the paradox of what it means to kill in order to live, and we’ll celebrate together all the ways animals feed us literally and spiritually.
Designed for high school students seeking wildness and a deeper connection to the land, a deeper connection to self, this program focuses on the ethics, ecology, and spiritual contours of hunting in the wildest corner of North America, and how these contours can help us be better humans on behalf of wild places everywhere. If you’re hungry for more than food–for community, personal growth, and challenge–Catalyst will satiate you in all the ways that count most deeply.
Program
Dates
August 6 - 17,
2027
Program
Location
Alaska,
United States
Application
Status
Opens Soon
Cost of
Participation
$8,500 USD +
Travel Costs*
Eligible
Ages
Grades 9-12
at time of
application
*Financial Aid Is Available
At Bald Mountain Meadow, we believe the opportunity to learn, explore, and experience the world shouldn't depend on financial circumstances. Financial aid is central to our commitment to making these experiences accessible to people from all backgrounds. We want our programs to bring together people with different perspectives, experiences, and ways of seeing the world, and we're committed to removing financial barriers that might otherwise keep them apart.
Currently, 37% of participants in Bald Mountain Meadow programs receive financial aid, on average.
Finding Strength in the Wild
Deep in Alaska’s Brooks Range, hunting is as much a test of character as it is a test of skill. Through the physical demands of a backcountry caribou hunt, students learn resilience, patience, and teamwork while exploring the ethics and traditions of hunting, our relationship with the animals that sustain us, and what it means to take responsibility for ourselves and one another.
Navigate
Alaska’s remote Brooks Range while learning tracking, stalking, and wilderness skills.
Challenge
yourself physically and mentally while building resilience, patience, and teamwork.
Reflect
on the ethics of hunting, subsistence traditions, and our relationship with the natural world.
