Graduate to guide Program

The Next Step:

COMPREHENsive Guide Training

To close the adventure gap in outdoor recreation, our most recent chapter has been training our ‘BK2AK Graduates’ to become wilderness guides.

Support graduate guide training

How it works

After 12 years of providing adventures in the Alaskan wilderness for youth from New York City, we inaugurated our ‘Graduate to Guide’ program during the summer of 2020.

Past graduates are leading future BK2AK participants, as well as private clients, on river rafting trips, overnight backpacking, ice climbing, and glacier hikes.

We now have 6 fully trained and certified BIPOC guides who are just as comfortable in the wilds of Alaska as they are in the city environment of Brooklyn, NYC. Our guides can cook, counsel kids, run 100-mile river trips in remote Alaska, and are wilderness first responders. We are the only team of river guides of color in America!

“Seeing guides in the outdoor space who are similar to themselves helps our kids absorb the wilderness experience more fluidly and integrate it into themselves more easily as something that can be a part of their truth.”

— Samuel, Grad to Guide program alum