How far are people willing to go to win a juicy $500,000 prize? The answer varies from person to person, but one sure thing is that money isn’t what motivates “Alone” contestants the most, but the need to challenge themselves well beyond any limits.
While there aren’t many people willing to risk their life by remaining in solitude in a wilderness environment for weeks, there are some special cases such as Brooke Whipple who not only did it once, but twice in a matter of a couple of years.
That being said, the “Alone” experience is an undeniably life changing event, which not many people are able to get over easily, but could this be Brooke’s case as well? Stay here to know all about her whereabouts, her double experience in the show, and what she’s been doing since the last time we saw her risking her life on TV.
Where Is Brooke Whipple Now?
Despite not becoming the winner of “Alone”, Brooke Whipple has been quite successful at building a career around outdoor explorations, and living ‘off the grid’. Nowadays, Brooke hosts the popular YouTube channel Girl In The Woods, in which she not only shares interesting content centered on her life in Alaska’s wilderness, but also interviews, useful tips for adventurers, do it yourself videos for alternative building techniques, and even recipes.
With over 470,000 subscribers and almost 60 million accumulated views, Brooke’s channel is definitely one of the most successful in the niche of survivalism. Her growing fame has allowed Brooke to offer other services through her website, such as wilderness tours in Alaska and South America, public speaking appearances, and selling her crafts, naturally-sourced jewelry and clothing.
All in all, Brooke has been using her time off TV in a useful way, and doing what she loves the most, which is enjoying nature and living outdoors.
What Happened To Her Husband?
Those who know Brooke from her time in “Alone” surely remember her husband Dave Whipple too. The couple was the third last standing contestants in the show’s fourth season, and undoubtedly left an impression in the audience.
Although it’s not usual to find a couple so committed to an alternative, off the grid life together, Brooke and Dave have surely proven that it’s perfectly possible to have a stable marriage while sharing the most amazing adventures in the wilderness.
Nowadays, it’s not rare to find Dave in Brooke’s videos and social media, though he’s also quite good at creating his own content. Through his channel Bushradical, since 2017 Dave has built his own loyal audience by sharing what he describes as ‘Rustic Living’ content, which consists of cabin building, sharing outdoor living tips and recalling some amazing personal stories for his audience.
Unsurprisingly, Dave’s channel is highly successful, having accumulated almost 860,000 subscribers and over 90 million views. Dave has also recently achieved an important milestone in life, as in October 2022, he and Brooke celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary doing what they love most, which is living outdoors, and freely.
Who Is Brooke Whipple?
While most people know Brooke Whipple from her time in “Alone”, or through her YouTube channel, she’s actually worked in a number of projects related to survivalism and off the grid lifestyle.
Beginnings & Education
Native from a rural area in Michigan, Brooke was always inclined to a life outdoors. However, the experience which changed it all was a road trip she took to Yellowstone National Park in 1991, while working near the Old Faithful geyser, spending the entirety of the summer hiking and just having a great time.
From then on, Brooke spent the following five years taking small jobs all around Colorado, Montana and in Alaska, where she traveled with only a few hundreds of dollars while having no job or housing secured in the state. Nonetheless, she made a living for a while working in the hospitality industry in Homer, while spending the rest of the time exploring nature and living in a tent.
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After exploring so many places, Brooke returned to Michigan, and in 1997, graduated from Ferris State University with a degree in Adventure Recreation Management. She then enrolled in an Outdoor Center in Wisconsin, in order to obtain a certification as an Outdoor Educator, as she listed on her website.
Nonetheless, Brooke isn’t inclined to academics – during an interview with Big Rapid News, Brooke affirmed not being pleased with the way the educational system works: ‘It’s based on your grade point average, going to college, but there’s really no discussion of what’s your joy, what’s your real passion — and that’s what you should chase down’, she said.
Writing Career
Brooke Whipple is a woman of many talents, including the ability to write entertaining and compellings books and articles. From 2001 to 2007, she wrote a comedic column entitled “View From The Cabin” for the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. Also starting from 2010 and for the next two years, she contributed to the local Delta Wind newspaper, with the column “Local Happenings”.
While her experience as a journalist is impressive, Brooke has also published two books – “The Frozen Toe Guide to Real Alaskan Livin’” was released in 2007 and offered important and useful tips and a guide on how to survive some of the biggest dangers of living in the Alaskan wilderness, such as the attacks of local animals and freezing temperatures, on top of dealing with the lack of basic commodities such as plumbing, electricity and food.
Though Brooke’s first book was released by a local Alaskan publisher, all the publishing credits of her second book entitled “Alaska Did This to Me” are for herself. The latter book follows the line of humor she used during her days writing her “View From The Cabin” stories. Despite being originally published in 2012, in 2021 she re-released it with a new cover, and it’s currently available on her Etsy shop.
Filmmaking
Brooke’s filmmaking career started with the 2010’s documentary “Mt. Marathon” aired on the AlaskaOne network. The documentary centers on Brooke’s experience in the Mount Marathon Race, celebrated yearly in Seward, Alaska and which consists of climbing the Kenai Mountains, reaching ithe highest peak at over 4,800 feet above sea level.
While the experience was undoubtedly hard, Brooke joined the marathon as a self-imposed challenge to get back into shape after the birth of her second child a couple of years prior. Despite not having previous experience in mountain running, Brooke was amazed by the race, and by the fact that not many people were able to see how it was to live it themselves: ‘I was just really inspired as I was just kind of getting into filmmaking at that point, and I thought, what a great first project’, she said in an interview for “The Alone Podcast” in 2021.
Despite admitting to wanting to change some aspects about the “Mt. Marathon” documentary, Brooke is still proud of the work she did as an amateur filmmaker. She isn’t the only one who deeply appreciates the documentary though, as the work was rewarded with a $5,000 prize by Alaska’s non-profit Rasmuson Foundation back when it aired.
Joining “Alone”
Brooke Whipple’s first participation in “Alone” was in the fourth season, which premiered in 2017. Teaming up with her husband Dave, the couple’s mission was to survive in the north of Vancouver Island, with little to no resources or tools.
While Brooke was dropped near the shore set for their quest, Dave was left 10 miles away with only a compass to point the way to his wife. The couple finally reunited on the ninth day of their adventure, and remained in the show for 49 days in total: ‘Our relationship is strong and remained strong throughout our time there. The takeaway I gained is the reinforcement that we make a great team and always have’, as Brooke told Hollywood Soap Box.
Regarding their reasons to join the show, Brooke admitted that the $500,000 prize motivated her at first, but the lessons she learned along the way were more valuable in the end: ‘you begin to realize the things that really matter in life are your relationships with other people, a shared meal, a warm bed, love, memories’, she admitted. Although Brooke and Dave weren’t the last standing couple in the show, the “Alone” experience surely changed their lives.
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Second Time In “Alone”
Not long after returning home from her first experience in the show, Brooke Whipple was invited to join “Alone” again for its fifth season. However, this time the challenge didn’t include her husband, and introduced a location near the Khentii Mountains in Mongolia.
Despite being excited at the prospect of joining the show for a second time, her previous experience made Brooke aware that the challenge was to be taken seriously: ‘It’s very traumatic in ways. It’s very rewarding, but it’s very taxing on every aspect of your being, your physical, your emotional, your mental’, she told Big Rapid News.
Brooke’s strategy to successfully remain in the wild in complete solitude was to keep her mind busy with daily activities, besides those which ensured her survival, such as crafting jewelry and a useful handmade system to keep track of the days she spent in the Asian wilderness. In the end, Brooke tapped out on the 29th day of the challenge due to the overwhelming loneliness she experienced. Yet she was content with the result and wished to prove something new: ‘I have nothing else to prove. I know I can do it. I want to do other challenges’, she affirmed in the same interview.
Other TV Experience
Although appearing in “Alone” played a huge role in Brooke Whipple’s rise to fame, that wasn’t the first time she’d appeared on TV. Besides her 2010’s documentary “Mt. Marathon”, Brooke also appeared in the reality series “Yukon River Run”.
Premiered in 2015, the eight-episode long series introduced three crews of rafters whose mission was to become the most successful supplies seller group as they traveled the Yukon River. The idea for the show was actually born from an article entitled “Rafting In Alaska” published in 2014 in Backwoodsman Magazine by Neil Eklund, whose decades-long adventures building and rafting along the river inspired the series.
Eklund is a good friend of Brooke and Dave Whipple, who have known the adventurer since the early 2000s, and they often traveled to Alaska to help him build log rafts, so when the idea of creating “Yukon River Run” came along, the Whipples had the right experience and willingness to join in the adventure, leading them to take their children Belle and Mick with them to appear in the TV show.
Despite not resulting in the winner of “Yukon River Run”, the experience did a good job at introducing Brooke and Dave to the reality TV industry.
Read about Nat Geo Channel New Series "Yukon River Run" and assoc with Backwoodsman Magazine https://t.co/DIKBj77Apr pic.twitter.com/tHVjVnl676
— Backwoodsman Magazin (@backwoodsmanmag) July 24, 2015
Guide & Teaching Career
From the start of her adventures, Brooke Whipple began collecting experience as an outdoors guide. Her earliest known work in this field dates to 1999, when she worked as caretaker of a Winter Homestead in the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea. As stated on her website, some of the most remarkable moments during that time were boating ‘alongside Orcas’, catching halibut, and preparing traditional wine.
Brooke kept that work until 2000, when she was hired by Neil Eklund to help him with his log raft building, something she considered as one of the best times of her life: ‘it was just such a special place. And boy, I could just go spend lots more time there on a log raft on the Yukon river, it’s like my happy place’, she affirmed in an interview with “The Alone Podcast” in 2021.
Although Brooke and her family briefly returned to living in Michigan in the 2010s, that didn’t stop her from teaching her knowledge about survivalism to people of all ages. Besides workshops, short courses and books, Brooke has also passed down her outdoors knowledge through other methods, such as joining the Imagine Exhibitions Museum Installation as a survival expert, and her YouTube channel.
All in all, it’s evident that Brooke is deeply passionate about not only living out-of-the-box, but also in teaching others how to be happy while doing what you love, whether that’s in the great outdoors or not!
