Arctic Wild: Our Guides

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Professional Guides for Alaska's Arctic Wilderness

Remote wilderness travel demands professional guides with exceptional technical skills. Our clients demand personable, knowledgeable, and hard working guides. Arctic Wild is fortunate to have an astoundingly skilled, informed and passionate group of guides working with us. Some guides only work one trip a year while some hike and paddle with us all summer long for decades.

Our guides’ skills are born of both experience and solid training. In addition to completing our annual in-house training all of our lead guides carry a Wilderness First Responder medical certificate and many of them are have Swiftwater Rescue training too. Some guides also work as biologists or mountaineers, professional conservationists, and educators. All of our guides have the experience and knowledge to make your trip safe, fun, and educational. All of our guides love their work!

Arctic Wild Guides:

Bill Mohrwinkel, Co-owner/Guide

Bill is an exceptional guide and educator who has been leading trips since 1989. He has worked as an instructor, guide and program supervisor for both Outward Bound and The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Alaska and across the US and Mexico. Bill is an accomplished mountaineer, exceptional paddler and an efficient, graceful and skilled outdoorsman. In addition to his technical skills and training Bill is a well rounded naturalist and birder. Bill has been active in working to protect the arctic for the past 10 years, and for the last 6 years has toured the country with a slide show about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He lives in the mountain town Palmer Alaska with his wife Carrie and daughter Halley. In the winter Bill is a concert promoter for Whistling Swan Productions, bringing folk, blues and Indie music to south-central Alaska.

Michael Wald, Co-owner/Guide
Michael loves sharing his knowledge and passion for wild places. It is this love of teaching that has led Michael to work as a wilderness guide, educator and researcher. Michael has been leading wilderness trips since 1991, helping others understand and enjoy wildlands from Alaska to Labrador to the Antarctic in all seasons. Additionally, Michael has taught science courses at the high school and the undergraduate level, and has participated in research projects ranging from marine mammal studies to songbird habitat characterizations. Michael is able to draw on these diverse experiences to help others understand the intricate and fascinating ecology of Polar Regions. When not guiding or exploring Alaska's rivers with his wife Sally and sons Leo and Nolan, Michael enjoys carpentry and wooden boat building. In the winter Michael does the scheduling, booking, and logistics for Arctic Wild.

Sally Andersen, Office Manager
Sally keeps Arctic Wild on-track and efficient. Being married to long-time guide and co-owner Michael Wald, she is no stranger to the business. And as a lifelong resident of Fairbanks and a field research biologist with a Master’s Degree in Botany, she is no stranger to the arctic. But, as mother to 4 year old Leo and 2 year old Nolan, she is keeping a little closer to home these days, In addition to working part-time as the Office Manager of Arctic Wild, she is the Project Coordinator for the Chena Flats Greenbelt Project, part of the Interior Alaska Land Trust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Yarnell
Ron started exploring Alaska’s Brooks Range in the early 1980's, long before other guiding companies, as owner of the guide business Wilderness Alaska-Mexico. Ron's company eventually grew into Arctic Wild when David van den Berg bought the business in 1999. Freed from Administrative duties, Ron can concentrate on what he likes most, showing participants the magnificence of the arctic wilderness. Ron enjoys helping people experience the wilderness and sharing his knowledge of animals, plants, geology, and local history. When any of us at Arctic Wild need information about a river or backpacking route, Ron invariably knows the answer. Ron's depth of experience is part of what make Arctic Wild special. In addition to leading trips for Arctic Wild, Ron guides trips in Mexico, Belize, Nepal, and Thailand through his business, All About Adventures.  Additionally, Ron is fulfilling a lifelong dream of building a log cabin on a lake 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle in the central Brooks Range.

 

 

 

 

 

David van den Berg
David van den Berg graduated from Furman University and came to Alaska in 1989 to help clean up oil from the Exxon Valdez.  In 1990, David moved to Fairbanks to work as an intern for the Northern Alaska Environmental Center to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling.  To learn the country, he immediately started working in the Brooks Range with renowned Alaska guides Wilbur Mills and Ron Yarnell, and eventually created the guiding company Arctic Wild in 1999.  Working with Bill and Michael and the rest of the Arctic Wild crew, David has consistently leveraged Arctic Wild to protect Alaska's arctic wilderness.  In 2005, David followed his passion for wilderness into an office, re-joining the Northern Alaska Environmental Center as its Executive Director. David has to count his vacation nowadays, but still guides a trip or two a year. 

 

 

 

Dan Ritzman
After many academic fits and starts (due to a fondness for wilderness and
travel) Dan found his way to Alaska after finally receiving a Graduate
Degree from the School of Forestry at the University of Idaho. One of his
first jobs in Alaska was with the Northern Alaska Environmental Center in
Interior Alaska as the State Lands Coordinator. Dan and David van den Berg shared an office in the old Northern Center house and met Ron Yarnell on a "lobby" trip to Washington, DC. This proved to be very fortuitous for Dan who found himself guiding a trip on the Hulahula the next summer. Dan feels very fortunate to still be friends with David and Ron and to have returned to the Brooks Range and North Slope every year since. When not introducing people to the beauty and wildness of Alaska's Arctic Dan spends his time advocating for its protection as the Sierra Club's Alaska Program Director working in Alaska and Washington DC to protect wild public lands. "Chill the Drills" Dan lives with his wife Cindy and her son Brody in Seattle. Dan and Cindy wed in the Ice Chapel in Chena Hot Springs under the Northern Lights...yeah cheesy, but memorable.

 

 

 

 

Dori MacDannold
Dori is a long time wilderness enthusiast who has kayaked, mountaineered, and hiked through the wilds of Alaska, Wyoming, and Mexico, and now makes her home in Palmer, Alaska. She has been an instructor with the National Outdoor Leadership School and with the University of Alaska Wilderness Studies Program and has guided wilderness trips with several Alaska companies, including Arctic Wild since 2000. Dori is currently a yoga instructor, massage therapist, and sole proprietor of Hoop-n-Hula Milk-n-Cookies.

 

 

 

Cameron Baird
Raised in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah Cameron Baird grew up playing in the wilderness.  He has since been guiding trips in Alaska for the past ten years.  With a formal education in Environmental Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks he holds a deep love of the land, inspiring those around him to experience the natural world with renewed wonder. In the winter months Cameron works for the Alaska State Department of Natural Resources. He is also an excellent nature photographer. Cameron and his wife Becky call Fairbanks their home.

 

 

 

Garrett Jones
Garrett came to Alaska in 2005 expressly to experience the Brooks Range. He has a Bachelors of Science degree in Recreation, Parks and Tourism from Radford University Virginia and an Associates Degree in Environmental Science from Mendocino College in California. His eleven years of guiding experience range from working as a fishing guide in Montana and Wyoming, as a wilderness instructor in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Alaska, and now as a guide with Arctic Wild since 2006. Experiencing Alaska and the arctic is a life changing event and he loves sharing this amazing journey with others. Garrett is a top notch boater and an enthusiastic naturalist. When not cooking in the Arctic, Garrett builds custom homes in Fairbanks.

 

 

Dave Shaw
Dave Shaw first came to Alaska in 1998 after graduating from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His first summer in the great land was spent working as a bird bander in Denali National Park. He fell in love with the state and moved up full time in 1999 to work as a field biologist.  Dave attended graduate school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where he received his Masters in wildlife biology in 2006.  He has a love of extremes, which has taken him from the Himalayas of Bhutan to Antarctica and the Amazon. He has worked as a naturalist guide in Antarctica, the rainforests of Central America, the Rockies of Colorado, and in Alaska.  While at home and depending on the season, Dave can be found skiing the trails, slopes and mountains around Fairbanks and the Alaska Range, fly-fishing Alaska’s rivers, backpacking along remote ridgelines, poking under mossy rocks, or waiting for the perfect light with his camera. He makes his living as a wildlife biologist and freelance photographer/writer/wilderness guide. Check out his website at www.wildimagephoto.com.

 

Mike Bassett

Mike Bassett is a naturalist, guide and field science researcher who grew up in Oregon and Colorado and now spends his time building in Moab, Utah, guiding in Alaska and the studying Desert Tortoise in the Mojave Desert. Mike first came to Alaska in 1994 to backpack in the Arctic and swore he would return. After five summers guiding in Denali National Park and the Kenai Peninsula, he has returned to the Brooks Range the past two seasons to lead trips for Arctic Wild. His varied employment history includes fish biology technician, Outward Bound instructor, wolf handler, environmental educator, carpenter, freelance mechanic and painter. He has been a licensed river guide since 1998 and has boated all over the western U.S. as well as in Canada, Kenya, and Alaska. His love of travel and adventure has led him to hitchhike on every continent but Asia and Antarctica, which should be remedied by the end of 2010. His extensive love and knowledge of reptiles and amphibians does him almost no good at all in Alaska. Luckily he is also an accomplished canoeist, raft guide, backpacker, birder, wilderness handyman, joke teller, historian, general naturalist, and not a bad cook.

 

Steve Springer

Steve is an avid outdoorsman and boater who enjoys sharing wilderness experiences with fellow outdoor enthusiasts. Steve is an excellent birder, has worked as a biologist for the Alaska Bird Observatory and enthusiastically guides birders from all around the globe whenever he has the chance. Come fall, Steve trades his river boats in for a dog sled or skis and goes mushing or skijoring with his huskies under the aurora. Its ironic that his bio is so short- he is never at a loss for words. His stories of adventures and natural history always delight and amuse his companions.