Any youth who lives in Alaska that meets a trip’s specific requirements. All trips have a specified age range, and some trips have location-based requirements (ie. must reside within a certain school district or geographic region within Alaska).

All participants must be nominated by an adult community member and have a completed student application. Links for these can be found at https://www.akgeo.org/youth-programs/youth-expeditions/

Once the nominator application and student application are submitted, the application process is complete.

Any community member in a mentorship role over the age of 18. Immediate family members, including parents, and friends of students over 18 may not nominate prospective participants. If you are a student interested in a trip and do not know who to ask for a nomination, please contact our Education team (email below) for further support.

Check in January for applications for the upcoming summer. We are not always able to have all applications open by January, some applications will open in February-April.

Please only apply for one trip. There is a section of the application that will ask if you would like to be considered for multiple trip options.

Our expeditions and trips are run in partnership with public land agencies, like the National Forest Service and the National Park Service. We work together with our partners to establish the structure and schedule for each trip individually. Most trips will incorporate conservation projects with our partners in the morning, then after lunch the group will go out on their exploration with their AK Geo guide for the afternoon. After dinner, there will be an Evening Program. Unless otherwise stated, our trips are camping based.

Please see each trip for their specific physical requirements. All participants must be in good health and be able to self-regulate emotions in moderate terrain through the rain, sun, wind, mosquitos, hot, and cold.

Unless otherwise stated, our trips are for teens living in Alaska. We make exceptions for Native Alaskan teens living in the Lower 48 and teens who are from Alaska but living outside the state temporarily. Any trip for youth from outside Alaska will be designed for a specific geographic area in the Lower 48 (Seattle students – keep an eye out for 2023 for a Klondike-Gold Rush Backpacking trip in Skagway!)