Chelsey Cook is an Alaska-based writer and mountain guide who specializes in the intersection of the outdoors, conservation, and the human experience. She is dedicated to making the outdoors accessible and helping people connect more deeply to a landscape.
Chelsey has been writing and editing adventure and conservation articles for the last five years, including gear reviews, adventure stories, destination profiles, and narrative nonfiction. She also has a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, where she deconstructed traditional adventure narratives and rewrote them through a feminist lens.
Beyond being a writer, Chelsey is a mountain guide, and an avid human-powered athlete and traveler. She’s pulled climbers out of crevasses at 13,000 feet on Denali, suffered from trench foot after a packrafting misadventure above the Arctic Circle, had snowball fights with Quechua children in Peru, raced winter ultramarathons in Alaska, and gotten the van she lived in for six years stuck on more than one backroad in Utah.
After several years on the road, Chelsey has landed back in Alaska, in a little cabin on a river. When she’s not writing or guiding, she can be found flying her bush plane up the neighborhood glacier, floating the river after work, exploring somewhere deep in the tundra, or traveling abroad.
Background
- Topics of expertise: Gear reviews, destination profiles, adventure narratives,
- Years of experience in these topics: 5
- Favorite topic to write about: conservation and the outdoors industry
- Favorite piece of gear you’ve ever tested: Nemo Double Haul Duffle
- Favorite travel destinations: Alaska’s Arctic, the Faroe Islands, the Highlands of Scotland, Peru
- Past applicable professions: I have been a mountain guide in Alaska for seven years and have worked in communications for several Alaska non-profits and conservation organizations.
Education and Experience
- Education: B.A. in Anthropology; MSt in Creative writing
- Other places you write for: Wide Open Spaces, National Geographic, ExplorersWeb
About the Writer
- Location: Palmer, Alaska
- Places you’ve lived or extensively traveled: I grew up in New Hampshire and have spent the last 10 years in and out of Alaska. I’ve also lived and spent extensive time in Ireland, the UK, Washington, and Utah.
- Preferred pronouns: she/her
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Chelsey Cook