Kristin Gates lives in Denali Park, Alaska where she performs backcountry operations for the Park Service by dog team. Kristin is a long-distance hiker and is best known for becoming the first woman to traverse Alaska’s Arctic Brooks Range solo on a 1,000 mile route that she mapped out herself. Over the coming three summers, she will be joining the Sedna Epic Expedition to snorkel the 3,000 km Northwest Passage. The goal of the expedition is to create educational outreach programs in the villages along the coast and create a platform to combine aboriginal and scientific knowledge about climate change. She will be the expedition’s EMT and videographer. The group will be diving to collect samples for above-ground tanks so that the communities can see what lives under the water in their backyard.