Four left standing by end of grueling Alaska show
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
Trish Bulinsky's worst experience on the Discovery Channel's "Out of the Wild — the Alaska Experiment" came early.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL The volunteers from the show "Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment" (from l-r) top row Penny Jo Johnson, Jake Nodar, Frederic Birt, John Ulmer, (middle row) Joseph Harner, Trish Bulinsky, Kimberly Wise, (bottom row) Dan Rac, Carolyn Yamazaki.

The nine group members had blundered the day before and decided to hike up a mountain rather than go around it. They ended up hunkered down for the night on an unprotected hillside, covered only with plastic tarps. They huddled and shivered together, waiting for morning to come. When they awoke, it was bitter cold, dark and snowing.

"It was horrible," she said in an interview this week. "If I was going to leave, I would have left then. We knew what we were in for after that. That was hard core."

Bulinsky, 36, was one of only four to make it to the end of the show. Brick Township resident Daniel Rac, 24, reluctantly dropped out in the third episode, after medical personnel told him he had to go.

But leaving the Alaska experiment was never an option for Bulinsky, a wife, mother of three and a bus driver from Middletown Township.

"I signed up for this," she said. "I wanted to be there."

The Discovery Channel cherry-picked Bulinsky; Rac, a Point Pleasant Beach police officer; and seven others out of more than 100,000 applications from people who wanted a slot on the nine-member team.

The experiment was a grueling 60-mile survival trek in a remote section of central Alaska. The group received a week of survival training before a bush plane dropped them off at Susena Lake in September 2008. The goal was to make their way out of the wilderness back to civilization. It was up to them to catch or kill their own food.

There were no prizes, no cash, no contracts waiting for them at the end. Each group member had his or her own reasons for signing up, Bulinsky said.

The show reinforced her inner strength, she said.

"I am bad ass," she joked. "I can do anything if I put my mind to it. It's scary, but it's also fantastic."

Rac, who is also a body builder, was initially attracted by the challenge of the experiment. But by the time he left, he had a new appreciation for home and family, both his own and the family of group members.

"The number one thing I got out of it is the importance of a family," he said in a recent interview.

There are only five group members left at the beginning of the last episode: Bulinsky; John Ulmer, 38, an assistant housing director from the Bronx, N.Y.; Jake Nodar, 30, a horse trainer from Darnestown, Md.; Carolyn Yamazaki, 26, a lawyer from Chicago; and Kimberly Wise, 25, a personal trainer from Chula Vista, Calif.

Spirits plummet when they arrive at their next shelter — wooden posts, a floor, a stove. There are no walls, no roof. Bulinsky and the group members fling tarps over the posts, start a fire and settle down for a frigid night. It is snowing heavily. There is no food. And Yamazaki is reaching her breaking point.

Day 28. It is 5 degrees, the coldest day of the journey. And Yamazaki can't take anymore.

"I'm leaving, you guys," she says. "Maybe tomorrow it will be over. For me, today it's over."

She pushes the GPS button on her belt. A helicopter comes shortly after, picks her up and clatters away to civilization.

Each time a group member leaves, it affects the remaining members of the team. There's more to carry. There's the psychological effect.

But although Bulinsky was sorry to see Yamazaki go, it didn't weaken her resolve to finish.

"I'm here for me," she said, as she calmly hacks off the heads and feet of squirrels Ulmer shot and killed. "I'm not going to let it make my mind weaken."

Bulinsky, Nodar, Ulmer and Wise pack up and reluctantly prepare for what appears to be a 14-mile slog up an icy ridge to the next shelter. None of them is looking forward to it. But there are clues that civilization might be close. Gunshots in the distance. A train whistle.

It is snowing heavily. The temperature is 19 degrees. One mile into the hike, the group comes to a crossroads of sorts. They spot a group of cabins in a clearing. No one is home, and breaking into them is not an option. Then Nodar spots clean train tracks set off from the cabins.

It's decision time. The group can keep following their map to the next shelter, or stay put and wait for a train to come, even though it may be days or weeks before one does. They opt for the train.

"We're not moving until a train comes," Nodar says.

They don't have to wait too long. A train whistles in the distance. They flag it down with a white shirt and climb on board. It is the first time they have been warm in a month.

The train pulls into Talkeetna a little after 5 p.m. The group members had planned to celebrate with some showers and a good meal. But they have a surprise waiting for them. Their family members have flown into greet them at the end of their journey. It is over.

Their worst enemies on the trail were hunger and cold. Both were a constant, Bulinsky and Rac said.

Days went by when they ate nothing at all. Hunting did not come easily. They caught only one fish on the entire trip. The group munched on the blueberries, highbush cranberries and crowberries that studded the Alaskan tundra in the early part of the journey. That ended when the snow started.

"You just don't have any food," Bulinsky said. "You'd be surprised how much abuse the body can take. We were hungry all the time."

So instead of eating, they talked about endlessly about food. Recipes. What they would eat if they could.

"We called it food porn," she said with a laugh. "I memorized so many recipes. It was actually comforting to talk about it."

At first, Bulinsky's stomach hurt from the lack of food.

"Then it just went kind of numb," she said.

Rac, on the other hand, was hungry by the second day. A body builder, he normally ate between 3,000 and 4,000 calories a day at home. He lost 53 pounds during his time in the experiment.

Eating was not easy, even when the show was finished and Bulinsky was back home in New Jersey.

"My body really went into shock when I had my first food, steak, king crab legs and potatoes," she said. "I had pains shooting through my stomach. That happened for close to three weeks."

Bulinsky lost 24 pounds during the trip and a few more when she got home. These days she stays in shape by doing what worked in Alaska.

She rolls up free weights in a towel, puts them in a backpack and hikes on the Henry Hudson trail near her home.

"Hey, it works," she said.

The four remaining group members also got to meet the camera crew that had shadowed them the entire trip. The crew was under strict orders not to interact with them at all.

"They did not help us, they did not sneak us food," Bulinsky said. "They did not point us in any direction. They were ridiculously professional. They couldn't wait to come up and introduce themselves. They were a bunch of fantastic individuals. Once they were able to put the cameras down, they were so much fun."

And both she and Rac said they would do it all over again, despite the tough conditions.

"Absolutely," Rac said.

The show's finale was slated to air at 10 p.m. June 9 on the Discovery Channel, with repeat episodes.