Katelyn McKinney, Director of Mountains and Medicine, is a seasoned therapeutic backcountry guide and facilitator. She leads transformative healing retreats and expeditions for physicians, veterans, and communities navigating traumatic experiences. She vibrates with the joy she finds in this work. Her background as a social worker is diverse, spanning sex trafficking intervention and aftercare in India, to most recently serving as Director of Healthcare and Social Work for the largest US homeless shelter operating during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Beyond her education as a social worker, she’s a licensed EMT and wilderness medicine instructor. She’s also received extensive training through NOLS for risk management as well as training in swift water rescue, avalanche rescue, glacier travel, and mountaineering. She’s also a decorated veteran, having deployed multiple times during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. After her honorable discharge from active duty she was a Foreign Service Critical language Scholar specializing in Hindi.

13 years ago Katelyn turned to wild spaces in the pursuit of finding balance in her high tempo, intermittently fulfilling and devastating work. She began an incredible, humbling, medicinal, professional adventure that would take her to over 40 countries. In that time, and with the guidance of inspiring mentors, she became a therapeutic backcountry guide. With the last decade deeply immersed in the frontlines of community care and holistic wilderness guiding, she has always cherished learning, and continues to develop her understanding of the nuances of gathering people in the wildest of physical and human terrain.

Katelyn lives in Juneau Alaska with her husband and cofounder of Mountains and Medicine, Dr. James McKinney. She’s an artist, potter, gardener, hunter, wood worker, and good mischief maker, often found covered in something with a giddy grin. She loves taking time to create beauty and instigate laughter. Katelyn, James, and their incredible pups are always stoked to ski, bike, climb, cook elaborate meals, and take long rainy walks in the wetlands together. Recognition of their privilege as well as appreciation of the Tlingit & Haida land and people they live among, informs their honorable harvesting practices and their efforts rooted in making upward mobility more accessible.

 “I love that we can gather to mindfully play, heal, and learn. Community that welcomes injuries and shame as essential to the collective experience, can sew us back together. I know it sounds so hippie dippy, but it’s data driven. This juicy-wiggly-electric learning space invites our highest intentions, getting to the heart of the practice of being a human. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

-Katelyn