TLDR: Will Longley, 37, known by his Iñupiaq name Panikġruaq, grew up in a traditional subsistence camp near Nome, Alaska, and now lives in Kotzebue raising five children with his wife Carrie.
He represents the United States on Alone Season 13, bringing ancestral Iñupiaq hunting, fishing, and food preservation skills to the Beaufort Delta.
His frame of reference for the competition is cultural, not athletic: he sees his participation as a repatriation of Iñupiaq knowledge to land his ancestors traveled during times of need.
Most survival contestants describe their preparation in terms of skills acquired. Will Longley describes his in terms of a life lived.
He did not learn Iñupiaq subsistence techniques in a course or a wilderness school. He learned them as a toddler, in a seasonal camp on a gravel spit on the Norton Sound, from a mother who was teaching him what her mother had taught her.
Nuuk, Nome, and a Childhood on the Tundra
Longley was born in Nome, Alaska, but the primary setting of his early life was Nuuk, a generations-old Iñupiaq seasonal hunting and fishing site located about 20 miles east of Nome along the Norton Sound.
His traditional Iñupiaq name is Panikġruaq. As soon as he was old enough to leave the warmth of his mother’s hooded parka, he was integrated into the seasonal cycle of the camp.
He learned to trap Arctic ground squirrels and lemmings, set a family gill net from a great-grandfather’s rowboat in the turbulent Safety Sound, and trek the tundra alongside his mother to harvest aqpiks, low-bush salmonberries preserved in seal oil for the winter months.
When he was seven, his family relocated to Fairbanks. He has described the experience as a sensory shock, seeing tall trees for the first time and feeling disoriented by their canopy.
He attended Ryan Middle School and West Valley High School there, polite and well-adjusted, and quietly resolved that he would return to a land-based existence as soon as he could.
Kotzebue and the Life He Built
At twenty, Longley met his wife Carrie, whose Iñupiaq name is Ulugaagruk.
Recognizing that her home community of Kotzebue, on the Baldwin Peninsula north of the Arctic Circle, offered the ecological and cultural mirror to his Nuuk childhood, he relocated there with nothing but a single duffel bag.
In Kotzebue he fully re-entered the subsistence cycle, studying under local elders and mastering advanced marine and terrestrial harvest techniques.
He and Carrie have five children together: William (Kappaisuk), Cassie (Inukuk), Willow (Aagayuk), and Kenna (Taliiraq).
Carrie spends winters hand-sewing traditional garments from harvested hides for local competitions.
Longley hunts caribou, moose, and grizzly bears, pots king crab in the Arctic Ocean, and fabricates traditional tools from harvested materials.
His Instagram account, @alaskanwill, documents this life for an audience of over 14,000 followers.
It functions less as a social media presence and more as an archive of cultural preservation, detailing the step-by-step methods of hide tanning, tool carving, and Arctic food preparation that might otherwise exist only in living memory.
The Tools He Makes by Hand
Longley’s traditional craftwork is functional rather than decorative.
He carves snow goggles from caribou hooves or walrus ivory, with narrow horizontal slits to prevent snow blindness, lashed with braided caribou sinew and moose leather straps.
He constructs semi-lunar ulu knives by salvaging 100-year-old two-man crosscut saws and mounting them on ivory handles and caribou antler stands.
He makes bird bola weights, leister prongs for spearing fish, ivory gorge hooks, and bone caribou arrowheads engineered to detach from their shafts on impact for game tracking.
He has also hand-constructed traditional Iñupiaq plate armor from caribou antler pieces lashed with moose rawhide.
His Strategy on Season 13
Longley was dropped at a location called Narrow Fields in the Richardson Mountains, a prime transition zone between mountain slopes and river delta where moose habitat and wildlife migration corridors converge.
The terrain closely mirrors the ecotones he navigated between Nome’s coastal tundra and the forested Fairbanks interior growing up.
His most significant gear choice was replacing standard fishing line and hooks with a gill net, the same passive harvest tool he learned to use as a child in Safety Sound.
He cannibalizes his snare wire to fabricate custom hooks as needed, freeing a full gear slot for both an axe and a saw. He also built a traditional mouth-drill and a wooden berry comb on arrival to strip tundra cranberries and blueberries quickly.
His most deliberate psychological decision was choosing not to bring family photographs.
While other contestants use photos of loved ones as motivational anchors, Longley made the calculated judgment that looking at pictures of his wife and five children in deep isolation actively triggers grief that degrades endurance.
A clean mental state focused on physical work, he concluded, preserves more resilience than emotional reminder.
He frames his participation not as a survival competition but as a cultural act.
Historically, during severe ecological shifts or famines on the Seward Peninsula, groups of Iñupiat traveled east across the frozen terrain to Canada’s Northwest Territories, harvesting in the Canadian boreal forest when their home ranges could not support them.
Longley sees his drop into the Beaufort Delta as a repatriation of Iñupiaq knowledge back to the same land his ancestors traveled during times of need.
Will Longley and Alone Season 13: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Will Longley’s background on Alone Season 13?
Will Longley, known by his Iñupiaq name Panikġruaq, grew up in a traditional subsistence camp near Nome, Alaska, and now lives in Kotzebue raising five children with his wife Carrie. He hunts caribou, moose, and grizzly bears, harvests marine mammals, and fabricates traditional Iñupiaq tools by hand from ivory, antler, and salvaged materials.
Why did Will Longley not bring family photos to Alone?
Longley made the deliberate decision not to bring family photographs, reasoning that looking at pictures of his wife and five children in intense isolation actively triggers debilitating grief. He concluded that a clean mental state focused on physical work preserves more long-term endurance than emotional reminders.
Why did Will Longley choose a gill net instead of fishing line on Alone?
Longley replaced standard fishing line and hooks with a gill net, the same passive harvest tool he learned to use as a child in Safety Sound near Nome. He cannibalizes his snare wire to fabricate custom hooks as needed, freeing a full gear slot for both an axe and a saw.
