TLDR: Dr. Žiga Ogorelec, 35, is a post-doctoral biologist from Kočevje, Slovenia, who co-founded Gozdovništvo bushcraft school in 2014 and has logged more than 80 days of off-grid survival experience including a 15-day, 270-kilometer solo wilderness crossing of Slovenia with no food.
On Alone Season 13 he made the riskiest gear decision in the cast: deliberately leaving his ferrocerium rod behind to free up a slot for additional passive harvesting tools, meaning he must start every fire by friction alone in the sub-Arctic.
Most people who end up on survival television have one thing. A military background, or a hunting credential, or a bushcraft school.
Žiga Ogorelec has a PhD in limnology, a published research record on invasive species and freshwater food webs, a solo bicycle expedition across five continents, a 15-day wilderness crossing of Slovenia on no food, and a bushcraft school he co-founded in the most bear-dense region in Central Europe.
He is also the first Slovenian citizen ever to appear on the franchise. In his home country, where Slovenian media celebrated his casting extensively, that distinction carries weight.
The Science Behind the Survivalist
Ogorelec completed his PhD in biology and limnology at the University of Konstanz in Germany, with subsequent research tenures in Sweden.
His specialty is freshwater ecosystems, specifically how invasive species disrupt food web dynamics, trophic cascades, and predator-prey relationships in lakes and rivers.
He currently works as a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Biology in Ljubljana, where he is the principal coordinator of PURIFICATION, an ARIS-funded research project on reducing freshwater aquaculture pollution, running from January 2025 through July 2027.
This is not background flavoring for a television bio. He applies the same bioenergetics thinking he uses in his research directly to survival strategy, evaluating the caloric cost of active hunting versus passive gill-netting, calculating whether the energy expenditure of building a large log shelter is justified by the thermal return, treating the wilderness as an ecosystem to be understood rather than a problem to be overpowered.
Gozdovništvo and the Kočevsko Forest
In 2014, Ogorelec and his brother Miha co-founded Gozdovništvo, a bushcraft and survival school headquartered in Kočevje. The name translates from Slovenian as “woodcraft” or “forest-craft.”
The school runs programs from two days to eight days in the Kočevsko region, which contains some of the last remaining primary old-growth forest reserves in Europe and one of the highest concentrations of brown bears, gray wolves, and Eurasian lynx on the continent.
Wild camping and dispersed fires are illegal throughout Slovenia and most of Central Europe, which means European bushcraft has developed as a highly precise, craft-intensive discipline focused on working within strict environmental constraints rather than roaming freely across open wilderness.
Ogorelec bridges both worlds. He brings Central European precision to the Canadian sub-Arctic, the exact situation his Season 13 competitor Nero Buys navigated from the opposite direction, bringing Australian arid-climate skills to a boreal winter.
The Experiences That Qualify Him
Ogorelec has logged more than 80 days of fully off-grid survival experience.
His most significant solo test was a 15-day, 270-kilometer wilderness crossing of Slovenia’s karst and forest regions, carrying no food and relying entirely on wild-foraged resources for the duration.
He has also completed a winter survival test without a sleeping bag or modern fire-starting tools, survived on a marine island without fresh surface water, and crafted a traditional dugout canoe for a 4-day survival rafting trip down the Kolpa River.
Beyond wilderness survival, he completed a one-year solo bicycle expedition covering 19,000 kilometers across five continents and 34 countries, documented in the film From Slovenia, Around the World and Back. The expedition was conducted with a bicycle, a basic tent, and minimal gear through deserts, jungles, and remote mountain ranges.
The Ferro Rod Gamble
The most discussed decision Ogorelec made before his drop was deliberately leaving his ferrocerium rod off his gear list. Every other contestant brought one.
He used that slot to carry both a gill net and a full length of paracord, giving himself immediate passive food acquisition capability from Day 1.
The consequence is that he must start every fire through friction, using bow drill, hand drill, or maintaining a continuous coal bed, under wet, cold, and increasingly freezing sub-Arctic conditions. In a region where the temperature will eventually drop to negative 30 or negative 50 degrees Celsius, losing fire is potentially fatal.
The irony is that the decision most likely to end his run early is the same one that demonstrates how seriously he takes the competition.
He filtered lake water through his leather boots in Episode 2, improvised physical filtration to remove particulates before boiling, which illustrated the same pattern: creative problem-solving in place of standard gear solutions.
He is also one of the few contestants who had not yet begun building a permanent log shelter by Episode 4, deliberately conserving energy while his passive gill net and snare lines generate calories without physical cost.
The contrast with contestants like Aaron Barnard, who threw enormous energy into a massive log structure from the earliest days, is stark.
For the full Season 13 cast, see our Season 13 hub.
Žiga Ogorelec and Alone Season 13: Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Žiga Ogorelec not bring a ferro rod on Alone?
Ogorelec deliberately omitted his ferrocerium rod to free up a gear slot for both a gill net and a full paracord length, prioritizing passive food acquisition from Day 1. He must start all fires through friction methods, a high-risk strategy that requires him to rely entirely on his bushcraft skills rather than a standard ignition tool.
What is Žiga Ogorelec’s background?
Ogorelec is a post-doctoral biologist specializing in limnology and freshwater food webs at the National Institute of Biology in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He co-founded the Gozdovništvo bushcraft school in 2014, has logged over 80 days of off-grid survival experience including a 15-day solo wilderness crossing of Slovenia on no food, and completed a 19,000km solo bicycle expedition across five continents.
Is Žiga Ogorelec the first Slovenian on Alone?
Yes. Ogorelec is the first Slovenian citizen to compete on the Alone franchise. His casting was celebrated extensively in Slovenian media, which framed his appearance as a historic moment for the country.
