Gabriella Palko

.

From the top of her small boat moored in the port of Valdez, Gabriella looks at mountains that, very close, recall what she has always loved: discovery, encounters, adventure.

In Palko family, Christmas often meant a journey to new skiing areas, with cereal bars and a holiday as a gift. Coming from a tribe that lives in nature, Gabriella, who also calls herself Gabby, grew up by discovering the joys of life in the open air. She travelled through many American states and mountains during his youth. She gradually was introduced to touring under his father's wing. After practising on the east coast, she enters the University of Colorado Springs, where she fine-tunes mountain skiing along with an environmental policy course. After graduation at the university, the pain for her father's death pushes her to change her life. On a whim, she manages to get hired for three months by a heli-skiing company in Valdez. The discovery of a community of people with a passion for mountains and adventure, in this wild environment cut off from the world, is a true discovery. She gets rid of everything she owns and decides to move to Alaska. There, invited on a friend's boat, she falls in love with the freedom to come and go and ski on the islands that dot Prince William's Bay. Since then, by force of circumstances, she became a skipper, on the Zéphir, her 7 m 50 fibreglass sailing boat. Her life is made of activities, including writing, photography or radio animation and given that enjoying nature is not enough, she defends it as a member of civil security. And at night, through a porthole, she looks at the Alaskan sky reflected on the water.