Joel Hungate recently returned home from filming a new reality TV show in Alaska in which a group of people had to use their wits and basic tools to survive.
GREENFIELD —Joel Hungate has a dependable job and a warm home in Hancock County, but that didn’t stop him from spending an untold amount of time in Juneau, Alaska, last month, hunting and foraging for his own food in the freezing rain.
The McCordsville man was tapped to film a new reality adventure series for a major streaming service last month. The series is being kept under wraps for now, but is set to debut next spring. “Think of it as a mix of ‘Alone’ and ‘Survivor,’” said Hungate, 33, referencing two other reality TV shows that have contestants fend for themselves in the wild.
After answering an online casting call and going through several interviews, Hungate boarded a plane Sept. 30 to meet up with his fellow castmates — 15 other self-described adventure enthusiasts who were selected to compete on the new show.
This week, he posted on his Facebook page that he was back home after a “wild adventure.” While he can’t disclose how long he remained on the show, or exactly when he returned, Hungate will say that the experience was the thrill of a lifetime. He can’t say whether he and his teammates won or not, but he does promise that whatever was filmed will make for great television.
The experience was a far cry from his job as director of Hancock Wellness and employer strategy at Hancock Health, where he oversees the county’s three wellness centers, among other things.
He plans to return to work Monday after taking the past week off to get caught up with family and friends, most importantly his wife, Jessica, and their three young kids.
“The real survival was happening at home, where she was managing our household with three small children. That would be the best survivor reality show,” Hungate said with a laugh.
His wife, a chemical engineer for Eli Lilly and Co., shares her husband’s love of travel and adventure. The couple are parents to twins Maximus and Charlotte, age 3, and Amelia, 18 months. “My wife is the strongest person I know. Every single day when I’d wake up (during filming) I’d find a lot of inspiration from her, knowing that she’s probably facing more of a challenge than I was,” he said.
That’s not to say what Hungate was going through in the Alaskan wilderness was a walk in the park.
“The basic premise of the show is that it is a technical survival competition in some of the most remote and harsh environments you can imagine,” he said. “This environment has one of the highest concentrations of brown bear population on the planet, and you’re rained on in 35-degree weather, which freezes you all night.”
The show divides 16 competitors into teams that compete to see which can survive relying on their own survivalist skills. Contestants are given the same primitive set of tools to survive.
“You had to source all your own food and shelter, using fascinating facets of survival like land and sea navigation, hunting, fishing, foraging, fire making and shelter building,” Hungate said. “It’s an incredibly unique take on the conventional concept of a survival show.”
Hungate lost 20 pounds throughout the course of filming. “My very first week back my first mission was eating as much food as humanly possible. I’ve been ravenous,” he said.
It was his appetite for adventure that prompted television producers to invite him to be on the new show. When he answered the callout online, Hungate shared his experience of a particular adventure he had five years ago in Mongolia, which didn’t exactly go according to plan.
He was the lone American to sign up with a British climbing expedition to make it to the top of a glacier no one had ever fully ascended before. While he and fellow climbers eventually made it to the top, earning the right to name the peak, Hungate was almost “crushed by a boulder the size of a Volkswagen” in the process.
One of his teammates wasn’t as lucky, and suffered an open fracture when a boulder crushed her leg. Hungate and his team rendered first aid and tried to reach out to Chinese and Russian authorities for a helicopter to airlift the woman of the mountain, to no avail, so Hungate spent four hours carrying her back down to base camp the next day before making it back up to the top with the rest of the team.
Hungate, who graduated from Eastern Hancock High School in 2007, has always had a taste for adventure. “I’m a mountaineer who happens to live in Indiana,” he said.
Producers of the new show thought his thrill-seeking ways made him a great fit for the cast to film the new adventure series.
“For me it was one of if not the most difficult thing I’ve ever done from a physical, mental and emotional standpoint. It really allows you to test yourself, to see if you’re the kind of person who can rise to the challenge under the most trying of conditions,” he said.
As tough as he may have been fending for himself out in the wild, Hungate was overcome by emotion when reuniting with his wife and kids afterwards.
“My wife met me at the airport and I got to go home and hold my kids extra tight,” he said.
Hungate can’t wait to share his love of adventure with his children, and hopes to make his upcoming adventures a family affair.
For now, he’s just happy to be settling into his old groove back home in Indiana. “There was no greater reward than being able to get back to my wife, my kiddos, my friends and my community,” he said this week. “It’s so good to be home.”
