YouTube creators The Try Guys recently posted two videos from their time in Duvall: a day of wilderness survival training and a night putting that training to the test.

The Try Guys have made a name for themselves being just that, a group of creators who constantly try new things and document their experiences. A few of them spent April 15 and April 16 at Wilderness Awareness School, an education center tucked away in the forest above Duvall near Lake Margaret. Their YouTube videos documenting the experience came out Nov. 26 and Dec. 3.

Instructor Jeni Ronald said she wasn’t familiar with The Try Guys when they first emailed her, and she second-guessed if it was real. Then, it was exciting that these YouTubers, with 7.9 million subscribers on their main channel, wanted to visit the school.

“It was just a no-brainer of like, this is going to support our school and get the word out of what we’re offering,” she said. “We just kind of made it happen really fast.”

The Try Guys get ready for sleep in the bushcraft shelter they made during their night in the wilderness.

The guys visited the school during its nine-month program called The Immersion. From September through May, participants spend about 19 hours a week learning everything there is to know about wilderness survival. In the end, they have a three-week “end-of-year rite of passage” that includes a one-week wilderness survival expedition, according to the website.

Ronald, one of three core instructors for the immersion program, said The Try Guys spent time with the immersion students while visiting. That day specifically, students were preparing for their survival expedition by learning what wild plants were edible.

But what the YouTubers learned was most definitely a crash course, Ronald said.

“We kind of just taught them the basics,” she said, like how to collect water when you have an appropriate container and are able to make a fire to boil the water.

“Versus, in our immersion program, we teach them how to harvest wild water without containers, without boiling, like if you didn’t even have a fire,” she said. “It was kind of like the tip of the iceberg.”

In total, the crash course included lessons on making a fire with dry wood, hunting and cooking bull frogs, collecting and boiling water, and making a bushcraft shelter with sticks and ferns.

The lessons were made even easier, Ronald said, because they “got lucky” with the weather, which turned out to be mostly sunny, dry and about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

While trying to find their own wood for fire and shelter, The Try Guys, who are from the Los Angeles area, did voice surprise at how wet the wood was, even when it hadn’t actively rained in a while.

This is a peek into the typical challenges immersion students face and are trained for, Ronald said.

Instructor Phoebe Reid (right) teaches The Try Guys to make fire without a lighter. Images courtesy of The Try Guys via YouTube

“What if you didn’t have a knife, or you don’t have wood from the woodshed that’s seasoned and dry?” she said. “The wood we’re going to collect is going to be soaking wet most of the year. We kind of go with all the scenarios of harsh weather and without having food in the middle of winter. Like, how could you make it work?”

During The Try Guys’ night alone, Ronald was on call with Phoebe Reid, another instructor who makes the most appearances in the YouTube videos. Ronald said they would radio the guys every so often to see how they were faring, “and we were really proud of them actually.”

“I was pretty impressed,” she said. “I would give them, like, an A-minus for a beginner.”

She added, “Our immersion students could school them. But for beginners that haven’t really camped, I’m like, OK, not bad.”

Though the primary focus of the videos is survival skills, Ronald said the school also focuses highly on soft skills, like practicing gratitude, community building and leadership. Viewers get a taste of Wilderness Awareness School culture when The Try Guys learn to practice gratitude.

“These [survival] skills are awesome, and we do use the skills as a mode of finding deeper nature connection, which is truly what our school is about. … What we’re trying to do is connect people with themselves and with their community and with the natural world,” she said.

Ronald said the Wilderness Awareness School team is open to visitors who are interested in learning more about The Immersion or any other programming, which includes some virtual classes. Information about adult and youth courses can be found at wildernessawareness.org.

While the school’s goal is to help people leave technology behind, Ronald noted that it is necessary to work with technology to draw a bigger audience.

“It’s kind of ironic that we were doing this YouTube video with these influencers when we’re a school that’s trying to get people off their phones,” she said. “I think there’s just kind of some beautiful irony there. Me and the marketing team recognize that we have to use social media to find people to come and get off social media.”