The Story You Didn’t See
(Or: everything that didn’t fit into 44 minutes of television)
We’re deeply grateful to have shared our lives on Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild. But television has limits. Time runs out. Weather moves in. Batteries die. And sometimes reality is simply messier, slower, and funnier than a clean storyline allows.
So here’s the fuller version—organized in a way that fits the spirit of the show, with a little honest humor where it belongs.
1. Why we’re really here (hint: it’s not a resort)
Let’s start with the most important clarification:
We are not building a traditional ski resort.
No lifts. No luxury spa. No shopping village. No “please remain indoors and enjoy the ambiance.”
Elev8150 is a mountain basecamp. A place to eat, sleep, gear up, and get back outside. The buildings are intentionally rustic and simple because the mountains are the main event—not the room you’re staying in.
We also plan on hosting a very small number of guests per year. This is not about volume.
Our guiding principle is simple: less is more.
2. Why this place exists at all: recreation (a lot of it)
One of the biggest things the cameras didn’t show is that we didn’t come here just to build—we came here to live.
Recreation isn’t a side note. It’s the reason this place exists.
Our real, everyday life includes:
Backcountry skiing
Snowmobiling
UTV riding
Hiking
Stargazing (the “wow, we’re insignificant” kind)
Whitewater kayaking and rafting
Jet skiing
4x4 / rock crawling
Hunting
Big game watching
Camping (yes… even though we live outside already)
We own the gear. We use it. Constantly.
None of this was filmed simply because there wasn’t time—or it didn’t fit the episode’s story arc.
Also worth noting: this is why construction sometimes pauses. Powder days happen. We’re human.
3. The dream didn’t start with Brandon
This matters more than people realize.
Elev8150 was Alisa’s idea.
She wanted land that matched our family’s outdoor, seasonal lifestyle.
At the time, Brandon was already renting a shop and building expedition 5-ton vehicles. He dropped everything to help build her dream. Not because it was easy—but because it mattered.
This project exists because of partnership, not ego.
4. The kids are driving this harder than we are
This is not a “parents forcing a lifestyle” situation.
The kids want this—badly.
For them, Elev8150 is a gigantic, real-world playground where seasons matter, skills matter, and life feels tangible. We sent Alayah off to build her culinary career fully expecting she might never return.
She did return.
Because it turns out there’s not a lot of everyday fun in the “real world.”
That should probably tell you everything you need to know.
5. We are not broke. We are not desperate.
This is a big one.
At the moment, we are completely debt-free.
If we stopped building tomorrow and never finished Elev8150, we would still be fine heading into retirement.
So no—this project is not about saving ourselves financially.
It’s about building something meaningful for our children and future generations.
Which brings us to…
6. Why crowdfunding actually makes sense
Building in the mountains is brutally expensive. Everything costs more. Materials. Labor. Transport. Time. Weather mistakes.
For most people, the options are:
Be very wealthy
Go deeply into debt
We chose a third path: tell the story honestly and invite people in.
Crowdfunding lets us build responsibly without betting our family’s future on massive debt. It’s not the easy way—but it’s the right one for us.
7. We already bought the “expensive stuff”
Another thing that didn’t come across on camera: we’re not starting from zero.
We already own:
Commercial stoves
Professional cookware
Tour vehicles
Groomers
Core operational equipment
What we don’t have yet are the buildings themselves. Ironically, the simplest-looking part is the hardest to fund in remote terrain.
8. This isn’t the middle of nowhere
The show focused (understandably) on our immediate location. What it didn’t show is the ecosystem around us:
Philipsburg, Montana—a real destination town
Collaboration and subcontracting opportunities with places like The Ranch at Rock Creek
Discovery Ski Area, which we can literally see from our property—and where Alayah works as a ski instructor
Elev8150 isn’t isolated. It’s connected.
9. Opportunity, Not Obligation
Brandon grew up on a farm in Illinois, where land and work are passed down for generations. That’s not unusual—it’s one of the oldest human traditions there is.
This isn’t about grooming our kids.
It’s about offering them choice, skills, land, and responsibility.
What they do with that is up to them.
10. About Alisa’s eyes (yes, people noticed)
Alisa looks worried sometimes because she is.
In the last year alone, Brandon has gone through:
A full knee replacement
Complications from surgery
Dental issues triggered during recovery
Significant lost time while healing
And now faces the possibility of shoulder surgeries
At the same time, we’re watching friends Brandon’s age pass away around us.
There’s another layer to this that isn’t visible on camera.
Alisa learned very young that time is not guaranteed. Both of her parents passed away early in life. Her mother—beautiful, vibrant, and once Miss Texas—passed away at roughly the same age Brandon is now.
So when Alisa looks concerned, it isn’t abstract worry. It’s lived experience.
Getting older is slowing us down—and honestly, it makes us angry.
Not bitter. Just urgent.
Urgent to finish what we started.
Urgent to build something that matters.
And at the same time, Brandon and Alisa are cherishing the time they have left—choosing presence, purpose, and each other, even as they push forward.
11. About the hair, the clothes, and the very obvious lack of “TV polish”
Yes—we noticed too.
And no, it wasn’t an oversight.
We made a very intentional decision not to dress up, get haircuts, shave, shop for new clothes, or “clean ourselves up” for television.
When most people are shown to the world, they glam up. Fresh hair. New outfits. A little polish. Maybe even an emergency spa appointment.
We did the opposite.
There were no last-minute hair color sessions. No wardrobe racks. No stylists hiding behind the camera. Just us, exactly as we live every single day when no one is watching.
Why? Because we didn’t want to perform a version of our lives—we wanted to invite people into the real one.
The truth is, everyone knows what they look like when their front door closes. This was us choosing to show that version. The unfiltered, practical, slightly dusty, occasionally exhausted version that actually builds things and lives outside.
It felt more intimate. More honest. More human.
And frankly, it aligned perfectly with who we are:
less is more, not keep up with the Kardashians.
12. About education, influence, and the people actually in our world
One impression some viewers came away with was that our family—and especially the kids—live cut off from the outside world, without much exposure to education, science, or other people.
That’s understandable. A lot of that context didn’t make the edit.
What wasn’t shown was Trinity and Ben spending time in a filmed segment that amounted to a private, graduate-level nature and conservation lesson led by Gregg Treinish.
Gregg is the founder of Adventure Scientists, an organization that connects adventurers with real scientific research around the world. He was named Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic after completing a 7,800-mile expedition along the spine of the Andes. His work spans everything from wolverine and lynx to bears, owls, and sturgeon, and his recognitions include Ashoka Fellow, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Men’s Journal’s “Most Adventurous Men,” and the Explorers Club 50.
That entire segment was filmed—and then cut for time and narrative focus.
At the same time, the film didn’t show the reality of our immediate community.
Our next-door neighbors on the same ridge, with property touching ours, are William Moore and his wife. William is a successful scientist specializing in water rights, and his wife is a practicing physician. They have a child of their own, visit their property often, and we communicate weekly. The kids have a great relationship with Will.
William is also an extreme skier who knows this mountain better than anyone. He has personally scouted and named every backcountry ski run in the area—and loved it so much that he chose to invest in property right next to ours. During filming, William even provided video footage of the ski terrain to the director. It wasn’t used because it didn’t fit the episode’s storyline.
That’s television.
There’s another layer of context that didn’t come through either—Brandon didn’t arrive here without an academic foundation.
Brandon comes from a family where science, curiosity, and the natural world were everyday conversation. His grandfather, Frank C. Bellrose, was one of the most influential waterfowl biologists of the 20th century. Frank spent over 50 years with the Illinois Natural History Survey, pioneered waterfowl population counts still used today, helped restore wood duck populations, exposed the dangers of lead poisoning in birds, and authored Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America—still a global reference. He even lectured internationally, including at the University of Cambridge.
Despite all of that, Frank was known most for his humility.
That influence shaped Brandon’s father, Ron Bellrose, who raised Brandon with the belief that nature is one of the best classrooms there is. For Brandon, the outdoors was never just scenery—it was education, responsibility, and wonder.
That academic thread continued formally as well. While studying at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Brandon received the Rickert Ziebold Trust Award in 1989–1990—at the time one of the largest individual financial academic awards being given. It’s not something he talks about much, and it’s not something we felt needed airtime—but it matters for context.
The simplicity you see now isn’t a lack of education or exposure.
It’s a choice.
So when people wonder about our kids’ “socialization,” the answer is simple: their world is filled with scientists, doctors, explorers, educators, and lifelong learners—just not always in classrooms, uniforms, or situations that look familiar on television.
Different doesn’t mean disconnected.
It just means the classroom has better views—and occasionally skis.If you recognized yourself in that—congratulations. You’re normal. So are we.
13. About Las Vegas—and the 19 years in between
The show spent time on Alisa’s past as an adult entertainer in Las Vegas—but what it didn’t explain is that Las Vegas was nineteen years ago.
That chapter mattered, yes. But it wasn’t the end of the story. It was the very beginning of a much longer one.
What didn’t make the edit was everything that came after Las Vegas.
After leaving, our family didn’t settle into comfort or routine. We leaned into adventure. We built several expedition-style vehicles and spent years crisscrossing America—often far from paved roads—visiting most of the U.S. National Parks, whitewater rafting and kayaking, mountain biking, camping, and traveling through remote places that most people only see on maps.
Those years weren’t a pause between lives.
They were training.
They taught us how to live small, adapt quickly, fix things ourselves, navigate uncertainty, and stay calm when plans fall apart—which, in remote places, they always do.
Check out one of our family year long 30,000 mile adventures in a military truck.
In many ways, that long stretch of exploration is what truly prepared us for what we’re doing now. Elev8150 wasn’t a sudden leap. It was the natural continuation of a life already lived outside the margins.
We also understand how storytelling works—especially in television. Sometimes a simpler, more recognizable starting point is chosen because it’s easier to grasp in a short amount of time. Nuance often loses to familiarity.
But the reality is this: the Bellrose family’s story isn’t about reinvention overnight. It’s about evolution over decades.
No shortcuts.
No sudden pivots.
Just a long road—quite literally—that eventually led us here.
14. What Alisa gave up—and why she still doesn’t have her house (yet)
One last piece of context that matters.
Alisa doesn’t have her “house” yet—not because of poor planning or bad luck, but because of a very deliberate choice.
Instead of buying real estate early and settling into one place, Alisa chose to invest in time, experience, and shared memory. For sixteen years of constant adventure, she gave her family something harder to measure than square footage: several hundred thousand miles of life on the road.
Those years were spent traveling the United States in self-built expedition vehicles—vehicles that allowed us to live anywhere, stay anywhere, and truly understand the places we passed through. Not as tourists, but as temporary locals.
Along the way, Alisa would constantly hear people talk about what they were going to do after retirement.
Having lost both of her parents early in life, she quietly came to a different conclusion.
Her personal motto became:
“Do it before your back goes out and arthritis sets in.”
In other words, it’s nice to get your bucket list done before you’re stuck cruising the ski resort bunny run, watching younger legs drop into the Black Diamond lines you used to love.
That choice looked like:
Trips to New York City and Los Angeles
Several years of skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado
Whitewater kayaking in Oregon
Rafting and skiing around Bend, Oregon
Sea fishing out of Coos Bay, Oregon
Rock crawling in Hummers through Moab, Utah, and Durango, Colorado
Trips to Florida to see the Space Shuttle, Disney, and the Everglades
Visiting most of the National Parks in the lower 48
Because of the expedition vehicles, we weren’t limited to weekends or hotel stays. We could live in places for months at a time—long enough to understand the rhythm of a community, the land, and the seasons. We didn’t pass through. We immersed ourselves.
Those sixteen years shaped our kids, prepared us for remote living, and quietly trained us for what we’re doing now.
So yes—Alisa doesn’t have her house yet.
But what she gave her family instead was sixteen years of shared adventure, resilience, adaptability, and perspective.
And Elev8150?
That’s where all those miles finally come home.
15. The biggest plot point the show missed: Alisa’s twenty-year curve
Perhaps the largest arc that New Lives in the Wild simply didn’t have time to tell was the magnitude of the curve Alisa made over the last two decades.
Alisa didn’t just change locations. She changed direction.
She went from a highly material, image-driven world to one defined by movement, discomfort, risk, and exploration. From an adult entertainer in Las Vegas to an extreme traveler and adventure-driven explorer, logging hundreds of thousands of miles across the United States—often far from pavement, cell service, or certainty.
No, she doesn’t claim a place alongside the great explorers of history. But she did take a very real stab at it—and she did something even harder: she brought her kids along.
Along the way, there were mistakes. A few detours. Some hard lessons. Growth rarely happens in a straight line.
What matters is that Alisa stepped completely outside the stereotype of who people expect someone from her former industry to become. She rejected comfort, predictability, and easy gratification in favor of challenge, exposure, and constant motion.
That kind of transformation isn’t tidy. It doesn’t come without psychological cost, identity shifts, or moments that feel uncomfortable—even unstable—while you’re inside them. Reinventing yourself often looks messy from the outside.
But it also builds depth.
The Alisa you see today is not a reinvention for television. She is the result of twenty years of lived experience, risk-taking, parenting on the road, and choosing growth over safety—again and again.
That curve matters.
And it may be the most important part of the story.
Final thought
A television episode can only show so much. Real life is longer, messier, funnier, scarier, and more meaningful than a clean edit allows.
If you watched the show and felt curious, inspired, confused, or skeptical—that’s fair.
We’d rather be understood than perfectly packaged.
And if “less is more” resonates with you, you’re probably our kind of people.