Nathan Olsen
Buhl, Idaho, USA · Alone Season 12: Africa
- Age on show
- 52
- Gear sourced
- 10/10
How far did Nathan get? (tap to reveal)
- Days lasted
- 34
- Placement
- 1st
How Nathan's season ended (reveals the result)
Tech CEO who lives in southern Idaho with his wife Erica and a blended family of ten children and two grandchildren; his brother Luke Olsen competed in Alone Season 10.
Our take on the run
Olsen won at 34 days, the shortest winning run in the franchise's US record, and the number is a review of the location more than the man: four of the ten contestants tapped inside the first five days, and only Olsen and runner-up Kelsey Loper survived past the one month mark at all. Meanwhile his own food logistics were, by desert standards, thriving, he described the acacia trees near camp as loaded with long strips of drying fish, and said afterward the finale felt bittersweet because he still had everything he needed to continue. That gap, a field collapsing around a contestant with food banked, is the whole story of the first desert season. His brother Luke had already played this game in a cold season, which makes the Olsens a household with unusually broad testing data.
The loadout, examined
Soap made Nathan Olsen's list. So did a water bottle, a blanket instead of a sleeping bag, and a block of salt, and together those four slots mark the first kit in this franchise built for a desert. The Great Karoo season rewrote the packing problem: heat management, water scarcity, and hygiene in place of the usual war against cold and rain, and Olsen, a 52 year old tech CEO from Idaho, read the assignment more literally than most of his cast. Only two contestants that season packed soap at all.
The food side stayed recognizable, bow and arrows, fishing kit, knife, multitool, pot, ferro rod, but the salt is the strategic pick: preservation for drying fish in a climate that cooperates with drying. A water bottle barely rates a slot in lake seasons; in the Karoo it was arguably the most important category on the table. This is what the standard loadout looks like after someone actually interrogates every default against the location.
Nathan's loadout, item by item
Fully sourced selection. Photos marked “category example” show a typical product for that slot, not the exact unit carried. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
category example
category example
category exampleBow and arrows
Pictured: unspecified 40-lb takedown recurve bow
category exampleFishing kit
Pictured: unspecified assorted hooks + monofilament line
category example
category example
category exampleWater bottle
Pictured: Triple Tree water bottle
category exampleBlanket
Salt
Compare with the rest of the Season 12 cast or see what every winner carried.