From Kilimanjaro to the Peaks of the Balkans

McKinsey & Company employees have built an adventure travel network called Mind Over Mountains that started with a 2023 Kilimanjaro trek and now sends colleagues on multi-day hikes around the world.

The next edition is an eight-day, roughly 100-kilometre route through the Peaks of the Balkans in September. The 100 places were claimed within three hours, with attendees paying about $1,000 each, excluding airfare.

The trips are not official McKinsey retreats. Organizers such as Alex Harman, a London-based AI product manager, work with local tour vendors and accept participants on a first-come, first-served basis from across the firm’s roughly 40,000-person workforce, from senior partners to entry-level analysts.

Participants say the draw is not only the destination but the chance to disconnect from email, meet colleagues outside office hierarchies and spend days together in a way that remote work rarely allows.

What Mind Over Mountains Reveals About McKinsey's Culture

Why demand keeps growing at McKinsey

The group has grown from roughly 30 colleagues on Kilimanjaro in 2023 to about 65 in Patagonia in 2025 and 100 for the Balkans. The three-hour sellout suggests real appetite for offline connection rather than a perk limited to senior staff. Participants say hierarchy fades on the trail because no one can easily tell whether a walking partner is a partner or a business analyst.

What the employee-led structure means

Because these are not corporate programs, employees pay their own way and organizers hire outside vendors; the 2025 Patagonia trip raised more than $115,000 for mental health charities. That keeps the initiative nimble, but it also places the logistical and safety burden on volunteers. Harman describes planning for 100 McKinsey colleagues as high-pressure, saying such a group will notice everything.

Where the model could go next

The founders want the trips to continue even if they leave the firm and encourage employees elsewhere to try similar projects. Whether that spreads may depend on company culture: the initiative appears to work at McKinsey partly because employees are willing to fund and organize it themselves, which may not replicate easily in less entrepreneurial workplaces.

What Other Employee Groups Can Borrow From Mind Over Mountains

  • Start with one named trip and let demand grow: Mind Over Mountains moved from roughly 30 Kilimanjaro participants to a 100-person Balkans hike over three years.
  • Use a clear paid, first-come model with an explicit price — about $1,000 per person for the Balkans, excluding flights — so the commitment is real without a corporate budget.
  • Treat local vendor vetting as the main workload; organizers reported high pressure arranging guides and logistics for 100 colleagues.