[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I'm not seeing my beaver meat.
No way. This has got to be a trick.
♪ ♪
I am not kidding you.
It's all gone.
And now it looks like I might even have to fast.
♪ ♪
I'm [bleep] screwed.
- Oh, [bleep].
A mouse has been defecating all over my fish.
My entire food stash is trashed.
All that dark stuff, that's all mouse crap.
The tapping urge, it builds on itself
until it's all you can think about.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
- Awesome! I got food for today.
And that's a big one too.
That's a big hare.
I just honor life right now.
Life is very special, and I'm alive.
I'm alive in the Arctic.
This is my north country!
Ha-ha!
Wa-pshh!
♪ ♪
- I'm not tapping out.
I'd rather die.
♪ ♪
- [sighs] Here goes nothing.
- Whoa!
- Yes!
- Oh, [bleep].
♪ ♪
- This is the harshest location possible.
We're 125 miles in the Arctic Circle.
- Ha!
- Never had an environment make me feel
like a complete amateur before.
- Everything is against us out here.
- Mother Nature went and bitch-slapped me.
- Looks like I've got grizzlies and wolves as my neighbors.
- Holy crap.
They're just hunting the shoreline.
- Mother Nature is about to dim the lights on us.
We're heading into total darkness.
- Hey, bear.
- The cold and the dark
is going to sap people's souls.
- Really makes you wonder if it's worth it.
- There is no camera crew.
There's no support system.
I'm completely alone.
- Yes!
- People go in one way.
- Stop bleeding.
- And they come out entirely different.
- [shouts]
- This is the most difficult survival challenge
in the world.
- Hoo, hoo, hoo.
- $500,000,
that's completely life-changing money.
- It's beautiful.
- Whoever can thrive the longest...
- Anything out here ought to be afraid of me.
- Whoever can push through...
- [groans] - Wins.
- I hope I made the right choice coming out here.
♪ ♪
[wind whistling]
♪ ♪
- So I heard this river all night--
crunching, crackling.
A lot of it might have been this pond over here--
the lake.
I think it's got some solid ice right now.
Tell you one thing that really blows.
My gill net is definitely gone.
It's, like, under all this water now.
Look at that disaster.
There's nothing I can do with this river right now, man.
That river's got a while yet, man,
before there's safe ice on it.
♪ ♪
Sure as hell can't fish that thing
in any way, shape, or form.
Food supplies are
rapidly depleting.
That's life here in the Arctic for me.
Food shortage, severe.
♪ ♪
There was mice defecating all over my fish storage.
I'm just trying to force myself to stay positive
for this last stretch here, however long it might be.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're here
on the banks of the Mackenzie River
for "Alone" season 11 fashion show
on the catwalk that's been graced
by none other than fashion mogul Callie Russell
from season seven.
Today we have Dub Paetz all the way down from season 11,
brought to you here live in the Arctic Circle.
Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together
for this stunning, amazing fashion show.
Ush, ush, ush.
[dance music]
♪ ♪
Ush.
Red squirrel lined.
Three red squirrels grace this beautiful garment.
Straight on the noggin.
Ush, ush, ush, ush, ush.
And cut.
♪ ♪
It's getting cold as hell out.
Get my coat on.
Let's go get a fire going.
All right, let's get some wood thrown in this shelter.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
There we go.
♪ ♪
I don't know why my back's all wet.
The [bleep] is this?
Oh, my God.
Water pouring in on my sleeping bag.
♪ ♪
Oh, no.
♪ ♪
Serious?
♪ ♪
Today is starting to really suck.
♪ ♪
I was having some condensation issues.
Got, like, slightly warmer.
And then I cranked a fire, and boom,
all this frozen crap that was up there
started falling on my sleeping bag.
♪ ♪
I'm going to rip all this spruce
bough branches off that are holding this moisture
and go from there.
♪ ♪
Every time you breathe, there's a huge blast
of moisture that comes out of your mouth.
And it's a combination of, like, cold air outside
and the warmer air inside, and there's just moisture
building all on the tarp.
Every time it gets warm, it drips down,
and it falls on my sleeping bag and on my bed.
A wet sleeping bag is disaster.
♪ ♪
So I just ripped all this
out of the ceiling of this side of my shelter
'cause of condensation.
I'm gonna try to move it all to the outside of the tarp
and let the snow build on top of that to see what that does.
So...[grunts]
♪ ♪
- I gave my teeth a break yesterday.
I did not chew on jerky at all,
so I'm gonna chew on jerky.
♪ ♪
White fat on the end of that.
♪ ♪
So yeah, I slept very quickly after I went to bed last night.
It was great, and then I woke up about two hours ago,
so I think that's, like, eight hours of sleep.
That's awesome.
♪ ♪
I never get eight hours of sleep.
♪ ♪
I need some more bunnies, you guys.
♪ ♪
Hopefully I'll see a hare and just pop it with my bow.
We got a long trudge through some snow.
There's no animals or animal tracks of any type.
♪ ♪
I have to say, the river is the real source
of food around here, but I don't know
when we'll get to ice fish.
The river is such a mess.
So I'm gonna keep out a snare line
but just in the spots where it seems profitable.
And we all know that you can starve on hares
even if you have a lot of them.
♪ ♪
Guys, I'm out here at my snare line,
and I've arrived where my snares start.
And I'm really sad, really sad.
I have a busted snare.
You can see the end of the wire right there.
Busted snare means an animal got away,
and I'm really sad about that.
Mm.
I don't know if it was a hare that got in it.
I can't tell by the tracks.
The snow is so churned up here.
♪ ♪
I keep thinking, like, don't leave a stone unturned.
If there's a place to go, go there,
'cause ain't nothing anywhere else.
♪ ♪
Empty, empty, empty.
Empty all around.
Empty everywhere, and no fresh hare tracks--
none--since we got this new snow.
♪ ♪
Big waste of time and energy.
♪ ♪
I don't know what the other contestants are running into
with hare population.
My hare population is not good out here.
♪ ♪
The fact that I'm not catching much new food
over these last few days does concern me a little bit.
But because of the amount of jerky that I have,
I know I can go past 100 days on the jerky.
My strategy is to just ration well.
As it stands right now, that food cache
will last till as long as the season wants to go.
♪ ♪
I have enough food to keep me going for a long time.
♪ ♪
[leaves rustling]
♪ ♪
I thought I heard something.
♪ ♪
- [snarling]
- Something making a weird noise in my food cache.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna go look.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- Guys, we have been visited by a new creature
during the night.
And I will show you.
Down here all along my trail, I see these tracks
that I've never seen before.
They're clearly marked out here on the ice.
I can't think of what that would be besides a wolverine.
And guess what.
He got my fish bait.
I had it clogged with a log.
I had a bunch of pike stomach stuffed down
into this little bucket that I made.
♪ ♪
He's gonna stick around.
That means I have to be doubly careful on my food cache,
make sure it's secure all the time.
And I'm gonna keep an eye out to kill that baby.
So I think he'll be back.
I think he'll be back for sure.
I want to eat that thing.
Dadgum. I don't like that.
I got to go run my snare lines.
It's getting late.
I feel that the longer he's around,
the more scraps he steals--
rabbit guts that I've thrown out or just whatever--
the more he could be a real problem.
We can't have that.
All right, we're at the edge of Moose Meadow.
I want to see that wolverine that visited us in the night
so I can shoot a broadhead right through it.
Here are those tracks.
That's got to be wolverine-- bump, bump, bump,
right along here with mine.
Yeah, he came from back there,
and he followed my tracks.
And that's how he found my camp.
All the way from back here,
he followed my tracks into my camp.
He could probably smell my boots had
some, like, hare blood on it.
That's nutso.
Now, what that means is, he found food
and he ate and he was happy.
Hope he doesn't become a huge problem for me.
I want to kill it.
Wolverines are raiders.
We think of the Vikings.
Wolverines are gonna Viking you.
So you might have food stored up.
You might have all your ducks in a row.
And that wolverine will raid you.
They're coming to get what you've got.
God help me kill that wolverine before he
tears something up or gets into my food cache or my house.
♪ ♪
All right. [grunts]
So I'm pulling the snares.
If I got a hare there, the wolverine
would have it before sunrise.
A lot of times...[squeals] They squeal a little bit
and then predators can hear that and come running.
So I just pulled all these guys right here, all these snares.
I'm not gonna come back to this area for snaring again.
All right.
Back to camp across the lakes.
♪ ♪
- Today's gonna be a bit exciting.
We'll get to try ice fishing--
proper ice fishing for the first time in the year.
Yep, yep, yep, so we got to keep moving forward.
So yep, one step forward all the time.
Got to try to keep making progress.
Progress, progress.
Now that I'm out of beaver, it's more important than ever
for me to try to focus and secure food somewhere else.
Without that, you know, I'm in trouble.
You just got to keep going.
Careful, it's slippery.
Slippery right here.
There's an old saying:
the harder I work, the luckier I get.
So I got to work hard now, and hopefully I'll get lucky.
There.
Huh.
Now, first things first.
Like that.
♪ ♪
I think my strategy was a winning strategy,
but losing the beaver was a major setback
in that strategy.
So now I'm kind of skeptical
of how this is all gonna turn out.
I'm gonna fight till the end, but is that gonna be enough?
I don't know.
I know now that the odds of winning
are getting less as time goes on,
because I'm pretty sure somebody got
either a moose or a bear.
Now, when we're in cooking and fooling around
and see that this here start to move a little bit,
I know there's something at the hook.
♪ ♪
Close to the old fire here.
Got to keep chasing opportunities.
Who knows?
But one day at a time is all I know.
One day at a time.
♪ ♪
Pause that right there.
Might not, but I might.
Oh. Good.
Mmm.
♪ ♪
[yelps]
It did move.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Ooh, big one.
Oh, my God.
Oh.
Oh!
Oh.
Whoa! Oh! Oh!
Look at that.
Oh, my God.
You know.
Whoa!
That's the biggest pike I ever caught on a hook.
Look at the monster.
♪ ♪
Thank you!
Yeah!
Oh, that is freaking awesome.
Look at that.
That's a week's eating there.
Yeah!
Hoo!
That saves me, you know?
That pike make up for a lot of beaver that got lost.
After I lost my beaver meat, I felt the heat a little bit.
I felt the pressure.
Oh, my buddy, what a big fish.
When you're dealt with a tough blow,
you just got to stay strong and keep focused on what
you got to do next, you know?
That's the only way you're gonna get out of this.
You just can't lie down.
You got to keep going no matter what.
Oh, jackpot.
Jackpot.
Piece of bait.
Bigger bait, bigger fish, Uncle Harold always said,
God bless his soul.
I'm relieved, extremely relieved,
and super happy, because now I'm secure again.
♪ ♪
I knew I could turn it around,
but it even happened much quicker than expected.
We're gonna have to come up with some other ideas
to try to figure out how to keep animals
from getting at my food.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
All clear.
What a day. What a day. What a day.
Well, man, can't complain, hey, boy?
♪ ♪
- That is really cool.
♪ ♪
[strings plucking]
♪ ♪
OK, gonna introduce all you guys
to my bass.
Check this out.
Now, here's the base.
It's kind of cramped in my shelter,
so maybe you can't see the whole thing at once.
But it's half of a moose antler, which I found.
The neck is made out of driftwood, good and dry,
so it'll help with the resonation.
The top nut is the rib bone of the moose that I shot.
The string is six strands of 20-pound
monofilament line twisted.
[strings plucking]
So this is--
boo-boo, boo-boo, boo--
this is my entertainment.
[strings plucking]
And I will probably give it a name.
It's a really crappy bass, but it's fun.
♪ ♪
I don't know why, but I feel it today.
I feel happy. I feel good about being here.
Gonna try to just pass the days the best I can
and just try to enjoy things and just be, you know?
Ch-ch-ch.
This is a mental game now.
Remember, this journey on "Alone"--
body, soul, and spirit.
And now it's the spirit that we're working on.
It's creativity.
That's your spirit.
So I've been working on a couple songs
I want to debut on "Alone."
[strings plucking]
♪ If you find my body on the field of battle ♪
♪ I'll be walking ♪
♪ The fields of gold ♪
♪ ♪
♪ If you pick me up where I fall from my saddle ♪
♪ I'll be riding ♪
♪ Where none grow old ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'll live life free until disaster comes ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Until it comes for me ♪
♪ Go tell my sister ♪
♪ Go tell my lonely mother ♪
♪ Go tell my girl that I loved her more than any other ♪
♪ We'll meet again one day ♪
♪ And then we're gonna see ♪
♪ Ooh, hoo, hoo ♪
♪ La, la, la, la, la, la, la ♪
♪ I'll be singing ♪
♪ La, la, la, la, lee-hee ♪
♪ I'll be waiting ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Later and later getting daylight all the time.
[laughs] Yep.
Tell you, days are short.
You can't get a whole lot done in a day.
But...
holy smokes.
Holy [bleep].
Smoke-tanned.
[laughs] Oh, [bleep].
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
♪ ♪
All the focus today is gonna be down on the creek.
We're gonna get a lot of sets out.
If I could cache a fair amount of fish,
I could almost stop fishing, you know what I mean?
There's only so much you want.
So I'm gonna try to cache some fish.
First and foremost, I'll check this one.
♪ ♪
Now we shall put another hole.
As time goes on, the days are gonna
get shorter and shorter until eventually the sun
ain't gonna rise no more
and we will go into complete darkness.
You make your hole as big as you can, you know?
When it gets frosty, you'll be happy for it.
[laughs]
I call this one a whitefish hole.
[laughs]
I come from a cold environment, and I know
as the daylight dwindle here, it's gonna get colder.
And colder probably suits me better than my competitors.
Any fish now entering the channel coming through now
pass by all these hooks, eh?
I got an idea for another little project, too, boy.
It was something that was talked about.
I'm gonna make an ice chest.
I can leave my hooks in there all night.
I can leave extra bait there that I need for later.
If I catch a fish, I can put in an ice chest.
I haven't got to worry about jays just
picking at it continuously.
So just a little bit of work while I'm keeping
an eye on my hooks, you know?
♪ ♪
All what I learned is almost like grass roots.
My grandmother's grandmother was Inuit,
so I got an Inuit background.
And my wife is Inuit.
Survival was tough, you know?
It's just like here, being on "Alone," you know,
they had to live off the land.
And it's not easy.
We all know that now. [laughs]
And I didn't realize how tough a struggle they had, actually,
until this show come along.
♪ ♪
There we go.
♪ ♪
- All right.
Lake is frozen.
I'm ready for ice fishing.
OK, I'm gonna chop a hole.
Oh.
I've been planning my whole survival around ice fishing,
so I am freaking ready.
I have very little food left, so this is when I start
really kicking ass, I hope.
♪ ♪
This ice is very thick.
♪ ♪
You know, there was a lot of time
before this show where I hem-hawed about whether
I was gonna bring an ax or not with me.
♪ ♪
The only reason I always ended up saying
I was gonna need one is for this moment right here.
I came in here with the hopes of getting a big game animal
and fishing as my backup and knowing full well
that if all else failed, I can always
bank on my fishing skills.
And right now, I'm banking hard on my fishing ability.
♪ ♪
So I'll give it a shot.
If I don't get a fish today out of this,
probably gonna get a little worried, and...
I do not want to be back to stressing about food, man.
I just knew that there was gonna be a two- to three-week
time frame where I was gonna have
a hell of a time getting fish.
Here we are.
I've not caught fish in a while.
I'm depleting all my food,
and it's starting to get cold as hell.
I need the food to eat, to keep me warm.
And it's not comforting to see my food supply
dwindling down to nothing, so I really,
really need to get some food.
♪ ♪
I literally have two ounces of questionable,
whether I should eat it or not, pike left,
but we're gonna eat some of that.
♪ ♪
Question at a certain point becomes...
♪ ♪
Do you want $500,000
this badly?
♪ ♪
It's like slime.
Eye socket hanging there off it.
♪ ♪
And it tastes like absolute hell, man.
♪ ♪
And the answer to that question,
of course, is yes,
I want $500,000 that badly.
So down the hatch.
♪ ♪
Dude.
♪ ♪
I mean, this is absurd.
I feel glad that I made it this far,
but I just need a couple fish.
I don't like this realization I've had today
about how screwed I might be.
♪ ♪
Look how far I've fallen.
I'm not sure how much longer I can push this.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- It's a nice day in the Arctic in Timber's cabin.
Right out my door, there's Moose Meadow out there.
I've got everything I need.
I've got a fire crackling right there.
I've got a bunch of firewood stacked under here.
So yeah, I'm doing pretty good.
I do have to watch.
While I have a fire like this, then you have to really watch,
'cause it pops, sparks out.
I'm grateful for an awesome day.
It's really bright.
It's gonna be nice.
OK, my project right now is to sort
my moose jerky into two piles.
And I've sewed a bag out of my T-shirt.
I sewed a string across the bottom.
And I'm gonna put one pile in here.
If it's soft enough to be chewable,
I'm gonna put it in this pile over here.
And if it doesn't look soft enough to be chewable,
it goes in the reserve stash.
♪ ♪
I've really eaten a lot of this.
♪ ♪
Oh, no.
I've got a few pieces that were thick,
and they are starting to mold.
When I see the first spot of mold on my moose jerky,
my heart just sinks.
How is this happening?
This stuff was not only dry but, like, overly dry.
I'm gonna work these few pieces over
and make sure that I don't lose them.
Cut the mold off and eat those first.
I can't believe the jerky's growing mold, guys.
Probably 50% of it has some mold on it,
but I'm cutting it off.
No man ever killed that much meat
and got to enjoy less of it fresh than me.
[laughs]
OK, the time has come to thaw out some fish
and to cook some lunch.
All right, we counted the lard up today.
It's gonna run out soon.
That is a sad thought, 'cause that stuff
is what's keeping me going.
I lived for weeks on boiled fish when I got out here,
and I can do it again if I catch more fish.
♪ ♪
I don't know what's wrong with me.
I feel like I'm probably eating better than most "Alone"
contestant ever probably,
and I'm still just starving,
losing weight, losing condition,
losing strength, and starving, hungry.
Even though I'm eating each day,
I just lust after food
in the most crazy way all the time.
♪ ♪
I think the mental game is really big now.
Has to be the main thing I play at--
managing the mind.
Or my mind will check out.
It just about reached that point of,
I want it to be over.
♪ ♪
So I really have to just buckle in,
find things to enjoy, keep my mind on track,
keep it reined in from thinking on certain things.
I miss my family like you can't even believe--
way worse than I thought I would face.
But I'm gonna buckle in mentally
and just try to do the best I can.
I don't know why I'm still scraping.
There's nothing more.
♪ ♪
- Today we're gonna make our second gill net.
♪ ♪
That looks good.
♪ ♪
I'm going to set the gill net in the lake.
[speaking indistinctly]
Nice, fresh hole.
♪ ♪
Daylight is dwindling, man, and it's only gonna get worse.
So I need to take advantage of every second of daylight
that I have left.
All right, let's see how this works.
Never set a gill net in the ice.
My plan is pretty much slip this damn thing under the ice
just like that.
♪ ♪
Gill net deployed.
In addition to the gill net today,
I'm gonna put a hook down with some fish meat on it.
I'd really like to get some fish.
♪ ♪
I'm giving it all. There's nothing to spare.
♪ ♪
I am just trying to make it,
'cause each day gets colder.
Each day gets darker.
And each day gets harder to freaking keep my hand
away from that damn button.
♪ ♪
The freedom that $500,000 would give me
is something I just can't even imagine.
♪ ♪
I'm extremely close with my mom.
You can tell I'm a mama's boy.
If I won the 500,000, I would immediately
pay my mom's house off.
Everything she's ever given to me,
finally I can give something back.
I really need to win this so bad.
♪ ♪
Nothing.
Bummer.
♪ ♪
It's getting cold, man.
I'm gonna head back.
♪ ♪
Every day, it gets darker and darker
faster and less daylight.
At night, there's nothing to do.
I have to sit in this shelter for the next 16 hours
till it's light out again.
There's nothing but time.
♪ ♪
So I made this violin.
So the strings are gonna come from here,
go across the top of that bridge,
up to here where they're gonna be tied off on something
that can tighten and loosen.
♪ ♪
[strings plucking]
I put pine pitch on the string.
♪ ♪
Has a 550 inner paracord and...
[strings screeching]
It needs a little bit of work.
That does, but--
[strings plucking]
Can also be a guitar.
[strings plucking]
♪ I came on "Alone" ♪
♪ And I thought it would be easy ♪
♪ I caught hundreds of pounds of pike ♪
♪ And a few inconnu ♪
♪ And I ate them all ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And now I'm feeling ♪
♪ A little down and out ♪
♪ Oh, I think I'd trade it all right now ♪
♪ For a hug from my mom ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Because I don't think I can last ♪
♪ Much longer ♪
♪ 'Cause my tank is empty ♪
♪ ♪
♪ My tank is empty ♪
♪ What do I miss the most ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I miss my mom and my dad ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And it's ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I think it's about time for me to go ♪
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[bleep]. Oh, [bleep].
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- All right, guys, the time has finally come
to get out on the river a little bit.
There's little zones that we can get to
and fish that are safe.
So I'm gonna get there, and I'm going to drop a few lines in.
So I've got three steel hooks and a bunch
of bone gorge hooks.
Let's get out on the ice and do it.
♪ ♪
Physically, I'm pretty solid.
It's not that thick.
Not too hard to get to.
Mentally, my moods swing around a bit.
I still have some glorious moments, you know,
and a lot of moments where I'm just like,
you know, I'd like to be at home.
Go down in, baby.
It's a-going. Good.
There.
All right.
That's one rig.
It's reached the point where, like, being here each day
is more of a struggle against the strong desires
just to be at home, be with my family, you know?
Yeah, I think that's got it.
But I'm not going down that road yet.
I mean, you know, don't open those doors.
On this one, we have a bone gorge hook,
so let's drop it in.
And so got to buckle in mentally,
keep my mind on track,
keep it reined in from thinking on certain things
going forwards.
Yeah.
There we go.
All right, it's in.
All right, now let's get out of here and go home.
I need to warm up my feet.
♪ ♪
Some of this nice new wood.
Grab some tinder.
♪ ♪
I'm good at struggling through stuff.
It's OK. I'm still good.
♪ ♪
I've still got some food to eat.
♪ ♪
Here we go.
♪ ♪
That's a good start.
♪ ♪
Looks like that'll take off too much.
Whoa.
It's hot. [bleep].
♪ ♪
That's gonna catch something on fire.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
♪ ♪
Pot over it, so it'll help block some of the flames.
♪ ♪
Wow.
That was crazy.
Wow.
That was--that was too much too fast.
I used some dead spruce with the dry needles on it,
and it went like gunpowder.
♪ ♪
That came pretty close to catching the ceiling
on fire there.
That was volatile is the only way I can describe that.
Wow.
That was nutso.
That was straight-up nuts.
Wow.
Now I've got to put some more water in the pot
'cause I dumped half the water out on this thing.
♪ ♪
Well, guys, today was a tough one.
I didn't bring in any food today.
I almost caught the shelter on fire.
So now I can see a big risk area
with the part that almost caught on fire.
Like, it's at a high risk of this
just happening any moment now.
It's like, you just go from one problem to the next.
I mean...
There's almost no such thing as kick back and cruise.
You just have to troubleshoot and work,
troubleshoot and work,
try to piece it together.
So I'll work on that mentally and try to figure out
what I need to do to make it safer.
Good night, world.
♪ ♪
Up through here.
♪ ♪
Right, there he is.
Whoa.
[exhales heavily] Calm down.
Take your time.
♪ ♪
What an eventful morning.
Now, we'll check our other hooks and that
and look at the net.
♪ ♪
And the bait is still on there.
[laughs]
Oh, Lord, jeez, I was wrong.
I was wrong.
Oh, damn.
Oh, this is huge, huge, huge, huge.
♪ ♪
OK, I have to.
♪ ♪
[grunts]
Huge whitefish. [laughs]
Oh, my God. It's the biggest one yet.
[laughs] Oh. Oh, yeah, he was tough.
Holy freak, look at the size of that.
Oh, my God.
That's a monster.
Oh!
Oh. Truly blessed again this morning.
Oh, my God. Look at that.
What's that, a 12-pound?
[smooching] Kiss the fish.
Oh, my God. Look at that.
Oh, in the old box you go, my buddy.
I'll tell you, my food cache is looking pretty darn good
again already, you know?
Plus that grouse. So it's looking good.
It's looking real good.
Yeah, I'll get a few more ice blocks
to reinforce the ice chest,
make this an impenetrable fortress so that
Sassy can't even get in there.
♪ ♪
My food strategy is, I want to get enough food to keep me
on at least a 10-day cycle, because within that 10 days,
I know that I should be able to get food
to carry me down the next 10.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- [grunting]
♪ ♪
[mutters indistinctly]
Caught it on camera. Hee-hee.
That's pretty good.
Let's go eat.
♪ ♪
Oh, look at that. Look at that.
♪ ♪
Just as I expected.
Look down there on the ice.
My beloved Sassy.
♪ ♪
[laughs]
Now, really, I got the best food security
I had since I come here.
So that's pretty darn good.
I'm really happy with that.
Sassy's got to go hunt for herself now.
Goodbye, Sassy.
♪ ♪
- Good morning, everybody.
♪ ♪
Got some snow last night.
Quite a bit.
A few inches of powder.
Cold as hell.
The sun's out a little bit.
It's almost the time of year when the sun never rises.
♪ ♪
So--
and this is pretty much the sunrise right here.
♪ ♪
That's what we get.
In addition to the cold,
right now, we're losing eight minutes per day in sunlight,
which means in less than a month,
it's gonna be pitch black almost the entire time.
♪ ♪
So I'm hoping today is the day we can get on this river.
♪ ♪
If it's not, we're in big trouble.
I have no backup plan.
♪ ♪
But it's cold enough
that it should not be a problem.
So we're gonna see what we can do about that, I guess, eh?
♪ ♪
OK, we're gonna give it a go
on the edge of this river right here.
I'm not going out any farther than this,
which is right on the freaking edge.
I got all the safety equipment on.
I'm gonna chip this hole out,
try to get some burbot back in.
So the other night when I sang that song,
I went completely off the rails on it.
But I want to be able to say, like, why I just broke down.
Dropping this hook down with a little bit of bait on it.
I really hope like hell my family and my parents are OK.
Hope a pike hits it.
Hope like hell.
So you're out here away from your family for so long.
When you're so isolated, you have a lot of time
to think about everything.
Gonna watch that close.
If it tips over, there's probably a fish on.
♪ ♪
And you started thinking about worst-case scenarios,
and you start thinking about, jeez, man, you know,
my mom's getting up there in age.
And I might never get to see her again.
I mean, my mom could be deathly ill
right now at this moment and I wouldn't know about it.
Not particularly deep right there,
but it's all we got.
So all of a sudden, it just, like, hit me in a weird way
that I miss my mom and my dad.
Don't hate me too much for trying to be vulnerable.
I'm trying to be as honest as I can here.
Holy [bleep].
♪ ♪
Holy [bleep], there's a fish down here.
♪ ♪
Holy [bleep]. Holy [bleep]. Holy [bleep].
Huge pike.
♪ ♪
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
This is so [bleep] good.
Oh, please, please, please, please, please, please.
♪ ♪
Yes!
Yeah!
Oh!
Oh, my God, yeah, dude.
Oh. [sighs]
Oh.
Thank God, man.
Oh. Oh.
Oh.
[crying]
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, dude.
I just went from, like,
I'm gonna lose this competition...
♪ ♪
Because I don't have any food left...
♪ ♪
To, I have a 40-inch pike on the ice.
And I can stay another freaking week from this fish.
♪ ♪
That is the biggest pike I've ever caught.
♪ ♪
Look.
Look what I just did.
♪ ♪
That thing is a freaking monster, man.
♪ ♪
Yes!
[grunts]
♪ ♪
That changes my entire freaking everything.
For the last two days, I'm like, I'm screwed, man.
There's nothing I can do.
I'm gonna lose.
And I got a freaking 40-plus-inch
30-pound northern pike that's, like,
way more than a week's worth of food.
I'm gonna be able to eat until I'm full every day
for over a week now from this.
♪ ♪
What a freaking miracle.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- It's late, late morning.
I stayed laying down for a long time.
And part of it, I realized, was that I
didn't want to face the day.
So that made me disturbed that I felt that way.
And I have to get up and face the day.
Can't procrastinate on that.
I have to do something to make it
a little safer with the fire, and I've decided
to use the moose hide again.
The range hood that I have up there
to help against the smoke, I'm gonna see
if I can pull the nails out, take it down,
and then nail it up on the ceiling in the places
where the moss is getting so dried out
that it's at extreme risk of catching fire.
I just have to do what needs done today.
I'm not really looking forward to the day,
but we'll work it out.
♪ ♪
My fire system is a problem.
It's actually dangerous,
and it has me really, really bothered.
I'm finding that these have become
really difficult days mentally.
I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get these nails out.
♪ ♪
I got one.
The darkness is getting longer.
The hunger is biting a little deeper.
Ah, there we go.
There I come.
I'm getting a little thinner.
The cold just grows a little bit.
♪ ♪
That came. Good. Thank you, Lord.
And all of those things just feel a little ominous.
Got it.
OK, now let's look back here at the damage.
♪ ♪
I feel so strongly
that I have to bring in more food.
I'm hungry so much each day because my meals are tiny.
My jerky supply is molding.
♪ ♪
I could lose because I run out of food
and run out of options.
♪ ♪
There are no hares anymore.
No grouse.
No porcupines.
No beaver.
No muskrats.
It's pretty crazy.
So I'm trying my best.
♪ ♪
All right, I've just got done playing chimney sweep,
but I have the moose hide nailed up there
and a lot of gaps plugged with dirt and a stone
and just anything I could piece together to make it safer.
So now I don't have a smoke shield range hood here,
but I'll just have to get by.
Let's get a fire going.
You know, I feel like I've thrived
out here in so many ways.
♪ ♪
But today I had to admit that I'm now struggling.
♪ ♪
And it's OK to struggle sometimes.
All right.
And the house is filled with smoke like before.
That smoke shield was really helping.
Now it's gonna be tough.
But this is beyond what I just
want to just drink in from this landscape right now
and this experience.
It's beyond that, and I'd rather be home.
[sighs]
♪ ♪
But I have come to the realization
that there's more important things than just
achieving what was in my mind at the beginning.
That's important, all right.
♪ ♪
The journey we have in life cannot be dictated
by our expectations and what we had in our mind at first.
It just can't be, or else we'll break.
So I'm trying to let things play out
and let God define what my journey should be.
♪ ♪
When I struggle, I really need to feed the soul
with Psalm 27.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation.
"Whom shall I fear?
"The Lord is the strength of my life.
"Of whom shall I be afraid?
"When the wicked, my enemies and foes,
"came upon me to eat up my flesh,
"they stumbled and fell.
"Though a host should encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear."
♪ ♪
"Though war should rise against me,
in this will I be confident."
♪ ♪
"One thing have I desired from the Lord,
that will I seek after."
I literally wanted to be at home today so badly,
it was crazy.
And my go-to these days is just to talk to God about it.
I'm like, God, I feel like I'm not done
with whatever it is that you want me to experience here.
"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him."
♪ ♪
And I began to feel strength ebb into me
and some desire creep back into me.
So I didn't really have it of myself.
It's how I get by, and I've found it to work for me
in some pretty trying circumstances--
much more trying than this.
I hope that my journey through a low day
will connect with somebody and help somebody,
'cause I'm just fine.
And I'm gonna face another day.
- I sees a fish.
Oh. Whoa.
Holy--that's like a dream.
I hardly cook my food, 'cause I want to get as much
out of it as I can.
There's the spawn.
- I'm getting ice clumped all in the bottom of my boots.
I've got one toe that's super painful,
so I think there's some frostbite on it.
It feels real cold to the touch.
[item clatters]
- What was that noise?
I don't know if it's the right decision to go out there,
but I got to go check.
The hell is that?
♪ ♪