[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- oh, my god. Yeah!
It's kind of a race now.
I have got to get my deer meat dry
so I can preserve it.
Now, that's just cool.
Come on, baby. Come on in. Yes.
Caught my first fish.
- Winter is coming, and I want to have a fireplace
and a chimney, and all sealed up.
Fantastic. So I can go and move in here.
- Something has been here. Something big.
Ate my cranberries. Hey, bear!
- I'm officially tapping out. My health is important to me,
and I'm not interested in battling
whatever it is that's going on in my body right now,
being on a starvation diet.
[ominous music]
[wind howling]
♪ ♪
narrator: In "alone's" most terrifying location yet,
ten participants face the deadliest predator
in north america.
- There he is right there.
- Grizzly bears. - Hey, bear.
- There are a lot of grizzly here.
I'm gonna have to live with them.
- Go on! Get!
- Every second we're on the land, we're being hunted.
- Holy [bleep], mountain lion.
- He's circling around my shelter.
Narrator: Bone-chilling cold...
- Winter is coming.
- You combine the wind with the rain and the cold,
this place could make the arctic look easy.
- Oh, [bleep].
Narrator: And complete isolation.
- You cannot hide from yourself
mentally and emotionally.
- Ah!
- There's no place to go.
- I am suffering from loneliness.
Narrator: Who will survive?
- Yes! Yes!
- This could be the end.
- I don't want to tap, but I don't want
to die either.
- You have to suffer before you can succeed.
[gagging]
narrator: The last one standing wins.
- At what point do I push the button?
♪ ♪
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
[birds singing]
♪ ♪
- mmm. Dirt soup. Delicious.
Not particularly delicious, but it's okay.
We're happy with what we can get out here.
It's so weird how I keep talking like "we're," "we."
[like gollum] we's happy with what we's gets. Precious.
[normally] I'm freaking turning into gollum over here.
[like gollum] what does it taste like, precious?
Is it scrumptious?
[normally] nope, it's not very scrumptious.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
all right. I say we go make a door for the shelter.
♪ ♪
I think there was probably some people who didn't think
I was gonna last very long.
[sniffs]
of course, once I started working
and getting overheated...
♪ ♪
I'm biko, son of tui. And I don't give up easy.
♪ ♪
now, I'd like to shovel a bunch of pine boughs in there,
to insulate the heck out of it.
You know, my dad was as marine and a sheriff,
and so he was always wanting to do outdoor stuff with us.
And basically, I just fell in love with it.
And the award for most flammable door
ever made goes to biko!
♪ ♪
how do you want to accept this award?
I'll take it in food. Thank you.
I hope to have more times like that with my dad.
He's a great father.
I hope to be a great father one day.
What a monstrosity this is. Hello, frankenstein door.
♪ ♪
to think I could have just made a simple door.
No. Instead, I got a [bleep] drawbridge.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[birds singing]
- so my bottle of hot water--
it's had a couple of rounds of hot water in it.
So. Whoo. I'm soaked.
[sighs]
so I'm actually using it to warm my hands.
But I'm gonna put rosehips in it.
And make some rosehip tea here.
I mean, I know I get lots of vitamin c,
but it's not gonna hurt me to have some more.
It's gonna be hard to mix up, but.
Just gotta spit out the seeds again.
But otherwise, it's nice.
So I now have a glass bottle
to put hot tea in.
That's gonna be so much nicer.
♪ ♪
I set snares, but there's nothing in my snares.
So I have to get more snares out.
♪ ♪
I'm starting to worry about food.
I'm not having the best luck fishing.
I can't believe I cannot catch a fish.
♪ ♪
it looks like maybe some bunnies have chewed
the bottom of this.
♪ ♪
this looks like it would be a good spot to put a snare.
Try that.
This path just kind of looks like it goes out there.
♪ ♪
I have to get some meat.
I just think about it all night long now, just waking up
and trying to think of different ways to get food.
If I could get some rabbits, I could eat more.
What is that?
It's right here.
Let's see if we can't maybe get it out.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
I got it out. It's heavy. [metallic thud]
I found a bear trap, I think.
♪ ♪
so this is really cool.
And a reminder that I have to be careful out here,
because these are old trap lands.
This is telling me that this is a bear traffic area.
All of these trails are bear trails.
Actually, it must have been a long time ago.
Most places, you haven't been able to trap bear
in a long time.
So you can see--
see those big teeth on there?
That's so cool.
That, I'm gonna take back to camp.
And we'll see how it goes with my snares.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I had a dream
that my family was cooking up a feast.
It was pretty cool, man. But it sucks.
In all my dreams, I woke up before I got to eat.
Like, food was all prepared, and then I'd wake up,
and I'd be like, "damn it." [chuckles]
I could have eaten in my dream.
Open the gate!
Nice.
♪ ♪
today, I think I'd like to start bringing rocks up
to the fireplace.
Oh yeah, there's some good rocks down here, for sure.
♪ ♪
some real good ones.
[grunts]
I want to build a fireplace that I can warm my shelter
on those really cold, stormy nights.
I can boil water in there, if need be, during the storm,
so I don't have to go out.
I know it's gonna be a huge calorie output.
All the rocks that are in the area are on the shoreline,
and they're down a hill, a steep hill
that I have to pack them up.
♪ ♪
whoa. Almost fell. Felt the mud going.
[panting]
[grunts]
[panting]
it's exhausting.
Just got to go slow and careful.
That's the name of the game for me.
Got a lot to lose by hurting my ankle.
♪ ♪
this past March, I had surgery on my ankle.
It was supposed to be a lot shorter recovery time
than it was. And it's still sore.
♪ ♪
[sighs]
♪ oh, I'm just packing rocks all day ♪
♪ packing them up a hill ♪
♪ packing rocks from the morning ♪
♪ until the end of day ♪
♪ I'm packing rocks ♪
♪ so that I can have a warm fire ♪
♪ in my troll cave cabin that I built with my hands ♪
oh! [bleep]. Oh!
Oh! [bleep]. Oh, hell.
[bleep].
[bleep] damn it.
♪ ♪
[groans]
♪ ♪
gonna have to be really careful.
That could have been bad.
That's what I slipped on, right there.
That's full-on clay. I need that.
Clay is great news.
That's gonna make everything easier.
[soft dramatic music]
my fireplace is gonna be so much better now.
I can really do the fireplace I want to do now.
♪ ♪
check out what I found washed up on shore.
A ziploc bag with some holes in it.
But what I can use it for is moving clay.
♪ ♪
my ankle's sore from today.
♪ ♪
I gotta be so careful with that ankle.
It's the one thing that'll take me out of the game
before I want to go.
♪ ♪
I've never made a fireplace before.
I'm hoping that, as I have some fires in here,
some of this clay will kind of bake in.
♪ ♪
it's coming along well. I'm pretty proud of it.
What a strange, crazy life I've led.
I'm in british columbia, in the chilcotin mountains,
competing for $500,000.
♪ ♪
what a crazy life.
♪ ♪
see, when you build a shelter like I've built here,
there's really no point in tapping out early,
when you put so much time and effort into this.
[scraping]
♪ ♪
it's working. Yes.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- golly. Beautiful.
Mushrooms are fun to find.
Hope I can find a few more up there today.
Sweet.
Whoops.
Well, so far,
it's gonna keep me alive until gill net time.
I think we have enough of them to last 14 days.
♪ ♪
you're collecting everything you can see
and find along the way.
Thank god I have all these plants,
and they all carry me till I get to fish.
♪ ♪
I can't let the mushrooms go bad.
I'm worried about it being cold and damp.
They don't like being stored in a hole.
They're not like cranberries.
Yeah, food preservation is one of my favorite things to do.
One of my faves.
I love salting, fermenting,
drying, canning,
boiling and pressure.
[soft dramatic music]
I do this in schools all the time.
We did a lot of food preservation.
We made cream of mushroom soup from wild boletes,
and sold it to the public. [chuckles and sighs]
♪ ♪
man, the kids just loved it.
Loved it. They'll do it on their own.
Any activity that revolves around food,
they're probably gonna jump on it.
♪ ♪
and it's a bunch of wonderful people in education, man.
The best. I loved it.
Part of my new mushroom-picking attire...
Is a smoked bolete necklace.
We are done. Holy [bleep].
So we have our lines up here.
♪ ♪
this one here is our red slimeballs.
The one back here is our pines. They're feeling nice.
♪ ♪
I processed about 30-plus pounds today.
Mushrooms are nice.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[wind howling]
♪ ♪
- we got some snow on the ground.
So it was a rough night.
Thought about home a lot last night and this morning.
Really missing my kids.
I miss leelee's little feet
running across the floor in the morning.
I'm feeling very hungry this morning.
Maybe something warm to eat will
lift my spirts a little bit.
♪ ♪
this morning, when I was just kind of laying there,
waiting for it to get light out,
I heard something outside my tent.
♪ ♪
all right, let's go check out the beach.
♪ ♪
so right there's the bear. And there's my tracks.
And those are pretty fresh.
[howling]
so he is in the area.
♪ ♪
must have just been coming down through this trail right here.
♪ ♪
hmm.
♪ ♪
oh, there he is, right there. [bleep].
Right there.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
Hey! Get! Get!
Go on. Go on.
♪ ♪
been following me. Get out of here!
He's right there. He's coming.
[air horn blasts]
[bleep]. Get! You get!
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- you get! [air horn blasts]
[bleep].
♪ ♪
there he is.
♪ ♪
oh, my god.
Oh, my god.
♪ ♪
he's just circling me.
♪ ♪
I just don't even know where to stand.
So afraid he's gonna charge me. He can come from any direction.
He's just out there.
[suspenseful music]
oh, my god.
♪ ♪
oh, god. I don't know.
♪ ♪
I feel like there's a point that this is not worth it.
♪ ♪
I just don't know if I should--
[shakily takes deep breath]
at what point--
at what point do I push the button?
♪ ♪
I feel like I'm being such a baby about this.
[sniffles]
♪ ♪
all right. Just have to get it together.
Let me see where he went.
I can't let this bear be the reason that I can't do this.
I don't know--I don't know what to do in the after.
♪ ♪
all the safety training in the world
cannot predict what that bear is gonna do.
♪ ♪
I am alone with a grizzly bear that is hunting me,
and there is nothing that is gonna save me except myself.
Every shadow...
[suspenseful music]
every noise. I'm jumpy right now.
It's about time for me to be okay and get some stuff done.
Hmm. I don't know.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I'm thinking about making a decoy hat.
I bet it would work great on these deer.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
this animal gave up its life for me.
I feel like the best way to honor it
is to use every part that I can.
You don't really get that kind of connection
when you go to the supermarket and buy meat off the shelf.
♪ ♪
for this project, I take the buck's head
and I flesh it all out, turn the ears out,
and basically make a stuffed deer head.
Stuff it with moss.
I've killed lots of animals with a self bow.
Giant bull elk, boar hogs.
They're all special, because they feed my family.
♪ ♪
my family depends on wild game.
This is something I've never,
never showed the boys anything about.
I don't know if they'd have any interest in it or not.
My dad--horses has been his life.
You know, he's--he's a horse trainer,
and, you know, it was a competition thing.
[sighs]
remind me to never
take up taxidermy as a second career.
♪ ♪
when he was, I don't know, I guess, late 20s, mid 20s,
and was working at a plant, he decided he was gonna
leave that behind and start training horses,
and everybody told him it was crazy.
I need to stitch this up, stitch everything up,
all the holes-- bottom lip to the top,
and stitch the eyes shut.
For a long time, I thought my dad
and I were very different people.
It wasn't until just a few years ago, I guess,
that I realized that we're exactly the same.
The only thing that's different
is what we're passionate about.
His is horses, and mine is archery
and bow hunting and being in the woods.
♪ ♪
this thing's gonna look like frankenstein.
And now he's in the national cutting horse hall of fame.
If you have something that you're passionate about,
do it because you love it.
You can make damn near anything work.
There you go. One deer decoy.
Figured I'd mount this thing to my head.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- well, let's see about this here deer mask.
Bring them right in.
Clay's taxidermy, open for business.
Here we go.
One rather bedraggled- looking deer head,
on the wall.
Oh, yeah.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna get started on bringing in the deer hide.
All right.
I knew that I want to do something with the hide.
At first, I used it for the top of the smoker,
which works great.
But I want to use this deer as much as I can.
And I also just want a project to work on.
And so I would love to brain tan this hide.
Use it for a recliner.
♪ ♪
doesn't smell sour or spoiled at all.
I'll get the deer brains out, put them in a pot,
and smash them up, just as good as I can.
Add a little bit of water.
♪ ♪
just gonna mash that up real good.
Mix it up as good as I can.
I want to get those brains over every inch
of the deer hide.
Mmm-mmm-mmm.
And then once you've got that done,
then you start working it.
[sighs]
was gonna wring this out again,
but I think I'm just gonna leave it
and just work--try to get every bit of that brain
worked into this hide.
I'm glad I decided to do this.
This is gonna be nice once I get done with it.
Sometimes I wonder why I ended up
with the interests that I have.
I have two brothers. They've hunted,
but they're not--they're not hunters, you know.
They didn't stick with it. I'm the youngest,
and my next brother's seven years older than I am.
And so when they would go to these horse shows,
I'd have to go with them. I always competed.
You know, it was a competition thing--cutting.
But half an hour before it was time for me
to go and show my horse,
it was--I'd come back, do it, and then I was gone again.
It's like my heart was in the woods.
I couldn't even begin to describe myself
without talking at length about being outdoors.
Just such a big, massive part of who I am.
All right.
Let's eat some dinner before I hit the sack.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- bad news. We got like--[exhales deeply]
I don't know. It looks like from here
four to six inches of snow last night.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
so I waited till the last moment.
We got this snow, and it looks like it's not gonna stop.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
♪ ♪
it is time to get my ass in gear
and get some warmth in my shelter.
I mean, it's necessary now.
♪ ♪
where is the most insulation in your house?
Not in your floor. It's not in your walls.
It's in your roof and your attic because heat rises.
And so for me, I'm gonna build the insulation
where the heat is gonna go.
Okay, the rest of the limbs,
we're just tossing on, face-down,
♪ ♪
with insulation-- that's the stick parts.
I'm trying to finish up the door.
[bleep].
♪ ♪
that just kind of makes it a little more serious now.
♪ ♪
gotta get everything going, man.
♪ ♪
snow days, man. Remember sledding? As a kid?
♪ ♪
and coming in, and mom having hot chocolate?
♪ ♪
got, like, cookies or whatever, walking in?
[chuckles]
holy cow, that was-- that was awesome.
♪ ♪
this shelter's 95% done, which for me means done.
And so I feel like I'm ready for winter.
♪ ♪
just gonna get out of these wet-ass clothes.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- oh, good morning.
It's getting light later and later in the morning.
I mean, I understand that's how it works this time of year.
But.
♪ ♪
at some point, winter is here, and plant foods are not.
So like to have a big, ol' gathering day.
Gathering has really been my bread and butter out here.
Haven't had much other option. [chuckles]
apparently, I can't fish.
But, you know, we all have to have a weakness.
And to be fair, it's not like my site
was exactly a fisherman's paradise here.
♪ ♪
fishing this site is incredibly challenging.
The fish that I do have access to are going to be very small.
I'm getting to that point where I know my body fat
is getting low, because I'm mildly hungry all the time.
My body is telling me, "you definitely need calories."
pretty sure this a good, solid half a can, which is my base.
I have to get that in a day. That's 500 calories.
I should gather three or four days' worth.
So we're gonna go a little further up field.
Traditionally, with modern hunter/gatherers,
up to 80% of the caloric intake comes from gathering.
It comes from plants.
It's an underappreciated caloric source.
So this is the landscape at the moment.
And I am seriously
digging roots out of a patch in the snow.
More solomon's seal. This one is a big root.
Look at the size of this guy down here.
Oh, it's a good-size one.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
time to see if we can figure out how to get back,
'cause it's starting to spit rainy, snowy stuff as well,
which is gonna get really unpleasant really quickly.
[crunchy footfalls]
I really haven't come down this side before.
So I'm trying to decide if I go up.
I'm gonna give it a go. I'm gonna--'cause I'm kind of
skirting the edge of the creek right now.
I'm gonna hop up--
let's go to that second ridge over here.
Ooh. Where are we?
Um, I don't know what that low point is,
so I'm gonna go see.
So we've gotten quite a long way from the creek.
♪ ♪
you must be [bleep] me. I have no idea where I am.
♪ ♪
oh, no.
♪ ♪
[sobs]
♪ ♪
let's walk. Let's get to our last spot.
Let's make some progress.
I am guessing we must be getting back
closer to the lake, 'cause for a while there,
the forest was-- I mean, it wasn't open.
It was still very dense timber. However, there was a lot less
of the--of the, you know, blown-down timber.
[sniffles]
pretty sure we're coming up somewhere
on the lake at this point.
Hello, basket tree willow.
It's weird what your brain remembers.
But that means we're close. This is great.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
we're back at the lake.
This is where the little creek comes out.
♪ ♪
feels good to be home.
♪ ♪
so this is today's haul.
It's about three cans' worth of cranberries,
highbush cranberries, small sack of rosehips,
a surprise sack of greens.
So those are watercress.
Actually found some watercress greens.
And then a reasonable sack of roots.
I mean, the calories I've brought back with me--
maybe--
♪ ♪
they probably just barely make up what I put out.
That's not the equation you're looking for. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
I'm really starting to notice the lack of calories.
It's really starting to affect my performance
and what I'm capable of doing.
Just wish I could catch some fish.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
I don't know.
So good.
Hey, the boat's still there.
Decided it's time to go boating.
Okay, here we go. The ol'...
♪ ♪
the butt will most certainly not be dry.
It'll be ice [bleep] cold.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
♪ ♪
I want to catch more fish.
I need to get a surplus of calories.
♪ ♪
okay.
Let's go fishing.
[soft dramatic music]
back home in alaska, I was in a long-term relationship
with a woman who had a young daughter named jordan.
So jordan and I had this motto,
just that we never give up, no matter what we're doing.
And so when I have tough times out here,
my mind immediately goes to her.
And it's kept me going,
thinking about her when times get tough,
and what she would say.
I'm exactly stubborn and resilient.
I don't give up.
♪ ♪
[thump]
[metallic clang]
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
♪ ♪
yes, yes.
♪ ♪
holy [bleep].
♪ ♪
here we go.
♪ ♪
second one.
♪ ♪
yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes.
♪ ♪
check that out. Two of them.
♪ ♪
two rainbows.
♪ ♪
totally happy about that. I am a vegetarian no longer.
♪ ♪
[bear breathing]
[branches rustling]
- I heard something big out there.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
[wood snaps]
can't see anything out here.
♪ ♪
[wood clatters]
♪ ♪
well, I heard something big out there,
but couldn't see anything.
By the time I got out of my sleeping bag and got out,
it was--whatever it was was gone.
I'll look around tomorrow and see if I can see any tracks.
Back to bed.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
I didn't sleep at all last night, hardly.
Gonna go down to the lake shore and then come back.
♪ ♪
so I just walked down to the beach,
and there's fresh bear tracks
coming right across my log here.
Walking right down the beach here.
So you can tell it's a black bear,
because a grizzly, the front of the pad here's straighter,
and you can draw a straight line from this side
to this side without cutting this toe here.
With this track, if you draw a straight line,
you're gonna cut this toe, so that's a black bear.
And that's a decent-size bear.
Yeah, that's a pretty good-size bear.
So, I just want to--with those bear tracks on the beach,
I just want to make--walk back here
and make sure there's nothing been poking around the cache.
♪ ♪
oh, [bleep]. There's bear tracks right freakin' here.
♪ ♪
like, right through camp.
So there's the shack, right through here.
♪ ♪
and here's bear tracks.
♪ ♪
that little bastard.
The cache looks like it's still--I mean,
the smoker looks like it's still intact.
I brought all my meat and stuff inside there
'cause I thought it would be pretty safe.
This bear walked right-- let's see where he went.
That is no good. We don't want bears walking through camp.
Looks like he may have walked down the beach,
and then just came back right through here.
Kind of in between camp
and the smoker.
I don't know how he didn't smell that stuff in there.
Man, that was-- that was just lucky.
[sighs]
he'll be back.
We ain't seen the last of boo-boo.
♪ ♪
- so been a really yucky night.
I have a really strong belief and mindset,
and that's what I try to do, you know, with my encounters
with a grizzly bear-- is every time I--
every time it happens,
I try to mentally think about the situation again
and change my mindset
to handle it differently next time.
So maybe I need to do that with, you know,
fishing and snaring, and whatever.
Just stop thinking about the things that I can't do,
and really start focusing on what I might be able to do. So.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
ready to check some snares. I feel hungry.
Really hopeful that there's something in my snares today.
♪ ♪
the scary things I've dealt with in my life,
I can definitely recover from a grizzly bear.
For sure.
When I was a kid, we lived a lot in safe houses,
and I was just always running around in the woods.
I was trying to escape from,
you know, a bad childhood environment.
Any bunny there?
I've always felt a little bit alone.
I had my children very young,
and tried to make a home for them,
but never really felt like any place was home for me.
When I was very young, I lived in a foster home.
It's just kind of always been everything that I do,
I've taught myself.
Yeah, I think they're too big.
That's scary when you're a kid.
So I can go through a scary situation,
and it may shock me for a second,
but I'm gonna recover quickly,
and it's not gonna knock me off my path.
I'm just gonna pick myself up, and I'm gonna keep going.
♪ ♪
[chuckles] I got a rabbit.
Oh, my gosh, that is awesome.
Tada. It's a bunny.
♪ ♪
got him.
So we're gonna go down and skin the rabbit.
Cautiously.
So that the grizzly bear doesn't come along.
♪ ♪
I don't want to waste any meat.
Okay.
Now, it's time to get this rabbit on here.
♪ ♪
my belly is hungry.
Can't believe I get to eat bunny rabbit.
Oh, my god, that smells so good. Oh, my gosh.
♪ ♪
this little, yummy bunny heart is gonna be so good.
♪ ♪
oh, my gosh.
♪ ♪
oh, my gosh. That was so good.
[chuckles]
just that alone, and I'm happy.
Oh, my gosh.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[birds singing]
- warmed up quite a bit today. It wasn't good yesterday.
Yesterday, it was still pretty damn cold.
All right. Let's see what we can do about an alarm.
I've got an idea for an alarm system for a bear.
♪ ♪
I forgot I had an air horn.
I think I can rig up that air horn to wire,
so if something hits the trip wire,
it'll set the air horn off.
Here we go. [clears throat]
♪ ♪
[air horn toots]
♪ ♪
got that.
The last thing that I want to do
is have to deal with a bear coming in here
wanting to take this meat.
But that's a very real possibility.
Just a little redneck ingenuity here.
♪ ♪
I have to be prepared to engage a bear.
♪ ♪
[air horn tooting]
♪ ♪
I want to win this thing. I need this meat.
♪ ♪
and so I am willing to go outside
and deal with a grizzly bear to protect this meat.
♪ ♪
all right.
So now, ol' mr. Bear comes snooping around...
[air horn blasts]
[chuckles] I like it.
That ought to wake me up.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- gonna have to ration out the deer meat that I have left.
So I'm thinking that's a day right there.
Little bit of fat. Little bit of meat.
Five or six little pieces of jerky.
[chuckles]
every day. That's not enough to keep a fella going.
You don't know how bad I just want to grab
a big handful of this stuff and start eating it right now.
But I can't. I need to catch a damn fish.
♪ ♪
all right.
♪ ♪
figured I'd go fishing.
♪ ♪
I don't know what to think about the damn fishing.
♪ ♪
it's pretty discouraging
when you go fishing day after day after day
and can't even hardly get a bite.
♪ ♪
I'm not eating as much as I should be
to keep my weight up,
'cause I'm afraid I'm gonna run out of meat.
[sighs] that was a crappy cast.
I'd feel a lot better if I could catch some fish.
I don't want to run out of food again.
You know, we could be out here for 100-120 days.
All it takes is one.
All it takes is one to keep you out here that long.
All right.
Hanging it up.
No fish.
What a surprise, what a surprise,
what a surprise.
♪ ♪
- I made a raft this morning.
So today is going to be all about passive fishing.
I'd like to do the trout line rock this morning.
There is a possibility it will catch a fish.
And that would extend my time here that much more.
Which basically means I have to swim out
into the cold, cold water.
But if I don't take advantage of all those possibilities,
that's what I'll regret.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
okay, we need to get two shore anchors together.
And my shore anchors have to be a significant distance apart.
Otherwise, the lines tangle.
I have the plan to swim out and anchor a rock
that has a wired eyelet on it,
and basically have a clothesline system,
where you have parachute inner cord
that goes thru that eyelet,
and you can just reel your trout line back and forth.
But I need to swim this anchor out a long way.
♪ ♪
just in case anything horrific goes on,
I can push the red button and presumably get saved.
♪ ♪
so. [groans]
let's warm the legs up.
All right, peeps.
We're a go. Let's do this thing.
All right.
♪ ♪
I'm running out of days
where I'm gonna have the energy to do projects
like swim 300 feet out into the lake.
If we can actually get the trout line in water,
some more calories coming in.
♪ ♪
[life vest self-inflates] [bleep].
It inflated on its own. [bleep].
[dramatic music]
uh-oh.
♪ ♪
[bleep]. I think I'm stuck.
♪ ♪
everything is a tangled mess. [bleep].
♪ ♪
and it's freezing. [bleep].
♪ ♪
starting to freeze.
♪ ♪
can't believe this [bleep].
♪ ♪
my ears are ringing so loudly
that I can't hear the waves.
And I know what this is. It's a blood pressure issue.
♪ ♪
not sure I'm okay.
♪ ♪
let me see if I can stand up yet.
♪ ♪
there we are.
♪ ♪
just trying to get all my big arteries...
Over the fire.
I thought I would be in the water
for about 15 minutes.
♪ ♪
I was actually in the water for 35 minutes.
♪ ♪
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
status update: I have a rip-roaring fire going,
and I plan to do so for a number of hours.
♪ ♪
wow.
♪ ♪
that was cold.
So just thought I should show you
the inside of my thigh,
from having to be so close to the fire to warm up.
Yep.
Lightly toasted. [chuckles]
ouch.
But a small price to pay, I suppose, for being alive.
There's nothing in the world
that makes you feel more alive than almost not being.
♪ ♪
what happened was the life vest self-inflated,
and it tangled in the paracord
that I had on the raft.
By the time I'd gotten that disentangled
from the life vest, somehow the line
had wrapped around my ankle a number of times,
and was so tangled up I had to take the shoe off
while in the water.
And finally worked out all of the tangles
so that I could then swim back.
All I ever have to do is push the red button,
and someone comes and saves me.
They asked me if I ever felt like this was life and death,
and I kind of laughed, and I said,
"no, of course not."
♪ ♪
today, it did.
[wind whistling]
[dramatic music]
- some fishing. Check the fish trap.
[grunts]
♪ ♪
any bets on whether I'm gonna fall in?
♪ ♪
ah!
- Ain't nothing for you here, mouse.
That little mother[bleep]. I'm killing him.
It's probably a circulation issue.
- This bear is coming here. Oh, my god.
[bear growls] holy [bleep].
[bear roars]