♪ ♪
ALEX: Getting through the winter here,
it's always a process of buying yourself time
against the cold.
You know the cold's always circling you and squeezing in.
I mean I knew it was going to be a little risky
coming out here in the winter like this,
but I, you know, it's a risk I was willing to take.
But the thing is,
all this wood I got here is basically useless.
It was a dead tree that had fallen down,
but I think it got waterlogged and then it froze.
So it's almost like I have no wood at this point.
Well, except for my very first winter here I've never been
in a situation where it was like,
get firewood or die.
If we do get a cold snap, that's it.
We're gonna freeze to death.
Yeah, see?
Feel how hollow it is?
Um, This I can tell is really rotten.
So, the hunt goes on.
Having a hard time finding firewood.
This is a situation I was afraid of before I came out here.
This one might be good.
Although it's wedged between these trees so good,
maybe it's gonna help me, maybe it's gonna hurt.
I'll just have to start cutting it and see.
I, I'm thinking those trees will pretty much
hold that half of it.
This is super dry, about as good as it gets.
There we go.
I came out here and I didn't bring,
you know all of the advantages of the modern world
with me so that I could take a risk to live life more fully.
Whatever the situation is,
I always tell myself that this is just my life.
I'm putting myself right into the most dangerous situation...
Alright.
So I have to do the work to be ready for the
worst possible outcome.
And if I don't,
and I freeze to death then it's just shame on me.
At Bear Creek,
like one log like this split up in like four pieces?
That's enough to like heat my cabin up, you know?
And then the cabin will stay warm.
You know, at least half the day.
Here, it's just enough to make breakfast and dinner.
But I mean that's just kind of part of the new
lifestyle and adjusting to living in a tent.
I cook breakfast, I cook dinner with fire.
Other than that, I just bundle up and,
and that's just how I'm gonna have to live.
Got plenty more firewood here for the future but this is
enough to get started with.
I just gotta think about getting myself through this
winter in this tent.
It's only a few more months.
ALEX: But you know, when it's cold enough that you can
freeze to death in one night
then a month's a pretty long time.
JOHNNY: Living in the city I didn't feel challenged because
everything I want and need is at my fingertips.
Being out here I strive for challenge.
I look for challenge I like to be challenged every day.
I'm in what I call my lumber yard.
I'm looking for two boards, uh,
that I can use for making hunter skis,
so I can kind of travel a little bit faster,
farther and a little bit quieter than, uh, snowshoes.
Like this.
I knew you guys were in here hiding.
Cool, looks like I can make skis today.
The first thing I'm gonna do is make them about a half inch
to an inch, uh, narrower.
I think if I have them
with my feet on them just a hair
narrower it's gonna be better.
Alright, time to start cutting.
So, the hunter skis are gonna allow me to move more
efficiently and faster on top of the snow.
The idea behind making skis originated from wanting to
stalk down caribou a little bit easier,
because caribou is my main food source.
You know the caribou; they move around a lot so if I'm
gonna chase them down for food it means I gotta move
around a lot.
So, the next thing I need to do
is plane the tip and the tail down.
The reason I have to do that is: in order to bend the tip,
it has to be very thin.
I want it to be a little bit light weight as well.
Now I'm taking off just paper-thin shavings,
it's a long process.
Should keep me warm out here though.
Today was another record breaking cold.
Woke up to negative 69 degrees.
Uh, every day seems to get colder and colder.
Building these skis is pretty straight forward,
except when it comes to bending the tip of the ski.
And that part's gonna be a little bit tricky because uh
wood doesn't want to bend, it wants to break.
Especially out here in these cold frigid temperatures.
I've never tried to bend wood before,
so it's gonna be a challenge and I just gotta
hope that it doesn't crack.
Oh yeah, it's looking good.
That's awesome.
I'm ready to soak these in some water.
Um, I don't have any more wood so I pretty much have
to make these work, make these bend.
If not, I'm gonna have a tough time making skis
out of something else.
So, just gotta get it right the first try.
CHRIS: I'm an adrenaline junkie, it's all about adventure and
it's about living a lifestyle that no one else can live.
I'm not worried what other people think of my life.
This life is what Jess and I love,
and we love doing it.
We're here to stay.
CHRIS: That's the big tree right there, right?
JESSI: Yeah.
This one right there and then right next to
me is that secondary birch.
CHRIS: Okay, I'm gonna start walking into the
woods and I'm gonna use you as my sight of reference.
JESSI: Okay.
Chris and I travel the Cosna River a little bit different than most.
We actually cross the river on zip-lines.
They're just a lot more safe than trying to cross
the treacherous river.
CHRIS: All right, straight back.
Right there, right through here.
JESSI: It'd be really great if we could install a
couple more zip-lines in some different spots.
It would make everything a lot easier,
a lot faster, a lot more efficient.
CHRIS: So, we're coming right down in the
middle of two trees, that's perfect.
Right around 280 to 290 feet,
so hopefully we got enough cable to make that work.
All right, back to the other side.
Cool. Long distance.
All right Jess, I found the tree we're gonna use
over there, and it looks like 290 feet.
JESSI: Ha! That's far.
CHRIS: Yeah, we'll have to test it out or something,
but it is a straight line straight through here and
there's just four big spruce trees that I want
to take down.
Once we take those spruce trees out,
we're gonna have a nice line of sight.
We're gonna take 'em down anyways.
JESSI: Right.
CHRIS: Can you bring my chainsaw over?
JESSI: Sure, I gotcha.
CHRIS: Awesome.
JESSI: Here you go. All right.
CHRIS: Come check it out.
JESSI: Get to cutting.
CHRIS: All right, so these are the trees we need to cut down.
I think we should start with this one.
Drop it out across the river, then we'll drop this one,
and we'll drop the big one.
We'll take this tree down right here,
open up some view, it'll look good.
Gotta be perfect.
I think we're going on five years now that
we've had our zip-lines up.
The first time we put a zip-line up we had no idea
what we were doing, it was simply utilitarian.
It's not leaning the way I want to, so keep an eye on it.
JESSI: Okay, I'm gonna move.
CHRIS: We have these like,
40 foot riverbanks our river goes up and down,
and in the winter, there's overflow,
but if you got a zip-line you're up above it all and you
just zip on over.
Awesome!
JESSI: Looking good. CHRIS: That worked out well.
The zip-line isn't just for today,
it's for tomorrow.
When hunting season gets here,
we're gonna get out all over the place,
our hunting ground is going to expand a lot bigger.
If we're going out and getting two or three grouse a day,
and then we put these zip-lines up and can come
home with four or five grouse in a day?
There it goes!
It's gonna last well into the winter.
Looks good.
I'm just gonna go down and check the water out,
see what we're working with, okay?
JESSI: Right here? CHRIS: Yup. Solid.
JESSI: Yeah, if this tree isn't going to take it out,
you're not going to.
CHRIS: Yeah.
It's amazing that that's like an hour walk from the house.
JESSI: I know it's right here;
we can see the house yet it's an hour away.
Next step we'll go get the ropes and sling them across.
CHRIS: Cool.
KALEB: A willingness to try is far better than any success
you could ever have out here.
Just trying, just doing in my book
is the most important thing.
BRITTANY: All ready to go? KALEB: Yup, all ready to go.
Maybe while we're gone you can clear a spot for us
to stack some wood on the deck.
BRITTANY: Yeah, I think Gil and I can do that.
KALEB: Awesome. Heat our house.
BRITTANY: It is a chilly day,
so make sure you keep our girl warm.
KALEB: Will do.
ELOVIE: I'm ready to go, Dad. KALEB: You're ready to go?
ELOVIE: Yeah.
KALEB: All right. Love ya. BRITTANY: Love you, too.
KALEB: Have fun. BRITTANY: You too. ELOVIE: Can I start it?
KALEB: Will do.
BRITTANY: Bye, baby. Love you. Have fun.
KALEB: Today we're heading out to find a new firewood spot.
In the bush here I don't just have a gas pipe that comes
from the city center that a furnace runs off of
that I never have to think of.
I have a wood-stove and a little oil drip stove,
and that's what heats my house.
I haul that fuel, without being responsible and going
out in the woods to get the firewood.
All of that goes away in about six hours.
I tried to go to my old firewood lot and the rivers
dictated that I couldn't make it,
so I decided to just abandon that lot and
start something new.
I scouted this new firewood lot from the airplane.
I have a general idea of where I want to go.
I have not been there on foot though;
I don't know what it looks like from the ground.
I don't know what challenges are gonna await me.
Uh, oh, we're stuck Ellie!
ELOVIE: Oh, we're stuck!
KALEB: Uh, oh, we're stuck Ellie!
ELOVIE: Oh, we're stuck!
KALEB: We're on a bank right here.
Oof.
Whoa, yeah, we might wanna do some shoveling here, Ellie.
ELOVIE: Why?
KALEB: Because we can go off this bank,
but we'd never get back up it with a load of firewood.
And I got stuck!
[muffled talking]
KALEB: Alright, I'm gonna get my parka off,
we're gonna do some work.
Yeah.
So, we gotta make a trail down onto the river where no one else has been
and in order to access our firewood.
So, we're gonna learn how to build a ramp today.
Shovel some snow.
We'll just shovel it right out from under the snow machine and that'll help us get unstuck.
I have to figure out a way to get from the bank onto the creek,
and it's a good four, five-foot-tall drop.
I have to be thinking how am I gonna get up onto the bank with a heavy load behind me,
when the best thing to do is just stop before the problem arises and build a ramp?
Pull that shovel!
Whoa, it buried you!
ELOVIE: Whoa!
KALEB: So, this is just part of trail making.
You build ramps and we got the snow machine stuck so we gotta get the snow machine unstuck.
So, we're accomplishing two tasks.
ELOVIE: Dad!
KALEB: You can turn the skis?
ELOVIE: They can go up and down.
KALEB: Alright Ellie.
ELOVIE: What?
KALEB: You wanna help get the snow machine unstuck?
ELOVIE: Yeah!
KALEB: I'll have you run the throttle and I'll pull on the ski.
Hopefully I've shoveled this out enough.
Let me pull my, let me pull my gear off.
You just push the throttle until the track starts moving and I'll pull on the ski.
I'll tell you when to go, and when I tell you to stop you just let go.
Kay?
Alright Ellie, give it some throttle!
I'm pulling on the ski!
All the way until the track goes, more!
More throttle! More!
Come on, more throttle!
Just hammer on it!
There you go, we're moving!
ELOVIE: Did it! KALEB: You did it!
ELOVIE: Yay! KALEB: Good job!
You got me unstuck and you got to be first tracks on the ramp.
How exciting is that?
ELOVIE: So excited. Yes!
KALEB: Alright, this ramp is done.
Continue on down the creek.
JESSI: There's a feeling out here that
I've never felt anywhere else in the entire world.
When I succeed out here it's a celebration.
It means that much more, and there's just, there's no other feeling like it.
CHRIS: Wow.
JESSI: The, the tree directly behind you,
is that the tree that we picked?
CHRIS: Yeah, this is the one.
I'm gonna clear a little brush real quick.
Damn, whew it's cold.
CHRIS: Oh. Ah! JESSI: Oh, no!
That's Chris's first hatchet that he's ever gotten,
and he just lost the whole head in the snow.
CHRIS: That's a bummer. It's straight down.
It's, it's gone. That's my first axe.
JESSI: I know.
CHRIS: Well, hopefully this is the only thing bad that happens today.
I'd rather lose an axe head then lose it going across on a zipline.
JESSI: I guess.
CHRIS: Well, I'm gonna start tying ropes.
I'll be over in a minute.
JESSI: Okay.
I'm not even allowed to use that axe when I'm chopping wood.
So, Chris and I's plan is with one zipline to go all the way
across the river to the peninsula,
and then across the river again right to our cabin.
CHRIS: Ooh, I'm breaking through the overflow down here.
JESSI: Okay.
So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna string a rope across first to tell
exactly what the distance is,
because we only have 300 foot of cable.
CHRIS: Nice.
JESSI: So, if this zipline is over 300 feet...
CHRIS: Oh, that's stretchy. JESSI: Yeah.
We're not going to be able to do it.
Moment of truth!
15-feet, ten feet, five feet!
Yeah! We made it!
I'm trying to.
CHRIS: I'm coming.
JESSI: Get it. Look at all this extra rope!
CHRIS: Wow.
JESSI: We're gonna make it!
CHRIS: We'll tie the cable on,
and I'll start pulling it to the other side.
JESSI: Oh, my goodness.
ALEX: This isn't me going out on a weekend to do something to blow off some steam,
this is nature compelling me to do something for fear of my life.
Alaska winters doesn't give a crap about your, um, your comfort.
You know?
It's really nice and, and warm in here.
Sixty degrees.
I usually by this time of day I would uh, I would have let the fire die out.
I still got a fire going because I've been melting ice.
Um, just this ice here I gathered from the lake.
First you gotta melt this down to water,
and then bring the water up to a boil so it's safe to drink.
But I was thinking if I go to the lake,
then I can drill down and just get to the water.
Then I won't have to use near as much wood just to, just to melt it.
A lot less wood I gotta cut and just help me be more efficient.
Grab a few tools like my shovel and load up my sled.
Head on down to the lake.
ALEX: And when I came out here and I only came with,
you know, manual tools instead of bringing gas tools.
It was for a reason.
So, I'm just gonna test here.
I wanted to put myself in a situation to where the work would be kind of daunting and
insurmountable enough that I would have to find new ways to think,
and new ways to, uh, adapt to the situation.
You know I could say oh yeah, it's about the journey not the destination but that's
just kind of meaningless words if I don't actually do the work.
Okay, I think that's good.
I got a few tools.
I've used this auger a bit and I found it kind of hard to use.
Uh, I'm going to try it again.
The good thing about the auger is it drills a hole and I can just go straight down.
Should be the most efficient tool for cutting a hole.
Doesn't seem to be making any progress at all.
It's mostly just moving wider and wider.
It's not really getting deeper.
You know what, what could be wrong with it,
that would make it not cut efficiently.
I don't know.
Yeah, this thing's just not making any progress.
I don't know about this [bleep] thing.
ALEX: I don't know about this [bleep] thing.
Maybe I gotta keep kinda making a hole in the middle or something?
The only time I ever use any of these tools and really do anything with ice was
a couple months ago when I was at the Teklanika River.
So, you know this is outside of my, you know, experience.
Do these things always take that much effort?
Is it always this slow?
Is ice usually this thick?
I don't know.
So, I just gotta slow it down, take my time and, uh, just try to learn here.
Otherwise, I'm going to start blowing steam out my ears, you know?
I just try to, try to be patient with it.
I didn't come out here to Deadman Lake just to, uh, do the same old same old,
I came out here because I wanted to grow, I wanted to change myself.
I knew I wanted to challenge myself.
So, if I want to do something I just throw myself into the situation headfirst
and you know, face real dangers.
Because, to me, that, that's the full experience of life.
[bleep], how deep are we?
Yeah, I'm just thinking,
I'm not really making any, any progress down anymore with the bar.
It's getting real narrow and I just don't have a lot of room to really get at it.
In order to get deeper I'm really gonna have to make it twice as wide so
I can get my whole body down in there.
And, uh, I'm also like, pretty, pretty exhausted.
It's a battle of me versus the ice but um I'll come back with more energy tomorrow.
Bring the reinforcements.
JOHNNY: What interests me is being one with nature.
Getting back to the basics of life.
You know I admire the ways of the past.
I admire the simplicity.
JOHNNY: Okay, that's a lot of ash build up.
The last time I used this was when I boiled my traps and went trapping last year.
Today I'm not boiling the traps,
I am boiling and steaming the tips of skis so I can bend them.
So, out here in the middle of nowhere I don't have motorized vehicles.
Snow machines, I don't have four wheelers, I don't have side-by-sides.
It's easy to take for granted methods of transportation,
you know when you compare the city to living out here.
Uh, it's simple,
you get in your car and drive to your store.
But I don't have that luxury.
So, I need to make something efficient to get to my food source.
Skis are soaking, fine line between steaming and boiling.
I'm gonna let these soak in the water
for a while and kinda let that water penetrate the wood.
And while they're doing that I'm going to step out and make a frame.
JOHNNY: Thatta girl! Yeah, get it!
Get it girl! Come on, come on! Thank you.
This frame is essentially just a mold,
and this mold is what's going to allow me to bend the tip of the skis.
What I do is I take the ski after it's been steaming,
I stick it in between here and slowly bend it,
and that will create the tip of the ski.
When it comes to caribou hunting,
you know the caribou are my life out here.
They provide me with, you know over 90% of my food.
I need to be able to track them down,
catch up with them 'cause they're always on the move.
They're always staying one step ahead of the wolves.
And um, I need to think like the wolves, you know?
Be able to move fast and efficient.
This is the mold now, that's complete, um,
it's going to be pretty tricky.
It's both cold and very dry,
and when I take that ski from the steaming water if I don't bend
it in seconds, um, it's going to stiffen up and it'll crack.
It's a very all or nothing process.
Uh, I wanna see where these are at in terms of flexibility,
and the only way to figure that out is to toss it in the mold and
start to see if it wants to give, if it wants to bend,
and just kinda see where we're at with it.
The more I move this piece here the more of a camber I'm going to make in the ski,
the more likely it is to break so I have to move it up very slowly.
Because this is what's giving me the opposite pressure to these two pieces.
So, it's a delicate balance of how steep you want it and
how big of a risk you want to take before the ski cracks.
Don't break, don't break.
JOHNNY: Don't break. Don't break.
JOHNNY: That's amazing.
Wow, this worked out really well.
Yeah, they got a lot of character on them right now.
You can see the red from the rust that was in the cauldron,
and you can see burn right here.
That's when the flame came up and hit this canvas
and, uh, kissed that ski when I wasn't here.
But that's character ya know?
That's the stuff I like.
Every time I see that, I'm gonna remember this moment and
I'm gonna remember being right here and making these skis.
If I bought a pair of skis in the store, they wouldn't have that character.
Anything I buy in the store,
if they get burned or scratched,
I get upset because I worked hard to make money
to pay for those and that's very upsetting to pay for something,
doing a job you don't really care for and then to, to lose out on it,
so that's a benefit of making your own stuff.
The benefits to self-reliance.
So, in order to do the second ski,
I have to put it in here, but I have to remove this
fulcrum, and when I do that this ski is gonna come back and relax.
So now when I put the second ski in, I have bend both of them.
So, it is a little tricky.
I risk not only breaking one,
but I risk breaking both of them.
Ooh, that was close.
Starting to hear some pop.
I've gone too far.
That's as far as I can go.
It looks pretty good.
I don't think I need to push it anymore.
I'll leave it as is, and that's that.
What I gotta do now is I gotta get these inside because they're gonna freeze.
These are soaking wet, uh, it's negative 35.
These are gonna freeze out here so I gotta take this thing inside ASAP.
CHRIS: I remember when I first started out here,
I couldn't plan for tomorrow.
I just took care of today.
CHRIS: We're hooking up the cable to the rope,
and then I'm just gonna pull the rope from
the other side and bring it all the way over.
The cable's gonna hang out here with Jess and then once it gets to the end,
we'll loop it around the tree, and we'll pull it tight with the come along.
Okay, I am gonna head to the middle.
And then start taking it down to the river.
Once I get it down to the river, I'm gonna let go of the rope.
I'm gonna climb up the hill, and then continue pulling it.
JESSI: I want you to be vocal.
CHRIS: Yeah. I'll keep hollering.
I'll let you know, make sure everything's safe.
Okay. I'm headed over.
JESSI: Neither myself alone, or Chris, we do not go alone down to the river.
It doesn't matter if it's the summer.
It doesn't matter if it's the winter.
The river's always the most dangerous place to go,
so you don't wanna go there alone.
He's got the cable.
CHRIS: That's good!
JESSI: Doing this, Chris has gotta go alone,
however, I can see him so that makes me feel a little bit better that I can see him.
Okay!
CHRIS: These are gonna hold everything so I'm just gonna do a quick visual inspection,
make sure there's no breaks.
JESSI: This is double the length of any zipline that we've built before.
I mean this is a long one and it crosses the river twice.
Last time that we put in a zipline...
CHRIS: Now I'm just gonna pull it tight.
JESSI: He did not double-check the clamps.
And he almost lost our snow machine down into the icy river,
so just double-check this this time.
I still have a couple feet left.
CHRIS: Not much though. Just enough.
JESSI: Just enough.
CHRIS: Just pull it off there.
JESSI: Alright, let's put it around a tree.
CHRIS: One, two, and heave!
Oh, I see it's stuck right there in the middle.
JESSI: Hey, there you go. CHRIS: Will you pull on it?
Awesome.
JESSI: Alright, I'm letting go? CHRIS: Yup.
JESSI: I'm letting loose.
CHRIS: Wow. JESSI: What is that?
CHRIS: That took a lot.
I think we should pick this up tomorrow.
We're losing light pretty quick.
JESSI: Yeah?
CHRIS: My plan for the morning is, I'm just gonna come out.
I'm essentially gonna hook this come along on here,
hook it up to that birch tree that's back there,
and then we'll pull it and we'll start sticking some shims up underneath it.
JESSI: Cool.
KALEB: What speaks to my heart is being able to get outside and adventure.
KALEB: To go out and come home rejuvenated and your soul is happy.
I thrive on that.
Alright Ellie.
I think this is the spot.
I see a bunch of dead trees.
We got a good bank here on the ice where we can work.
So, I think this'll be a great spot, what do you think?
ELOVIE: Yeah. KALEB: Yeah.
I'm gonna get some trees cut down, Ellie.
I want you to sit on the snow machine.
I'll get three or four of them down and then we'll start processing 'em.
30 below this morning.
I don't know what it is now, but it's cold.
Face all frosty.
You're clear, Ellie?
I'm knocking this tree down.
Oh man, this is a nice tree.
No rot in it.
It fell in the right direction.
This is awesome.
Just working on getting myself a bit of a trail back here.
I'm gonna drop this tree down and then I'll skid it out with the snow machine.
The leaner's a potential health hazard.
If it was to fall when I was underneath,
there's no more Kaleb Rowland.
Game over. Lights out.
And there are some trees that are ready to fall over.
The easiest thing to do at a woodlot is just get all the easy stuff fallen first,
and I did that.
I felled a tree.
It fell right now onto my turnaround staging area.
I was able to cut it, split it, buck it up.
Get it ready to go without having to do any extra work.
There we go.
But, as the easy stuff goes away,
I have to start yarding the trees out with the snow
machine where I have good ground to split things.
Gonna get this strap under here and yank this log out.
See if she goes anywhere.
[reverse beep]
But all these limbs and stuff that are stuck in the ground and frozen in,
they don't like to give up.
Come on you stubborn bugger, don't make me cut you in half.
♪ ♪
ELOVIE: Nice!
KALEB: Big old spruce's got bad attitudes and
they don't like doing what I tell them to.
Fortunately, I have a badder attitude.
I think it's time for a fire, a nice big pile of slash.
Time to torch it.
Out here in the woods, you take every moment you can get with your kids.
You know it's cold out.
It's a big whoopty-doo to bring your kids out in the cold.
Gotta make sure they're warm,
their gear's tucked in just right,
all this stuff and it,
it makes it complicated to bring 'em out.
So, when they are able to go out,
when the weather cooperates and everything's good then,
something to be enjoyed.
ELOVIE: Oh baby!
KALEB: That's a fire now, Ellie.
ELOVIE: Yeah, that's a fire baby.
I had so much fun.
KALEB: Oh, good.
I have enjoyed being here in the woods with you too, Ellie,
and we have the start of a new firewood lot going.
JOHNNY: I don't necessarily measure growth.
Any situation I encounter, I'm gonna grow from it.
There's no measurement of time or wealth or success or even failure out here.
♪ ♪
JOHNNY: So, I'm pretty sure these are dried enough.
They look good.
The moment of truth to see if they hold their shape.
What do you think, Java?
Is it gonna work?
Alright, let's try it.
JOHNNY: Yeah, they look pretty good.
They're, they're not going anywhere.
They have dried into that position and it, it seems like they're there to stay,
but they have a very obnoxious squared off edge.
So, what I need to do next, is to make a point.
That way when I'm traveling through snow that point's gonna make it break through the
snow a lot easier, versus having this flat edge.
Traditional ski-makers, when they would shape the tip,
they would make some sort of bulb or ornament
on the end and that's what made it their ski.
It's their signature.
I'm not gonna get fancy with these out here,
because these are gonna get a lot of abuse,
but one thing I'm noticing, on the end of my ski here I have the rust-color red.
It just kinda happened to work out that way and, uh, that's gonna be my signature.
So, these are the caribou shin-hides that I'll be putting on the bottom.
I have to make sure that they're the right direction,
so I slide forward and not backwards.
I harvested a couple caribou this winter and it's my responsibility
and my duty to use all parts.
So, if I can use these shin-hides for the bottom of my skis,
you know that's something to take advantage of.
I'm going to make two holes in the ski.
I'm going to countersink around the hole and that means it'll be a little
hole for this nut to live in.
And this'll actually work better too because the nuts
will sit flush with the bottom of the ski,
and they won't catch any snow, they won't be hitting the hides.
They'll be nice and flush.
They'll live embedded in the wood of the ski, versus sticking out.
It all starts with an idea, and I take the idea and then I craft it and I build it.
These are skills you can't take from me,
you know these aren't possessions,
and being able to take a piece of wood that was gonna be a shelf in my cabin and
make skis out of it,
and something that I can transport myself all around this beautiful landscape,
that's a really-really good feeling,
and it's satisfying knowing that I can make
something from nothing.
But they look awesome, I think they look great.
They got a lot of character.
Oh hey. What do you think?
You think these look good?
Huh?
You just like the hides on the bottom?
Yeah, you like those hides don't you?
I think these look awesome.
These are gonna be a lot of fun.
They're gonna get me around, moving around faster in snow.
ALEX: No matter what. Nature's demand is clear.
I gotta burn some calories to get what I want from this place.
Uh, that's just the way it is.
ALEX: Down as far as it goes.
I was so tired after the last day I was out here digging,
I took an entire day and just pretty much slept all day.
I was beat.
So, I'm just gonna pick up where we left off,
I think I've got probably two more feet of ice to dig through.
It's getting harder now because, uh,
it's, as it gets further down, I have to bend over more.
But yeah, I think it'll be worth it if I,
'cause, um, I'm just burning so much wood to uh,
to melt ice, and, and also in the future I wanna fish here.
Uh, I mean this lake is gonna be kinda my primary resource.
It's, it's the big reason I moved here, ya know?
And I don't wanna just let a little bit of ice stop me.
I want to, uh, dig through it, get to the water,
be able to use that water so that it's kinda like I do a bit
of hard work, ya know, yesterday, today, and then it
should pay me back big time, I expect, ya know?
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Yeah, I, I thought getting water here would be, be a no-brainer,
it'd be pretty easy.
We're digging through, ya know, five feet of ice.
That's pretty tough.
So much chipped ice in there.
I don't know if I'm doing any damage or not.
Yeah, I'm just digging this hole, and digging this hole and it's getting
to a point where I feel like I'm not making progress anymore.
It's pretty disheartening.
So, it's getting pretty personal ya know?
And when it starts feeling personal for me,
then I feel at war.
Man, how [bleep] deep is it?
It just keeps going and going.
[ice chipping]
Oh, there's water, there's water.
Oh my God.
ALEX: Oh, there's water, there's water.
Oh my god.
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes.
Look at that beautiful water.
I just dug through um, I think technically it was about five feet of ice.
Uh, but my muscles are telling me it was about 200 feet.
Man, that was a lot of digging.
Finally broke through.
I got water.
I'm gonna get five gallons.
I mean five gallons will last me for, for weeks.
Oh yeah, already the top the, uh, it's starting to ice.
I guess that water's probably just right at
like 31 degrees or whatever,
31.9.
Now that I know how long it'll take to dig,
what tools I'll need to use you know what I mean,
then I'll, it won't be such a big deal 'cause I just know you know
okay it's gonna take a couple hours, ya know?
But again, I'm kinda using a hodgepodge of tools here.
If I get my corkscrew thing working better,
that'll probably be the fastest way.
Probably one of the big things I've learned living off grid so far is that the
only thing I really have to change is my mind.
Society always wants us to become something.
But to me that's all nonsense.
Kinda my big mission is to not become something but just be what I am.
I wanna do the things that my instincts tell me to do,
and I wanna just know life fully.
I wanna know all the ups and downs of life.
That way when it's time for me to leave, I can say I did it all.
CHRIS: The way on the Cosna is your always working forward.
We like to push ourselves.
We like to be challenged,
but out here on the Cosna we're always being challenged with everything.
You've got it. Push it up.
Alright. Roll that one into place.
JESSI: Awesome. CHRIS: Okay.
This dang zipline is super high up in the air.
Gonna have to build some kind of ladder on the tree to get up there.
Today we got the zipline up.
It's all about expanding territories, expanding the hunting area,
putting our foothold here and learning and living the lifestyle on the Cosna.
JESSI: Alright, here Chris goes across the biggest zipline we've ever made.
CHRIS: See you soon!
JESSI: We did it, our first 300-foot zipline across the river twice.
This is something that we are gonna get some much use out of.
CHRIS: Awesome!
JESSI: It definitely sags a lot.
CHRIS: But it got me across in, how long did it take?
JESSI: I don't know, fifteen seconds?
CHRIS: Yeah, that's a lot better than a 45 minute walk.
JESSI: Yeah, you only have to do that.
CHRIS: Two steps across the center?
JESSI: Yeah.
I'm so grateful that I can have a partner out here that's willing to do anything to make
things better out here like this is our home,
this is where we wanna spend all of our time.
Everything that we build out here for ourselves is making this place better.
KALEB: I think fire is a magical thing.
We take this cold, dead wood.
We split it up, a little bit of spark and it warms your body.
It warms the soul and it's something that is often taken for granted.
BRITTANY: You're back! KALEB: Yeah!
ELOVIE: What's up?
BRITTANY: So obviously you guys were successful.
GILBERT: Let go Elovie! KALEB: Yup.
We have the starts of a new woodlot.
BRITTANY: Oh good.
KALEB: So, I'm pretty jazzed.
BRITTANY: It's a little bit closer than the other woodlot too?
KALEB: Just a wee bit.
So, we got stuck going out there and Ellie ran the throttle to get us unstuck
while I pulled on the skis.
BRITTANY: Did you really? ELOVIE: Yeah.
BRITTANY: Was that so fun? ELOVIE: Yeah.
BRITTANY: Yeah! So, all in all it was a success?
KALEB: Oh yeah. We had a good day together.
BRITTANY: Good.
KALEB: In the bush, fire is important.
Fire is everything,
and it's not just my house I'm keeping warm, right,
it's a warm, safe, loving environment for my
kids and my wife, so it's more than just a chore.
It's almost a life calling to make sure that the
firewood is always stocked up and ready to go.
BRITTANY: Well, we lost the kids.
KALEB: Alright. Let's go try this stuff out.
BRITTANY: Go find those children.
KALEB: I imagine we'll find them right in front of the wood stove.
JOHNNY: Maiden voyage on the hunter skis, and I am thoroughly impressed with them.
They glide right up on top of the snow.
I don't sink too much.
I got a ton of surface area,
and it keeps me afloat and I'm super excited that I was able to
add something to my arsenal of transportation and it's something that I made.
So, it means a lot to me.
These have character. These have soul.
They're a part of me.
When people ask me,
why do you choose to be that secluded,
why not live in the city?
The city is a place of limits and boundaries.
And I'm a rebel at heart.
You know I like to live wild.
It's not normal to be this alone, to be this isolated.
But if you look at it differently,
you can grow from it and become a better person,
and that's why I choose the arctic.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.