Original subtitles

[eerie music]

[dramatic music]

- Holy [bleep]. Bear.

If I want that bear,

I need to be at the berry patch.

- Dang, my gill net snapped.

Look at that.

Don't fall in the water.

- So I've been trying every day

to get a little bit done on the shelter,

but catching more game-- that's my focus.

This is a fat trout.

- I'm gonna sneak up over this rock

and hopefully get one in him.

[wind whistling]

male narrator: For the first time,

ten participants will fight to survive the Arctic

for longer than anyone in "Alone" history...

a grueling 100 days.

- This is the ultimate challenge.

- A hundred days in the Arctic is no joke.

narrator: If they can endure,

they'll win the biggest prize ever:

$1 million.

- Whoa!

- Holy [bleep]!

- You can't tap out

when there's a million bucks on the line.

- Oh, my gosh. [growls]

- How hard can you work for $10,000 a day?

- It looks like frostbite.

[screams]

- Oh, [bleep]!

narrator: This is "Alone: Million Dollar Challenge."

- They're just surrounding my shelter.

[wolf growling]

[eerie music]

[music swells]

- We struck it. We just hit that muskox.

We just hit that muskox.

We just got an arrow

in a giant bull muskox.

That was probably 35 yards.

Holy [bleep].

[eerie tones]

I think he's gonna go someplace and bleed out.

There was a bunch of blood, man.

He's going up over the rock ridge.

[whispers] He's right up here.

I'm gonna wait a little bit.

[tense music]

Daylight's getting thin.

I got no arrows.

I gotta do something.

Sometimes you just gotta go for it.

[muskox growls]

[music swells]

[muskox growling]

[growling]

[whimpers]

[music fades]

[breathing heavily]

You ain't gonna [bleep] believe this.

[panting]

I just stabbed this muskox to death.

Oh, my Lord.

Hoo, hoo, hoo!

We got big game.

Big game at Rock House.

[sighs]

We are very thankful.

I still have a long road ahead of me,

but this is so big.

There's a hundred emotions going through me

at this very moment.

Got a lot to do here quick.

We got about an hour and a half of light.

We gotta pop the guts out of him.

The chase took me two miles away from Rock House.

It's getting dark.

Right now, I wanna take all these organs home.

That is the most valuable part of the kill.

That is where the best nutrients are.

Right there, baby--

fresh heart.

Feeding time.

This is a pure animal out of the pure wilderness.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with it,

and it's mealtime warm.

Now that's pure energy right there.

I love it.

We're gonna need that by the time we get home.

And there's still a lot of work to do yet.

We're gonna get blessed from this so many ways,

your freaking eyeballs are gonna spin.

[ominous music]

Holy [bleep].

We're gonna have to make a break for camp, I'm afraid.

I hate to shut down,

but we gotta do it.

I just got one side of the hide pulled off.

I'm gonna carry it in my raincoat,

what I'm taking back first.

I wanna wrap all these entrails up.

There's just hardly no fat on him,

no internal fat, you know?

No kidney fat.

Mostly the kidneys are all wrapped in a big, fat ball.

Little wee bit of fat in the intestines.

And there-- that bundle will ride.

We've gotta make tracks. I can't help it.

We're just gonna bed down and try to be up early

before them birds get out and anything else finds it.

[haunting music]

[bear growling]

- We can see...

Man, look at that.

Some is more recent, man.

You can tell by how fresh the berries are.

Hopefully it's not after my smoked fish.

[whimsical music]

I'm catching all this fish.

I think that I have really good chances

to lasting a very long time.

It should be way more insulated

and protected,

and a bear would have a hard time

trying to break in to get my fish.

That will get me time to get up.

The lake is calm,

so I wanna check the gill net.

[upbeat music]

Oh, [bleep].

[tense music]

[bleep]. Oh, my God.

The gill net's gone.

Whoa.

Ugh.

This is really terrible.

That thing produce a whole month of food, straight up.

Full month of food supply.

[solemn music]

- We gotta get moving

and head up the mountain and out to the muskox.

I'm worried there's some critters on it.

[foreboding music]

I'm worried about a wolverine or a bear

getting on this thing in the night.

That's the main danger of me losing this meat.

I've had animals get my kills.

I've busted my ass, go down the next day,

and there's a grizzly bear on it.

Got the whole thing buried. It's ruined.

Bear'll ruin it in one night.

It'd be a shame to lose it.

Wow, something ate a bunch of the stomach liner.

But he didn't do no damage to the muskox.

The muskox is safe. Phew.

Gotta be careful.

We got a lot of work to do right now, a lot.

[dramatic music]

What the hell is that?

Thought I heard something.

[sighs]

We gotta get the hell moving.

Here we go.

I need to get it butchered up

and moved away from the kill site.

Everything always comes to that kill site first.

[groans]

Then I'll start pack-ratting.

There's one leg.

Whew, nice.

Next, we'll go for a front shoulder.

Butchering's brutal. It is hard work.

[grunts, sighs]

But I do that for a living. I have that advantage.

I've packed tons of meat on my back.

Tenderloin right there, baby.

That's gonna be our reward for this day's hard work.

Red meat.

I'm probably one of the most experienced wilderness guides

on the face of the planet.

But a hundred days unsupplied, that's heavy duty.

This is some real [bleep] here.

[grunting]

You gotta try to think it all through.

[birds cawing]

The wilderness will make you more alert

to your surroundings and what could happen to you.

You just have to be

because there's nobody backing you up here.

These birds are sure circling us hard.

I'll just keep shuttling everything up little by little

where I can keep the birds off of it.

Oh, the camp robbers found us.

Now we got them in here too.

Man, oh, man.

Butchering, whew.

I am whipped.

I just wanna get everything to the top of that highest point.

I'm just gonna cache that stuff there

and come back later.

It's getting late.

We're taking the hide too.

That's what's gonna cover the meat while we're gone.

And then go rocks all around the hide,

and then a bunch of trees on top of that.

Always worried about something getting on it.

We're gonna be busy for a couple more days

getting this to camp.

I hope it's all safe,

but I can't do no more.

- [groans]

- I got a home that's more like a shack

I got a bed that's more like a rack

I got a fire that's burning

That keeps my heart a-yearning

To stay out here for another day

The goal is to make it to a hundred days

So I sit here and I'm praying

Yeah, folks, listen to what I'm saying

I need fish in my gill net

I need rabbits in my trap set

Yeah, a moose, where's the moose at

I've seen lots of bear and lots of bear scat

And this is the life I'm living

I've been waiting for for a minute

But trust me I miss my little one

So I sit inside by the fire

That's burning so bright

And think about what I'll say, hey

To that camera I carry all day

[vocalizing]

[laughs]

Now that's a song right there.

[dramatic music]

Gonna go check the gill net now.

I've been lucky to catch a lot of fish in my gill net.

Fish are like my life line out here.

They've been saving me. They've been keeping me fed.

Come on, fishy.

But recently, things have changed.

No fish today.

I went from two, to three, to four fish a day

down to none.

[eerie music]

Right now, I just have the fish hanging up in the cache.

I have to figure out a new strategy,

devising ways to put food in the food cache every day.

Maybe they're moving deeper. I don't know.

So we're gonna lower the net down.

Yes, we are.

The game plan is to lower the gill net

about another 10 feet in the water.

[exciting music]

We're gonna try and angle the net this way

'cause I think the water's deeper there.

I haven't even started to hit the tip of the hard part.

When the weather gets real cold,

it's gonna get extremely hard.

I don't know how this is gonna work out, but...

When I became a Recon Marine,

that's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

This isn't harder than being a Recon Marine.

It's not harder than being a Scout Sniper.

It's just as hard.

It's hard in a different way.

I have no clue what my gill net looks like,

but, I mean, it's deep.

It's not just about me.

I'm doing this for my son, and I'm doing this

for all the recon and sniper communities out there.

I've gotta keep it up.

Hopefully some fish get tangled up in it,

and we'll hope for the best.

[upbeat music]

[birds chirping]

- I had a bit of an epiphany last night about fishing.

The ice isn't coming as quickly as I want it to,

and I want to get out deeper,

and I keep talking about having a boat.

So yesterday, I walked my entire land

and I found a barrel.

If I can build a raft around the barrel,

I can sit on the barrel as a seat,

and paddle out, and start fishing from that.

So what I'm gonna do is get the barrel,

and then we'll build a frame.

All right.

It's just a wee bit snowing. Nothing major.

Hopefully this isn't the sign being like,

"This is a bad idea."

I'm running low on fuel

'cause the snaring has kind of been frustrating.

But you have to be creative with the stuff that you find.

Semi-desperate. [laughs]

This is a big deal, I think.

I understand the energy that it will take

to create this raft,

but the reward of it working,

I think, would totally outweigh

the energy expended to make it.

I figure one fish per week should give me enough fat

to get me to the end.

So it'll be like a raft.

I'll do three logs per side.

I'm pretty happy with...

these guys.

I think when you take on a challenge like this,

you have to be good

at self-assessing risk.

If the consequences outweigh the potential benefit,

then you need to think about

whether you're gonna take that risk or not.

Trying out this raft is going to be

one of the more risky things to do.

If the weather picks up and I fall in this water,

it would be a long, cold swim back.

[dramatic music]

It's dangerous,

but I am dangerously low on fat.

Oh, I got one. Oh, I got one!

Okay, put two logs

raised up on either side,

and those'll be my foot stirrups.

Lash it down to the raft.

All right.

She's on there. She's on there real good.

[melancholic music]

- I'm taking another bath.

All I need to do is heat up my water,

put my sock in the water,

and I just give myself a rubdown

'cause you gotta bathe.

I'm gonna start losing weight rapidly, I'm sure,

whenever the weather gets real cold.

[sighs]

This is a good chance for me

to make sure I'm not looking too skinny.

My arm looks skinny, that's for damn sure.

And I look clean.

[eerie music]

Time to get to work.

Let's go check our gill net.

High hopes for the gill net. Come on.

I hope that the fish are on the bottom

and I hope I set that net up good.

Gotta get more, gotta keep filling that cache.

Things could change drastically

at any point in time, so I'm gonna try all means

to try and produce food for myself.

Oh, man. Wow.

Fresh bear poop.

That's from last night.

This is right on the trail

where I go and check my gill net.

I would not have missed this.

So a fresh pile of bear scat?

Come on. I'm excited.

It's still around. That's good.

[dramatic music]

Bears just, they're hard to hunt,

but that would be a food source

that'll last you for the hundred days.

We're still gonna check the gill net.

So this is where we find out.

Did we catch a fish, or what?

So we got ourselves another strikeout, guys.

Oh, well. No fish today.

[tense music]

I really gotta look into some other options for food

because the fish'll dry up.

That'll happen and that's inevitable.

We're gonna call it a day.

We've got fish in the food cache, dinner for tonight.

I'm saving my dried fish for emergencies.

Holy [bleep] cannoli.

Now I'm pissed.

[bleep].

There's my food cache, right?

And there's no fish. That's insane.

Oh, yeah, a bear apparently just started a war.

- [bleep].

Now I'm pissed.

The bear had ended up stealing fish out of my cache.

He climbed up, grabbed the line,

and yanked on it until it pulled the fish over.

You steal my food, you turn into food.

[exhales]

I got a fire lit inside me, though.

And that's not good for the bear.

We're gonna devise a game plan to kill this bear.

All right, the goal is to turn these three trees

into my next cache-slash-hunting stand.

So...

I think I may use this tree to get to that tree to climb.

I'll be taking off almost all the branches.

Might kill a bear from it.

That's where I'm gonna put the meat.

It's far enough away from my shelter

and it's overlooking the berry patch.

He loves to walk in throughout this berry patch.

[sighs]

The bears will eventually hibernate,

so the clock's ticking.

So I just need to start putting up some poles,

and then build my hunting stand.

It's looking good.

[sighs] But we're not done yet.

[grunts]

[ambient music]

Quitting is an option. That's true.

But that's just not something that I wanna do.

Holy [bleep], that was not easy.

Doing this, I wanna show Max, my son,

what it is to do something extremely, extremely tough

'cause this is not easy.

This is hard.

[sputters lips]

Failure is a part of life,

but your mind can do amazing things,

your body can do amazing things.

A lot of times, it's your mind that stops first.

But if you learn from it,

you can go out and you can change who you are,

and start doing something better.

But you're never gonna get there unless you start it.

That's the hardest part.

I like it up here.

I can see a heck of a lot more and see what's coming.

I want the advantage. Now I have it.

[exhales]

[eerie music]

- I'm fairly well-protected against the wind right now.

It's not like I'm super cold,

but definitely the wind is [bleep] driving me crazy.

It's just like...

[vocalizing]

That's what it feels like.

It feels like the little annoying

Gripey McGriperson constantly.

I know it's an indifferent force of nature.

I really just wish it would stop.

[funky music]

Today is pretty much all-day shelter build.

That's the plan, and I wanna work hard at it.

Gotta push right now. Here we go.

Going down.

I still got a lot of work to do on this shelter.

Not gonna lie, I'm disappointed in myself.

I didn't think I would be this far in

and no long-term shelter finished.

I feel like I've been really focused on food.

Mm, I made things kind of hard on myself, didn't I?

I wanna keep working on it, see it finished.

I definitely wanted to have a robust shelter.

I knew that it would be a big risk.

Just the foundational framework has, like,

three joints on either end,

and I'm hewing the tops of them.

I really hope that being meticulous with this shelter

doesn't turn around and bite me in the ass.

I don't think my time of forgiveness

from the Arctic winter is gonna last much longer.

Maybe I've made a mistake.

Getting a bit of a wet snow.

It's coming down,

so I'm gonna crawl and hide away.

[sighs] Oh.

Feeling winter gaining on me.

Each day that goes by is another day

that adds up that it's not finished,

and it's my fault.

I think I'm just gonna keep myself dry in here.

What the [bleep]?

[solemn music]

The tarp is just, like, permeable right now.

The water's just coming through it

and getting all over everything.

I think just all the fatigue from the wind.

It's got holes all throughout it.

It's not waterproof anymore.

My biggest "can't happen" out here is getting wet.

And if I get wet, and then it drops well below freezing,

then I'm really screwed.

Drips are hitting this pole and dripping down

onto my sleeping bag, which freaked me out.

The primary sacred object that cannot get wet

is the sleeping bag.

Down can't get wet.

They're useless once they're wet.

So I am using the chamois for drying.

If it keeps raining like this, I'll be done.

Wet sleeping bag is tap out, period.

It's still happening.

Everything's just wet.

Why? Why rain?

[bleep] rain!

It's not supposed to be [bleep] raining in the [bleep] Arctic.

Son of a bitch.

[bleep] this.

- [sputters lips]

It stopped raining a couple hours ago.

Air out a little bit.

Much needed airing out.

Hang up the sleeping bag to dry.

I had kind of a temper tantrum with the wet weather,

but I still have energy, I still can get up and about.

I've not experienced extreme hunger.

I want to stay here a hundred days

and win $1 million.

I'm moving into the long-term shelter today.

It's not gonna be easy,

but I think I've got a good plan.

I'm moving into that shelter.

I wouldn't have the end walls really up,

but I could definitely get the tarp up.

And in that instance,

the tarp is at least not gonna be dripping on me

'cause the walls will be steep enough.

It just needs water to run off a bit faster.

It's gonna take me a couple days

to get enough logs up to close this thing.

It's looking good.

Feeling winter at my back.

I just gotta power through.

Just as tight as it needs to be, baby.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, still moving. Hoo.

I wanna come away with the potential to change my life,

and the primary goal has always been

I'll buy property and have some security

and have a little more freedom.

And the more I'm out here,

I'm starting to think more about the reality

of that large sum of money that could be coming my way.

So I just gotta keep my mind set

focused on what I can and can't control.

And sometimes, it's gonna be wet and windy

for several days, and I'm just gonna have

to hang up my wet sleeping bag and try to keep warm.

It sucks, but as long as it gets dry again,

it won't be the end of me.

No rest for the weary here.

[ominous music]

[lively music]

[wind whistling]

- [chuckles]

Good morning.

Winter has arrived. Check this out.

[chuckles]

I woke up to a world transformed.

Winter is here.

Obviously there's challenges that come with this, right?

Clay is frozen, berries are hidden,

firewood's wet, et cetera,

but it's winter tracking season.

Now in the snow, I can see

everything that happens throughout the night--

every squirrel track, every rabbit track,

where they stop and eat, where they rest.

So the snowshoe hares are moving.

We got tracks in the snow which is super cool.

This is gonna be awesome.

It's gonna make setting traps easier.

So we have the rabbits moving that way.

We got the front feet, and then the back feet moving that way.

So you can guess right where their head's gonna go,

so you can place the trap right in the exact place

that their head's gonna be.

So all right, good day to set traps, huh?

I am starting to feel more hungry

and I am losing weight too,

so I'm very hopeful for snowshoe hares.

This is a place that's gonna test my abilities.

I know where my edges are for my skills,

and this is gonna just push me past that.

[dramatic music]

[wind whistling]

- Yes, indeed.

Boiled muskox heart

from my big, fresh kill.

Pure energy.

Oh, my.

Oh, my God.

Oh, Lord! That is delicious!

Oh, ho! [grunts]

There's a big ring off the bottom,

and it's one of my favorite cuts of any animal--

them first three or four rings off the bottom of the heart.

That's just a hunter's reward there.

Wonderful.

That's what's gonna fuel the next run.

We're gonna go find our muskox.

We got wet snow, but there's nothing I can do.

I gotta trudge out there and keep pecking at this.

It'll be all day today packing meat.

I'm taking my bow on this first trip in the morning

because if anything got on that,

you know, it'll still be there.

I hope it's all just intact.

This thing is way out there.

As long as we don't screw up and hurt ourself

or let something eat all that meat,

we're looking good.

We're about halfway to the kill.

Just bear tracks everywhere.

Little surprised to see bear tracks.

I've seen winter bears before. It ain't real common.

Hopefully he didn't disturb the kill.

[tense music]

Oh, no.

Head is over there.

Bear came in and raided my muskox cache.

They started to eat the lip off right here.

Started to eat the lip off there.

This bear, he cleaned the tongue out,

and all the meat right here in the back of the head,

the good jowl meat.

[eerie music]

Oh, we gotta get the hell moving.

My main concern is to get back to Rock House.

It's gonna be a heavy, heavy, heavy load,

but I'm determined to take it all.

I gotta cover it back up.

We'll just have to pray nothing gets in this.

Packing meat, one of the hardest jobs there is.

Brutal, hard work. There ain't no half measures.

[tense music]

Holy [bleep].

First load in.

[grunts] That was brutal.

I packed a good many critters in on my back.

Big ones--moose, caribou, sheep, bear hides.

I've probably hauled in 20 ton of meat on my shoulders.

Every year, they're getting a little heavier.

It's starting to snow.

This snow is just slippery.

I'm concerned every day about burning too many calories,

but I gotta finish this.

It probably is a good mile and a half or more.

Whoo.

What a battle.

I am burnt,

and we gotta go back and get another one.

Wow!

[ominous music]

Time to roll.

So if it stays safe one more night,

tomorrow I can have all the meat in.

[sighs]

- The weather...

Well, the weather report is snowing.

It's like Christmas out there.

I think I have enough paracord. I got some lines laying.

I'm not using this shuttle,

so I let it from this corner to that corner over there,

and I'm gonna try to bring it down right now,

and just laying my strands here.

Tomorrow is gonna be my daughter's second birthday.

[solemn music]

Two years now, she's starting to see life

and its beauty.

I'm trying to do this and stay strong because

I want a better life for my daughter.

I just wanna keep her in mind and wish her the best.

Awesome.

[eerie music]

My family--they are lifting me from the ground up,

giving me some good energy so I can survive.

[exhales]

[ambient music]

- Now the water is as calm as it's ever been,

so I'm gonna go fishing.

We just got to. We gotta try.

We kind of have to move quickly here

'cause the wind could pick up.

Every minute that passes,

you're losing weight.

There is this looming worry

that I'm going to run out of fat.

No matter how well someone is doing out here,

they are low or deficient

in some sort of mineral or vitamin

that has potential to impair their judgment.

And so, everything is higher risk out here.

Oh, can you imagine if this barge worked?

I got, like, two weeks of fishing in

before the ice came.

But we gotta be really careful here.

To be alone on the water, you know,

it could turn into a bad situation pretty quickly.

All right.

And then paddle out there.

And that'll get me out another 30 feet or so,

and that can be hopefully where I get my fish.

[grunting]

[tense music]

Just going downhill now.

[grunts, panting]

She's floating. She's floating.

Okay, I'm getting on.

Oh, oh.

Okay.

All right, let's just try this, okay?

Wow. Oh, my God, I'm floating.

Oh, [bleep].

Not as stable as we'd like.

[uneasy music]

This is a bad idea.

[dramatic music]

Ooh, [bleep].

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.

- Ooh, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. [grunts]

No.

[ambient music]

This raft is not ready for a big fishing expedition.

It's unstable.

Oh.

We could've had a couple weeks of fishing.

I am disappointed.

Well...

I guess now we can kinda put that out of our minds.

Party barge.

It's a party of one bum, one wet bum.

[exciting music]

- Think it's colder today.

But the important thing to know today,

it's my baby's second birthday.

It's two years now.

She's starting to see life and its beauty.

I wish I was there,

but she's got a beautiful family taking care of her.

So the plan of today, I need to check the gill net.

[upbeat music]

I realize to be living on these cold conditions

is really tough.

And without having a supply of food,

it's pretty impossible.

By the time you start lacking calories,

of course, you start thinking more and more,

"Is it now the time, or can I go a little longer?"

You know?

Oh.

Well, guess what?

I think we got fish.

The gill net's starting to work.

First night on the shift,

and it provided fish.

Metzli got me a fish for her birthday.

My daughter, Metzli, thank you for this fish.

[laughs]

[whimsical music]

Gave me this awesome, awesome gift,

some food for my belly.

Yeah, I see the line.

I got a pike.

It's freaking awesome. My gill net is producing.

Food for another couple days here with this pike.

[optimistic music]

What a great start.

So grateful. So freaking happy.

[tense music]

- We're getting ready to head up the mountain.

That'll make two more loads there.

We just got to keep shuttling.

[ominous music]

Oh, boy. I'm feeling it, man.

We're throwing ourselves at it as hard as we can.

I'm done in each day.

But I gotta stay focused.

It's gonna literally make me or break me.

I cannot let nothing get this meat.

[ambient music]

He knows there's a dead animal in the area.

It might balls him up.

Look.

That's a bear right there.

We'll fight, crawl, or [bleep] swim,

whatever we gotta do.

Ain't gonna let no [bleep] stinking bear

steal my meat out of my front yard.

- Welcome to "Alone: Tales From the Arctic."

I'm Colby Donaldson, here tonight

with Roland, Mark, Joe, Amós, Kielyn, and Callie.

Roland, you shot a musk ox with your bow and arrow.

Then you gotta finish him off, put him out of his misery,

with your knife.

Walk us through, if you can, that experience.

- Yeah, I can try. It was quite a time.

Anything can happen.

There I am, there he is,

and I--all's I got is an empty bow

and a belt knife.

I don't want to set there till dark,

and I got within three or four jumps of it,

and I went in and hit it, as you see,

and then, when he finally--

you see he goes down on his side,

and his legs are out,

I let out a war hoop

somebody in the next camp might've heard.

I don't know. [laughs]

Hoo-hoo-hoo!

Praise God! We got big game!

- Speaking of those in the next camp,

I-I do want to hear from some of the others

just in terms of what they were thinking

as they were watching it play out

with the rest of the viewers on the show.

Uh, Mark, how about you? What were--

what thoughts were going through your head

as you watched Roland take that musk ox down?

That was insane. I mean, Roland talks about it

as one of his most epic kills--

and this is what he does for a living--

and I have to agree. That was absolutely insane.

I loved it.

- Did any of you know

that Roland had taken a musk ox

prior to seeing it on TV?

- No. [laughs]

Everyone probably assumed someone got a big game,

but ultimately, the nice thing about the 100-day challenge

is that doesn't matter how other people are doing.

You still gotta get to that 100 days,

and everyone was trying their best to get there.

- Joe, just--I want to ask you,

how important is big game out there

during an experience like this?

- I mean, it's like pulling off the Hail Mary

at the end of the football game.

You gotta have some luck on your side,

and you gotta be skilled, and luckily,

Roland had both in that instance.

- Roland, first of all,

how many miles do you think you covered, in total,

just getting that animal back to your camp?

- I very well could've put on 40 miles in three days,

but just the sheer workload

of breaking that thing down

and then the process of pack ratting it

clear back to camp--

it's the hardest thing you'll ever do to your body.

- You know, as far as protecting your food goes,

that's--that's really what a lot of this episode

is all about.

How did that weigh on you, Mark?

- A lot of it is all about food.

And so once you get it, you're lucky enough to get it,

then you gotta say, "Well, I gotta keep it."

And so if it means fighting off

whatever's coming in there to take it,

that means fighting it off.

It is a daunting task.

Once you grab that food,

everything in there is trying to eat,

so survival of the fittest, right?

You steal my food, you turn into food.

- The interesting thing was,

animals weren't the only thing out there,

uh, in the Arctic stealing food.

Let's take a look at this never-before-seen footage

of Callie.

- What do we have here?

Oh, wow.

We have a squirrel stash...

Of mushrooms.

Whoa.

What a cache.

[squirrel scolding] Oh, the squirrel's not happy.

Wow, this squirrel's like, "Dude, get out of my cache."

[laughs]

So I got some mushrooms

from a squirrel cache.

That's a nice little meal right there.

Thank you, squirrels.

[squirrel scolding]

- Callie, tell us about, uh, raiding the stash there

and you being the, uh, ever opportunist.

- [laughs] Yeah, that was fun.

You know, we were dropped at location

at the very end of September,

and by then, a lot of the mushrooms I was finding

were decaying and slimy and practically just mush,

so the squirrels did something for me

that I couldn't do for myself.

They stashed a bunch of mushrooms

up in the trees.

So it was a pretty awesome score,

and being a scavenger and an opportunist

is a great skill to have.

I mean, all the animals out there--

they're not gonna pass up an easy meal,

and neither am I.

- I wanna talk about hunger for a second, Callie,

uh, because it's always present in an experience like this,

and for those who may be sitting at home, watching,

uh, enjoying a pizza,

give us an idea of what it's like

to be that hungry.

- Yeah, I mean, out there, I had food,

but still, you are expending so many calories

going all over the place,

building massive shelters.

Like, doing everything that we have to do

is burning tons of calories,

and so even though I was eating every day,

it's still not enough.

I'm Colby Donaldson, here with Roland,

Mark, Joe, Amós, Kielyn, and Callie.

Joe, uh, at this point,

your shelter is beginning to take shape.

It looks pretty solid.

Are you concerned that maybe you waited too long?

- It's such a game of balancing priorities

and managing your time,

and I went in knowing that I was gonna take my time

on a long-term shelter.

Really, having my shelter incomplete

was something that I was just looking at

as, um, something I could be patient with,

and I really needed to prioritize food,

and the shelter was sort of like my hobby.

- So what were you working on, uh, in lieu of that shelter?

What were you spending your time doing?

- So I had been chipping away at a gill net

for a little while, and that was something I'd work on,

um, when I just had some spare time

between trapping, foraging, working on the shelter,

and doing other various craft projects.

- Amós, you took a-- a huge hit

when you lost that gill net.

How does that affect your morale and just your--

your mental state moving forward

when something like that happens?

- Yeah, it was a big blow to the strategy.

The gill net--it did provide a ton of fish,

a bunch, so it was a big loss.

But at the same time, I felt really low

because I lost a net to the lake.

I didn't want to contaminate the lake.

- Well, and at that point,

were you having much success hunting?

- No, I'd been walking a lot, but I hadn't had--

I hadn't seen any big game.

I seen some moose tracks, I seen some scat,

but the gill net was pretty much

what was providing for my food.

- Kielyn, let's talk about that raft.

- She's floating.

Okay, I'm getting on.

- That was a bold move.

Uh, you're fully kitted out.

It's about 30 degrees outside.

You decide, uh, to paddle out on a barrel

into the deepest lake in North America.

Tell us about that choice.

- I struggled with the fish,

and I didn't want to give up on the fish,

and I just weighed the options,

uh, how much energy it was going to cost me

to build this raft,

and what it would be worth to me

if I--if it was successful,

and, um, it floated. It worked,

but it wasn't quite, uh, maybe beefy enough,

wide enough,

that if I felt like I was catching,

you know, a 10-pound, 20-pound, lake trout,

it would just pull me in, and I would've gone swimming.

- Mark, this gets us into sort of that inner conversation

you have to have at some point out there

about risk versus reward.

- I mean, you gotta take risks.

Even walking, walking around the lakeshore,

right, when it starts freezing up

and there's ice everywhere--

um, that's a risk,

but you--you have to do that if you want to survive.

Everybody's taking risks,

and they are calculated.

But that's life, you know, so you gotta take that risk

and just hope that you got enough knowledge and skill

that you're gonna be able to work your way out,

work yourself through.

And now I gotta get back up here

without busting my butt.

- Roland, we leave, uh, the episode

seeing that bear off in the distance,

probably the bear, you know, that's been raiding

your musk ox.

How rare is it to see a winter bear?

- The winter bear is a little bit of an oddity,

and it will make them more unpredictable

and potentially more dangerous.

Mark, we saw that bear, you know, took your fish,

so you decided to flip the script

and actually hunt the animal.

Tell us about that. Were you successful?

- Uh, well, you guys will have to wait to see, right?

Um, but I will say,

if anything takes anything from me

while I'm out there,

I mean, I'm going after it.

It's wartime. It's game time.

- Well, that's it for "Alone: Tales From the Arctic."

I'd like to thank Roland, Mark,

Joe, Amós, Kielyn, and Callie.

Tune in each week after the episodes,

where we'll be talking with all of the cast,

and now, as promised,

a sneak peek of next week's exciting episode.

We'll see you then.

- Hey! Get out of here, wolverine.

It's my food cache. [wolverine growls]

Get out of here!

- I'm gonna build a meat crib.

We're gonna fit them tight so nothing can get in there.

I was right there.

- Oh, [bleep]!

I just lit my shelter on fire.

[grunts]

Holy [bleep].