Original subtitles

This is going to be one of the most epic experiences of my life. You're by

yourself. Anything could happen at any point in time.

All of your success and all of your failure is all on you.

This is it.

It has begun.

Who are you when everything's been stripped away?

Gary out here in these woods.

I have not had a serious meal in a week. If I can't get a player, then I can't

stay here.

It's always in the back of your mind. Well, I could tap out.

Putting up with a filming booth?

Running into a predator. It's not an if, it's a when.

Get the hell out of here. I see you. Get out of here!

I need to get out of the woods.

I'm just demolished.

I'm living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Yes!

$500,000 is a lot of money. It's just going to keep getting harder.

It's not the world that needs to change. It's me that needs to change.

We're about to embark on an extended wilderness survival experience.

How long? I don't know.

What we're doing out here is dangerous.

The wilderness is the unexpected.

We have an idea of the conditions. We have an idea of the resources.

But until you get on the ground, you have no idea what you're going to do.

Oh, my God, I'm alone.

The last person left wins $500,000.

That can make you push yourself past the limit.

Crap. What the hell have I done?

We get to take only 10 survival items, which is hard enough as it is, but

documenting everything is an entirely different level of craziness.

Here they go.

Alone at last.

Let's pass the boot line, mother.

Go, go, go, go.

Damn it.

Now I'm soaking wet.

I'm in for it.

It's beautiful, but with beauty also comes the danger.

The predators, the bears, the cougars, or the wolves, they are part of the

circle, and I just need to learn to find my order.

What's going to be more difficult, being alone or staying alive?

All right, just got dropped off.

The bush is just crazy, crazy thick over here.

I've got a good water source already.

Won't have to worry about water at all.

Right now, I'm just looking for an area to set up my shelter.

Water, shelter, and food. Those are the orders that I'm going to go in and then

fire, of course.

Like Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face.

As long as I come out here with an open mind.

Taking everything day by day. I know I can develop my plan as I go along.

$500,000 is a lot of money.

Motivates you to do a lot of things out here.

Area's really thick. The woods are really wet. Not what I expected it to

be.

Look, look, look.

Bear scat.

Definitely a bear presence here.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm a little concerned right now.

Feeling a little anxious right now.

The woods have an eerie feeling with them. I swear they do.

Feels eerie out here.

But I'm going to keep pushing forward, see if I can find a place to make this

shelter.

In the military, you have to push through everything. So that's what I

plan on doing while I'm out here.

I did seven years, ten months in the Army.

Enjoyed every moment of it. It's a great experience. Love to serve my country.

That's my family right here. That's my mom right here.

I'm doing this because it's just an opportunity for me to be a positive role

model to my family, friends, and people that look up to me. Put it in the bag.

Put it in here.

Being alone won't bother me one bit, and I look forward to it.

60 days, I think it'll be easy to do.

Being in the military helps me out here by giving you the intestinal fortitude

to push through any adversity that you might have or you might encounter.

The military has just given me drive.

There's no stop.

You know, I ain't going to tap out.

That's for sure.

They're going to have to grab me. They got to do some physical altercation.

Yeah, and then if the bear grabs me, if somebody sees a bear fight, they need to

help the bear. Right.

I'm just saying. I'm going to be fired out there.

This area is dense, really dense.

Oh, this is fresh.

This is fresh bear scab right here.

I mean, this is probably 20 to 30 minutes old. I'm not sure, maybe an

hour.

I got to get out of here. All right, let me get moving.

That's a super steep slope right there. So, I mean, I can't really pitch a tarp

right there or anything.

I need to... I don't really want to dive into the woods right there.

So, let's get off this beach.

Let's go exploring.

My priorities for tonight are purely shelter. I just want to make sure I got

a shelter. And it doesn't have to be an elaborate shelter.

There's no flat spot.

It's all deadfall.

It's all, you know, super brushy.

It's going to be hard to find a good shelter location.

And directly in front of me is a creek bed. If it starts to rain, that creek is

going to rise and it's going to flood me out.

So what I'm going to do is rethink my situation. And, you know, if I have to

climb this hill to find a good night's sleep tonight, I will.

But I barely scratched the surface of where I'm at.

Barely.

Okay.

I've reassessed my plan.

And that's okay.

I'm going to just do something super simple. If you can see these cedar trees

behind me, I'm just going to take my tarp and drape it over it. That's all

I'm going to do. To heck with it. That's my shelter for tonight.

You never know when you come out into the woods. It could be an hour, two

days, three months before you are sick and tired of things or something scares

you or, you know, you miss your family too much or whatever. Your mind gets a

hold of you, hunger gets a hold of you, whatever.

So you never know what's going to happen, but I'm not sure what could want

me to come out of this place.

After looking at where I put my shelter, this was my first moron moment. I was a

moron for putting it there. The water's right next to it. But we're talking by

not very much. That's a stupid place to put a shelter.

My first moron moment. That's all right. It'll happen.

I can change it.

I need to find a shelter location.

The shelter location I have sucks.

I could sleep there tonight if I absolutely have to. I would really

rather not sleep there.

I'm going to follow this creek up and see what happens after that.

Honestly, I still can't believe that I'm actually out here doing this.

Before I came out here, I shaved my beard. It was kind of a, I'm going to

start changing the way that I live my life now.

I've been married a long time.

My two kids, they're already grown up. They already left.

This is my son.

This was a graduation picture. This is my daughter.

This is my wife, Rachel.

So we've been married for, how long has it been now?

27 years, something like that?

26. I think what I want to put in there next.

It is my act.

I just focus my entire adult life after 18, basically, on raising my kids.

Obviously, I love my wife and I love my family dearly. But there comes a time

sometimes in a person's life where they need to step back away from their life

and have an experience, have a journey, a spiritual journey, kind of. I don't

know how else to explain it. I'm really excited. I know you are. And when you're

out there, remember us and remember that we support you and we love you and we're

really happy for you.

I love you. Love you, too.

I want to step back away from the life that I'm living right now, get a little

more introspective, and find out what's my next step in life.

Thank you, Rachel, for letting me do this. You're welcome. There was never

any question.

That is where I came from, right down there.

I'm going to keep up this steep cut of a gun because I see.

This one overhang is pretty small.

There's another huge one up there. It looks like it flattens out.

God, I hope it gets easier.

Oh, I need a shelter. Oh, my God.

Okay.

Back up the mountain.

One step at a time.

It's crazy walking here. You can be walking along and then all of a sudden

you can step in a hole and you can be up to your armpits or you can be down to

your ankle. You never know. It's not solid ground.

Oh, the breakfast will be fine.

It's just so thick. Oh, crap.

All right.

Onward.

Yeah, this is the current team that comes to me.

These damn ferns.

Damn it.

Frickin' jackpot, man.

Here.

Sticking the eye. Sticking the eye.

Red alert.

Sticking the eye. God.

Jesus.

Not my way.

Here.

Not my way.

Hear it.

He's just playing it.

I've seen a lot of sign of bear around here.

What I want to do is make sure I have my food out of reach and away from me as

well. That way I don't attract anything into my area.

In Iraq or in Afghanistan, any of those places that I've been before, at least I

know what conditions I'm going to be in and what to expect.

At the end of the day, I know I have...

Other people there that have my back, if something happens to me here, the only

person you have is yourself.

Wow, man.

The fear factor of the unknown is just overwhelming.

I won't be able to get it up without the line breaking off.

Either I have to find some rope or I have to think of a different option for

tonight.

Let's go see if I can find a different location.

I can't believe this weather.

It's amazing.

But after jumping off the plane today and getting soaking wet, my boots are

wet, and so I got to move.

I was hoping that maybe I wouldn't need a fire tonight because it's warm enough.

But now that all my gear's wet, I'm pretty much screwed.

So that was all the unknowns I was worried about.

So it makes me nervous.

It's thick. It's dense.

It's green today, but it's going to be dark tomorrow.

This is it.

This is it.

That's all I got.

Do it.

Look around here, see what I got for shelter space.

There's so much going through my mind, it's unreal.

I'm scared, I'm nervous, I'm excited.

Just the thought of being alone and the unknown, it's not going to be easy.

I'm going to set up over here, I think, for the night. So I'm going to clean out

this area over here, this way.

The hardest challenge is going to be leaving my children.

I miss my daughters terribly.

They're always on my mind.

My daughter's all over the place. She's four now.

She does know I'm gone. She does know that I love her.

Greta, she's just a baby.

I don't get to talk to her much, but I get to hear her.

She's rolling around. She's doing good.

I was part of the Hobart Hotshots out of the Tao National Forest.

Hotshots are wildland firefighters.

They are known to be the biggest, the best, the strongest in the field, and it

was one of the hardest challenges I've ever done. What I learned was that

mental strength can get you just about anywhere.

I'm doing this because I want to see how far I can actually make it, how far

mentally and physically can I survive on my own.

I want my kids to say, my mom did that, or why would something stop me? I can do

that.

Are you going to miss me?

Yeah.

Hello, nice guy.

I feel that if I pass this adventure up, I would be shorting myself and my

children because there should be no limits in life.

You should push yourself to your personal extremes and see how far you

can always go.

to better yourself and those around you.

Anyway, it looks like it's kicking my ass.

I wasn't... It's good.

It is what it is.

It's a large tarp.

I'm going to go ahead and brace down the other side of my tarp so that it's

usable for tonight.

Pretty much right now, just filling the place out.

I haven't been out here very long, a couple hours.

Everywhere I go, I'm starting to see more and more signs of bears.

Just looking for an area to set up my shelter.

Just want to stay focused. Don't want to start getting upset right now. Got a lot

of things to accomplish and do.

Anytime you get frustrated out here in this environment, it can mess with you.

I just heard a noise, a loud noise out there. I'm not sure where it was.

It was kind of a little far off, but definitely heard something.

Hey, Bear.

Yo, Bear.

This is real now. This is real.

This is bad.

I got to get out of here.

This is crazy.

I got to get hustling.

I got much to do.

I'm going to get in here and try to get things situated. That way I can make the

first night easy and not stress myself out too much.

So I'm going to get my shelter up for tonight.

You never know what's over your head.

Unless you look.

And I'm going to show you why it's so important to look.

That could have come down on me while I was sleeping.

With the right kind of wind coming through here.

So, always check above.

Look for widow makers, deadfall.

You should never know what you got above your head.

There are certain skills, you know, basic techniques that if you don't

follow and you suffer a mechanical injury, there's nobody here to help you.

You have to know how to help yourself because rescue is a ways away.

This is the type of environment that you need to know how to affect self-rescue

first.

If you don't, then it could be pretty harsh for you, and it could definitely

take you out. That's difficult. So I'm looking forward to using that knowledge

that I have gained over the years and helping me in this experience.

I am former military and former law enforcement.

I am very fortunate I still have my parents.

All right, good boy.

I have my daughter and my son, three grandchildren, and my best friend Molly.

With the children having grown and left and living their lives, Molly's always

been there. Molly, here. I think she's upset with me right now because I am

leaving. For me, this is a spiritual journey.

I'm looking forward to having this time to go within myself to resolve a lot of

unanswered feelings and emotions and events in my law enforcement and

military career.

Be safe always.

Remember I love you. Love you too.

I've been witness to a lot of very difficult things.

I'm here for the inner journey and spiritual aspects of healing myself.

I can't forget it, but at least I can make peace with it and try to step

forward with a new perspective and a new beginning.

All right.

One throw together temporary shelter.

This will get me through tonight.

Okay, well, I'm going to be brutally honest. I am at a loss as to what to do

for a shelter.

I mean, I want to do a plow point of some sort, but I

thought I'd have like a little bit of level ground. And I mean, I do have a

little tiny bit, but it's right next to this creek.

I've been up along this ridgeline.

Tomorrow, I'm going to explore around that ridgeline.

What I need to do today is...

Quit screwing around.

I need to start cutting some logs.

So my preferred shelter is a plow point shelter.

Basically what I do is I take a square tarp. You take one corner and you

incline it on a tree branch.

I can drake my tarp over the top of that.

Pretty tough to work with a tarp when you don't have much real estate to work

with.

And just manufacture stakes.

And then I can stretch my tarp tight enough so I don't have to worry about

cordage.

That will at least work for this first night.

I'll be honest with you.

Feeling a little worried.

I feel like I bit off more than I can chew being out here right now.

A little frustrating.

I didn't think I'd have a problem worrying about animals, but the minute I

seen that bear scat when I got off the boat, it really changed me. It changed

my whole psyche about the situation.

The woods, they have an eerie feeling about them.

The forest is so dense.

Every little sound that I hear is bothering me, it's getting to me.

It's a different animal being out here and knowing you have to do this all by

yourself.

I know everything to do. I know what I want to do, but going inside the woods,

I just don't know.

As of right now, I'm not feeling it.

I'm not feeling it at all.

Check this out.

The whole place is a mussel bed.

Look at that. Everything right here.

Mussels are my absolute favorite.

This would be enough food that I could collect every day and

not run out for six months.

And I can't touch it.

When we came out here, they told us that we could not partake in

any of the shellfish out here because of red tide.

This is tough.

This is the hard part.

It's so hard looking at something so awesome, knowing that it could kill you.

This is one of those little things that rocks your world.

Right now, this is feeling like the toughest thing I've ever done in my

life.

It's like I had all these ideas in my head about what I wanted to do, but

everything just went out the window. It's like I don't know anything right

now. It's like I've never been out here in the woods.

My entire morale just went down the drain.

This was a personal choice to come and do something to make a better living for

myself and my family.

I don't know that it was the right decision.

At this point right now, all I want to do is go back home.

What are you thinking about right now?

I mean, it was just, I just never experienced nothing like that before.

I'm good.

So I guess I'm officially tapping.

Good.

Got a lot of people looking up to me to do good things.

I'm feeling like I've let them down.

It's a different animal being out here and knowing you have to do this all by

yourself.

I mean, because when they say alone, you're really alone.

I believe I hear the neighborhood residents.

I just have not seen any.

But my thought is that they will come to visit tonight.

There's a crashing through the brush.

It is just amazing the amount of noise that I'm hearing in the woods here.

I figured I'd hear a bit, but quite a bit.

Like that.

It's raining.

It's gonna be raining cats and dogs probably all day.

Your shelter's holding up okay though.

That's all that matters.

My boots are so wet.

It pisses me off.

I can't stop thinking about that.

I don't have dry boots.

Well, let's see here.

If we see an eye shine back, as I heard.

I am mostly concerned with the cougars.

I will do my very best to stay out of their way and let them do what they need

to do to get through their winter, and I'm hoping they'll do the same for me.

But when you weigh 275 pounds, you learn that running isn't much of an option, so

you better be ready to fight.

Hopefully they will find me not interesting.

It rained all night.

No big surprise.

I'm still just pissed off about my boots. I can't.

It's going to be days before my boots dry out. Days.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Stop right there.

I'm finding all kinds of water in my tent.

The bottom of my bag is super wet.

My sleeping bag is down and once down gets wet it's near impossible to get dry

in these conditions and I need a dry sleeping bag.

I like you.

Oh, my kindling. Everything I collected.

Wet.

Filthy wet.

What the hell?

I screwed up.

Day one.

I'm wet.

First

things first.

Bridge pole check.

So I plan on building the same sort of structure in A-frame. The construction

that will be different is the fact that I'm going to tie my grommets together

underneath. And then I'm going to put the grommets. under my ridge pole,

point being that the rain can't get in on the sides at all. The rain will come

in from underneath.

And then from there, I have an extra tarp as one of my items, and I'm going

to lay that on the floor and create a boat so that if any

water sheds from the inside of the tarp, it misses me in the center of the boat.

I put that green tarp on top so if any Water comes in on my ground

tarp. My bottoms have to dry.

See, it's all up on the sides there.

If I can stay dry, I can stay out here as long as I want to.

Where to look for firewood in a rainforest?

When it's dry out, no less.

Winter's going to be a bitch.

All of that just for one little handful of firewood that's wet anyway.

Hope I can get this fire going.

Wow, winter's going to be a pain in the fuck, man.

I'm just...

This

tree climbing, I know it's going to swell as soon as the rain starts.

And trying to make a move in the rain is going to be difficult.

So, I don't know.

The alone part...

It doesn't bother me at all, but it's only been two days.

But just the crappy-ass shelter that I made and the freaking difficulty of

having the fire and just the steep terrain and kicking pot.

I mean, if the terrain was even just a little bit easier, these have

got to be just about the hardest woods I've ever had to try to survive in.

I just feel like I'm not performing like I should be.

They're outside.

caught the entire forest on fire.

It's basically fighting an inner battle all day long. I can't do no more!

I way underestimated this place.

You heard me get!

One wrong move and I'm done. What am I doing out here?

Look at that!

Squish mouth, my favorite!

God, I feel like I'm letting her down. I'm slowly dying of starvation.

Oh my god, Mama Bear just stood up on her hind legs. Not good.