Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero...

When Alaskans bet against Mother Nature,

the house always wins.

ANDY: Whatever Mother Nature throws at you, you just got to deal with it.

SUE: In all the best-laid plans, nature has another idea.

NARRATOR: The brutal freeze threatens Andy's way of life.

Almost 50 below.

ANDY: I don't think they're gonna start.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones break trail through the bitter tundra.

There is no easy, it's all rough country.

Sue Aikens braves jagged terrain to protect her camp.

If I can't get myself up, I'm somebody's dinner.

NARRATOR: And the Salitans struggle to outsmart their prey.

We caught something and it got away.

(DOGS BARKING)

CHIP: It's light winter, the sun is up now until 9:30 at night,

and it's time for us to have our hunt on.

We have long, clear days. It's gonna be cold,

but where we're going is where all the caribou are,

and wherever the caribou are, there's fur.

NARRATOR: For the Hailstones, the transition from dark

to light winter brings more daylight and is the time

to journey to Kiwalik, where they will hunt and trap

red meat and fur for the next few months.

AGNES: It's gonna be a two weeks of pretty much

everything we come across.

Caribou hunting, wolf hunting, seal hunting, fishing.

You know, there's a lot of things

we expect to see out there

but we're just gonna do what comes to us.

The first step we do when we plan a trip like this

is we take care of our machines.

I don't want to go out there and think that "Oh, I have to run

"my snow machine real easy."

You know, try to take it easy on my ride and all that.

Once we get out there into the country, there is no easy.

It's all just rough, hard, cold country.

CHIP: We paint the snow machines just for simple

camouflage effect.

We wanna get closer to the animals,

we want the animals to get close to us.

We wear white.

We're not 100 per cent camouflaged, but we're enough

to break up our outline and deceive the animals.

Get more advantage just being concealed.

The kind of white I wanted, white as snow.

Well, I think this is looking pretty good.

Looking pretty good. Wow.

It's time to go.

AGNES: We should be able to make it all the way down

to Kiwalik today.

Its 110 miles.

We leave when we do, simply because of

the way the sun is.

We're travelling south, and for quite a few hours

of the day, the sun is directly in our eyes.

So basically what we do is we either leave early

in the morning, or we leave late in the afternoon.

AGNES: Be here every day when the kids

come home from school.

Mm-hmm.

If anything, we're just two hours away.

CHIP: We've got our kids in the age old enough, they can take care

of themselves. They can watch each other.

They can run a house efficiently without

burning it down or blowing it up.

And we can be gone for a couple, three,

four weeks at a time if we need to.

SUE: If you only go through the routine, and the accepted,

you get the basic script of life down,

but you're short changing yourself on

all the little nuances.

The closer I get to spring, you know, it's tough walking on

some of these, uh, snow drifts, because you're solid, solid,

and then you fall through.

I used to have a couple pairs of real nice,

professional snowshoes, but things break.

So what I wanna do is, uh, mack down some of these willow branches

and start fashioning a couple of snowshoes.

There are predators out there.

And I'm 180 to 200 pounds of fun.

I'm punching through the snow and if I can't get myself up

I'm somebody's dinner.

Outside, out here in the cold, things break, they're brittle, they're frozen.

So what I wanna do is get them back inside my cubby,

let them warm up so they're pliable.

If it's 20 below outside, everything's brittle.

Uh-oh, Ermie, what does mama got?

So I'm gonna light my little stove here.

I got the little heater going, so that will add to the warmth

of the room, help speed up the process.

They don't need my help to thaw.

So these will just do their thing, I'll go do mine.

While I've got the willow branches thawing out

in the Twinkie, I wanna get up here and check my surroundings.

Is there a major predator sitting out there?

You know, I heard something howling out that way.

So looking helps me see, what's the area

I wanna go to look like?

Most animals are gonna be coming down or up the river.

So what I wanna do is cross-section it.

I just wanna see what's in my neighbourhood.

Is there something out there snarling, and falling down,

and sick that I have to deal with?

So you gotta get down, dirty and personal with it.

ANDY: Big part of living out here is gaining a system that works

for you, 'cause it's different for everyone.

And then rocking and rolling when it's time to do it.

'Cause days are short, you just gotta get out there and do it.

Got up this morning and it was

50 below at sunrise.

It's, uh, warmed up to about 40 below now.

Everything has to average out.

And if you don't get your cold early in the year,

you're gonna get it towards the middle or the end

of the year and that's where we're at right now.

Unfortunately, just because it's a cold day out

doesn't mean that all the chores get

put on hold around here.

Every day there are chores.

Dealing with dogs, dealing with wood,

dealing with water.

So whatever Mother Nature throws at you,

you just gotta deal with it.

I've got to get wood today. I'm pumping a lot of wood

into my stoves right now. I'm starting to get

low on wood for my generator shack.

I have to keep my batteries warm, otherwise,

it will get ruined.

As much as I'd like to hunker down at 50 below zero,

that's not gonna be the case today.

I can go see if I can't cut some wood.

I'll go harness up some dogs, head over across the river,

try and get a couple loads of wood in.

I'm gonna take both chainsaws out and hope that I can get

one out of two to work today.

(ANDY SPEAKING)

Yeah, come on, boys! Let's go!

They love nothing better than to get out and get their

-blood moving when it's cold like this. -(DOGS WHIMPERING)

So, we're gonna use the dogs to go haul wood.

I have about four loads with the dogs to equal one

load with the snow machine.

And so I gotta work a lot more, it takes

a lot more time to go out and use the dogs,

but, uh, I know it's a given.

I know I'm not gonna have to fight equipment.

I know I'm not gonna have to fight breakdowns.

The only thing I gotta worry about with the dogs

is making sure that they're taken care of well,

they're well fed, they're well hydrated,

and they're in good shape.

Hup! Let's go!

(DOGS BARKING)

Ideally I try and do this during a little bit

warmer temperatures, even 20 below

it's a big difference, but it just didn't work out that way.

So just gotta knuckle up and go do it.

ERIK: You gotta be motivated and excited to be doing

this stuff, otherwise you quit real quick.

I'm very fortunate to be able to live where I live.

And to get to see some of the incredible things

that the natural world can show.

Trapping season's been open up here in the Brooks Range

for over a month already.

Martha and I haven't done any trapping yet because of the snow conditions.

There's not enough snow to ride the snow machines.

So, we're gonna go out and we're gonna walk

some country and lay some steel, see if

we can't put up a couple pelts for the winter.

The sort of cash crop of all Alaska trappers

is to trap lynx and to trap marten.

Those two animals are consistent producers.

They're the bread and butter of trappers.

All right, babe, let's see if this is good ice.

Let me go first.

The one dangerous thing about rivers, especially ones

that are really swift, is that if you fall through,

your chance of survival is slim.

So that's why it's always good to go ahead

and have somebody go across by themselves and check

the river and make sure that the ice is safe.

We're good to go.

ERIK: When you're going out in a weird year like this,

not a lot of snow, not a lot of cold weather,

you gotta be careful crossing rivers

and things like that.

Water is the way that you can really get hurt in Alaska,

water is the way that you really die in Alaska.

So this is where I had a cubby set in past years.

(SNIFFS) You can see the cubby's still there with the broken sticks.

I've been trapping up here for a number of years.

I got a lot of steel that's already in the woods.

And we'll go re-tent the cubbies.

We'll, of course, re-bait the traps and set them

so that we can catch some animals.

So the idea of this cubby set is that you're funnelling

the animal into...

To enter like this, and the trap is,

of course, in the way, for the animal to get

at the bait that we'll place in a minute here.

MARTHA: What do you wanna use on this one?

I wanna use the caribou leg and I wanna use

a part of a grouse.

I saved all my grouse from the fall time.

They're a little bit stank, not rot, but just perfect for bait.

They have a good aroma to them and it's a great way

to recycle the waste product.

So what we're doing here with this wing is we place

this up here, and what this does is

it serves as a visual attraction.

We use a trapping axe and we just lay a thin layer of snow.

You never do the snow in your hands.

If it compacts, the trap will freeze down

and it won't be able to operate properly.

You know, the big hope on this set would be to catch

either a, uh, lynx or a, uh, wolverine.

But much more likely a lynx.

I got that one all, uh, squared away.

-Let's go work on this marten pole. -Okay.

ERIK: Marten the animal that is intended to be

caught in this trap. It's in the weasel family.

A good marten trapper can catch over 200 marten in a year.

The last few years, they've been paying

record high prices for the marten.

I think we're all good here. Is that pretty tight?

-Yeah. -(SNIFFS) Let's rock and roll the next one.

On to the next!

It's a lot more challenging to trap on foot

than on a snow machine. It's pretty limited

where we can go on foot.

MARTHA: This sounds hollow. ERIK: About a three-foot drop of shelf ice there.

MARTHA: I don't wanna be on this.

ERIK: Wanna avoid spots like that. That's dangerous ice.

As you live in Alaska, you learn the dangers around you.

So one of them is definitely the rivers and the water.

How the ice sounds, what it looks like, the colours of the ice.

ERIK: You wanna look out for that dark ice.

Dark ice is not your friend.

You just gotta be careful and know what you're doing.

MARTHA: Ooh.

Those are fairly fresh, aren't they?

(ERIK SPEAKING)

We got a fairly fresh lynx tracks coming

right along the edge of this beaver slough.

That looks pretty prime right there, that tree right there.

-Huh? -Okay.

MARTHA: So we're just gonna go out on a hunch,

because we saw a lot of tracks in this area and we haven't been seeing any.

So we're just gonna go on, uh, intuition.

(ERIK GRUNTING)

ERIK: You know, you wanna find a good place to catch a cat,

you look where there's some cat tracks.

This is the first new set Martha and I have made for the season.

I feel good about this spot.

It's fresh, it's new, we're just getting started

for the year. We got some done so far today.

We got a lot more to go.

It gets a lot easier to do this, you know,

year after year you do the same thing.

All you gotta really do is come and freshen up

the cubby, re-bait the trap, set the trap,

you're already good to go.

Let's roll.

SUE: Own your own mistakes.

Own your liabilities.

You wouldn't last long out here if you had to have perfection.

Nature by default isn't perfect.

Morning, Ermie.

I know, I'm trashing your world out, huh.

My little branches have been in here all night.

They are as limber as they are going to get.

So I wanna start fashioning a couple of snowshoes.

NARRATOR: To scout her camp for predators, Sue is making

a pair of snowshoes that will help her trudge

through the deep snow that surrounds her.

So I apply gentle pressure and give that branch

a chance to stretch its cells out a little.

Bend it back instead of forward.

I'm asking it to do something it doesn't really want to do.

Wasn't... Didn't grow out there saying, "Hey, I think I'm gonna touch my bottom."

(SNIFFS)

I'm not always known for being a gentle soul.

-(TWIG SNAPPING) -(GASPS)

Trashed it.

I didn't give them time to stretch.

That was a good one too.

(GRUNTING) So again, I'm just gonna try to work it.

Suggest to it that it needs to live in a different direction

than it normally does.

When you're working it, you'll feel where

the tension is saying, "Bitch, I'm gonna break."

Now this guy's gonna be a hard sell right there.

You mother-fucker. God damn it.

Goddamn son of a fucking whore.

That was a beautiful one too.

(GROANS)

Trying to work this bottom to give me a little

more pliability. I want this to bend, not this.

Don't break now.

(WHISPERING) Come on, come on, come on, come on.

Before you break, get your butt in there.

Okay.

You have a basic hoop shape here.

I just wanna lash it.

Come on, my little friend.

Okay.

(SIGHS)

Tie your little webbing, your netting, and then you put

a couple of cross members on there and it gives you

this much more flat surface.

It's like giving yourself Sue-Squatch feet.

The whole purpose behind making these little hummers

is, obviously, I know I've got foxes around.

Obviously, I know I've got some birds around.

I wanna know about those predators.

I'd like to know what's out there.

And this, this hopefully will help me get into areas

I normally don't. There you go.

Your basic little snowshoe.

Those are the the two main guys,

but if one breaks, doop, you've got your other one.

So I'm all set for a morning excursion.

ANDY: Cold is just a part of the environment we live in.

It's dangerous, but it's like anything in life,

if you know what you're up against

and you can prepare for it, even though it's dangerous,

it's doable.

All right, let's go. Hup, hup.

Yeah, buddies.

NARRATOR: In order to battle the frigid 40 below temperatures,

-Andy must maintain his wood supply. -Hey.

All right. Good job.

Good boy, Coug. Good girl, Tope.

(ANDY SPEAKING)

And I gotta strip down

'cause I know I'm gonna get too hot if I leave all this on, plus it's just

so bulky it's hard to work in.

(GRUNTS)

I'm gonna try and make this go as quick as I can.

Oh, man.

(GRUNTING) I had that thing warmed up inside the house.

They don't really like these temperatures very much.

Machinery saves you a lot of work.

You can get a lot more done, but it has its drawbacks.

It's not meant to work in this kind of cold.

Shit. I got another saw.

I'm gonna try that one.

It's a little older saw. Maybe the compression

is not quite as tight on it.

(GRUNTING) So, this saw turns over a little easier.

It's a little older saw with a little less compression.

It still doesn't wanna really turn over.

I had these things heated up inside my house all night.

Just in the amount of time it took to get here,

they stiffened up.

I don't think they're gonna start.

Shit, man.

I brought two hoping I could get one going.

And it looks like it's time to build a quick fire

and try and get a little bit of warmth to them.

NARRATOR: Andy is attempting to harvest wood to heat his camp.

But brutal temperatures have frozen his machinery,

and the only solution is the most primal

and basic of skills.

Probably the single best skill to learn up here

is building a fire quick.

Always make sure I have birch bark with me

whenever I go outside for times like this,

I find paper matches work better than

the wood matches up here.

Birch bark catches really good.

Best fire starter in nature.

And it burns even if it's wet.

People been living up in this country with far less

than we have now for thousands of years.

Sometimes when I'm feeling sorry for myself I think about

what it must have been like to live here two,

three hundred years ago when you didn't have

the benefits of some of this machinery.

You didn't have some of these lightweight, warm clothes.

But, uh, we're pretty spoiled nowadays living out here,

compared to what people used to have to put up with.

Feels pretty good already.

The main thing I think I need to get is these recoils

need to warm up.

Let's see if I can warm these up without burning them up.

Fire, man's best friend up here in the north.

All right, I'm getting a little bit of heat on these.

I'm gonna try, I think I'll try this big one first.

It felt like it was pulling a little bit better.

-(ENGINE WHIRRING) -Yeah, baby.

All right!

You can't have high expectations

when it's cold like this. You just get out, try and get

what you can done, and be happy with that.

I think that's it. I can tell it's getting dull.

That's a couple loads of wood with the dogs.

So that's a good start.

One thing about wood, it warms you about four times.

Once to cut it, once to load it,

once to chop it up, and another time to bring it

in the house and throw it in the stove.

Still a lot of work ahead of me.

Once that sun hits that top of that mountain, temperature

is gonna start dropping quick and I'm gonna

lose that sunlight. So, can't slow down,

just gotta keep on humping.

ERIK: We just make it work. That's the whole thing

about doing anything out here in the bush.

If you're trapping, if you're hunting,

just make it work.

This isn't Harvard. You just have to wanna do it.

Martha and I set some traps here

just five, six days ago.

We're gonna go down and check those traps.

There's been some snowfall.

We're gonna tend those traps.

I'm bringing along a couple more.

Set a few more, if necessary, and we'll go from there.

We'll see what we got.

Come on, let's roll, honey.

MARTHA: Nature's throwing a couple of curve balls at us.

We got no snow so we're walking around on foot.

There's limited light.

So you gotta know your resources, and where you are and,

just, uh, roll with the punches.

Freshen up the bait here a little bit.

Nothing in that one, let's check out the next.

Nothing in this one either.

Well, oh for two.

We'll go on, check some more.

Pretty slow day of trapping.

Middle of winter here, it's, it's just slow.

So, uh, we'll keep trying and in the end we'll win.

What's going on here?

Oh, it's a marten.

The sign looks super fresh.

Oh...

Yeah, it's got little tunnels and stuff.

MARTHA: It's hopeful that at least there's a marten around.

So, we're just gonna keep trekking.

-Oh, we got something going on. -What?

-What? -We caught something.

Something's underneath the snow there.

Something is either dead under the snow there...

Got loose.

Oh...

We caught something and it got away.

Something got caught in the trap and pulled it out

this way and the trap was under the snow over there.

Whatever I caught it didn't hold it very well

and it got loose.

So we'll see what happens here

and I'll reset the trap.

All you can do is keep trying.

Last set of the night, nothing in it.

Just rigging up a new tassel here

and better luck next time.

MARTHA: Today we saw a little bit of sign.

We're just gonna come back in another couple of days

and hopefully we'll have an animal.

It's almost like a chess game.

Pretty soon it will be checkmate.

We'll have a marten, and maybe a lynx.

CHIP: If you take the time to do things right, you don't have to do them twice.

We take our time on purpose.

When you add time to the problem, you get the solution.

We've just made it to camp before it got dark.

So, um, good to see the cache is still standing.

NARRATOR: Last summer, the Hailstone family

constructed an elevated cache to store and protect

their equipment until they could return

for the winter harvest.

CHIP: It's the top.

AGNES: Oh, the top came off?

CHIP: It blew off.

AGNES: Hope it's not wet and frozen together.

CHIP: Ah, we'll see.

-How about I untie this while you go untie the sled. -AGNES: Okay.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones have travelled 110 miles to Kiwalik

River Camp for their annual caribou hunt.

With the sun setting, Chip and Agnes must quickly

set up their shelter in order to survive overnight

in the negative temperatures.

CHIP: Agnes, come here and help me.

Bring your snow machine.

AGNES: You found the tepee?

CHIP: Yeah, but we're gonna see how it is.

It might have got wet and froze!

I don't know!

AGNES: Oh, come on.

If it's frozen, we're fucked.

We're not camping for a couple weeks

at 20 below without a tent.

(DEEP BREATHING)

(CHIP SPEAKING)

(AGNES SPEAKING)

(CHIP BREATHING DEEPLY)

-Seems dry to me. -Yep.

That's, this canvas covers real good.

Yep. Well, since this is good, I'm gonna mutt up

a little bit too and I'm gonna cool down.

If we start sweating, we'll only chill if we...

-I know, I know. -If the temperature

drops because the sun is down now, yeah?

The sun is down.

(AGNES SIGHS)

I'm just gonna keep untying before it get dark.

CHIP: It's getting late in the day, so we just gotta cut out

the shortcuts and get with the work.

If we don't hustle, we're gonna be out here

in the dark. So this is the time to get her done.

Once you're in there, just spread them out

as fast as possible because as long as they are

stacked up, it will slide right down it.

-You know what I mean? -Yeah.

When you spread them as fast as possible, it will stop it from sliding.

(CHIP GRUNTING)

CHIP: And in order to get things done, and done right,

and done quickly, we divide, we conquer, and we get done

what's necessary.

And we've been doing this along together so long,

that, uh, we know what needs to be done.

We just get to it.

(CHIP GRUNTING)

AGNES: You got it?

Yep, perfect. (SIGHS)

We just about have our tepee set up.

Now all we got to do is, uh, warm ourselves up,

and get us something to eat, and crash out for the night,

wake up tomorrow, and start all over again.

ANDY: There's always a few calculated chances.

Everything you do out here, there's a danger.

You never know what the situation's gonna be,

so it's better to be prepared.

Straight ahead! Chi, chi, chi! Chi, chi, chi!

Atta boys! Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Ho!

I got wood now. It's time to go get water.

Sun's setting. Temperature's gonna start dropping really quick.

I need to get this done in the next hour.

NARRATOR: To get water from the frozen Yukon river,

Andy will use an auger to drill through the thick river ice.

But in these ruthless conditions,

the use of machinery is not guaranteed.

(ENGINE RUNNING)

Woo!

That's why I never take it down there

until it's warmed up and running.

Little haw!

Let's go! Hup, hup!

There are definite things that happen outside every day that you gotta do.

And if you don't get them done, there's a lot

of suffering that goes on and it's just not the way

to live up here.

(ANDY SPEAKING)

Come on, baby! Punch through!

(ENGINE ROARING)

(ANDY SPEAKING)

(ENGINE ROARING)

Little bit of trials and tribulations with

the finicky motor in the cold, thick ice.

But we prevailed.

Now the big challenge is to try and get this,

all these buckets filled up before my hole starts

freezing up there.

As soon as it becomes stagnant, it freezes.

And the only reason it's not freezing underneath

is cause it's moving.

Hopefully I can go another week or so

without having to get water.

Cause the next time's gonna be really hard work.

And I'm hoping it's not 40 below when I have

to do the next one.

Got a long day fighting chainsaws,

fighting ice auger motors.

Just something about being out in the cold,

it just kind of drains you, just like the energy

out of a battery.

SUE: What's the reward versus the risk?

There's a hell of a lot of risks out there,

but I accept them.

Life's an adventure.

You know, open your eyes, look around. You'll find it.

Well, I'm getting ready for my little day trip.

I wanna see what tracks are around.

Uh, the state keeps telling me about this severe outbreak

of rabies and distemper.

So I'm concerned and I wanna see what prints are around.

(REVOLVER CLICKING)

Just verify that I've got it loaded.

I'll have the pistol on my hip,

the .44, um, in case I run into something larger.

I've got the .22 and the .410

in case I run into something smaller.

Good to go, see what's out there.

I'm starting to sink a little bit in the snow.

So get a couple of little shoesies out.

Get out my little cross ties. This is actually just

some t-shirt material, that I tore up.

I've got to tie my feet, to this.

You're looking to make yourself one with the shoe.

Okay.

It's always interesting to see if what you got going on in your head works.

Yeah, it would be interesting to see, see if they last.

(SUE LAUGHS)

I feel like I'm learning how to walk all over again.

(SUE BREATHING HEAVILY)

My little snowshoes are doing good.

They're cool. I'm going.

Walking like a little penguin,

but that's all right.

Once I get the right waddle down,

you know, good exercise, I can get out.

You know, it feels nice being out. It's a beautiful day.

(SNIFFS) You are right. These are ptarmigan tracks.

Big, furry feet. You got your three toes.

So naturally, when you see ptarmigans,

you're gonna find the foxes, maybe the wolves,

anything that eats a ptarmigan will be around the same area.

What I'd like to do is, uh, there's a nice little hill over there.

Um, and it'll give me a little bit of high ground.

Peek around, see what I can see,

and then, uh, figure out which way I wanna go.

I kind of live in my imagination.

And it's a pretty fun place in there.

But I can come up with some pretty hair-brained ideas

that don't always work out so good.

(SUE PANTING)

My question, how I wanna get up,

without busting my ankle?

There we go. That was just an "Oh, shit" moment.

Because my feet are tied to it, I'm trying to

get up underneath me to stand up, but it's putting

an awful lot of pressure on the ankles that got

busted up, and I just elected to back out of it.

I can always retie them back on.

I don't need to break myself.

What I think I'd like to do... (SNIFFS) Is just try to get up closer

to that little rise there, take a little peek around.

Um, I'm not gonna be, uh, putting the snowshoes back on.

I'm just gonna go. There's a little bit of

hard pack here, I think. I'm gonna just try

to get over to that area. If I need them,

I'll put them back on.

(PANTING)

(GROANS)

(SNIFFS)

Now that I've got a little bit of high ground

in the sun, let's take a little look-see,

see if I see anything.

What am I seeing? I'm seeing fox tracks.

I'm seeing ptarmigan tracks. Oh, it's all good news to me.

If there's foxes running around, then you know

your top predators are keeping their distance.

Cause the top predators will eat them.

They're low predators.

The ptarmigans, obviously that's a food source.

Hey, it's nice for me to see that they feel so comfy.

But I'm not seeing huge, nasty predator sign.

There's, there's not a wolfie track

that I have to worry about.

I feel accomplished. I feel like I, I did what I set out to do.

It didn't work perfectly, but, it got me

from point A to point B.

I went through the deep snow without a problem.

It's getting cold. It's time to just get my butt

in gear and get back inside.

MARTHA: You just gotta keep playing in the woods.

That's just part of living out here.

The cards aren't always gonna play with you.

They're always playing against you.

Hopefully that marten decided to stop back by again.

Yeah, maybe a few more days of letting those traps soak

and we'll have some fur.

Let's go check it out.

NARRATOR: Erik and Martha have set traps to harvest the fur

of Arctic predators, a priceless source of income

during the winter months.

MARTHA: The traps have been out for a couple of days.

So hopefully that marten came back.

It's like a game. You gotta go back and forth,

back and forth until you get the animal.

So hopefully he's there.

The temperature has dropped a lot.

It's well below zero now.

We're hoping this colder weather gets the animals

moving a little bit.

We also got a new set that we put out where we saw

a bunch of traffic, and hopefully that little spot produced too.

ERIK: What's going down here? The bait's gone.

The trap has sprung.

ERIK: What is it?

MARTHA: What happened?

Oh, the... He pulled the bait into the trap.

MARTHA: Oh...

MARTHA: What a sneaky little...

This is... (CHUCKLES) Now we got robbed again by this guy.

ERIK: Oh man. MARTHA: Let's go check the other one over here.

ERIK: Let's go check the next one.

MARTHA: (CHUCKLING) Oh...

MARTHA: Nothing here.

ERIK: Got the bait for sure.

ERIK: It's a weasel that keeps...

MARTHA: Just sneaking in the back, huh?

Feed it again there.

ERIK: Totally, uh, bamboozled us.

Is there anything?

Oh, the weasel fooled this one too.

(BOTH CHUCKLE)

MARTHA: We're gonna keep feeding him grouse?

ERIK: We may as well.

Same thing on the menu?

ERIK: Grouse tartar.

ERIK: This is a rather minor situation.

A weasel has stolen some of our bait on several different traps.

So if you reflect on it like that, a little weasel

doing a little bait damage, not a big deal.

Oh, well, we re-baited. Keep on truckin'. Onto the next.

Weasel's been everywhere.

(MARTHA SPEAKING)

Okay. We've got a lynx.

(GUN FIRE)

It's a really, really nice animal.

It's as tall as you.

Oh, it's heavy.

-ERIK: That's a good-looking cat, huh? -MARTHA: Yeah.

We went to all of our traps

and there was nothing there.

You know, it was kind of bringing our

energy a little bit down and our attitude.

And we got to this last spot here,

and I saw eyes, and immediately the attitude

went right back up again.

MARTHA: Really cool to be able to find a new spot where you see

really good amounts of sign, set a trap like this,

and in a couple days come back and have an animal.

I mean, it's, uh, what we hoped for.

AGNES: You need to be prepared for everything.

You have to know what you're doing

when you go out there and you wanna

just be comfortable in extreme cold and whatever

Alaska brings you.

CHIP: I'm making a wall for my tent.

The wind up here is a big factor all the time.

Staying out of the wind can help you stay alive.

Takes a day or two to set up.

We actually have to go get more wood.

I have some firewood over here.

I gotta get my chainsaw warmed up.

My wife's gonna make a bed.

Before we can take off anywhere, we want

to have some place warm and cosy to return to.

My mundane chore in this world sometimes seems

to be providing a lot of heat for my camp,

for my house in Noorvik.

If you ain't warm... (SNIFFS) You ain't gonna do well.

This right here is what we cook with,

and this right here is also what we heat with.

So it's in constant demand. This log ain't gonna just sit around,

it's gonna get chopped up, and it's gonna disappear

up in smoke.

Like to somebody else, this might be just

a little piece of wood, but to us, it's a night's

worth of good, solid heat.

How was that ride? Looks like a pretty good log.

Yeah, I saw it from camp.

Everybody else has the convenience of hot water

or running water. Here you don't.

Here, we have running water under the ice.

(HEAVY BREATHING)

You know, it's... It all works together in a big circle.

You go get wood to make heat, to thaw the water,

to cook your dinner.

CHIP: Thirst is the bane of the arctic.

You start to get cold easy, and you don't think very well,

and your body doesn't feel good.

When you're dehydrated, that's the one thing

you gotta keep doing. Put in the liquids.

AGNES: I like the clear ice. I miss the taste of

-Kiwalik River water. -CHIP: Yeah.

CHIP: You can't just come in, put up a tent, and then go off hunting.

Because when you come back, you'll have to cut the wood,

you'll have to thaw the water, you'll have to

put in the time, and that's when

you really wanna sleep.

So I'd rather just spend the day, go get wood,

go get water, get a good wall built up around the tent.

The more we can have prepared now, is less

we have to prepare when we return from hunting

so we can concentrate only on hunting.

AGNES: We're glad to be here. We got our tent up.

Everything's running smooth.

CHIP: Tomorrow we'll figure out what we're after.

We'll figure out if there's any animals around.

We'll figure out where we'll put out traps,

we'll figure out where the caribou are, and we'll go from there.

Everywhere around here is rich in resources.

This entire Kotzebue Sound area is resource rich.

And this is just gonna progress into spring,

and from spring into summer.

And every month that we're here, we know what the resources are

and we know what is harvestable and what foods

we may be after, and we know when to be here.

So right now, this is the time to be here for fur, the time to be here for caribou.

AGNES: We got out camp set up. We're ready to go. It's game on.

ANDY: It's all a big cycle.

It's a real symbiotic relationship

between me and my dogs.

I depend on them and they depend on me.

It's the way things should be in this world.

Everything should be interconnected.

ANDY: Let's get a fish!

Who wants a fish? Bergy wants a fish!

Donner, you want a fish?

There's been a long day cutting wood, getting water,

a lot of struggles with machinery.

Thank God the only piece of machinery I got left

to work with, is this.

And this is my kind of machinery when it gets cold.

So we'll chop this fish up, make the dogs happy.

I'll go get some water. Water them up good.

They really need the, uh, moisture to rehydrate.

The cold makes it harder to do the work, but you gotta do more work when it is cold.

So it's kind of a catch 22.

Here you go, buddy. Yeah!

There's your fish. Donner always needs a pat on the head.

Wow. That's a nice fish, Donner.

Here you go, Carb. Yeah!

Yeah, you did a good job today.

Eat your fish up. I'm gonna go get some water for you.

Boy, you did a good job today.

Dogs did all the work today.

Their payback is to have some nice,

warm water to drink at night.

Is that pretty good, huh?

That's gonna keep you warm tonight.

Some warm dog food.

Then I get to go inside to a nice, warm cabin

with all the wood we hauled and sit down and relax,

get some calories back in me.

Good boys.