Original subtitles

[flies buzzing]

[Glenn] Bugs out here this time of year.

There's thousands and thousands of them, everywhere.

That's one of the worst parts of living out here.

The summertime. Mid-summer, the bugs get intolerable.

This time of year, when the bugs get bad like this...

it's hard to get anything done.

[sighs]

And the only way you can really get any relief is to

go up to high ground, up on the mountains.

I got to get out of here.

[theme music playing]

[Glenn] Summertime out here at the lake...

It's actually one of the most difficult times of the year.

The bugs are the biggest problem.

The one thing about summer,

it's a good time of year to get out of camp.

Over on the other side of this mountain, there's a river I've never crossed before.

And on the other side of that river...

There's a mountain higher than any mountain I've ever climbed up here before.

It's over 7,000 feet high.

Within five miles of the lake, I got it pretty well covered.

I learned all the little nooks and crannies around here.

Now, every year, I try to go somewhere new.

I try to look a little further.

I got a big journey ahead of me.

First, I'll paddle all the way across the lake.

Then I have to cross over the first mountains here.

This is all familiar country,

but when I get to the other side of the mountains, there's a river.

And I've never walked over on the other side of it before.

It's exciting just to get out and see something different.

Go a place where I've never been before.

The canoe's gonna have to stay here,

that's the farthest I could travel by water.

From here, it's through this pass.

I got several miles to go just to get to the bottom of the mountain.

[Sue] It's not all about the hustle, the bustle,

the, "Will I make it? Won't I make it?"

It's not always something.

Sometimes it's the nothing that really grabs you and it takes hold.

This is a cold northwest wind coming in.

I'm not glassing for a bear or a caribou,

unless I have reasonable expectations of seeing one.

Or I've physically seen it with my eyeballs

and now I need to gauge more.

You glass just to check for that which does not belong.

What sticks out?

What's different?

You know, I've been here 14 years.

The bushes don't move, animals do.

So it clues me in on where I need to look.

There's a possibility that there's a little caribou down that way.

I just see a dark spot that doesn't belong,

but not with enough clarity.

I don't wanna whine later on this winter

that I'm losing too much weight when I could've gone and got something.

I'll get the .30-30, I'll get my little shorty gun

and I'll go down there and see what I can see.

I might just be chasing a bush, but at least I'm chasing it.

[narrator] Sue Aikens spends most of the year isolated in the tundra

and 500 miles from the nearest grocery store.

With dark winter soon to arrive,

she must take advantage of any opportunity

to increase her food security.

It's always a good day when you can fill up the freezer

a little bit more. That's for sure.

But I just can't lay claim that...

I mean, it could just be a big raven sitting in a tree.

I won't know till I get a little closer and close the distance.

So I'm just scanning and making sure I'm not missing anything.

And then I'm gonna stick close to this side...

And go... Why do I care? Why am I gonna stick close to this side?

Well, there's brush. If I need to [shrieks] dive off for cover.

Then that's what I can do.

Let me look. I see another dark spot.

And here comes an airplane. Most likely gonna need fuel.

Fuck. Really?

There's three planes.

All right. That has to be it.

That's what pays for the bread and butter that I wanna put on the caribou. So...

I gotta go make that money.

One plane just landed, number two is landing.

Number three is lining up.

That's one, two and three strikes and I'm out,

I gotta go back to camp.

Having the planes in is an advantage.

Having the opportunity to maybe see if I got meat

hanging out down on the end of the runway is an opportunity.

I definitely want the caribou, but I need the revenue more.

[Chip] There's things in this world that are just bigger than us.

And you go with the flow. You be like the grass

and you make the bend in the wind, and you survive.

[barks]

[Agnes exclaims] Look, who's that? That's your brother.

-[Ting] Hi, Brother Doug! -Ho! What you got?

Doug brought three seals. He brought a ring seal,

a young ugruk, and a full grown bull ugruk.

[Agnes exclaims]

[Chip] I'm gonna lift and you're gonna pull.

One, two, three lift. [grunts]

These seals are a really valuable resource,

simply for the fact that you can't buy them.

Pull, pull, pull, you guys!

-Hold on. -Okay.

You have to go out there and you have to get them yourself.

Yeah, my son's a hunter of the ocean, so that's what he does.

[Agnes] Girls, come on now. We need your girl power.

Two, three, pull, pull, pull!

-[grunts] -[Agnes] Ooh! Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Doug lives at right at the coast in Deering, so, um,

he's able to watch the ice come in and go.

He was able to go out and go hunting and come provide us

and share us with his wealth.

[Doug] Good and stiff there.

Thank you, son. That looks pretty good.

-[Doug] Yup. -We have a lot of work ahead of us.

You ready? We're gonna make oakruk.

[narrator] For the native members of the Hailstone family,

seal hunting is a centuries-old tradition and way of life

providing vital meat, oil, and skins to survive the extreme Arctic climate.

[Agnes] It's a long, slow process

but in the end it's gonna taste real good.

We pretty much dip all our dried meats in oil...

Fish and stuff in seal oil and this is where our seal oil comes from.

[Ting] We're about to take the, uh, seal meats apart

and hang them up so that they could dry,

and then we could put them into our oakruk.

Then we'll have our black meat and seal oil.

[Agnes panting] As much meat off as possible.

And it'll just come apart.

It's gonna be heavy. Ready?

One, two, three, go.

[breathing heavily]

Hold it... Good job.

We're pretty much got it real good, majority of the slabs.

This is just the first process of the ugruk meat, so...

We have a lot of work ahead of us.

[Andy] Big part of living in the bush is the mental game

that you have to play with yourself, and keeping a good attitude

and just being well-prepared.

There's not a lot of room to work in here.

I was driving my tractor, and the steering wheel came off.

The steering shaft broke on it which rendered my tractor

completely useless to me.

-[whispering] Okay. -[screw turning]

I've gotta get the whole steering box taken out.

And, of course, it's buried under everything.

I've never dealt with one of these steering boxes on it before,

so this is all new to me.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I need to get some longer bolts in there.

[narrator] Andy Bassich grows 80% of his yearly food supply

at his home along the Yukon River.

But the brief summer growing season is coming to an end.

And repairing his tractor is critical to his ability

to grow and maintain his crop for the year ahead.

[Andy] I use my tractor just about every day for something.

Probably about the worst time of the year it could've broke.

'Cause I really need it now for getting my compost

so that I have good soil to start my plants with next year.

If I don't make the compost now,

I would have to probably spend about $5,000

in Fairbanks in fresh vegetables and canned goods.

An 800-mile round-trip just to go grocery shopping.

This is the steering arm, and what happened was

this pin broke right here, that goes through here.

Then it sheared.

This job's as far as I can go. I need parts.

[narrator] While waiting for the parts to repair his equipment,

Andy must now turn his attention to another key task for his harvest.

[Andy] I like to let my grass grow nice and long.

And I use all this, uh, grass clippings for the green in my compost.

Which is actually the most important part of the compost

'cause when this breaks down this is what creates all the heat

that allows the compost microbes to breakdown the other material.

So it's really important to have grass.

I've only got four weeks until the snow flies

and I gotta get that compost breaking down.

[Glenn] Sometimes you think, "Gosh, is this really where I wanna be?"

But overall, it's just so beautiful.

First time I ever landed on the lake was 16 years ago.

And that very first summer, I noticed that mountain over there.

The highest mountain anywhere around. It caught my eye.

I just never made that trip before 'cause it's a long way.

And there's really only one time of year to do it...

Summertime.

There's the river!

Wow, this is all new territory now.

All these mountains over here, I've never been in here before at all.

If I can just get across the river...

I can climb all the way up to the highest one.

Right in here, this looks like it's probably the narrowest spot.

It doesn't look too deep right here.

But it's hard telling over on the cut-bank side.

It's gonna be deeper, I just don't know how deep.

I'll find out when I get there.

I've got a dry bag I can put my clothes in and my gun.

Then when I get to the other side,

I'll be able to take my dry clothes out and put 'em back on.

It's pretty cold, actually.

I'm getting cold without even being in the water.

Water's kind of cold.

The only thing I'm worried about is I've got a big load.

I've never crossed a river with so much weight before in my pack.

It's getting deeper!

Whoa!

Whoa! Whoa!

Oh, it's cold!

[grunts]

Whew, I made it.

[breathing deeply]

I made it across.

Made it across the river.

Now I can climb this mountain.

I've never been in any of this country over on this side of the river.

I got about 5,000 feet vertical,

and seven miles horizontal to go.

To get from where I am now to the top of this mountain.

I'm gonna see if I can do it.

[Andy] Staying warm, eating good and staying healthy.

You got that in your life, you got everything in your life.

Got my parts ASAP.

[narrator] Andy has travelled the 30-mile round-trip journey to Eagle

by boat to pick up the necessary parts he ordered to repair his tractor.

A key piece of equipment needed to grow food

before the summer growing season comes to an end.

Looks like I got a sunny break for a little bit here,

so I'm gonna go balls to the walls, to try and get this fixed.

This will drop in. I gotta replace all the bearings in it.

Put this back together, put this arm back on.

Now I'm trying to get everything assembled again

and this part here... Yee-haw.

I've got most of this bad boy put back together.

Final thing's the steering wheel.

I'm hoping I got everything back together right.

I'm gonna find out in about 30 seconds here.

[engine starts]

Oh, yeah!

Few little hiccups along the way, but nothing major.

Parts fit, I don't have any nuts or bolts leftover.

So that's always a good sign when you take something like this apart.

Well, whole purpose of working on this tractor

was to get all this grass up.

I gotta use this for my compost.

Probably, the most important ingredient for making good soil

is you need good green!

That'll be next year's soil for peppers, tomatoes.

Steering's good!

It's not, uh, it's not as tight as it used to be.

So that's good.

Good fix.

A lot of young people come out and they see everything I got here.

And they think that they're supposed to have that in one year.

And it took me over 30 years to do what I did here.

Between making the money to buy the tools that I needed,

or clearing the land and building the cabins.

And so everything that's here either had to be cut from the woods

and milled and made into something,

or freighted in from Fairbanks and then freighted down

the Yukon River in a boat and dragged up the hill.

There's no freebies here and there's no contractors

that I just call 'em up and say, "Hey, I want a cabin.

Can you come in and build it for me?"

It's a year-and-a-half's worth of work before you even pound the first nail

to get all the logs and cut the materials.

It's a good life. It's a very physical life.

And it's like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

So if you don't put the work and the planning and the logistics into it,

you won't get shit out of it. That's the way it is out here.

This is all sawdust from my sawmill, which makes really good compost

'cause it's already nice and fine.

So I lay this down, and I put the grass on that.

And so I need this to become this by next year.

I got a ton of vegetables I gotta harvest and take care of.

I got a bunch of grass, I got a bunch of sawdust.

The fix was good. It's steering good, it's running good.

Just in the nick of time.

[Chip] No matter how much money I have in the bank,

I'd probably still live in a tent.

It keeps me busy. It keeps me moving and active and adventurous.

We do this every year.

We try to get at least 30, 40 gallons of seal oil and meat

stored up before the winter.

[narrator] Agnes's son Doug has gifted three seals to his family.

An essential resource that provides meat and oil

to help them survive the extreme cold of dark winter.

[Agnes] With this blubber being this thick,

it's easily gonna give me 30 gallons of seal oil,

so this is a real good catch.

Looking good there. You're getting pretty far.

Yeah. So, the meat is pretty much drying up.

We'll keep breaking it down and then the, um,

blubber's starting to render as we cut it.

So by the time we're done with all this,

-we'll start stretching the skins. -Okay.

We're gonna go get firewood. Can't have too much of that either.

-Yeah. -All right. Love you.

-See you. -Yup, be safe.

Yup.

The ladies have gotten to it with the meat and stuff,

and we figured we'd go get some firewood.

The spring flood brought down, not a whole lot of wood this year, but enough.

And, um, it's a very valuable resource because it's our form of heat.

That's a nice dry piece. Came up with the flood.

Landed, and now we're gonna knock it apart.

[saw whirring]

I love my chainsaw.

[thuds]

That's a good, dry chunk of wood there.

-That's well worth it. -[Doug] Ready?

[Chip] Yup. We'll go get the next one.

[Agnes] Once we start taking the blubber apart from the skin,

we have to keep going until we're all done.

It's already starting to turn into oil.

You can see the oil's forming in the little pockets here.

So our best bet is to just hurry up and get it into buckets

then in the end we'll have plenty of black meat and oil.

[Chip] We need a lot of, uh, cleaning water,

we need to have a lot of hot water

for taking care of all these seal oil soak stuff,

and, uh, that requires a lot of wood.

This one sounds dry, doesn't it?

[Doug] Yup.

Good couple whacks and we'll get her done.

[revvs]

[whirring]

[Chip] That's dry wood!

Oh, this is the best.

Hello, sweetie pies.

[Agnes] How'd it go? Find a lot of wood?

-[Chip] Yeah, dry wood. -Right on!

-We're still working on our blubber. -Oh, good.

If you're gonna keep cutting blubber, we'll get a fire started

and, um, we'll start making a big vat of hot water

so we can have a real good clean-up here, too.

We got enough firewood to make lots of water,

and not worry about having an oily mess on these clothes and stuff.

Right on. Thank you, guys.

[Sue] Every mistake you make

helps you not make it the second time,

and make a better decision.

You learn, you grow, you move on, you learn more.

I'm not gonna give up that opportunity may knock at my door.

It sure might.

I've seen, not many, but a onesie, twosie caribou here and there.

It just may be my day.

[narrator] After spotting a possible caribou near camp,

Sue's pursuit of the animal was halted by the arrival of planes in need of fuel.

With winter approaching,

she must take advantage of any opportunity to stockpile meat for her survival.

And searching the tundra for food today is crucial.

Where I'm just wanting to go is up there on the top of that hill.

I'm at 600-foot base elevation here.

That's 1,400-and-some feet. I'm gaining 800 feet.

Why is that important to me? I can look over my domain.

When you live inside the dollhouse,

you don't get to see the nice, fine detail work of the wood.

So I wanna get out of the dollhouse and look at my place.

The base of the hill is about two miles away.

Then it's about another mile, mile-and-a-half up to the top.

It doesn't seem like much, but for me to get there

I've gotta cross the river a few times.

It's a little bit of unforgiving territory there.

But Little Red should be able to handle it.

So right now, the first challenge I have is crossing the river.

The river looks pretty darn low.

Very manageable.

I'm just gonna take it not straight, but just a little bit off-centre,

and get across this patch.

Yeah, I mean, I got the baby step out of the way.

You know, once you get through with your baby step,

you can toss the diapers and start to run and crawl.

So that's what I'm gonna do.

That's the scavenger hunt of the journey.

And that makes it pretty cool. There is no real plan.

I just get to kind of pick and be a pirate and sail the salty seas.

There's a caribou.

[engine idling]

Maybe I'll try to just sneak up a little bit.

This is like one of the hardest ones to hunt.

What's happening is the bugs.

They're attacking him.

This happens to all the caribou.

The bugs are attacking him so hard.

The warble flies, big ol' flies...

They burrow into his skin, lay the larva.

It hurts like a son of a bitch!

They, actually, physically go crazy.

Okay, he's down in the river bed.

So what I can do is I can get close to the river bed.

I'm gonna walk to the edge, see if he's there.

This bank that I just came up

is the same one that he took to go down.

Just over here right where I was.

So maybe he made a right-hand turn at Albuquerque, but it doesn't look like it.

He could spring back up and go the other direction, too,

you never know.

I'm just gonna laugh like a son of a bitch when he pops up in camp.

I don't doubt that he's really close.

But I do doubt that I wanna beat the brush to get him.

I've got no interest in getting chewed alive either.

I wanna continue on my journey...

See all there is to see, and I really wanna get

to the top of the hill. It's not a big goal.

It's a tiny goal, but it's my goal so...

Good luck, little caribou, hope you stay out of the bugs.

[Glenn] Most of this country out here I still don't even know.

It's huge country and you could spend a lifetime getting to know it.

Made it across the river.

And over here, this is all new territory to me.

I've never set foot in this area before.

[narrator] In the Brooks Range,

Glenn Villeneuve is hiking to the highest mountain in the area surrounding his camp

in order to explore new territory.

Walking through unknown country is a danger,

and he must be alert along the way.

[Glenn] A lot of times, I actually find it more comfortable

to walk barefoot than to wear boots.

Your boots just get all wet anyway.

Look at the blueberries!

Blueberries are growing really well this summer.

Mmm.

Whoa! That's a big grizzly scat. And it's fresh.

It's been eating blueberries.

Hmm.

There're definitely some bears around.

[breathes deeply]

I gotta keep my eyes open I don't wanna get surprised.

This country out here,

it can be deceptive because it's so beautiful,

but it can be deadly at the same time.

Wow!

This is a big creek.

So I have to cross this creek, climb the ridge,

and about seven miles from here

that's where the summit of the mountain is.

You have to be careful in this thick brush.

One time I was walking through some thick brush like this.

And all the sudden, I saw a flash of brown.

And a grizzly bear stood right up on its back legs.

It was only 20, 30 feet from me.

But neither of us knew about the other until we got that close.

You just can't see much in here.

And with the noise of that river rushing next to me,

I can't hear anything either.

It's always a little creepy going through the brush like this.

Made it through that brush.

It's time to climb up onto the ridge now.

[thunder crashing]

Looks like quite a storm's blowing in.

I gotta try to keep dry.

If I get wet up here it could get dangerous.

When it's cool like this in the summer and it's raining,

it's real easy to get hypothermic.

This is the ridge.

If I can get up on this ridge and follow it,

the top's over there in the clouds.

There.

This is good. It's good to be up on top of the ridge.

And I can see the top. That's the summit.

Oh, it must be, at least, five miles still.

But it's in sight.

I just have to keep following this ridge line now.

It's getting rockier up here. I need to switch to boots.

I'm right up on top of the ridge now.

I don't have to worry about the bugs up here.

There's not a mosquito in sight.

It's getting late.

Must be after midnight now.

This time of year, it doesn't really get dark.

But it gets a little dimmer in the middle of the night.

I'm getting tired. I gotta find a place to sleep.

I'm not gonna be able to make it to the top tonight.

It's been a really long day.

I've climbed up about 4,000 vertical feet since I crossed the river.

And I've still got quite a ways to go.

It's getting cold fast.

Time to call it a night.

I just hope the weather holds out.

Things change fast up here.

[Chip] You're rich for what you can give.

You keep what you must.

Getting ready to take Doug home.

It's that time right now. It's really calm.

I can make a straight shot over there, drop him off,

and a straight shot back,

and be here in about six hours.

I came in from Deering a few days ago

and I brought some seals with me.

And I gave 'em to my mom.

You guys ready? One, two, three, up.

My parents, they live here in inland,

but Deering is a hotspot for ugruk,

so I just helped them out and brought 'em a few.

Carol, there you go.

[Carol speaking]

[Doug speaking]

Good half-bucket of eggs.

[Agnes] Yup. Your share.

All different kinds of bird eggs.

He provided his mom with a whole bunch of meat.

Really good skins.

A whole bunch of oil.

In return, we're sending him home with a bunch of eggs.

He overlaps where we can't catch, we overlap where he can't catch.

[Agnes] Love you lots. [Doug] Yup.

[Agnes] Thank you so much, son.

Everybody does it around here... Sharing, trading, it all comes back.

[Agnes] Awesome, eh?

Now we got enough oakruk and he got enough eggs

to go around. Good trade.

Real heavy, eh? That's why I need your help.

Way too heavy for me to drag it.

[Agnes] Now that we're done butchering the meat

and the oil is rendering,

now we just have to stretch out the seal skin.

Up to there. Little bit more.

Right about there.

That's where I'll stretch it out.

[grunts]

When you start, you have to start from the bottom-centre

and the top-centre. Before you start stretching anything

you have to tie those down.

So no matter what, it will be centred.

Now it's important for her to learn

the first few steps of stretching, that way

once she feel like stretching her own skin,

she's able to just do it on her own.

So I'm gonna be poking a few holes on the, um, tail and the neck part.

I made holes on the rest of the body when I was first

cutting it apart from the meat and blubber.

The way I start off, from here and I go under and over.

Your one going this way is gonna be opposite.

So it'll be over and under.

That's how you start it, and then you just go the opposite...

Opposite side. After you go through this way,

you just tie it up and it'll dry real straight.

That's all I pretty much just wanted to show you.

This is pretty much a one-person job.

-Call me if you need help. -Yup.

[Agnes] Not only do we get to eat all the meats and oils and stuff.

When I have extra time, and I can stretch out a skin

like this and make something out of it.

Maybe boot soles or could use it to pad someone's boat.

Or could make some rope. Or pretty much just even turn

this whole thing into a real nice white canvas and draw

something on it, and sell or trade that for something.

After four days this is what's left of all the hard work we've done here.

It's stretching up the ugruk skin, putting it up to dry and calling it good.

[Sue] If you've got one foot in yesterday and one in tomorrow

the only place you're not experiencing is today,

and that's where I've gotta be.

All righty.

Well, here I am at the top of the world.

Kavik is right down there, and uh...

I don't get this vantage point often.

I have seen it from the air in an airplane.

I don't get enough time to actually come up this way too terribly often.

Seeing it here, you do, maybe, draw more perspective on

what a speck I am in the infinite space that is the Arctic.

Oh, shit.

By the time I get everything I need, he'll be gone, man.

[in a lowered voice] I see a caribou. I'm sitting here blabbing away

and there's dinner right there.

They're kinda coming back.

-[gunshot] -Here we go.

First things first.

Thank you, caribou. Thank you.

You're gonna get me through the winter.

This is pretty much the end of the thaw.

And for me, uh, it's been very, I would say successful.

I had my ups and downs, learned some lessons.

I achieved a hell of a lot from getting here and having

to deal with the wolverine right away.

[gunshot]

-Got some meat for my freezer. -[thuds]

I worked on my greenhouse, I got that going.

I fished like a mug.

I got some fish.

I'm working on the runway.

I brought out the new fuel tanks.

The camp is growing, the needs are growing.

I've gotta grow with it.

-[drilling] -I'm working faster...

Harder.

Smarter.

Trying not to beat Old Man Winter.

You're not ever gonna beat him.

But you can be comfortable living side-by-side.

From my heart to your heart...

Thank you for your sacrifice.

You're gonna be good meat.

It's been a great thaw, but I'm not done yet.

Winter's at the door.

[Andy] I don't have to work for other people.

And that's my goal out here.

I just have to work for myself.

I'm a slave-driver of a boss, I work pretty hard for myself.

It's harvest time!

[laughs] It's past harvest time.

My greenhouse is well beyond the time

I should've been harvesting it.

So I've got a lot of really mature plants in there.

They gotta get processed now or they're gonna go to waste.

And I put way too much energy into this greenhouse

to waste any of it.

Waylaid by my tractor rebuild and other projects around here

so I gotta get back into my jungle here

and pick the most mature fruit.

And get going processing on it before it goes bad on me.

These are zucchinis. They grow really well up here.

They grow fast, they grow big.

There's an awful lot of food in here right now.

Look at the size of these beans.

They're great.

My favourite thing is eating all these vegetables raw.

It's like eating German or Swiss chocolate to me.

I'm gonna have a ton of cucumbers.

They're really doing well this year.

I like to get these big ones off.

And get some pickles made out of those.

Let's get some of these peas!

For me, the ability to live here on almost no money,

and all it takes is perseverance, planning and hard work,

and I've got everything I need to live here.

How many people can say that?

It was a pretty productive summer for me.

An exhausting summer.

[laughs] This year, break-up, uh, came with a bang.

And it just about got me again this year.

It was a very impressive break-up.

The ice jammed up in front of my place,

threatening my property and threatening me.

The ice went out, and uh, we were unscathed.

We had a really rainy summer, which

made for working conditions to be pretty challenging.

I managed to put up a few king salmon and make some strips

and put up a few smoked filets.

Another project that I did which I've never done before is I built a kayak.

I built a yurt this year, was a completely different type

of construction than anything I've ever done.

Now I've got a great new workshop and a place I can work

out of the cold winter, which is eight months out of the year.

Picked a whole bunch of vegetables, and uh,

started dehydrating.

So I got pickled beans.

Pickled cucumbers.

Pickled peas.

It's been a long day doing this.

I'm pretty darn tired.

I'm gonna put these in the freezer and chill out for the night.

Not too many people in this world can

pretty much provide everything they need for themselves.

So I feel pretty lucky living where I live.

[Glenn] If there's something you wanna do, go out and do it.

Don't wait forever. You only live once.

It looks like the weather's picking up a little bit.

I might be able to make it to the summit today.

The summit's still in the clouds, but it may get better even later today.

Timing's everything.

The weather can change fast up here.

If I don't get up there fast,

those clouds could come back in, it could snow again.

This is the time to do it.

I've gotta be careful.

Because if I get in a cloud up here, I could get disoriented.

Had that happen before, up on a mountain.

Everything turns white, all the sudden you don't know

which way to go to get down.

Those clouds are still hanging pretty low on the mountains.

Hopefully I get a little opportunity.

If it clears just for a little while,

I can make it up to the summit.

There it is! That's the top.

The clouds are blowing away.

But look at how steep it is.

I don't know, that looks pretty hard-going.

[panting]

I enjoy spending my time outside.

It's just so beautiful.

But on the other hand, you're also insignificant,

irrelevant and really puny

compared to the forces that are around you.

It looks pretty steep, and the clouds are coming in.

But hopefully, I can make it up there. I've come so far

I'm not gonna turn around now.

All these boulders jumbled up here.

This looks like the most difficult part of the whole climb.

The only trails here are the ones the sheep and the bears make.

[panting]

Wow.

I'm almost to the top.

Just a little further.

Yes. This is it!

I made it!

Whoa!

Amazing! Look at the view.

This is the highest mountain anywhere in this whole area out here.

What a journey it was.

Almost 20 miles from my camp.

I had to cross other mountains,

I had to swim across the river,

I had to walk miles and miles up this ridge.

Look at the mountains, just endless mountains.

Think of all the mountains nobody's ever even climbed before.

Maybe nobody's even climbed this mountain before.

There's no sign of anybody ever having been here.

I wanna leave a marker up here so if anybody comes up

here in the future, they'll know that somebody else had been here.

What a great spring and summer spent up here in the Brooks Range.

I've been getting out and exploring a lot of new territory.

I walked all the way from Chandalar Lake up to my camp for the first time ever.

I used a canoe to spend break-up in an area where

I'd never spent break-up before.

And then I took off and I climbed a mountain

that I've been dreaming about climbing for more than 15 years.

It's a good feeling.

This is what I like to do.

That's why I came to Alaska in the first place.

It gives you perspective.

When you think about how long it took for the Earth to form

these mountains and these valleys and these lakes and these rivers.

And how short a time we have on this earth,

to enjoy it and be part of it, it puts things in perspective.

You feel small.

We're just part of a much bigger thing.

[Chip] It's good to have my kids all around me.

It's good to work with them, make new memories.

You know, in 20 years we'll have something to talk about.

Carol, we're gonna have upinuktik right now, eh?

We have some black meat and some blubber

and some oil we've been working on for the last few days,

and we're just gonna have some good dinner.

Well, the meat dried.

The oil rendered.

And the skins are stretched.

So it's been a real awesome, hard-working couple days.

Some pretty good stuff. It'll give you energy

or let you sleep good, or just a good all-around snack.

Black meat and oil.

It's about time to go take a load home to Noorvik and drop it off.

-Quite a good haul with all this meat, eh? -Yes, it is.

-[Agnes] And oil? -I think it'll fill the boat.

[Chip] It's been a good spring, it really has.

We've done a lot of hunting.

-[Agnes] We hunted birds this spring. -[screeching]

[gunshots firing]

We hunted caribou up in the mountains

and in the rivers.

[Chip] We got to hunt eggs.

We got to go fishing.

Come on, fish!

[Chip] We got a lot of fresh air. Got a lot of exercise.

[Agnes] We just got a lot done this spring.

[Chip] I like being here with my kids showing them all this stuff

and let them experiencing things.

Because every day is like an adventure.

[Chip] It's a pretty cool place here, huh?

Got a lagoon, got a fresh river.

Got an ocean right there. Mountains, flats.

And it's all within walking distance.

And then we're on our own time and having fun.

Mmm-hmm.

And wake up and work until you're exhausted and sleep

until you're done sleeping.

Yup.

Get up and do something more.

[Chip] I'm never bored here. I always have something to do.

I can have fun and make a living here.

I can have fun and eat real good.

I can have fun and have an adventure.

I can have fun and say I know every square inch of this place.

I feel good about it.

I like coming back here. It's always worth the effort.

And you guys know for a fact,

if you had to make a living, you can get it all from here.

Everything.

This place is just dynamic.