Original subtitles

[Jessie Holmes] This is Alaska. It is the last frontier,

and I'm gonna treat it like it.

[Erik Salitan] Alaska is a harsh place. The climate's harsh,

the culture can be harsh in ways.

It's the only place that I could live.

[Martha Salitan] As you live in Alaska,

you learn the dangers around you.

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

[narrator] In the Alaskan wilderness,

Jessie Holmes and Erik and Martha Salitan

have chosen to live life

on their own terms.

[Erik] To me, living out in Alaska

is all about being able to take care of yourself.

[narrator] To subsist and survive,

they must endure and thrive in fierce conditions...

[Martha] Harder livin' out here.

The cards aren't always gonna play with you.

They're always playing against you.

[narrator] ...travel rugged terrain and uncertain waters,

confront dangerous predators

and battle their darkest fears.

[Jessie] You're pretty small when you're out in the wilderness out here.

There's other predators.

[Erik] It's a physical challenge. It's a psychological challenge...

[narrator] For Jessie Holmes,

and Erik and Martha Salitan,

living as a renegade of the Arctic

is a freedom worth living

and dying for.

My name is Jessie Holmes. I live in Nenana, Alaska

with my team of 50 sled dogs.

[dogs barking]

[Jessie chuckles] I love dogs.

I love the loyalty and the work ethic

of the Alaskan husky.

I appreciate their tough feet, their big hearts

and their athleticism.

I build my own structures,

I hunt, I fish, I live a subsistence lifestyle.

I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and

I realised I needed to turn that around quick

and go back to the genuine thing

in me that was just like, calling for quiet,

peace and wilderness.

So like, I directed my life

to correct in that and going back to what I knew

I needed and wanted.

And, you know, now,

I strive to live a simple lifestyle

here on the Nenana River,

running my dogs, trapping, hunting, fishing,

doing whatever it takes to maintain this lifestyle.

I'm a lucky man to live the way I do

and I thank God for it every day.

[narrator] For Jessie Holmes,

subsisting in the Arctic along with his team of sled dogs

depends on his ability to hunt and gather.

To do so,

he must use a combination of modern tools,

and Alaskan ingenuity.

And no time on a harvest can be taken for granted.

[Jessie] I got a passion for this and

it's what drives me.

It's passion, determination,

competitiveness.

The more you grow out here, the more you understand what it takes

and like, how prepared you have to be.

[Jessie] Winter's coming fast, there's already snow,

the ground's been freezing every morning.

Now it's time to turn my full attention to

my last big priority of the season

before winter is to put up a lot of fish here for the dogs.

[narrator] Jessie relies on the resources along the Nenana River

to maintain his livelihood.

In order for himself and his sled dogs

to survive the long winter ahead,

it's vital for Jessie to catch fish from the fast-moving

and dangerous river

before it freezes.

[Jessie] My lead, which is one of the most important parts

of the fish wheel, is in pretty bad condition.

So, a lead is basically a fence

from the shore to the baskets of the fish wheel.

So the fish hit it,

they have no way to go through except into the baskets

scooping them up.

Could run now without the lead and catch some fish

but I'm not looking for some fish. I'm looking for hundreds of fish.

Next thing is just to physically push this in here.

Fall in this river, you know, you're not going to make it

very long, especially this time of year.

You can get hit by any moving part

or scooped up into the basket if you fall in.

You could lose your boat and your life.

Oh, come on. You gotta be kidding.

All right.

Oh, it's looking like it's running,

you know, the lead's all in place.

That's an important thing.

It ain't going to catch no fish if it ain't in place.

There's a fish right there.

Another one.

Wow. That's two in a few minutes.

Wow. It's looking better than I expected.

That's days of feed for my dogs.

This is what it's all about for me.

[Jessie] You suffer a lot of hard times

and lean times out here.

So when it's good, man, you're excited. You're just, uh...

You realise how lucky you are to be doing something like this.

This is a lot of fish.

And that could feed my dogs for a long time.

Fishing is nothing but work.

But whenever it pays off,

it's the best feeling you could have.

I have a life that I can live self-sufficiently.

But it only gets colder in Alaska in the winter, so...

I'm not trying to just survive out here.

I'm trying to thrive out here.

Finally, winter's setting in

with a nice snow pack and

conditioning my dog team while I'm going out with a purpose.

I need to get some wood around here

because it's starting to run slim.

That's your safe haven, is that wood pile

for living up here in the winter.

Gotta have wood to make warm food for the dogs

and to warm my cabin,

so I can have a safe place to come home to.

[dogs yelping]

Wood's a huge commodity to me out here.

[Jessie shouts]

I need, like, stacks of wood.

[dogs howling]

So it's time to get to work now.

-[dogs barking] -Stay ahead, stay ahead.

[Jessie commanding]

-[Jessie commanding] -[dogs barking]

Breaking through the whole way across,

and I just tried to keep moving once I hit thin ice.

-[dogs yelping] -The minute you slow down

is when you're gonna go right straight through.

You know, your team's gonna get hurt

and you're gonna be stuck out in the middle of a lake,

swimming through it.

There you go. Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead, gentlemen.

I see some bigger trees back there.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

This looks like a good spot.

[saw whirring]

This will burn nice and be light to haul back.

My goal will always be

to have a cord of wood outside of my cabin.

If I get hurt or sick,

I need to be able to have

a month's worth of wood.

I have to be prepared to get that cabin warm very fast.

You know, when I do all this work

to provide for myself up here, to have a good stack of wood

outside my door could really save my ass in bad conditions.

Count ourselves lucky that

got a load of wood and

it's a good feeling to be self-sufficient.

My name is Erik Salitan

and this is my home.

I'm married to my wife, Martha Mae.

We run two lodges in Alaska.

You know, a lot of people view living in the bush

as very physically demanding,

which it can be at times, but

I wouldn't live any other way.

For me, I enjoy living here

and living the lifestyle I do, guiding

and living a subsistence lifestyle.

I'm Martha Mae Salitan.

I'm originally from Iliamna, Alaska.

Currently, I like up here in Wiseman with Erik,

67 miles north of the Arctic circle.

We're totally off the grid

and we do everything for ourselves.

I would not want to come out my backdoor and see

a huge skyscraper or a neighbour.

It's a good feeling to be able to provide for yourself.

[narrator] For Erik and Martha Salitan,

living a subsistence lifestyle

means hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering in the Arctic.

But success is never guaranteed.

And securing a bounty depends on their will

against Mother Nature's wrath.

[Martha] It's a little bit daunting.

You never know if you're going to live up to the task

that the wild poses on you.

But it's a lot of fun and

the wilderness will give to you.

You just got to be there to seize that opportunity.

This time of year,

large herds of caribou come through

the south side of the Brooks Range here near where Martha and I live.

[Erik] Caribou is the animal to hunt at this time of year.

You always look forward to eat some fresh caribou meat after

eating moose all winter.

Martha and I are gonna go up the valley,

a likely place where the caribou first start to congregate usually,

and see if there's anything around yet.

[Martha] Whenever you go out hunting, you always are optimistic

about bringing an animal back.

If we come up on any caribou,

I'd like to be the first person to

fire off a round being that

Erik's killed a lot of animals

in his lifetime, so, uh,

it's nice for me to be able to pull the trigger now and then.

I see lots of tracks, lots of diggings.

Ooh, ooh.

There's a caribou in the bushes.

I take that back. There are three caribou.

[Martha whispering]

[Erik whispering]

Okay.

Ready?

[gun fires]

You got one. I got one.

Good shooting.

[Erik] Here we are. It's springtime in the Brooks Range of Alaska.

I'm with the best hunting partner I've ever had in my entire life, my wife.

She just made a really awesome shot.

Perfect heart shot on this adult bull caribou.

I hit one and then the third one got away.

[Erik] We got a lot of caribou to cut up.

These aren't good animals to eat throughout the winter.

They're real run down after the late fall breeding season.

But come springtime,

they're fattening up again

and these are the fattest, healthiest,

most nourishing animals that you can harvest.

[Martha] Look at that heart.

[Erik] Shredded his heart. [Martha] Shredded.

[Martha] This land here

provides a lot of opportunity.

You just gotta go out and find it as far as animals go.

You know, Erik and I can't go to the grocery store

and be like, "Oh, that's what we want for dinner.

Oh, that's what we want for dinner."

We gotta go out and get it ourselves.

So, it's very fulfilling to be able to go out

with the person you love, you know,

and go and spend time out in the woods and

come home with some fresh meat.

[Erik] Whoo! We'll be eating good tonight.

[Martha] One of the cool things about living in Alaska is that

the land is always there to give you opportunity

and that's what Erik and I love.

We don't see it as a chore. The two of us, we go out,

and we go and subsist off of the land.

[narrator] Erik and Martha spend their summer living in Iliamna,

harvesting the area's resources

to subsist and survive.

With the seasonal salmon run coming to an end,

the couple has one last chance at

harvesting fish before they return to Wiseman for dark winter.

Because Erik and I rely a lot on subsistence, it's

very important that we take advantage of

what's in season.

So, right now, salmon are in season.

It's swift out there right now.

I've been fishing at the same spot since

I can remember.

I've been coming here for

24 years.

I've held the rod and reel in my hands since probably I was five years old.

And I've been slaying salmon since then.

[Erik] Martha Mae, she grew up in her father's fishing lodge and

she's a pretty top-notch fisherman, so

let's see if she can't teach me a thing or two about these rivers and fishing.

Oh! That was in the mouth!

Further.

Fish on!

[Erik] The first salmon of the day that we've caught

legally in the mouth.

This is some really good, good, fresh meat.

Meat like this sells for $19.99

in supermarkets across America.

Found free,

here in the wilds of Alaska.

If you don't use a net while you're fishing these salmon,

you lose a lot of them, so

you gotta have control, even though

you see all the fish in the water there.

Get the net ready, because it happens quick.

Keep it off the rocks.

Nice!

All right!

We got to the limit.

So this is the last fish of our limit today.

[Erik] Martha and I had the goal to put up a couple hundred

pounds of salmon for the winter.

Got our last 10 in the Rubbermaid.

We're gonna go home, set them up, clean them.

Ship these fish to Wiseman.

And have fish head soup.

And definitely have fish head soup tonight.

I'm so hungry.

Let's rock n' roll, babe.

[narrator] To harvest Mother Nature's various resources,

Jessie, Erik and Martha

must constantly travel throughout the Arctic

by water, land or air.

And they will stop at nothing

to thrive in brutal conditions.

[Jessie] I'm a man building a lifestyle

and a life out here for myself.

I love getting out in the river, but

this isn't recreation to me.

This is something I just have to do to maintain this lifestyle.

Any time I get a chance to like, get out,

go camping and go hunting and fishing,

that's just like everything to me. That's why I live up here.

[narrator] Along the Tanana River,

Jessie Holmes relies on fishing

to feed himself and his team of sled dogs.

With a chum salmon run in full swing,

Jessie must get his fish net into the river

or risk losing out on vital protein.

[Jessie] Fishing around here goes on a schedule.

I have a 42-hour period

to see what's out there in the water.

With any hopes, there's still going to be some king salmon out there.

The net's kinda tangled up here.

Some sticks.

It doesn't look like there's any in there.

This thing isn't catching here.

You know, I'm gonna move it.

It's kind of discouraging,

but this is just kind of how it goes. I gotta keep at it.

Just hope and pray that I'm gonna catch some fish here soon.

It really isn't cost-effective to be driving, like,

you know, four or five miles up and down the river.

And not be catching any fish.

But what you gotta look at

is, like, the end of the season,

you need to figure this all out.

"Well, I spent this much in gas but I got

3,500, 4,000 fish put up for my dogs

and I got my winter

supply of fish taken care of."

All right. I came a little further upriver here to check this spot out.

I see from the old poles and a piece of rope hanging here,

this is the spot.

You know, all the best spots are established already on this river.

It's gotta be deep enough,

there can't be sand bars below it,

there can't be snags.

There's only so many spots like that on the river

without travelling a long distance.

I'm gonna give it a shot.

I'm going to head back down to camp, and

hope for the best here.

[Jessie] Let's go check this net.

I moved my net yesterday.

I got high hopes that this spot's gonna catch some fish.

Cutting some corners on the river like I normally do,

because this boat's good for shallow water, trying to save some gas,

and nailed a sandbar.

[engine starts]

Luckily, this is a old-school, tough motor,

made for taking abuse.

I'm getting to the end of my 42-hour period of fishing here.

I gotta pull this net after I check it and

I'm just hoping there's some fish in here.

[chuckles] Oh, yeah!

All right.

There's a nice summer chum right there.

That's a good-looking fish too.

It's a female.

It's going to have some nice roe in there to eat.

I hope there's some more in here for the dogs.

There's a white fish. All right! A king?

You know, it just feels great.

And I knew this is how it was going to be, I just have to keep after it.

There's another one.

It doesn't get old to me

to pull up to a net or a fish wheel and see fish.

It's always an exciting feeling.

Good start to the fishing season for me.

[Erik] It's nice to just hang out in the woods and

observe nature.

I got the biggest backyard on Earth.

I love where I live.

I was looking for something bigger and something wilder and I found it.

[man speaking on headset]

[Erik speaking on headset]

The state of Alaska is encouraging sportsmen to go out

and harvest brown bears and black bears

so that they don't predate upon the moose calves.

Individual bears can kill an astonishingly large number of moose calves

in a very short period.

And that really puts a hurt on the moose population.

[narrator] In order to manage the number of bears in Iliamna,

Alaska Fish and Game has issued Erik a permit

to hunt for predator control.

To do so,

he's travelled to the surrounding wilderness

where he will hunt alone for the next few days.

Hour one in my solo-archery bear hunt. I'm pretty pumped.

Frickin' beautiful out here.

I am going to ease my way up this river towards those mountains

and see if I can't find me a bear.

It's really thick, thick stuff in here,

a bunch of bear tracks in the soft soil.

I'm already on fresh bear sign.

I'm gonna get up on these rocks

and set up and just do a nice spot-and-stalk hunt. See if I can't wait,

spot one from up high

and then sneak down these rocks and put the sneak on him.

This is a perfect place to find a bear coming across an opening.

Archery hunting is a lot different than a lot of other types of hunting.

You have to get much closer to the animal, there's a lot more skill involved,

you got to practise with a bow a lot more

than you do a rifle to be proficient.

A well-placed arrow can kill an animal just as efficiently,

if not more efficiently than a bullet.

This is a sweet spot.

I'm just gonna own this.

I'm just gonna watch it, watch it, and watch it.

Success is measured in a lot of different ways.

I'm fortunate that I get to sit here

glassing for bears.

How many people's lives do you get to just be out in the wild

and see things that are painfully beautiful?

Living out here is just...

It's awesome.

That bear took off.

Ran through the clearing.

I'm going to ease up in there with an arrow, all knocked, ready to rock n' roll.

We're stepping into another world here.

This isn't bright and sunny and hot.

This is shady and full of shadows.

This is the world of the bears.

I'm 6' 4" and these ferns are waist deep on me,

which means that bear, dead or alive,

you're not going to see him until you step on him.

[whispering] I can see the blood on the base of that birch right there.

I'm hoping that bear's dead right up in here.

There he is.

There he is, right there.

Not sure if he's alive or dead right now.

[continues whispering] I'm gonna ease up on him here.

Looking pretty dead to me.

I got a dead black bear here.

One clean shot.

Did the moose a favour here

in this Predator Control Unit.

Have a little bit more meat running around in the woods

for all Alaskans and...

Life is good.

Pretty pumped. This was a successful hunt.

A little worn out, ready to head home,

and, uh,

get out of here.

[narrator] In the Arctic,

living a subsistence lifestyle means

staying ahead of drastic seasonal changes.

For Jessie, Erik and Martha,

their success and survival

in an unpredictable and uncontrollable climate

requires foresight

and adaptation.

[Jessie] It's definitely not me versus nature.

You gotta be in harmony and you gotta have balance.

I work with the weather.

I work with nature.

There's danger around every bend out here

and I just have to be

very sharp and pay attention and know my game.

[dogs howling]

[Jessie] I've got to get my sled, my harnesses and everything in line here,

tied down on the top,

and pick out a small team, easy to control.

[narrator] In Nenana, rapidly dropping temperatures are a sign

that racing season is about to begin for Jessie and his dog team.

Proper training involves hundreds of miles of running

and Jessie's first task is to prepare his trails.

-[dogs barking] -I'm just trying to travel to the end of

the broke-out trail. I've got my chainsaw here.

All the stuff I need for a good day of working on the trail here.

All right. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Haw! Haw! Gee! Gee! Gee!

Haw! Haw! Haw!

I don't know how many miles I'm going, but right now,

I'm preparing for a thousand-mile sled dog race.

So we've got 64 days to condition these dogs out here.

Oh, whoa, boys. Good boys, stay.

Hey, whoa. We're going to stop here for a while.

I've got to get this stuff cut out

-so it's time to get to work now. -[barks]

[engine roars]

Stay! Stay! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

What the fuck are you guys doing?

These dogs will get away from you and they will not come back.

They will keep going.

Stay!

Stay.

We just pushed through about 150 yards to this portage here.

These are the trail passages. They go through here.

This is an old trail, but every year it takes work and maintenance

to get through here.

Stuff falls in the trail.

This is the kind of stuff we have to do all winter to use these trails.

They don't just maintain themselves.

They take elbow grease and chainsaw power to get through here.

This thing's got to go.

You're coming through here in the middle of the night

and bam, knock yourself in the head...

Not something you want to have happen out here

when it's 30, 40 below 0.

Are you boys ready?

-[dogs bark] -Straight ahead, gentlemen.

[narrator] With the trail fully broken, Jessie is preparing for an overnight run

into the surrounding wilderness.

Hi, good.

I'm pretty amazed at how the dogs handled their run.

They're really coming along nice.

Getting into shape fast.

It's getting to where it's too far away to spend all day working

and then have to go home,

so this is going to be great to have a camp here.

This is a good end to a good day's work.

Some people think of money when they think of riches.

I think of lifestyle.

That's what I think makes you a rich man.

It's the life you live.

This is as good as it gets for me.

[Erik] I have a strong drive to want to take on those challenges

associated with being out in the natural environment.

My choice in life to live out in the bush and do the things that I do.

It's an unbelievable life I get to live. I feel very fortunate every day.

[Erik on headset]

[Erik] Good one, man.

[man] Easy money.

[Erik] I'm out here in Kodiak

and I'm going to find a good camping spot protected from the weather.

And then I'm going to harvest a deer.

This is going to be my home away from home for a while.

You always want to set up your tent as soon as you get to your camp.

I mean, it was pretty good weather when we got here,

but already you can see on the horizon there's something ugly coming.

Still raining pretty good here, but I'm going to do a little walk around

and see if I can't spot a deer.

[whispering] There's a track. Deer track along the beach.

Tide's coming in. It's getting dark.

I have a really limited time window

and I need to get this hunting done while I have time.

[whispering] I just spotted a deer. It's really far away, though.

It's going to be a real push if I can get it before dark.

But I've never been afraid of a challenge.

If I'm not aggressive, I don't have a chance.

Hopefully, he's still there.

If he's still there we'll be able to see him right over the top here.

I think I got him.

I do have visual confirmation. The deer is down, the deer is dead.

But I'm not going to pat myself on the back too much

because I've got to beat the weather and get off this mountain in a hurry.

Well, that's one Sitka black-tailed buck in a backpack.

There we go.

Hee-hee, hoo!

We gotta go down through all this brush, down the side of the hill

and then about five, six miles down the beach.

So, there's only one way to get there.

That's one foot in front of the other.

Tally-ho!

[narrator] The Alaskan wilderness requires its residents

to employ innovative, cost-effective and time-saving methods

of utilising resources.

For the renegades of the Arctic, these skills are crucial for survival.

[Jessie] Honestly, it takes a strong back and a weak mind.

That's how you survive up here.

[Erik] Whenever you're dealing with four hours of daylight

and extremely cold temperatures,

tasks tend to slow down.

Time up here is everything.

Just getting my morning started here with a cup of coffee.

Gonna get out here and start working on this boat.

I got some holes in it I need to repair.

I'm trying to get it in the water here in the next couple of days

so I can get out and build a new fish wheel

so I can start putting away some fish for my dogs this fall.

This is my boat. It's a 24-foot long,

four-foot wide, narrow river boat.

If I don't get this boat fixed and in the water,

there's like, no way that I'm going to be able to afford

to have these sled dogs this winter.

The goal is to catch about 3,500 to 4,000 fish.

[narrator] For Jessie, getting his boat repaired and in the water

is the key to his livelihood.

His ability to travel on the river and catch fish

is essential to feeding himself and his sled dogs

for the months ahead.

Making progress.

I need to flip this boat up on the other side

so I can start working on patching my hole.

This is kind of a challenging thing,

'cause I don't have help and I gotta figure out how to do it by myself,

so I'm really hoping this will work pretty quick.

My idea is to just keep tightening this up as I lift up

so it can't come back down too far on me

and crush me.

Oh, shit.

So I'm just going to have to pick this thing up.

I think I got it.

I hope this rope's gonna catch it so it doesn't go over.

[grunts]

[struggling] Sometimes you just got to go for shit.

It's holding. It seems like it's holding.

Oh, shit.

Yeah! It worked.

Now that I've got the boat flipped up on this side,

I'm gonna get to patching these holes.

It's gonna be in the water soon, I hope.

So what I'm gonna do is... I would like to haul my boat down with my truck,

but I don't have a ball hitch on my truck.

I'm thinking I'm gonna attach this bicycle to it.

It's pretty much the best option I got at this moment.

All right. Here goes nothing.

I don't quite know how I'm gonna do this yet,

but this is the challenge about doing things by yourself.

It's somewhat dangerous.

[grunts] Oh, fuck.

Okay. Feels like I'm going, kind of.

The best feeling for me at the end of the day is,

you know, knowing that I worked hard, feel tired enough to go to sleep.

You know, it took me three days of work to finish up this boat.

And now the reward is a couple summers on the river, doing what I love.

[Martha] We live totally off the grid.

There's no grocery store. There's no like, mechanic shop.

There's nothing here.

We provide it all for ourselves.

There's nobody out there who's gonna save you.

You just gotta do it.

[Erik] You want to scrap together a smoker and smoke some of this meat?

[Martha] Yeah, that could be fun.

Well, I'm done, let's go out and check out what we've got for building materials.

Sounds good. I'm done too.

I'll go put this outside where it will be cold.

[Martha] So Erik and I just got done butchering the moose.

We're going to go out to the hangar and hopefully find the materials

that we need to put together a usable smoker.

[Erik] The type of smoker that we're looking to make

is a cold smoker.

It just adds a little bit more flavour. It doesn't add any nutritional value.

It has nothing to do with life or death.

It's just a little spice of life.

Doing these small kind of projects is fun 'cause it's like a change of pace.

Something different than the daily chores.

It's nice to be able to build something yourself

and be able to also take the meat that you harvested

and throw it in there and make an edible finished product.

[Erik] I used these 2x6s that are left over from building this hangar

this past summer.

We're going to go six feet deep, six feet wide

and put a six-foot roof on her.

[Martha] Now we've just got one more wall to go,

which is the wall that's going to have the door in it.

Then we're gonna throw on the sheeting.

[Martha] We've got a lot of work ahead of us.

[Martha] We're putting up the sheet metal here,

which is not only going to complete the smoke house

but make it sturdier.

Feed it up on the top there.

[Martha] So far, progress has been real fast.

We have four walls, we have the roofs all ready.

We pounded it out and we're just going to keep moving.

Is it going to fit?

We're going to get this door on hinges.

Make sure it flows the way we want it.

Then we'll sheet the son of a gun.

[narrator] Erik and Martha built a smoker

to prepare meat they harvested themselves

but before it can be used, it first must be moved out of the hangar.

Little bit more. That's good.

Okay.

[Martha] Oh, oh, oh!

I knew it was going to hit that lip.

It hit that lip and busted a skid off.

We just tried pulling the smoke house out.

Unfortunately, we didn't have the skids braced well

so they came together and in turn

pulled the whole frame of the smoke house in also,

so little bit of a bummer.

How did that happen?

Chain choked the two pieces together, because there's no cross piece here.

[Erik] Kind of irritated with myself for rushing,

not putting a good support on it.

Gonna take this 2x6 and make the skids a little bit sturdier

by putting it in between,

so next time, when we pull, at least they won't come together.

[Erik] Now we got the bracing on there,

I'm going to go ahead and hook it onto my truck

and hopefully it should be secure and go ahead and we'll be able to pull it across

the yard where we want it.

Just move the smoke house to where it's going to sit temporarily

and get it smoking.

I'm going to put this little wood stove in there

and fire it up.

There she goes.

Being able to put the moose meat in there and get that fire going,

get it smoking in there, it's great, you know.

It will be good and it will have that really good smokey smell and taste to it.

Close the doors. Let it smoke.

[narrator] Survival in the Arctic depends on gaining knowledge

through trial and error.

Mistakes can have deadly consequences.

To endure in fierce conditions, Jessie, Erik and Martha

must constantly stem the tide of adversity.

[Jessie] The dangers of living like this,

it's the little things that are going to get you.

A simple thing can become a big problem.

-[wood creaks] -Argh! Fuck.

[Jessie] I'll be building a new rack system

that I can hopefully hang a thousand fish on,

so I can just take those fish right off if they're ready

and just to lessen my workload, make more space.

[narrator] Jessie relies on the fish from the Nenana River

to harvest protein and feed himself and his sled dogs

for the long winter.

Constructing a rack will allow him to dry, smoke,

and preserve large quantities of fish

but hanging thousands of fish by hand is a daunting task,

and time is of the essence.

I need to start collecting some poles

and I'm going to put them up with some barrels in a level area,

start filling it up with some fish.

If there's fish put up for the winter, it really enables my lifestyle.

This is a huge part of my lifestyle to have this fish.

It fuels my dogs and it fuels me.

I can fit about five fish per alder pole.

I'm looking to not go too far of a span, 'cause I don't want it to bend and break

and be under the strain of too many fish,

so I'm just trying to fit in this rectangle what I can.

I'll have a 125 fish per row

and nine rows, so I'll have

over 1,000 fish hanging on this, which is going to be cool.

It's time to hang some fish and try to fit as many in there as I possibly can.

As much as my rack can hold is the work I got cut out for me

I'm just going for it, 'cause time's everything to me right now.

I got a lot of dogs. Need a lot of fish.

Got to do it right.

Without these fish, life is pretty hard.

I gotta get this done right so I optimise on my catch of fish.

I don't get to try to do this again.

This is it. This is my opportunity to put up fish for the winter.

Fucking damn it!

I don't think that plastic barrel helped me too much there.

I could have had more barrels maybe

and more supports and some weight.

I think I cut a shortcut because the metal barrel's heavier to carry.

This is what fucking happens.

I'm gonna load all these fish on the tarp.

This is costing me valuable time

that I need to be out there on the river putting up more fish.

It takes a lot of pounds of meat to feed these dogs.

[Erik] If you're going to make your living off the natural resources of Alaska,

that privilege comes with a responsibility.

Danger's around every corner in the bush.

You've got to pay attention but as long as you pay attention

and you don't make mistakes, life is good.

[narrator] For much of the winter,

Erik Salitan supplements his income by trapping fur.

Today he is using a powerful yet unfamiliar trap

in hopes of catching foxes,

but setting them in dark and freezing conditions

is a dangerous task.

I've made it up to the area I want to trap.

Nice fox track here.

I want to try to set up in this bank.

Hopefully this will attract a fox to this area and we'll catch them.

I hope we have some luck.

-Use my handy trap-setter here. -[grunts]

[straining] Try not to break my arm.

So I'm learning as I go and there's a learning curve.

Got to pay really close attention here.

Make a mistake, it'll cost you a finger or worse,

so, to be honest, I am kind of scared of these traps.

I'm just not very experienced with them so I try to use a lot of caution.

I'm pretty cold right now.

It's about 20 below zero-- [yells]

Oh, I fucked up.

Well, I caught my hand in it.

Oh, yeah, it didn't feel particularly good.

I guess that's part of the learning curve.

You can get yourself in trouble out here, so...

At least my arm's not stuck in it.

Using my body here as leverage.

This hand isn't feeling too good.

You may have noticed my leeriness around the traps.

Learned a good lesson here with these 330s.

Kind of just reminded myself why I never fooled with them in the past.

They're freaking dangerous.

I'm happy all it had was my hand.

[narrator] For the few who've carved out a life in the Arctic,

the journey to remain and thrive has been long and strenuous.

For Jessie Holmes and Erik and Martha Salitan,

their experience, hard labour and sacrifice

affords them the ability to live free in Alaska

and to see their dreams become reality.

[Erik] This is the life that I've chosen to live and that Martha was raised in.

Why we eat these things or why we do these things,

there doesn't need to be a reason.

It's because of what we choose.

I mean, if you don't have free will in the world, you don't have anything.

No one else has to live the way we live,

no one has to approve or disagreee with the way that we live.

It's just what we do.

I'll help you out.

[Martha] Erik and I, our whole life basically revolves around subsistence.

We like the meat that we eat, we like caribou, we like moose,

we like salmon, we like all those things.

[straining] This is the biggest one.

We live independently through ourselves,

we don't rely on anybody, and we like it that way.

You know, a lot of people, they'd rather have things handed to them.

Us, we'd rather go out and do it ourselves.

It's just the way that we are. It's just our nature.

There's king crab, there's lobster.

There's foie gras.

-There's oysters -I love oysters.

That's all shit.

Caribou tongue, that's the best thing there is.

The best way to get at the tongue is to cut along the jaw here.

[Martha] Not too shabby.

We'll arm-wrestle for that later.

I love my wife. I don't think we fight more than any other couple.

But every time we kill an animal, we get in a fight.

-We're always fighting over the tongue. -[chuckles]

Let's go eat tongue.

[Martha] I'm so excited right now.

It's a really complicated recipe. It involves boiling and salt.

Mmm.

This is candy. This is a candy meal. This doesn't even count as a meal.

I could eat 50 meals and be so full and be like

"Mmm, tongue? How much can I have?"

You're gonna burn your mouth.

Winter's pretty much over, the light's coming back, caribou coming through.

Pretty soon the birds will be here, the bears will be coming out.

We'll be guiding bear hunts.

This was a nice cap to the season, though.

Yeah, it was.

[Erik] Alaska has been extremely good to me.

I get to go out and just love nature and just be out there with my wife.

We're just out here caribou hunting, fishing, tinkering on this and that,

just loving life and loving each other.

[Martha] We're about to pass out of a tongue coma.

(BOTH GRUNTING)

[Jessie] The reward at the end of the day is being out there on the trail

with your dogs, doing what you love.

They're my dogs and I'm their human.

Look.

Well, we can't go without a flash.

Hold on there, buddy. Zeus!

[narrator] Along the Nenana river, Jessie has devoted his life

to racing sled dogs in the Arctic.

With the first official test run of the racing season only hours away,

Jessie must quickly gather his equipment and 14 sled dogs.

-[dogs barking] -Easy.

-Jessie Holmes! -Jessie Holmes.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

[Jessie] What I would say to the person

that wants to live this kind of lifestyle...

You better have the stuff that it takes, 'cause it's gotta be inside.

It can't be just romanticism.

When I came up here, I didn't just run off into the woods dangerously.

I eased into it,

because ego doesn't keep you alive in Alaska.

Fears keep you alive.

Be willing to dump your ego.

Be humble and realistic about your abilities.

It's been a hard journey to get here where I'm at,

and I've wanted to quit quite a few times,

but I always keep going forward.

Every mile made me ground myself.

Good dog, straight ahead.

All right. We made it to the finish line.

Dogs made it, finishing strong.

I'm one proud dad right now.

Before this, I fucked up a lot, but I'm trying to make up for it

and become a better man.

Just because you've made a lot of mistakes

doesn't mean you should have to be held to it for the rest of your life.

Now I'm proud of who I am. I'm a winner, not a loser.

It's amazing what I've already done in the past,

and it's going to be amazing what I'm going to do in the future.