Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero,

the future is uncertain as winter sets in.

SUE: You know, Alaska's always gonna have the upper paw. Nature wins.

NARRATOR: Sue tackles the threat of an unwelcomed visitor head on.

SUE: Only a fool forces a situation where we all have guns.

NARRATOR: It's tough sledding for Andy on the Yukon River.

ANDY: Something's not right here. What the hell is going on?

NARRATOR: Glenn chases the hunters of the Arctic.

Wolves went right through here.

NARRATOR: And the Hailstones brave the ice for native trade.

AGNES: Dude, you can't go too close to me,

you're gonna freak me out.

(SHOUTS) What the fuck?

I'm gonna go get a load of wood with the dogs.

My woodpile over by my workshop

is getting kind of low.

Now, I've probably got enough for maybe two, maybe three days.

So you never have enough wood when you're heating with wood.

We'll take all of the older, fat dogs out today.

Give them some exercise, take a relatively small team out

and make them do some work.

With these winds like this,

it's probably gonna be a lot of glare ice out on the Ford Lake.

It's a little bit dicey

when you've got a sled full of heavy wood like that on that glare ice.

NARRATOR: In winter, the frozen lakes and rivers

that surround Andy and Kate's camp

serve as highways to various resources.

But travelling on ice is not without its dangers.

ANDY: What kills you out on that glare ice

is you start sliding sideways.

It instantly wants to flip the whole sled over.

You get thrown off the sled, you smack your head.

It's just all around a bad day.

Let's go harness some dogs up and go get some wood.

Yeah, you're like a big old blimp, Alt.

(BARKS)

Let's go haul some wood and work some of this fat off.

Going and getting loads of wood,

the biggest challenge is on the way back.

This little sled is small,

but it's gonna have close to 500 pounds of birch wood in it.

And once it starts sliding one way or another,

that's a lot of force.

During freeze up,

exercising dogs and getting firewood is a big part of my life.

All right, hup, hup!

Weight and momentum is a recipe for disaster.

You have to go slow.

If you can, you gotta, kind of, take the momentum out of turns.

Be a little bit cautious but,

you know, when the dogs are ready to go and they've got a lot of power,

there's not much you can do, except for just hold on.

Go haw. That a girl.

Atta girl. Let's go.

Straight ahead. Hup, hup, hup, hup.

This is, kind of, the area I like cutting wood.

The flood in 2009 wiped out this whole forest

and just stacked it up right here.

So there's a lot of really nice, good, dry birch,

and cottonwood and spruce.

Just a big mix of everything.

It's only about two miles from my house,

so it's not terribly far to go get it.

I want to get the sled a little bit closer to where the wood is,

'cause I don't wanna have to carry it any farther than I have to.

So we'll get a little bit of wood cut up here

and start hauling it back.

SUE: I educated myself that

nobody else can make you happy,

that's something you do yourself.

They can add to your happiness,

they can take away from your happiness,

but never without your permission.

I did not know if I could run Kavik on my own.

So back-up plan, uh, friends of mine had this cabin

in Fairbanks so I bought the property.

But my pilot buddy flew over and said,

"Hey, you know that cabin you got,

"I thought I saw smoke coming out the chimney.

"You might have squatters."

And if somebody is squatting on my property, what you do,

you get there, only a fool forces a situation

where we all have guns.

Definitely for me, I'm packing the 454 peashooter.

The process is, I get there,

go in and diffuse the situation,

see what the situation is, handle it.

NARRATOR: After leaving Kavik for a foot procedure,

Sue Aikens will travel 150 miles

to investigate possible squatters on her property in Central Alaska.

But freezing temperatures have created treacherous road conditions

and driving is a risk.

SUE: I have a window of opportunity to check on this place.

I haven't driven this road in three, four years

and it was really bad conditions.

It's not a great road.

For me, this is Fairbanks, this is where we are now.

But then we start going up

and, you know, we're gonna go higher up in elevation.

We've got several summits.

We're going over the White Mountains.

This right here, this is not guaranteed to be open.

That's what all that means.

This is winter, and I've got a big old pass to go over

and 150 miles to get there.

The world moves so fast here.

In Kavik, I'm going, "Putt, putt, putt" five miles an hour

thinking I'm all that,

and here, people are going 50.

And I don't have any control. They're passing me.

Nobody passes me in Kavik.

I don't know. Are they drunk? Are they sober?

Are they able to drive well?

It's a whole field of unknowns.

So for me to be close to the social world everybody else lives in,

you know, it's a lesson in how does it feel to have no control.

CHIP: I look at the subsistence way of life

and I see a lot of good in it, I see a lot of health in it,

I see a lot of my family in it and I see a lot of prestige.

I mean, we don't have a lot of money here in this house,

but people give us respect.

NARRATOR: For the Hailstones,

the freezing of the Kobuk River

is a brief window for the family to catch whitefish as they migrate,

a key source of food and trade for dark winter.

Well, you know, it's the time of year when whitefish run,

and the whitefish run when the ice is starting to come along

in the fall time.

When they're here, there's lots,

and when they're gone, there's nothing.

NARRATOR: After setting the nets before the freeze,

Chip and Agnes return to the river to test

the newly formed ice to make sure it's thick enough

to support their weight.

I'm just walking along here, checking out the ice.

I can see that it's frozen, a lot of thickness to it.

There's no bottom ice, water, top ice.

It's all just ice, ice, ice, all the way to the river.

So this is really good.

Chainsaw is a new technology

and my took is my old technology.

Either way I get through the ice.

(CHAINSAW WHIRRING)

Yesterday we set this net and today we're here to check it.

This is a real good time to set your net,

when the ice is about that thick.

The ice is better than last year.

A lot thicker.

Every day will be a little safer than the day before.

As long as we do our part, the fish will do theirs.

Well, we'll see what comes out of here.

AGNES: Yee! What a load coming up! CHIP: Yep.

AGNES: Fish been hitting the net all the way from the bottom to the top.

We set our net just super.

-Now we have enough fish for dinner. -Yep.

My hands has gotten so cold my polish is coming off.

-Oh, thank you. -Got your gloves. Here.

We have dark winter coming on.

Like any other fish, when there's lots going by, we get lots.

And then when they're gone, they're gone.

And pretty soon there won't be any whitefish at all under here.

They'll have all passed by.

It's just the way that everything is around here.

The whitefish are passing by, and the time to get them is now, and we're on it.

GLENN: I don't think life has a meaning.

It's not the kind of thing that has to stand for something else.

A letter has a meaning, a word has a meaning,

it stands for something else, it represents something else,

but life just is, it just exists.

I'm gonna have a look around for caribou.

I walk out here on the lake just a little ways in front of camp,

where I have a good view of all the mountains around the valley.

I spend a lot of time out here with binoculars

just looking for caribou.

Caribou are one of the most important animals to me out here.

NARRATOR: Glenn Villeneuve relies on the limited animals

that surround him in the Brooks Range for survival.

As the days grow colder, it is crucial for Glenn

not to let any opportunity for meat pass him by.

This time of year, they often come down this way

and they'll pass through this valley some years.

Other years, they stay up high on the mountains.

When I can intercept them, I like to.

I'm just looking around to see if there are any in the area.

Right now I'm living on moose.

I've got a moose that I killed about a month ago,

but I don't have any other meat here.

I see caribou, they're up on the ridge.

They're a long way off, they're out of my range,

but there are a few of them up there.

I don't have a trail up there right now,

so it would be hard for me to get up there right now.

I probably wouldn't be able to intercept them.

By the time I got to the top of that mountain,

I think those caribou are gonna be gone.

They're travelling.

If I had caribou here on the lake that would be really nice

but they're not down here.

So I'm gonna make do with the moose meat I've got.

(DISTANT HOWLING)

Hear that?

That's wolves howling.

I'm going over there to see what's going on.

I'm headed over here because there's some wolves howling,

ravens flying up out of this willow field

about a half mile from my camp.

Something's going on. I think the wolves killed something over here.

I'm gonna go over there and see if I can find it.

Sometimes if I get there fast enough,

I can get some meat off of what they killed.

And they may have killed a caribou up there.

It's possible. I'd love to get some caribou meat.

Getting across the creek up here is gonna be a little problem.

It's pretty slippery, all covered in snow.

I don't wanna get my feet wet.

Made it.

The wolves are right up this way.

Right through the brush there, the snow's all knocked off.

Wolves went right through here.

Just a little while ago they knocked all of the snow off the brush right here.

These are the tracks.

See, here it is.

Caribou, they killed right here.

The wolves killed this caribou.

Oh man, there's not much left.

I got here too late.

(SIGHS)

They cleaned up most of it already.

They made a mess of it.

As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing on there for me to eat.

Still meat here that the wolves will eat,

but I wouldn't eat any of this now

'cause it's all been chewed up by wolves.

There are just scraps left.

What I love about living out here the way I live,

is that most of the time out here,

it's just very calm and meditative.

It's a very silent, quiet environment.

It's very peaceful out here.

But that calm and peace is punctuated

by excitement like I had today.

When something like these wolves come along,

kill a caribou, it's the contrast.

I like to live a really quiet, calm life out in nature most of the time,

but I like the excitement that happens every now and then.

Something like happened today.

A pack of wolves in my backyard killed a caribou.

It keeps life interesting.

There's nothing there for me, though.

I'm gonna head back, go back to camp.

Make myself some moose hoof gelatine.

SUE: Remote people aren't ones that really like to stand still

and let the world fall down around us.

If it's falling, you know, we're there to be like Atlas and hold it back up.

NARRATOR: After getting a tip that squatters are on her property

in Central Alaska, Sue is travelling 150 miles in icy, perilous conditions.

No matter where you are,

whether you choose to live in town or out of town,

you know, Alaska's always gonna have the upper paw.

Nature's got the upper paw. Nature wins.

You can lay down a piece of pavement,

and nature's gonna say, "Watch what I do to you now."

You know, "How'd you like that?"

So yeah, I'm just taking a minute

and giving the paws a little bit of a break.

They're sore of doing the manual transmission,

but, you know, as you look out across this vista here,

this is the Twelvemile Summit Wayside,

but it's the Pinnell Mountain Recreational Trail.

I always kind of stop here at this area.

Almost 40-45 years ago,

a state dump truck lost control, swerved,

killed a bunch of my friends, and hurt some others and family members.

So for being somebody who doesn't drive often,

I'm kind of curious, you know, 40-45 years later,

I'm on the same stretch of road

and it's a little icy and I got little hurt paws.

And, you know,

take a minute to, uh, my heart to theirs.

You know, don't ever forget your family, friends.

And the decisions you make today could have deep ramifications.

That sun's getting real low, so I better start making tracks.

(TYRES SCREECHING)

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm not even going 40 miles an hour.

The road looks in good condition, but it's sheer ice.

And these semi-bald tyres couldn't get a grip

and I lost control of the vehicle.

You know, I got it back.

Yeah, the speed limit's 55, fuck you.

GLENN: People have a very romantic view of nature,

kind of, peaceful and beautiful.

It's actually, there's a lot of suffering that goes on in nature.

This is the last piece of butchered meat that I have.

This isn't even enough for a day.

I have to go out and get some more meat

down off the meat pole now.

Thaw it out in here and cut it up into small pieces

so I can cook it and eat it.

NARRATOR: With his stock of meat wearing thin

and unable to harvest caribou,

Glenn must rely on his stored meat cache

to harvest a healthy supply of protein.

At this time of year I've got my meat in two places out here.

Some of it's hanging off this pole 20 feet high,

and some of it's up on this platform 15 feet high.

The purpose of these structures is to keep the meat safe.

If I didn't have the meat up there,

wolves would come along, bears would come along, eat the meat up.

So I have to keep it up high out of reach.

Right here I've got a moose head.

I killed this moose in the fall.

I buried it in these antlers in order to protect it,

try to keep ravens off of it.

And now the snow's fallen on it and protected it

further from the birds.

I just have to dig it out and throw it down

so that I can bring it inside, thaw it out, and butcher it.

Here's my moose head, nothing got to it. It's in good shape.

Birds didn't chew it up.

No animals got to it up here.

This looks like a tasty hoof. I'll take that one.

Living out here in the Brooks Range,

I'm highly dependent on moose and caribou.

They make up the bulk of my diet.

And it's important to have variety in your diet.

You can have a lot of variety even when you're only eating one or two species of animal

as long as you make use of all the different parts.

This is all thawed out.

I'm gonna start with this hoof this morning.

All the ligaments and tendons in that hoof will boil up

and they'll turn the liquid that I boil them into gelatine.

I'm gonna skin it.

And skinning a hoof is tricky.

I enjoy skinning.

It's an interesting process,

especially when you get into the details.

Just to understand how things are put together,

how animals are adapted to the function.

It's interesting.

A hoof is a part of a moose that's often not utilised today,

but I like to use the hooves.

The gelatine that's used in processed food today

is made from hooves of cattle mostly.

And I make mine from the hooves of moose.

So a lot of people are used to eating gelatine, they just don't know it.

Gelatine comes from boiling up ligaments and tendons,

a lot of which are found right here in the hoof.

When I started living out here,

I wanted to live as much off the land as I could.

And I started experimenting and realised that

just living on steaks, and roasts, and muscle meat every day is not good,

but if you eat all of the different parts of the animal,

it feels good.

Gelatine in the making.

ANDY: One thing I'll say about this country out here,

there's no guarantees to anything.

The way it is, is the way it is.

And if you can't handle that, you don't come out here and do anything.

(CHAINSAW WHIRRING)

This is my favourite place to come get wood.

'Cause there's lots of it from the 2009 flood.

Lots of variety in a small area.

That makes hauling wood become a much easier job.

Well, this little sled, when it's full of birch, is probably about 400 pounds.

And then another, with me in all my winter gear,

is about another 170, 180.

So you're looking at 600 pounds in a sled.

So that's about, a little over 100 pounds per dog to pull.

Alaskans are very unique people.

We're all very independent,

especially people living out in the bush.

We live out here to live a certain lifestyle,

to be connected to the land,

to get the resources from the land.

And that's what's important to me.

The big thing is when you got a heavy load,

you've got more momentum.

When you start sliding out, you got more torque.

When everything starts twisting, it's hard on them.

Anytime you put weight on something,

it totally changes the whole formula.

I'd say that's a load.

NARRATOR: In winter, Andy's dog sled is essential to gathering resources.

But adding weight to his sled could make for a difficult trek on the ice.

The big thing I have to worry about is when I'm sliding sideways,

hitting the snowdrifts,

'cause that will flip you in a heartbeat.

Okay, let's go.

We'll see what it's like out on that glare ice out on the lake.

It's pretty, pretty windy out.

It's gusting 25 to 30.

And this is like a giant sail out on that lake ice.

Oh, shit!

Oh, something's not right here.

What the hell? (GRUNTS)

What the hell is going on here?

Oh, shit!

Ho, ho, ho!

Whoa! Whoa!

God dang it!

Looks like my ties broke.

I kept pulling on... Whoa!

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Ho! Everybody stay.

Looks like both sides broke.

I was having problems steering coming over that trail

and it looks like my plastic even broke right here, too,

and it's broken on both sides,

so this stanchion's wanting to come up.

If this thing comes apart, I could be left standing with just a driving bough,

a piece of wood in my hand, and the dogs go home.

And then I got a long walk home.

It could bust on me and I could fall off and smack my head on this ice.

You just don't want to take chances.

And the worst thing that can happen to dogs is

running free with no driver on the back.

That's when dogs get tangled up, legs get broken.

These guys are my buddies and they're dependent on me.

I'm making the right decision right now.

I think if I take the weight out of this sled,

I'm gonna be okay.

Everything's about efficiency.

Bush economics.

Sometimes shit happens.

Oh, shit. Here's another place that broke.

That sucks.

Here, this plastic's cracking here.

This broke under here, too.

Basically I'm gonna have to rebuild this whole sled.

All right. If that's the case then,

better get it home and get on it.

Go.

GLENN: There is no food that evolved in order to feed something else.

They're trying to survive and then something comes along and eats them up.

This gelatine's been boiling for a long time

and all the ligaments and tendons off that hoof

have boiled down now

and that's gonna gelatinise that liquid.

But I have to separate the bone

and the tissues from the liquid

because I like my gelatine nice and smooth.

When this cools, I'll have about a gallon of gelatine.

That'll be really tasty moose gelatine. That's good stuff.

I'll set this outside to cool.

Right behind this eye, there's a big chunk of fat.

That's what I'm going for.

Right here, so I go right down in here.

That's the eye fat. That's really tasty.

Fat is very important.

In the cold weather

and when I'm not eating a lot of carbohydrate,

most of my calories come from fat.

Look at that. All that fat right from behind the eyes of that moose.

Here we got some gelatine.

Ooh, that looks delicious.

The idea that it's a bad thing to kill animals,

to hunt, to eat animals because it causes suffering,

that's all tied into a modern view of life

as being something that is

comfortable, and gentle, and peaceful.

That's one way of looking at life,

but I like the reality of life under more natural conditions,

which isn't always pretty, but it's real.

CHIP: We're not trying to catch the tail end of anything here.

We always have fish, we always have caribou,

we always have heat.

The kids are clean, well-dressed.

Pretty happy with ourselves.

What we're gonna get is, we're gonna get food

for ourselves and for our dogs,

'cause a dog's got to eat and we like to eat.

And the way it looks, over the next couple three days,

we should have a lot of trade.

Whitefish is a good commodity around here.

You can get a buck or two for each fish,

in trade anyway, worth-wise.

It worked out really well.

This one looks almost like it was caught in the net before.

CHIP: I would say that if we get lots and lots and lots and lots,

we won't only have for ourselves and trade,

but we'll be able to give plenty away, too.

And my wife has sisters and, that are elders,

and we have other people that are elders

that rely on us for the fish.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones have a limited window to harvest whitefish,

an important commodity for meat and trade.

But working with heavy nets on the ice

cannot be taken for granted.

The water's getting deep on the river top here.

AGNES: Ice might not be strong enough to hold our net, fish,

and snow machine, and people.

I'm afraid of the ice getting thin or rotten,

there's a lot of times when it just doesn't

look safe enough.

Dude, you can't go too close to me, you're gonna freak me out.

(SHOUTS) What the fuck?

CHIP: There's no need for you to freak out.

Don't be setting yourself up for being like that.

Get it out of your mind. Sing a song.

Whistle.

We got water flowing on top of the ice, but under the snow.

So this isn't exactly the safest way to be out here

doing this stuff, but we're not doing too bad.

We're doing pretty good.

And we're not falling through, we're pretty well,

pretty well off here.

If it gets any more dangerous, we may skip a day or two.

Hopefully it will get colder.

Other than that, just keeping up with the net is the way to go.

Look like we have enough. I probably will just pick out

-a few good ones and keep them aside for trade, eh? -Yep.

CHIP: We basically do call this shopping.

We got almost 80 fish.

I can't think of the last time we've even bought fish.

I mean, where would you even buy fish in a store

except maybe a can of tuna?

AGNES: I don't think I've ever bought a fish.

I've sold fish, I've traded fish.

Ah, this one's full of eggs.

-AGNES: The bottom of the... -Sugliks.

Oh, this one is a good one.

(SLURPS)

You want some?

I have other methods of getting them to my mouth, but yeah.

We got a bunch more over here

we could trade off, if you don't eat them all.

I'm not gonna eat them all.

I'm gonna save this one to cook.

Whitefish with eggs are the real prize.

Real good trading material if you come up with a whole bunch of them.

People will trade you gas, or food, or things from the store.

How about when we get these home, you'll...

You can get on VHF and see if anybody wanna trade.

I can think of a lot of things I'd like to have.

-AGNES: They're all in the can. -Yep. Now grab that end.

-It's been awesome fishing with you, thank you. -Mmm-hmm.

ANDY: If you have a few of these basic tools

so that you can turn natural resources

into the things that you need to build

or create your life, the way you envision it here,

then those are tremendous assets for me.

Get this beast over in the shop and

try and rip her apart.

I think I could have been in big trouble if I would have left that load in.

It's barely held together.

But it got me home, that's all that mattered.

This is a lot quicker for me to rebuild this

than to start from scratch and build a whole sled.

Put some new plastic on it, she'll be like new,

and hopefully I can get another five or six years out of her.

All right.

I like this sled.

I've done a lot of miles with it,

and I've hauled a lot of wood with it,

and it's one of my favourite little sleds to run around.

It's, kind of, my little Corvette,

so I wanna keep using it.

That was the guilty culprit.

That's definitely needed replacing.

It's all messed up here.

It's broken all back in here.

That's all it would have taken for me to lose that sled.

This is probably the hardest part of the whole process,

is cutting a big piece of this plastic by yourself.

It's like trying to cut a giant noodle.

I didn't wanna screw that up, 'cause that's about a $350 piece of plastic.

(LAUGHS)

I'm always nervous when I'm making my cuts on that,

'cause one mistake and it's a lot of money down the tube.

It is the most important part, it's the foundation.

It's like the foundation of a house.

You know, if you have a lousy foundation,

you don't have much of a house.

There's nothing like running a new sled, psychologically.

It's, you know, you're... Just put a bunch of work, and time,

and effort into something, that's always, always a big deal.

One more screw.

I love making a mess, I always hate cleaning them up.

All right, I got her done.

It's time to take her out,

and see how she tracks, and go get some wood, and run some dogs.

Bye!

SUE: As remote people, people in the bush, you know,

we, kind of, have a saying that, you know,

we're all out here 'cause we ain't all there.

You know, as I'm driving down the road and it's dark,

we got the northern lights,

are just really bright, really active.

So that's pretty cool.

The northern lights are considered a pretty lucky sign,

so cross my fingers, hopefully it's lucky for me.

We're trying to find the lead-in trail to the cabin.

But in the dark, when all's you can see is a few feet, they all look the same.

But there's the hill and I'm at the top of the hill.

It's gotta be around here somewhere.

NARRATOR: Sue is travelling to her back-up cabin in Central Alaska

to investigate a tip that there are squatters inside.

But without any daylight, she must approach with extreme caution.

Now my property starts here on the right hand side.

Okay. And there's a vehicle in my driveway,

but it doesn't look like it's moved for a while.

That's my driveway right there.

And there's a vehicle there.

All right.

Yeah, this has been here a while, man.

Somebody's using it as like a trash dump.

They just parked it here to try and claim something.

I mean, I've never had a huge log across my friggin' driveway.

Like they say, a lock only keeps out an honest man.

Somebody's been here,

didn't respect that it wasn't theirs.

This has been junk here for a bit.

Looks like, maybe, with the mattresses on the floor and all that,

it was a party house.

From being a cute little kitchen area to being this,

the only thing that I can see to fix that is a sledgehammer

and some gasoline.

So, I mean, all's I'm gonna do is assess the damage,

then make a decision.

Do I wanna stay here and start working on it now,

or make a plan for the future?

It's a little creepy seeing the baby stuff.

But to have little babies out here and in this kind of a mess?

This did not come overnight.

This is not somebody who went hunting and thought,

"Yeah, hey, nice hunting cabin."

You know, we'll use it for a weekend with the boys.

This was a family invasion, man.

Really the only thing, after seeing that,

the only thing I can do,

I can't stay in the cabin.

I've got a blanket, I've got a car, and I got time.

You kip out for a little while, get up in the morning,

and see where you're at.

Right now, where I'm at is not a healthy place mentally,

but a lot healthier than staying in there.

I'll make a decision, when I see it in the daylight, how I'm gonna handle it.

Not looking a whole lot better in the day.

I can smell it more in the day.

That ain't pleasant.

I've just gotta assess, make a plan,

see what I wanna do.

Who puts a frickin' chicken coop in a house?

Where do you pick and choose

what you save,

and what you fuckin'...

There.

You know, ta-da, I've gotta flip that.

It was a nice table, now it's junk.

Junk.

There's not one piece or stick of furniture here

that I don't feel creeped out about.

I came to get intel on squatters,

I got more than I bargained for.

Life's like poker, you know, you gotta play the hand you get.

You know, make the best out of it.

It was a lot of effort to get out here.

It was monetary and personal, not a wasted trip at all.

Emotional trip, you know, head-trip.

The structural integrity is still here.

You know, cosmetic integrity? No.

I gotta get back to town, I gotta get my stuff together.

I gotta get Ermie, I gotta get back to Kavik,

and I have to make a plan to make this better.

ANDY: In dealing with multiple personalities,

10 or 12 dogs, or even five or six dogs,

you're gonna deal with issues at times.

And it's how you work through those

and come home at the end of the day that makes it fun,

and exciting, and challenging.

(WHINING)

Gambo's ready! Alt's ready!

Everybody's ready.

Let's see if the sled's ready.

All right. I guess we're going.

NARRATOR: After repairing the foundation of his dog sled,

Andy must retrieve the firewood he left behind

and make sure his sled is fully able

to withstand the harsh winter trail conditions.

ANDY: Good. Whoa, whoa, easy, easy, easy.

Whoa, whoa! Whoa, whoa! Good!

All right, come haw.

Sled's doing real good.

The test is when it has a load in it.

It felt pretty tuned up and it felt... Felt good.

Put all this wood in here and see what it does.

This will be a test for it.

A good load of wood like this,

I'd say that's a load.

You guys ready to go?

Okay, let's go. Hup, hup.

Yeah, let's rock and roll, guys.

A lot of labour and work goes into having dogs

and so you want a payback,

and my payback is hauling wood.

There's a million different things that they can do for me,

it's unlimited. They're tougher than hell and they just love to work.

It's not punishment to take 'em out. You can see it.

The second they see me or hear me move

one of these sleds around, it's chaos in the yard,

'cause they're happy and they wanna be the one chosen to go.

We're gonna go gee up here, Tope.

Atta boys, all the way.

Yeah. Whoa.

Yay! That was perfect, Tope. Good girl.

Yeah, that felt really good.

Drove perfect. The bridle is adjusted just perfect.

I'll offload the wood and split a little bit up for tomorrow morning.

See my woodpile's about gone, so this is good timing.

If it all goes good, I won't have to do this repair

for a long time again,

but just another day

in the life of a dog

in my dog lot.

Right, boys? They love it.

Yeah, boys. Haw, haw.

CHIP: You know, in the end, it's self-perpetuating,

that's the best part about it.

So it's like basically being self employed in a bit of a business

that can perpetuate itself by skipping the money part, mostly.

Well, Agnes went inside to get on a VHF,

and I got a feeling she's gonna probably get rid of most of these here today.

Not too many people are running nets right now.

I have some whitefish outside if anybody's interested in trading for gas

or grub from the store.

I'd be interested in some fresh vegetables to trade for.

Thank you.

-Hello, neighbour. -Hi!

Just heard it over the VHF that you were willing to do a trade.

-Sheefish, whitefish. -Awesome.

I have the ones with eggs over there and one salmon.

Oh, awesome.

-Here's a bag of fruit. -I'd love one.

-There. There's three of them. -All right.

They're about the same. Right on, thank you, neighbour.

Okay, neighbour.

AGNES: Not bad, three fish.

Five gallons of gas.

Hey, awesome.

I was asking for gas.

You can take, I guess whatever you want.

-Mmm-hmm. -These two in the oven,

fry that one for some other time,

and give this to your puppy dog.

Yes, potatoes.

Yee!

A few people came over and now I have some apples

and oranges, some fresh fruit.

I have five gallons of gas.

And now I also have some potatoes and onions

to go with the fish dinner I plan to have tonight.

Awesome.

Bye!

Whitefish is a very valuable commodity up here.

It's almost like a dollar bill to us.

It's a delicacy people love

and they'll trade almost anything

for some of the fish here.

Yeah, for us, this is like, you know, economic bonus.

We get fish, we can trade them around.

We got gas so we can go check our nets with our machines some more.

My wife got to trade for some fruits and veggies

and other stuff, some oil.

It's, kind of, the way we have to work with things.

I get to hang out with my kids.

I get to work with my wife.

This is for sandwiches for tomorrow

if you guys don't finish it.

So we've got fish for ourselves

and fish for our family, extended family.

Fish to give away to friends and for gifts and stuff.

And fish for trade, like Noorvik dollars.

So they're whitefish. Everyone likes them.

-Not a bad day, yeah? -Nope.

-It was pretty good. -Good teamwork.

I've got five gallons of gas outside

and it didn't cost me nothing but a couple fish.

Gee whiz, that's great.