Original subtitles

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

Alaskans blaze a trail into the wild.

CHIP: It has to be ourselves saving ourselves

or all they're gonna do is find a corpse.

NARRATOR: Chip travels the tundra to protect his family.

CHIP: Any way along this trail we're within a day's walk

of food and shelter.

NARRATOR: Sue's contact with the outside world is threatened.

SUE: Those wires come down,

I can't communicate to get help.

NARRATOR: Andy struggles to trap food on frozen ground.

ANDY: I hate working and not producing.

NARRATOR: And Erik loses control in the Arctic wilderness.

SUE: Awesome!

Beautiful sunny day.

The winter up here on the north slope

and in Kavik in particular,

it is just one blizzard after the other.

It is absolutely relentless and just beats you down.

This is the break in the storm I've been looking for.

Uh, you know, it's a lull.

This is the opportunity I've got to clear out

in between my rows of trailers and in front.

I'm making a nice, flat, smooth, even patch of ground

that I can move around on.

Ermie can move around on and safely get

from place to place without, you know,

going up and over the, uh, drifting.

You can't see what's behind them.

You know, it gives, uh, gives predators a place

to hide and jump out at you from.

I'm just going into the, uh, time of year where the predators

are much more active here.

So clearing some of this snow is my top priority.

NARRATOR: Below freezing conditions have forced Sue

to heat her machinery before use.

Her primary snow clearing vehicle, the Bobcat,

is no exception.

It is warmer in here with the generator running.

But what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna open the back door

for a little bit more light in here.

I'm gonna get the heater, the, uh, extension cord,

plug it all in.

Extension cord's glowing red,

that means the power's being delivered.

I'll go get that tarp.

This is by no means perfect.

You know, what I'm trying to do is...

I want the battery warm, I want the oil warm.

It's cold, so I'm just trying to create a little bubble

of happiness for this heat to collect and warm everything up.

But it's gonna take a while,

that thing's been sitting for months.

While that's happening, I can, uh,

grab my shovel,

start working on a couple of the staircases.

Something this deep, this tall,

this hard packed, I'm probably...

I'll get to where I can free up the doorway,

but then when I bring the Bobcat through,

I'll use the bucket as much as I can.

When you're living all on your own in a remote,

cold, mostly dark place for a lot of the year,

your body kicks into a whole different gear of time.

Everybody else seems to have this 24-hour time clock.

I don't pay attention to the clock,

I pay attention to my body.

When I wake, when I eat, when I sleep,

it's got nothing to do with is it light or is it dark.

It's when it's,

my body says it's right to do it.

I've done quite a bit but the position

of the sun's telling me I need to get out there

and check on the Bobcat, see if I can crank that thing over yet.

We got a lot more chores to do, so I better get to it.

ANDY: Every day, you're thinking about what am I gonna do today

and what can I do to prepare to make that go easier?

It's hard enough to live out here,

without making it harder on yourself.

Eight.

I've got a lot of muskrat activity out

on the lake behind our place.

I figured it would probably be worthwhile

to spend some time, go out,

and see if I can't trap some of the muskrats that are out there,

because, I really kind of enjoy eating muskrats.

It's kind of like the veal of beaver

and beaver's really good too.

And I really like diversity in my diet, so I set a trap,

I set it down in the muskrat, uh, push-up,

which is basically like a little house

where they feed. (SNIFFS)

Cut off part of the top of the house

so I can see down in and attach

it to this stick right here

and then this stick will make it

so if the muskrat does go down into the hole,

he doesn't take my whole trap.

Okay, out into the Arctic wasteland.

(DOGS BARKING)

Let's go!

Atta boys!

Okay, let's go. Hup, hup.

Living out here, we really

don't live by the calendar that much,

we live by the seasons.

You kind of have to second guess

what mother nature's gonna throw at you every year.

When the cold hits, when the temperatures

are well below zero, it's pretty damn dangerous,

because, once you get cold, your body shuts down.

If you're by yourself, there's no 911 out here,

there's nobody to come save your ass.

It's all over.

Atta boys! Straight ahead.

Atta boy. Good.

Go over to this house, this is a nice big one.

Let's see what we've got.

There's a lot of houses out here this year.

Way more than I've ever seen.

Right now there's probably well over 100 push ups

out on the lake.

The biggest thing I'm up against right now

is this transitioning into the cold time

of the year for me.

Once they freeze up, that's it for muskrat trapping,

because the muskrats can't come up into them.

The important thing right now is to get as many out

as I can before the cold weather

closes these in and the game's over until springtime.

So you can see, there's all kinds of vegetation here.

Their breathing has created a bunch of ice right here

and that's also helping to seal it

so air can't come in

and as it starts to freeze, they bring more and more

of this material up and they keep packing

it in there to create more and more insulation.

It's like putting more insulation in your attic.

So, can I get some of these traps going

and catch a few muskrats before the really cold weather

hits and they can no longer keep up with the amount

of insulation that's needed there?

So I'm hoping this will work.

I'm just gonna as carefully as I can,

put this back over the hole

and cover it back up and hopefully insulate it

as good as I can,

so it doesn't freeze up on them.

Another big one over here.

This looks like a pretty good little spot.

I think I'll get a set in here and then hopefully

I'll be lucky enough to catch something.

Fingers are getting cold.

Put this pack overtop.

Okay, you guys. Come and get it.

I've got a good system

and I think I'm gonna just go ahead

and start popping in traps in as many of these houses as I can.

Right there, good job, Iceberg.

I think there's almost 20 traps out,

so I think my odds are fairly good.

Trapping's nothing but a wait-and-see game.

Set my last trap, let them set overnight,

come back tomorrow and see if the muskrats

have outsmarted me or I've out smarted them.

Let's go home. Atta boys. Hup, hup.

CHIP: Our way of living requires money.

And our way of making money is to sell the stuff

that we make from the things we gather.

You've got these divvied up?

Just the, um, flap of the cardboard,

not the whole cardboard box.

CHIP: Part of what we do here is get ready for the winter.

Part of getting ready for that is we put caches in place.

We put gasoline, we put food, and a way to rest so that

on any way along this trail,

we're within a day's walk of food,

rest, and maybe a little bit of shelter

if we use a tarp and make a tent.

NARRATOR: The Hailstone family spends the winter hunting,

fishing, and trapping across the Arctic.

Planting emergency supplies along their travel routes

is crucial to their survival.

Well, the main elements of a cache are to have,

number one, the ability to eat something,

fuel, fuel for the body.

Then you need to have a form of heat or a fire

so we've got matches and a lot of burnable stuff here.

We are going to make a way to melt water and basically

have all the comforts of camping.

We don't really consider it a survival situation,

we consider it a "Well, I've got to get home" situation.

And what we do every time is when we leave, we're ready to stay the night.

This is one of our backups, people are other backups,

but number one, it has to be ourselves, saving ourselves,

or all they're gonna do is find a corpse.

AGNES: Right now I'm heading to go get some, uh, gas.

That's the only thing left that I have to get

for our caches that me and Chip are going to go set.

Good afternoon Native Store, this is Agnes Hailstone.

I'm here to pick up my 9.97 gallons gas.

(WOMAN SPEAKING VIA SPEAKER)

"Go ahead, it's ready" she said.

So this is where we come to purchase our gas.

When we gonna buy it for cash money.

It's kind of weird getting gas here.

Press the button, and call the Native Store,

and tell them how much gas or stove oil you want.

And then they'll either tell you to go up to the store

and go pay for it.

Or if you're a local, they'll let you, um, just go up

and pay for it after you fill up.

That's it. Now that I'm done with getting all my gas and spending all my money,

I'm gonna go back home to Chip.

ERIK: If I come out my door and I go east,

I can go all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

I come out my door and I go west,

I go all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

I have the biggest backyard on earth.

All right.

I'm about ready if you're about ready, Martha.

We've got everything we need.

Yeah, we'll be good with one tank of gas for a sled load.

NARRATOR: Erik and Martha Salitan rely on the land

to provide them with their means of survival.

With temperatures dropping, today they will head

into the woods to gather one of their most vital resources.

ERIK: I went into winter with very little firewood.

I spent my whole fall guiding hunters

and I didn't have very much firewood coming into the winter.

Then we didn't get any snow, so it has been hard

to get out and get any wood. And it's been warm.

The river hasn't been very safe.

It finally is enough snow to get out here

and get a little bit wood.

MARTHA: That looks dead.

What do you think? It's a nice size.

ERIK: Does it have any green on it at all?

That one's not green, but it's little.

This is a six-inch wood. We'll get a few days wood out of this.

(ENGINE ROARING)

MARTHA: 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.

ERIK: I don't think I'm gonna be able

to get all the wood that I have out here in this load.

Try to load a little bit more on,

then head back to the house with this load.

MARTHA: Didn't lose a log. It was awesome.

ERIK: (CHUCKLES) How about the chainsaw?

MARTHA: No, didn't lose the chainsaw either.

-ERIK: Good. -MARTHA: I think you rode pretty well.

ERIK: This load alone was pretty good.

I'm not gonna waste any time.

You want to start making some food

and I'll run back by myself and get the other load?

-MARTHA: Sounds good. -ERIK: All right.

It's been a good day. We're just gonna get in safe with this last load.

Got the heavy ones out of the way.

This light load should be pretty easy going

if we can just get up this bank.

So rock and roll.

Last load of the night, always when you get hurt.

Get this

flipped over before it stalls out on me.

-(BATTERY BEEPING) -(ENGINE DYING)

(ERIK SPEAKING)

Pay the price...

When you're out here in

poor snow conditions trying to,

trying to haul wood when there's not a good trail.

The problem is if I don't get flipped over quick, it will be all flooded.

My wife is a mile away at the house.

If I didn't show up in 30 minutes,

she'd come out and look for me.

Before I had my wife and I lived out here alone

and you come out and get hurt like that,

let's just say I'm not that well-loved.

The track's not connected.

When I flipped the machine, I kicked the track.

So rather than smoke the machine... (SNIFFS)

I'm just gonna walk home

and I'll deal with this tomorrow.

I guess the, the old adage goes,

never ride a snow machine further than you're willing to walk home.

I'm walking home.

SUE: You can't live in this kind of an environment

and expect everything to be perfect.

That's not why I'm here. I don't want it perfect.

(ENGINE RUNNING)

I'm gonna go make myself a path to the Twinkie

and jam out some snow.

It's time to rock it hard, man.

NARRATOR: After heating the Bobcat overnight,

Sue must clear the snow throughout camp,

which will provide safe trails and protect her

from any unforeseen predators.

SUE: You know, I've got hours and hours of work to do.

It's a pretty big chore.

It's 10 acres that I'm trying to keep fairly groomed in and out.

All right.

I got a bunch of snow macked out.

Got a little trail here. That was my goal.

But I'm getting cold. I'm getting really cold.

So, uh, I need to go inside,

put on a little bit heavier gear.

You know, the staying warm is,

it's not just having layers,

it's having appropriate layers.

You're not going to be a beauty queen,

you're being a snow queen.

I'd love to relate this chore to what a normal person

would be doing in the city, but I'm not that gal.

You know, there's no service I can call. It's me.

The goal today was to get the Bobcat running,

shovel off a few of the stairs,

and start the process of clearing camp.

Big drifts

near where I need to go. Um,

knock those down and get them out.

I've still got a lot more to do,

so I've got to get the upper paw on the job.

ANDY: You gotta take care of yourself.

You gotta be smart about what you do.

And you gotta try and keep from getting hurt.

'Cause there's nobody to come rescue you when you screw up out here.

Hup, hup. Hup, hup.

Good. Kip, kip.

NARRATOR: Yesterday, Andy set traps on the frozen lake near camp

in hopes of harvesting muskrats for food

before temperatures fall

and the animals are no longer accessible.

This one's a little bigger house,

so I'm kind of hoping that I have a little better chance on this one.

No, looks like the same thing, man.

They really packed this one in.

See, this was all open when I set the trap.

Whoa. There's a lot of activity on this one.

Pretty frustrating to open up the houses and see them all full of that material.

I hate working and not producing.

That just really bugs me. If I'm gonna do something,

I really want a payoff from it.

My leg hold traps aren't working too good,

so I'm gonna try using some of these conibear traps.

A conibear trap is a body gripper.

I'm hoping that that's gonna work

and alleviate the problem of them stuffing

this vegetation into my trap.

See if this thing will go down in there.

Get this in.

I can try and get it right below the level of the ice.

That looks pretty good to me.

It's all about adapting to whatever the situation throws at you.

And right now, the situation is push-ups

are getting smaller, harder to trap

in the actual push up.

So going under the ice seems like the way to go to me.

(SIGHS) I think I'll go to the next one and try again.

Looks like more of the same here,

pushing stuff up into the hole.

Looks like it was almost a waste of time yesterday.

They're just blocking my traps in.

When you're trapping rats, you've got to be innovative.

If you're not innovative, you don't keep adjusting

to what they're doing,

then you're not gonna catch them.

I got a bunch more. We'll just keep trying.

So far they're skunking me,

so I've gotta do something different,

because obviously what I've been doing isn't working.

Hopefully I can outsmart these little suckers.

Close this baby up and head on back to dodge.

Okay. Let's go. Hup, hup. Hup, hup.

CHIP: A lot of people don't get the idea of being out here.

They just don't realise that we get to shape ourselves here

and we get to flow with nature,

rather than having people influence us.

I'm bringing out the things I'm gonna put in my cache.

Sleeping bags, a box of food, and a little bit of equipment.

I'm gonna make my sled ready,

tie this stuff down, and get on the road.

NARRATOR: Today, Chip and Agnes will plant supplies

along their winter travel routes,

which will help them survive in case of an emergency.

CHIP: Well, this is like a gun.

It's insurance and you hope you don't have to use it.

So basically, um, we don't want to have to go eat up the food that we're trying

to put in place to save ourselves.

AGNES: We're just going a little ways

and we'll all come back tonight and...

Lay it down, lay it down.

Before the weather gets bad and then

let's go again tomorrow?

If the weather's good. Depends on the weather.

AGNES: Looks like there's storm coming.

It's only a couple hours out and a couple hours back.

CHIP: It's a pretty important thing.

I'm gonna have to have a cache.

It might even be a place we can use in an emergency.

So that's kind of the whole idea of the cache.

That looks good right there.

CHIP: Awesome.

Yeah, this is nice and deep.

This would be a good place to put one.

It'll get covered over, but, uh,

we'd be able to dig this out and have a windbreak

without having to put the tarp up.

Why don't you take the axe and go knock off, uh, three poles?

-Okay. -CHIP: Sound good?

Yup.

(GRUNTING)

AGNES: This is an all right tree.

It got some dry branches... (PANTING) And it's, um...

(CHUCKLES) Small enough for me to chop down.

I'm putting the things in the tarp

that I want to be in the tarp, and now I'm folding it up

and weatherproofing it.

Now I'll basically leave it right here.

My wife will come over here with three poles

and make a tripod, and we'll mark it,

and we'll move on to the next place.

Just go around the tree and push it down.

Just the pole.

Watch out.

This cache is gonna be good till it starts to thaw, huh?

(GRUNTS) Whoa.

-Wind's getting you? -The wind.

It's getting strong.

CHIP: It's just the way it's going right now.

The wind's picking up so, I'm...

I wanna beat the weather. So, what I'm trying to do is get this done

as fast as possible and I see my wife

is hustling over here with some tripod material.

AGNES: I'm gonna tie them up

and then put it right in front of where this cache is

in this tree right here. This is a good thing to have.

It's got a shelter, it's got food, it's got

something to make a fire and melt water with.

Pretty much all we need to get by.

This is security for us. Just like money in the bank.

-I think this will be good. -Yeah.

Can't miss that tripod.

Well, there's no call boxes, no highway patrol,

there's no one's gonna help you.

No AAA. It ain't coming along.

-You ready to go home? Because we have... -Yeah.

Uh, nothing but a wall of white coming to us.

CHIP: Let's get her done!

SUE: I'm human, even if I don't always seem like it.

Things bum me out, occasionally it reinforces

that I've chosen a very solitary existence.

But, it's my life and I like living it.

SUE: So last night, you know something over here

is, uh, making a lot of noise.

Right there is the problem area.

My water pipe has been blown up,

blown off to the side. What you can barely see

is my communication wiring

is wrapped around that trestle to take it

from the satellites over.

It's gonna yank down my wires.

Those wires come down, I can't even communicate to get help.

NARRATOR: Tundra winds have put Sue's communication lines in jeopardy.

And she must secure them or risk being cut off from the outside world.

SUE: I've got to try and move the snow.

Get close enough to that trestle that I'll hopefully

be on top of the snow,

to get up on top of the Bobcat,

stand there, and tie it down.

I specifically don't use the Bobcat back this way.

I've got too many wires on the ground.

Fuel lines,

it's just not an area I ever dick with in the winter.

I need to get that tall. This isn't tall enough.

Done, I can't go any more this way.

You can see I'm gonna knock it down.

Come on. For fuck's sake!

The Bobcat from the ground is not tall enough

for me to stand on and do the fix.

You know, it's just so freakin' close.

Yeah, that's not gonna hold home fry's weight.

I could stack barrels,

but that's how I busted my leg in three places a few years ago.

So that's probably not my best idea.

I break myself one more good time and I'm done.

I think what I'll do is I'll get my handy dandy little ladder, test fate.

Might bust my ass, but I might find a fix.

I can't think about the falling.

I have to think about the fixing.

(SUE PANTING)

(CHUCKLES) It's so unstable. This is stupid.

Oh, man!

Just do some half hitches.

Back them against each other.

(SIGHS)

This is one of the most stupid things I've done in a long time.

I put three turns around.

Not freaking' tight,

but

whether it's absolutely piss tight or not,

uh,

I got three and then I loop these two together.

This one here will give it some downward force,

because I tied it to this one.

Something that silly, saves my communications.

Who knew? Bubble-gum and twine.

Probably not the safest fix I've ever done,

but hey, credit where credit's due.

I didn't stand on top of barrels this time.

Frustrating day on one hand,

but I overcame it and I still came up with a fix.

Yay me!

Life's a river, sometimes it's full of shit sometimes it's clear water.

Figure out how to swim, man.

ANDY: I'm always experimenting.

It seems like a lot of my experiments

are failed experiments.

But if you're afraid to fail, you don't learn anything.

Failure is teaching your best lessons.

ANDY: I'm gonna check my muskrat sets out on the lake.

The wind came up overnight, so not nearly

as much fun today, as it was yesterday

out on the lake here.

First time out I was just trying to assess

what was going on out on the lake.

If the push-ups were even trappable.

And they were.

I set some sets on top of the ice

on their feeding platforms

and my traps were rendered inoperable.

So I've modified that now and I've tried it

under the ice, in the water.

And I'll find out today if the conibears work better

than the leg holds.

We'll just see what happens.

Everything's freezing up pretty bad.

Right now, the weather's changing,

temperatures are starting to drop down into zero

and well below zero now.

It's gonna be pretty challenging

trapping the muskrats.

I'm gonna try and get this done as quick as I can

and get the heck off the lake.

And hopefully we got some muskrats.

I don't know if I set that off or something else did,

but that one was set off.

They chewed off the stick where I had my trap on it.

So I may have lost everything on this one.

That sucks. Dammit.

Came in and piled all of this stuff up on top of my stick here.

I'm hoping I got one here. It's all froze in right now.

I think this whole endeavour would be a whole lot easier early in the fall.

Out here on the lake it's probably 15 below

or so wind chill.

Everything's icing up, which is making it a lot harder.

Come on, muskrat.

Nothing.

Set the trap off, but it didn't get caught.

Uh-oh.

It looks like they chewed this one off too.

Let's hope they're still in here somehow.

And I don't know where this trap is. This froze up too last night.

Unless that's it right there, that might be it right there.

Nope. Nothing.

I think my muskrat trapping days are coming to an end pretty quick here.

Come on, rat.

I don't know, wait a minute, this one got sprung.

And we got a muskrat! Yeah!

It looks like the conibear got him.

Finally, a little bit of success here.

Yee-haw.

That's exactly the way I wanted to catch him.

Right by the head. It's a quick kill and very humane.

They're not gonna get away like that.

So that looks like a pretty good technique to me.

And it's a good sign. So I think the modification,

putting the traps down in the water was a real good way to do it.

I'll go over and check out these other houses.

I got a couple right over here I'll go check out.

Yeah, looks like another one.

Oh, yeah! We got a rat!

Yeah, buddy. Woo-hoo!

That's the perfect catch. Right around the neck.

That's what we want.

It's always a good feeling when you try something new and it works.

This was a good experiment.

Yeah, looks like another one.

This one by the hind leg.

So the leg hold trap worked on that one.

This is the last hole. I'm ready to call it a day.

All right.

Let's see if we got anything here.

Nope. Nothing. (SIGHS)

Everything's pretty much closing in now

so quickly that I don't think I'm gonna be able to

do too much more.

I'm glad I had a chance to do this.

I learned quite a bit,

developed some new techniques.

All in all, I think it's a success.

We got some fur, we got some meat

and, that's what I'm out here for.

Sun's getting low, it's time to go home.

It's a good day trapping.

Time to go home and do some skinning and cooking.

Tighten up! Hup, hup. Let's go! Hup, hup.

ERIK: The Brooks Range of Alaska is one of the last wild places on earth.

Living and working up here, you never know what your day's going to, uh, produce.

(SNOW MACHINE ENGINE RUNNING)

MARTHA: Your chariot has arrived.

-ERIK: Are you driving or am I? -You can drive.

All right... (ERIK SPEAKING)

NARRATOR: While harvesting wood one mile from camp,

Erik wrecked his snow machine, trying to navigate an embankment.

Flip it over before it stalls out on me.

NARRATOR: Today, he and Martha must head to the crash site

in order to inspect the damage

and haul the machine home for repairs.

ERIK: I need to go and recover the snow machine that I wrecked last night.

We'll get the snow machine back to the hangar,

and get it all fixed up,

and we'll just wasted about half a day.

That's not too bad.

I went off this bank here

and it just, it rolled violently enough

that it kicked the track.

ERIK: It actually...

MARTHA: Dented up the...

Yeah, the trailer hitch is all,

so I gotta find, I gotta somehow

get this freed up

so we can load the sled in the sled.

When the sled rolled down the bank,

this rolled too and it twisted all up in there.

So I'm having problems getting it off.

Hey, do you want to lift up on this?

It's pretty close.

ERIK: There we go.

I'll start unloading this wood

and then we'll cache this wood,

come back for it.

Push it up.

(WHISPERING) Okay.

Now can you hold it there and I'll run around the back?

Oh, you're gonna beast it yourself, woman?

You're a beast? Beast mama?

We got the sled loaded on.

Hopefully, uh,

hopefully this will work out

and we'll be able to

get off this bank safely towing the snow machine.

Well, we're through the hard part!

We're just gonna putt home nice and slow and

get this machine back in the hangar and get it fixed.

We got plenty of firewood.

We, we're gonna be able to heat the house now

for quite some time with that wood we got.

Although, I kind of busted my sled up,

in the end, it's still a win.

I just really wouldn't call it a big victory.

MARTHA: So, what do you think is wrong with it?

When I rolled the machine down the hill,

the track came off the rails.

And so what we need to do is,

get it lined up right

and then tighten it back down. So...

It's just convenient that we were

-a couple of miles away from the house. -ERIK: Yeah.

We'll fix it up no problem.

-Now, we've got tools, and light, and heat. -Yeah.

And we got a bunch of firewood, so let's go take care of that.

ERIK: I hate to think of getting firewood and different chores you do

to live here as being really hard.

But today it was kind of a little bit hard.

Sometimes life is pretty cherry here,

but, uh, cherry is not exactly what I would describe

as, uh, what transponded today.

Get an armload and go inside?

Sounds good.

ERIK: I'm happy to have some of this new, uh, birch wood.

We have, you know, put a piece of birch in there

at the end of the day and

-it will burn all night. -MARTHA: Yeah.

-It won't burn out. -It's good overnight wood.

That is good overnight wood.

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good day.

We cut a bunch of wood. I rolled the sled but...

I'll be able to fix that no problem.

We're sitting here warm, aren't we?

Wood in the wood stove.

MARTHA: Then, I think we're doing okay.

CHIP: If I had a million bucks, I'd still be out here camping.

You cannot buy

this kind of adventure, this kind of peacefulness.

You can't buy this kind of time with your children.

For today I'm gonna go put out a couple caches.

My last cache, my farthest cache.

We've already set caches at Kookoochiaq

and now we're going to Independence,

which is the very end of our trapping-hunting line.

We're taking basically a gas stash and

a cache of food and some other safety equipment.

Gas is really important.

There's no gas stations out at that end.

We have to have a way to fill up again and

I have to have a way to tell myself,

or a safety anchor place

that I can go to where there is more gas.

And I'm taking Tinmiaq with me today

because my wife's been there a thousand times,

Ting's been there maybe 100 times.

But she's our safety.

I want her to see exactly where these places are.

I'm gonna point them out to her.

If anyone is gonna get me parts, or bring me gas

or find me with a broken leg,

it's gonna be one of my daughters here or

my son in Dearing.

Quite a long ride, maybe 200 miles from here.

But I can be there in probably about maybe 5 hours.

It's gonna be a long trip for sure.

You know, there might be some danger to it.

Isn't there danger crossing the street?

It's no different for us, except we're crossing the Arctic Circle.

Me and my wife are really into education.

But a kid in school can't learn to be warm out in the minus 40.

A kid can't learn terrain features,

they can't learn where the ice is, or hunt,

or gut an animal without actually doing it.

Whoa, you remember this place?

Yeah.

There the mountain.

Right over there, the creek.

Here's my firewood.

How about I get the axe off and we can start a small fire.

I love it when they do that.

One thing we always do,

we always get the fire started.

So we just got here to Independence.

It's the end of my dad's and mom's, uh, trap

lines that they set back here.

I made me a hole to make a fire.

It's better to make a fire on top of ice than to make a fire on top of snow.

A lot of this wood is, uh, old and dead.

But, um, it's not always dry.

A lot of times this stuff will get, um, rained on

and stuff like that and it doesn't have time to dry.

Gonna put a light to that.

-The matches. -CHIP: Yeah.

-She's on fire. -Yeah.

TINMIAQ: There you go.

Whoa. It didn't hurt bad.

(CHUCKLING)

So I got some snow melting so I can make some coffee.

(CHIP MUTTERING INDISTINCTLY)

TINMIAQ: Nice and hot.

Coffee.

TINMIAQ: Coffee's done, Dad. CHIP: Oh, good.

-How far are you? Almost done? -I'm almost...

I'm almost done here. I was getting my ropes down and I'll join you.

And whatever we don't drink we'll throw in the thermos

and we'll call it good.

Today, me and Ting drove out to the furthest point of our trap line.

And we put in our anchor. We put in our turn around point.

This is our cache.

This is the place that is the biggest,

is the furthest part of the loop of the trapping

that we do and then we go back to Noorvik.

We're just about set up. We have to come back here one more time. We'll bring a tent.

I'll bring my wife.

She can bring her guns. I'll bring my traps.

And we'll get our light winter on.

-Well bud, it's been good. Look, we got a good cache. -Yeah.

We got a good trail to follow. I'm gonna haul ass!

I got an empty sled, I got a full tank of gas

and a date with your mom.

I'm right behind you.

I bet you are.

ANDY: If you think you're old, then you will be old.

I think a lot of it is mental attitude.

So, I try and go into everything

with the attitude of, "Hell yeah, let's get it done."

Muskrats.

And I'll take my time with the first one.

It's been a while since I skinned one so,

get my technique down a little bit again.

It's been a unique fall experience here.

The rats are populating, so that's good. It's another food source.

I learnt a good lesson, start muskrat trapping

a little bit earlier in the year

before it gets so cold. I think I'd save myself a lot of work

and maybe a little frustration on how to trap them.

But I think I got a good method now that I know works when it's cold,

so, it should work really well when it's not so cold.

A little bit of carrot. A little bit of potato. A little bit of cabbage,

tomato and green chilli in it.

And a little bit of rat.

All that took was, uh, two days of rat trapping

and some cold fingers.

Oh, yeah. She's a bubbling.

Let's see, let's dig out a nice old chunk

of hindquarters and back. Look at that.

Mm, mm, mm.

So I got a hindquarter, a little bit of tail,

a little bit of front shoulder. Mm, mm, mm.

I'll serve a little bit of this up,

let it cool a few minutes.

Slurp that stuff on down.