Original subtitles

[music]

[Simon] I've never used GPS, I use my orientating skills.

I've always enjoyed walking in the mountains,

the swish-swish sound of the lovely powdery stuff

that is fluffy and woozy and just nice and pleasant to walk through.

Okay, nine.

18

[Simon] The first hour or two is to be careful measuring, padding along and plotting.

25.

[Simon] Drawing up the line, this is somewhat careful process

because it's so easy to make a mistake.

OK.

[Simon] It takes about 12 hours.

This is it.

[humming]

[Simon] The idea normally is to try and get it done in one session.

So it's just about the same as running marathon, I would think.

Of course, it depends how fast you run the marathon.

At an age where most people are thinking of retiring,

I feel I'm just starting.

I think my life has been largely wasted, trying to do the wrong thing, trying to be good

at the wrong things and trying to be good at too many things when I was young.

When I did my first drawing, I was very, very surprised, such a simple process.

Just walking around at the snow could produce such an impressive result.

[instrumental music]

The plan is to traverse the coast mountains of British Columbia in Alaska.

Just myself and my mom.

It would be nice to do it in five months. I think it will take six months.

But we figure we actually will have to cover terrain about 2,300 kilometers.

There will be ski traversing the coastal mountains.

I'm so honored that she wants to do it with me.

She called me and she says, "Oh, I've been thinking,

I just came up with this idea.

I don't know if you think you, you would do it with me."

She was very careful about how--

It didn't pop out right away.

And then she says,

"Uh, would you do the coastal traverse with me?"

And silence, and I was like, "Yes!"

It's like, "Yeah, that'll be so cool. I'll be 60.

Yeah, let's do it. That'll be my birthday present."

[Martina] My mom is super hardcore, but she's also very humble.

I think she's aware of her capabilities and her limitations and...

She doesn't really care what people think of her, I guess, in a way.

She'll be the first to talk about her fears of water and heights.

I'm afraid of being submerged in water.

I do not like that.

My head under water is not acceptable.

Do not use in high winds, rapid currents or dangerous tides.

Follow these safety rules to avoid drowning.

For the big rivers, we will be using just the little children's raft.

We will use avalanche shovel for paddles.

Those will be big rivers. They'll be cold.

I'm not headlessly going. I will make sure we're crossing

somewhere where it's as safe as possible.

[peaceful music]

[Martina] She's been dehydrating and planning out six months' worth of food.

[Tania] We need at least 5,500 calories a day.

Protein and fat has to be a big part of it.

For me, it's hard enough to just plan out what I'm going to have for dinner,

but to plan out 180 dinners and lunches

and breakfasts and snacks, it's huge.

[Tania] Um-hum, those are, I did those last year.

I didn't catch them this year.

I started dehydrating the food

about a year ago, in September.

This is probably one-third of the pile for the six months.

I don't have a lot of money, right?

I have time.

We have to carry everything that we need with us.

We're going to try and get resupplies every 5 to 10 days.

So, that means that we have to carry all of our food in between that, stove, fuel, clothes,

glacier gear, because there's going to be crevasses. We need to be prepared for that.

We will be sleeping in a two-person, one wall tent,

and we will have down sleeping bags.

All right, let's see.

-There are two mamas in there. -Yeah.

Yeah. There'll be a lot of room for my thermos and hot water and a lot of bottles in there.

[Tania] First two months will be a bit difficult with hygiene.

You know, do you really want to wash your underwear in a cold creek in February?

I'm thinking probably not, so...

With our food drops, we might have a spare pair of socks and underwear

and base layer because it might be crusty

by the time we get to that foot drop.

[Tania] The thing I will be missing the most when I'm out there

will be my little avalanche dog.

His name is Summit.

And, uh... I've been training dogs for the last probably 15 years.

So, he's my third dog.

He's the best,

and I will miss him a lot.

[instrumental music]

[Tania] It's probably a hiking trail.

[Martina] So there's this way, I just...

[Tania] It started snowing, and hopefully it will snow a lot

before we start and not too much while we are out there.

But this winter is supposed to be pretty stormy.

When I'm on a climb, colors become more vibrant.

My hearing becomes more acute.

[instrumental music]

I just sense the structure of the ice and the snow.

I like to think of the analogy.

See a wolf loping through the forest.

You know that that wolf is aware of everything around them.

You get into that awareness.

You're drawn absolutely into the present.

We spend a lot of our time so removed from our body

and every thing that it can provide,

and it's nice to be the wolf for a bit.

[grunting]

[panting and puffing]

[Barry] I think I was called to mountain climbing,

just looking to the western horizon growing up

in Calgary and seeing the mountains on the horizon.

I was riding a Greyhound bus back from visiting my grandmother

to getting picked up by mom.

I was nine years old.

There was a girl on the bus who was in her 20s.

She took time to read me passages and show me pictures

of one of the really great classic books on alpinism

called The White Spider.

Four guys coming together on the north face of the Eiger

and bonding in partnership.

Using the rope to get up a wall that no one else had climbed to that point.

Here was pictures of men doing their best and trying to help each other

to get up this wall.

You know, Casperic, spending the night in an uncomfortable position

supporting Vorg's back so Vorg could get sleep.

I just hadn't seen that much sacrifice and support

in most of the males that were in my life.

And here were some guys doing heroic things.

And that resonated in my bloodstream.

All boys wanna be heroes.

Here were men being heroes.

I was like, "Okay. This is something that I wanna experience in my life.

I wanna be a mountain climber." Even though,

I didn't know much more about it at that time and just to say the word

I really didn't know what was involved in being a mountain climber.

But I started paying attention to it and seeking it out.

[Barry] My family is Metis. We're half Indian and half Scots and French.

I've experienced prejudice in my life because of my heritage.

You know, I'm a brown-eyed, brown-skinned, chug, native neechee.

The young guy kind of labored under that.

Trying to be good enough in the white world.

It's interesting about climbing culture, it's largely tribal.

That sense of tribe, which isn't really super strong in Metis culture,

because our religion is Roman Catholicism,

but the sense of tribe is really powerful

experiencing it in the climbing community.

[Barry] I don't wanna call mountains an addiction.

I think I'd rather call them a return.

I don't know. A well spring or a fountainhead.

[breathing heavily]

[Barry] A mountain will lift you physically, intellectually and spiritually.

The moments of awe, and I'll even use the word grace,

that you can experience up there.

They sooth your soul, they rock your soul.

A lot of people refer their mountaineering as going to church.

I'm not interested in dying.

I'm up there, because I wanna live.

I personally think that the human body was designed to be used really hard

for two or three days at a time maybe, maybe as much as a week,

and then to be rested. I think we're built for it.

[exhaling]

Looking at my buddies that I climb with, I see some of them

come up with things that they wouldn't be able to do

at sea level. They become heroes.

And, I don't think I'll ever fatigue

of seeing human beings accomplish the heroic.

I think that's really beautiful.

[calm music]

It's actually not that bad, even with everything in it.

[Martina] There's no way that we can do this trip, and not change.

You know, it'll change who we are as people.

And I think it'll change us for the better.

I'm excited to see what I learn about myself, and what we learn about each other.

And then excited to do this trip with my mom.

[indistinct talking]

[Tania] No more logistics, no more planning.

All I have to do is walk and ski.

[calm music]

We believe that we can pull it off,

but there are so many unknowns.

So many things can go wrong.

[rousing music]

Facing a whole winter out there 24/7,

through all the storms.

So much of it is out of our control.

[wind blowing]

[Martina] What happened to the last of our water?

And we should use it before it freezes.

[guitar music]

[Tania] We are trying to have as many food drops as possible,

hopefully once a week.

I am sure that we will maybe lose one drop.

That's my fear.

That we'll be short on food.

[Tania] You should eat. It's getting cold fast.

-[Martina] Mm-mm. -Yummy goopy.

Mind you, everything tastes yummy when you're out here.

[Martina] I know for sure that there's risks out there.

I've been on search-and-rescue for a number of years.

I've dug out bodies from avalanches.

My good friend, Todd Weselake, was caught in an avalanche.

He was buried two meters deep.

[Janina] The day of the avalanche,

we got the phone call from Todd saying,

"Let's go out to Mount Proctor.

I was out there two days ago, the conditions were great."

In the morning, myself, Todd, Janina headed out to Cold Feet Bowl.

Snow built in, put on our climbing skins and started heading up the ridge.

[Janina] We're heading out with Todd. He's one of our friends.

He's a photographer and we worked with him quite a bit,

Ian and I, so we were like, "Let's go out and take some epic photos."

It was going to be a powder day.

[peaceful music]

We skinned up the ridge to the top and we thought,

"Alright, this is a place where we're going to go. Let's get some photos."

[camera shutter]

The last photos Todd took, I ended up skiing by him.

[Janina] Ian was in front and he cut across.

And I created a small avalanche and alerted the group.

We needed to get off its face. We weren't really expecting that.

We went into larger trees where we thought it would be more supported.

Todd went first.

[Ian] And then there was a settlement.

It's when a weak layer in the snowpack fails

and you're actually dropping and you can feel it collapse.

Suddenly I just was on my side holding on to the tree

and I looked down at Ian and there was this huge wave of snow.

It seemed to me like, "My, what a huge wave." And I was just like [gasps].

[Ian] Waves of snow underneath me pulling up the tales of my skies.

I thought they were gonna wrap my skies off.

I heard Todd just one scream and then it stopped and everything went silent.

"Ian, Ian, Todd's been caught in an avalanche, he's, he's caught."

And I remember Ian just freaking out going, "No, no, no he's right below me."

"No, he's caught in the avalanche."

My first thought was that we need to switch our beacons

to search mode and go find him.

You know, we've trained for this,

which is crazy because we just did an avalanche course literally a week before.

Janina was ahead of me with the beacon,

and as soon as she received a signal, and she started counting down numbers.

[Janina] I had my transceiver out looking. [device beeping]

The lowest signal I got on my beacon was 4.7 meters.

Oh, my gosh, he's buried deep.

[Ian] We didn't have a lot of time at all.

And, um, yeah...

The first two probes I did,

I was actually in the wrong spot.

And Ian was like, "Janina, we need to step a meter over,

I'm getting a lower reading. Fuck, we've just wasted time."

Then I, I took one step and I got a reading of 4.2 meters.

Okay, this is actually a low reading.

Started probing again. I did one in.

Nothing. Out. Probed again.

Clunk, and it was just like...

Janina struck him on the second probe strike.

"Ian, I have him."

"You f##ing better have him. Check again."

I was like, "Whoa, again, clunk."

[Ian] She was certain that it was in fact Todd.

I remember him saying, "We are not taking home Todd dead. We're finding him alive."

We started digging immediately.

[Ian] The digging was crucial.

We knew we had to get to his head as fast as possible.

I was frantic.

I dug as fast as I could.

We were fairly certain it was Todd, but I didn't know.

Digging and digging and digging, trying to get to the end of this probe.

We could see a silver mark.

Oh my gosh, it's his bindings.

Shit, and we still need to get to his head.

As we got closer, we, it was actually his helmet.

Oh my god, it's Todd. Like, "We've got him. We found him."

We managed to just get all the snow around his head out, and he was bright blue.

-He was unconscious. -Getting snow out of his mouth.

Sticking his fingers is in his mouth.

He just had snow everywhere, up his nostrils.

[Ian] And I felt a very shallow breathing on the back of my hand.

I've no idea if I'd die during that time or...

What happened is about 20 minutes of not breathing,

being encased in ice.

I heard them yelling "Avalanche!"

So, I just grabbed on to the tree that was in front of me.

The wind blast from it.

Knocked me on my back.

And I remember the snow slowing down and I could still see light and I was Like, "I'm on top."

And at that point, all the snow that was above me caught up, and it just hit me like a train.

It really pushed me into the snow.

And I just remember the feeling of just getting pushed deeper

and deeper and deeper.

And then it stopped.

Dead quiet and black.

[silence]

[Todd] I couldn't move my fingers, I couldn't even expand my lungs.

[muffled voice]

A minute of panic.

[muffled voice]

I'm way too deep. There's no way that they'll ever find me here.

I'm dead.

That's when I passed out.

After they got to me,

when I regained consciousness,

it was like coming out of the best dreams that you've ever had

when you're in the deepest sleep and then all of the sudden,

someone comes over and shakes you hard.

And I just remember thinking, "No, I just wanna keep sleeping.

Why are you waking me up from this."

It's just the most calming, peaceful sleep.

It was like a utopia.

He had his camera on his chest.

And a puffy coat on, and I remember pulling the camera off

and just seeing his puffer start to expand again.

I guess he was just so compressed in there that his lungs had no air

and you could see his lungs start to breathe.

He came to and he was just screaming,

"My toes, I can't feel my toes".

And we're like, "Who cares about your toes, you're alive."

Then he told us to take pictures.

Take photos.

And he was, "Take photos, take photos." And we're like...

"Todd, chill out. We're taking photos. We're getting you out first."

I knew that I damaged my back, I could feel the pain in my lower body.

At that point, as I was waking up, I puked, I shit myself, I pissed myself.

Everything had left his system, he was this close and he just kept going,

"I pooed my pants." "We don't care, like, you're alive. We got you out."

Just after they finished getting me out of the hole,

I remember knowing that the hazard was still very real.

It was getting dark. If we would've called for help,

there's nothing they could've done at that time.

[Ian] 30 to 35 minutes of snowmobiling headed for a service road,

and then a 20-minute drive to get Todd to a hospital.

We didn't even get the snowmobile back on the truck, we just left it out there.

Jumped in the car and drove and we were just sitting in the car going,

"What just happened?"

[Todd] They laid me down on the bed,

put heated blankets around me just to get my core temperature up.

Took some X-rays and that's when I discovered that I had compressed my spine.

Based on the depth that I was at of approximately two meters,

the odds of surviving something like that is around 18% or slightly less.

Everything just kind of lined up perfectly for me to be able to survive.

The days after the avalanche when I was at home,

it just wouldn't stop snowing. It was just the perfect storm.

I was scared to go back out, but I knew I had to.

If I didn't go back soon, I might not do it again.

So, I chose to go back to work four days after it happened.

Getting into the mountain still and sharing my passion through photography with people,

if you don't have the same opportunities to get places,

it means a lot to me.

It might actually have been this tree.

Janina and I both took an avalanche course together.

I believe that that information was invaluable to the success

we had that day, of getting Todd out safely.

I would not go into the backcountry now with anyone

that hasn't done an avalanche course. Ever.

It's not worth losing a life over.

[Todd] I got my private pilot license last year.

The feeling of flying in the mountains is pretty much unbeatable.

Now, I'm able to go out and help Martina and Tania,

drop their food for this trip they're doing.

[ATC over radio] Papa Victor, we're just 20...

[plane engine]

[ATC over radio] 180?

[Todd over radio] Yes, let's do that.

[Todd] Some of the drops are as high as 800 feet.

I hope the boxes hold together.

-[co-pilot] A pass right there. -[Todd] That there?

[co-pilot] We're outside the CAP.

[Todd] It will be fairly closer to line up there.

[Todd] What they've chosen to do is further than walking from Canada to Mexico,

only it's over some of the most rugged remote terrain in North America.

-[Todd] Do it right there. -[co-pilot] OK.

[Todd] Back it over.

[Todd] Five,

four,

three,

two,

Box away.

[Todd] Being out there for six months in the mountains,

I would not do this trip.

[banging and clunking]

[Martina] It's a munchkin.

[laughs] Look at the munchkin.

-[Martina laughing] Oh, oh. -[Tania] Oh, my God.

[Marina] Oh, look, he's holding the avalanche forecast.

[both] Ooh.

-[Tania] Sushi. -[Martina] Control your tempura.

[laughs]

-[Martina] Yay! -[Tania] What's oh, that's fuel.

[Martina] That one's fuel.

[Tania] Oh, I was hoping that was vodka.

[strong wind blowing]

There's some tea when you're done there.

That's a good 12-hour sleep.

[chuckles]

I could sleep all day, but I feel better now.

[Martina] Well, I'm not doing it to impress someone, right?

I'm doing it for the two of us.

[wind blowing]

[Tania] When people ask me, did you do this trip or that trip?

I would think, maybe when I'm old.

Maybe when I'm old I'll do Churchill River or when I'm old I'll do...

and then I get this odd looks.

And then I realize, "Oh, they think I'm old now."

I don't feel old, right? I feel I can do this.

When I'm old, that means when I'm not capable of sleeping...

in winter somewhere out in a tent.

[relaxing music]

[Tania] I think people make themselves old way too early.

They accept they're old because something hurts.

They stop exercising. And I think once you stop exercising, then you're getting old.

You're just going that much faster to your grave.

So, I'm fighting it.

It doesn't have to be outside, whatever you like doing.

Just don't think you're too old to do it because most of the time you're not.

[wind blowing]

[choral music]

[Sister Marie] Snow scared me the first year.

And then, Sister Claire encouraged me to really push myself

and go and touch it and feel it.

And I did.

It's like flowers.

In the city, there is all kinds of siren and this happening and...

But here, the only thing we hear are the wolves.

Silence is really an endangered species in the world today.

[choral music]

[Sister Claire] We are not here to convert people.

They can be of any religious tradition, but they can come to experience this.

Our main way of preaching as Dominican nuns

is not going out to stand in the middle of the street

or in the church in the pulpit and preach.

We preach by our way of life.

[Sister Claire] It's all about centering.

It takes such concentration...

that it centers your whole being down.

At the still point of the turning world,

there are the dances.

Where no still point, there will be no dance.

[calm music]

So I feel like I'm in tune with the whole cosmos actually.

[calm music]

[Sister Claire] I was born on the prairies, not in the mountains.

Our house had a hill and I spend my childhood going up and down that hill on skis.

My parents were alpine ski instructors.

We spent a lot of time there in the mountains and skiing.

By the time I was 14, I was on the Canadian skiing team

as a junior cross-country ski racer.

[Sister Claire] I think the most essential part of my cross-country skiing

wasn't the competitive aspect. It was the community with the other skiers.

It was a highly structured lifestyle of training and time of solitude.

It was really formative for me.

[Sister Claire] We weren't even Catholic, our family.

[religious music]

[Sister Claire] I did have this interior, kind of secret spiritual quest

that was awakened in the outdoors.

It became my center of gravity.

[chorus chant music]

[Sister Claire] The mountains really have changed my prayer.

In the candle you can see this changing of light and then changing of the snow.

You're never tired.

[Sister Marie] It's just prayer made real.

[Martina] It's become apparent that it's the coldest winter in about 20 years.

-So, what's for dinner today? -Our three course meal and...

[Tania] We just did not expect minus 20 temperatures for weeks in a row.

It has been hard, really hard,

to stay away from hypothermia.

We...

are dealing with it...

but it's making us much slower.

[tranquil music]

[Martina] With the cold come the consequences of things like our stove breaking, and...

when the stove breaks we can't make water, we can't cook.

-Have some ice tea. -Oh, yeah.

All right, tomorrow night, minus 25. Whoo-hoo!

-What? Again? -Again, big surprise.

-Winds dying Monday. So, that's two days from now?

-Yeah. -Balls.

Mainly sunny, temperature rising to minus 10.

[Tania] Yay, it's going to be warm.

[Martina] I wasn't expecting to have to deal

with so much hazard every single day.

I knew for sure that it was going to be a dangerous trip

but a constant assessment of, "Is this too risky?

Should we try and find a different way? Should we back off?

Do we keep going?"

[river flowing]

[Martina] It feels like we're not getting anywhere.

Mom is literally carrying half of her body weight out here.

[Tania] Walking through all there is like going through a field of angry octopuses.

[Tania] Oh, here we go.

It used to be logging road. Now it's a creek.

We don't know what to do so we're climbing a cliff.

I don't hear any swearing yet.

Let it go.

[singing] Oh, see the tee. Please don't let me go for a swim.

[Martina] We're moving in teaspoon distances.

It's making me doubt our chances of finishing.

[Tania] The Arctic outflow is coming and it's going to be really cold again.

I am almost looking forward to it because this wetness is my nightmare.

I don't like being wet.

[calming music]

[Martina] We're stuck on the Goddard Glacier and we can't find the food.

We've put Bluetooth beacons in each of the food drops but we can't get a signal here.

Mom just made the last of the hot chocolate.

We really have pretty much nothing left now, just a few crumbs.

We keep having the same dreams out here.

Dreams about food.

I'll be in a grocery store.

I walk down the aisles and fill up my cart.

When I go to check out the food will suddenly disappear.

I never get to eat the food.

[wind blowing strongly]

We've searched for boxes and every little rock we found.

[Martina] After two full days of searching we had to give up.

Our next food drop was about six days away.

So, Todd had to organize a helicopter to come in.

We were super remote. It cost about $4,000

to get a few boxes of junk food flown in at that point.

We got food. A lot of food.

Hmm!

-Hmm! Hmm! -Oh, hon!

[Martina] Those were the most expensive potato chips, I think, anyone's ever eaten.

Food. Cheese! [laughing]

[Martina] Mom has gone through so many difficult things in her life.

These are just little things and she knows it will pass.

My mom was born in the Czech Republic in a small town called Teplice.

It was under Russian occupation and communist rule.

[Tania] I felt like I was living in a police state.

I did not want to raise kids in the physical and mental environment I was living in.

[Martina] You couldn't leave the Czech Republic

so they had to escape across the mountains on foot.

They had to leave everything behind,

all of their possessions other than

what they could carry on their backs.

They had homemade down jackets and sleeping bags.

It was early spring so they were forced hauling through snow and it was wet and cold.

They picked the worst border crossing.

This narrow canyon with a road and a river down below.

They had to walk through the river. If the border guards

ever just looked down they would be caught.

My mom is pregnant with my sister. They're soaked.

[Tania] The only dry thing I had on me was a toque because I fell in the current.

[Martina] She took off her toque and put it over her belly to try and warm up the belly.

[Tania] Little baby. Stay warm.

We made it to Switzerland. We lived there for about four years.

And just the idea that we could be sent back home any time was not acceptable for me.

We applied for Canada and Canada accepted us.

When I was like 10 years old I was reading books about Canada, and...

It was my dream to see the nature here

and here I am.

I think my whole life I was just steering towards this place.

[strong wind blowing]

[Tania] My friends ask me why am I doing something like this?

Why would I go through a hardship like this?

I keep telling them, "Well, you see things...

you normally would not see. And sometimes you just pretty much trip over them."

One day, we just...

walked by an ice cave at the bottom of the ice field.

[mystic music]

[Tania] It was such a magical place. It was unbelievable.

I've never seen anything like that.

Ages old ice.

It was so beautiful.

Just like without ugliness, there would be no beauty,

or without night, there would be no day,

then without suffering, there is no joy.

I think the harder I have to work for something I want to experience,

something beautiful, the bigger the joy, or...

I don't know how to better describe it.

[Tania] When the helicopter came and,

he, uh, quite blatantly asked if we wanted a ride out of there,

Martina stopped in her track, and I could see she was really tempted to just take a break.

She just wanted to keep going.

[Tania] I'm really proud of her.

She has never done anything this hard before.

[Martina] There's definitely a chance that we'll fail.

We still have months to go.

[Bernhard] I'm not a city person.

I had to move out here because the only time

I felt I had my heart in my chest is when I was up in the mountains.

I feel at home.

Bernhard is his German pronunciation.

And bernis bear, and hardtis heart.

He's bear-hearted.

When Bernhard walked me around this property

when he proposed that I might want to live with him,

I knew right then and there he would never move from here.

You're free if you follow your heart, otherwise you're not free.

[Mary] We're on the north most tip of the Cascade Mountain Range.

We're at about a 2400 foot altitude here.

We've lived off the grid for almost 50 years.

The steepness of these mountains is really abrupt and severe,

and it takes a lot of getting used to and it didn't happen overnight

that I, I felt at home, shall we say.

[Bernhard] I have no idea which one is supposed to be clean.

They're all clean now. I know you don't wash them at all.

They're all clean but they're all dirty.

Yeah, I know--

[Mary] I came from an area

that was hill-and-dale and ravines

and I would go home in a flash if Bernhard would kick

the bucket on me because, uh, my family is there.

Are you absolutely sure there is nothing else.

But you and I live beyond Amanda.

By the time I met him, he was fresh out of art school.

Once I started touching rock,

it's like, you know, the first time a duck becomes aware it floats.

You can't get him out of the water. [laughs]

That's what happened to me. I love working with rock.

[tranquil music]

I can bake eight loaves of bread in here, large loaves of bread.

This is the first fort he ever built,

because every boy wants to build a fort.

And he finally got to when he was 20-something.

And he's been working on it ever since.

[Benhard] I just love the idea

of taking what is wasted otherwise

and make something with it.

[Mary] He's a pretty versatile guy.

In the winter Bernhard paints.

But for a number of years, he was mostly doing woodwork and carving.

[Bernhard] In the winter you can't go anywhere. There's no road, no train.

The winter allows me to take what I've harvested

from my year

and place it within the concept of my art.

That is something that I credit the mountains for.

I am allowed the time and the season to grow.

If I didn't allow and explore in the summer,

what would I paint about in the winter?

It's what makes something brilliant.

It's when opposites stand next to each other as equals.

Life comes from the yin and the yang.

Heavenly seen. [laughs]

[Mary] When I met Bernhard he had two young boys aged three and six.

And their mother lived in the city but they came here every other year.

We homeschooled them. I'd work from dawn 'til dusk and I'm glad I did

because then now you can look back on it and think,

"Oh my goodness, I did that."

I'm going to give the, the peas water

because I didn't do that earlier.

Um-hum.

[Mary] Bernard and I are actually better gardening far from each other

because we don't agree on how to do it.

I have been in the garden and been surrounded by bears

and I think they recognize that, that I'm making my food

and they're eating their favorite food so we can co-exist.

When I first started out here as a younger person

I knew that where we were living if there was something

like a stroke or a heart attack or something really serious

where you cut an artery, you'd be dead.

There would just would not be the help that would be available quickly

and especially not without a phone.

The older we get, the more, perhaps, questionable it is.

I don't worry about it.

That's just what you live with.

[Bernhard] It takes me about minimum six hours, eight hours, to get up to my cabin.

I grew long in the tooth, as they say in horse language.

It's my backyard.

When I first come up here,

I lost my heart here.

[playing harmonica]

I consider myself so fortunate

to have had the opportunity to live a life

that really extended past any of my expectations.

I never expected to outlast my horses.

And now I don't hunt anymore.

I wouldn't be able to fire a shot at anything.

Only to save maybe a life not to take one.

Letting a bicycle or motorbike out into the backcountry

we're saying today is in place,

that's letting a wolf into a pen.

I let the trails deteriorate or dead trees into the trail to obliterate it

because where a bicycle goes,

a motorbike will follow.

And where a motorbike will have been,

snowmobiles will go.

And where snowmobiles will go,

the wolf has a track to stay aloft

so that the moose cannot go and hide.

And all of a sudden,

the advantage is on the side of the wolf.

When I look back on approximately 50 years

in the mountains here, I...

it brings me to tears.

["The Road Ahead Is Golden" by Jon and Roy]

[Bernhard] I'm so lucky. Somebody might say they're lucky when they win the lottery.

Oh. Try this one.[laughs]

I got the best draw of them all.

I'm looking forward to sushi.

[Martina] I can't wait for the all-you-can-eat sushi.

All-you-can-eat sushi, oh god.

I'll be bursting. I think they will lose some money on us.

-Shower, whenever we want to. -Oh, showers.

-And toilet. Hmm. -Yeah.

-No more freeze dried food. -No more. Hm.

Conversations with other people.

You have all that.

[Martina] We've arrived at the Dean River and the water is black and fast and cold.

Mom has stripped down to her ski boots and underwear so she can keep her other clothes dry.

She's got this. She's got this.

[Tania] Mom, mom!

Come on, mama.

[swearing in Czech]

[Martina] It literally took us all day to get across.

Dark was setting in and it was pouring rain.

[mystic music]

[Martina] There she burns.

-The mean Dean river. -Mean Dean.

I don't want to see that river in my life anymore.

-Never again. -Ever.

[Martina] The glaciers are clearly retreating out there.

Our original route plan is just not feasible anymore.

[Tania] This is really making me nervous to see all these open crevasses, so high up.

[Martina] It was kilometers of bare ice and rock, and then it just suddenly ended.

[Tania] The map is showing three more kilometers of the glacier, which is not there anymore.

[Tania] All your baskets are caught.

Oh. It's so bad.

My pelvis is screaming at me right now.

-Are you dying? -No, I'm not dying.

[Martina] Oh, your feet stink.

-Tuck them in the sleeping bag. -I need clean socks.

[Martina] This three-day storm had kept us tent bound

and then it finally cleared up and we ski toured up to this high ridge.

Mom was a little bit ahead of me and as I reached her, I saw that she was crying

and she told me it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen in her life.

[Tania] That was something I'll never forget, for sure.

I think it's time to be done. Six months is a long time.

[Martina] I think our relationship is stronger.

I understand her past and where she came from a lot better

and I think she understands me a little bit better too.

I'm ready for summer.

[Tania] We're still talking to each other.

We respect each other even more after this.

[Martina] I can't believe tomorrow is our last day.

[Tania] Forecast for tomorrow is, of course, is rain. So, it could never be easy for us.

[Martina] You be careful up there. You're 60, you know.

[Martina] For me what's impossible and what I'm capable of

definitely got redefined.

We're in the berg shaunt.

[Martina] I found that when I thought I'd reached my threshold

and that I couldn't go any further, I actually could.

[Tania] I think she did not have any idea what she was into

when she started thinking about this trip.

[rousing music]

[Martina] When I was a kid I was that uncoordinated asthmatic,

skinny child that just struggled to pass gym class.

[Tania] I knew she could do it, but she had to figure it out on her own.

Oh my god.

-[Tania] Nobody died. [laughs] -Yes.

Where did we just come from?

We climb and we think... Where did we come from?

Where did we come from?

We came from Vancouver.

[laughing]

Argh.

Wow!

[Tania] It doesn't have to be 50 days or 100 days.

Even if you've spent just a week in the mountains,

or some kind of a trip, where you're taken out of your normal life,

it just teaches you about appreciation of the little things.

All my life, I could always see mountains.

I could not live anywhere else.

There's something about being in the mountains

that just feels like home.

["The Road Ahead Is Golden" by Jon and Roy]