Life Below Zero (2013) s01e01 Episode Script
End of the Road
1
ERIK SALITAN:
There's nothing that prepares
you for this way of life.
You're either into it
or you're not.
SUE AIKENS: I don't want them
to eat me.
They want to eat me.
You know, life is on
life's terms, not mine.
CHIP HAILSTONE:
Everything I need
to make a living is out there.
I can build my house,
I can feed my kids.
SUE: I've got to always be
prepared that every day
may be your last.
ANDY BASSICH: Being free means
being able to carve out a life
on your own terms.
You gotta remember,
the country can eat you,
just as quick as you can eat
anything from the country.
(GUNSHOT)
Anytime you can
dance with the devil
and come out on top,
it's not a bad feeling.
ERIK: What you need,
what you want,
it's all subjective.
This is, like, a plush life.
CHIP: Can't be scared
of death, just scared of the
pain it takes to get dead.
(LAUGHING)
I am the last frontier.
SUE: You let your guard down
once and you end up
going home in a body bag.
(DOGS BARKING)
CHIP HAILSTONE:
I'm Chip Hailstone. I've been
living in this region
for 25 years now.
I met my wife, Agnes,
and I've just stayed with
her and she stayed with me.
I love this place.
I'm gonna have my bones
picked clean by the birds
here someday.
AGNES: I'm Agnes Hailstone,
and I'm an Inupiaq Eskimo.
I was born and raised
around the Kobuk River area.
Right now we're
catching the whitefish
and the mud sharks.
CHIP: Today we're
setting nets. We're hoping
for quite a few fish.
It's just, when you want
to make a good living
and you want to do it
from the country,
you gotta remember,
the country can eat you
just as quick as you can eat
anything from the country.
(ENGINE REVVING)
I fish the Inupiaq way,
and we go to the same place
where my wife and her family
and her mother
and her mother's mother
have been fishing.
And it's possible it's been
going on for hundreds, if not
thousands of years there.
(SNOWMOBILE APPROACHING)
Where I live,
beyond the end of the road,
before the Earth
stops going north,
food is pretty important.
Late fall is one of the
last chances to get
a large bunch of whitefish,
and setting the nets on
thin ice is probably one of
the more dangerous things
that we do during the year.
But death is
a big part of our life.
It's kind of our doings.
This is Hunting and fishing
is dealing death.
The changing seasons,
the changing conditions,
that all keeps me
kind of apprehensive.
But as long as
you're paranoid,
then you're worried,
and as long as you're worried,
that's the first step
to protecting yourself.
Well, the far side
is one-inch ice.
One-inch ice
we don't put our weight on.
But this is highly dangerous.
This killed my wife's mother,
this killed my wife's brother,
this killed my wife's
brother's girlfriend.
A lot of people every year,
so we just gotta be careful.
It's pretty risky.
Nobody will grab you,
'cause you'll go under the ice
and the current will take you.
This is a strong,
fast-running river.
There's no coming back.
Every day, I kiss my kids,
if I don't see them again.
Yep. It's kind of scary
sometimes. (CHUCKLES)
We're hoping for
quite a few fish.
We're trying to be
as safe as possible.
We've only got
a couple inches of ice
underneath us.
(CRACKING)
Two-inch rule.
AGNES: I lost my mother,
my brother and his girlfriend
to the ice.
Ever since then, I'm real
cautious of where I step.
When I pass away,
I would like to go to the
Happy Hunting Grounds
where my ancestors are.
(CRACKING)
CHIP: That's over one inch.
AGNES: Okay.
-That's as far as we go.
-(CHIP LAUGHS)
That's as far as we go.
ERIK: Being a registered
guide outfitter in Alaska
is something really special.
My guide licence number
is 1,273.
Ever since I was a little kid,
I always was really
into the outdoors.
It was something that was just
born into me.
My name is Erik Salitan,
and I've lived in Alaska
for 10 years.
I'm a registered
guide outfitter here
and I live in the Brooks Range
above the Arctic Circle.
I buy absolutely no meat
whatsoever from the store.
Every bit of the meat that
I eat is harvested by myself.
(SNOW CRUNCHING)
Here's another wolf track.
I'm gonna say that
this wolf track is probably
a week old.
This wilderness is the
last true wilderness left
in North America.
There is no other
true wilderness left
but right here
in the Arctic of Alaska.
That's it.
This is a hindfoot,
the track somewhat obscured
by the frost coming up
out of the ground.
But you can see the five toes
here and the claw marks here.
It's bigger than
my hand is across.
We're probably looking at
a pretty big bear.
Let's follow them
and see where he goes.
(WHISPERING) There they are.
We're gonna move along slowly
and see if we can get in
good range here to get a shot.
We've spotted a medium-sized
herd of caribou.
They're mainly
comprised of cows.
We're gonna target a dry cow,
a cow without a calf.
That's the best meat
at this time of year.
That's the fattest animal,
and the meat is what's
important to us.
(CLICKS)
Another dud.
We had a gun malfunction here,
you can see the bolt.
It's just, like,
slow motion here, I gotta use
my forward assist to close it.
It's all frozen up.
I had one chance with these
caribou here. (COUGHS)
They've taken off now,
it's cold,
my gun malfunctioned.
Better luck next time.
(SNOW CRUNCHING)
I came to Alaska the day that
I graduated from high school,
and I've lived
here ever since.
There's nothing that prepares
you for this way of life.
You're either into it
or you're not.
There's no school that you
can go to, there's no training
that you can take
to come live out here
and do things like this.
Some people take
a job in a factory.
I rolled out and came here.
I was crazy to begin with,
so it wasn't a problem.
SUE: I've always craved
extreme isolation.
I don't wanna be in town.
I wanna go home.
Nobody wants to get
attacked by a bear.
I mean, it's not what
most people think about,
what most people
have to worry about.
But I do.
I live at Kavik River Camp,
which is a camp up on
the North Slope,
and I am its sole caretaker.
My address is
a GPS coordinate,
69.4 North, 146.54 West.
My closest neighbour would be,
I don't know,
300, 350 miles south.
I live at the top of nowhere,
in a tent,
have no desire to change that,
and my closest neighbours
might be a bear
right outside the door.
Back in June of 2011,
I was rewiring the camp
up at Kavik,
fell, and I broke my leg.
I needed surgery to fix it,
ended up having
to come to town.
So, I just had the surgery
and getting better.
The doctor just gave me
the green light to go home,
so I am packing my shit and
getting the hell out of Dodge.
I don't know the conditions
I'm gonna be walking into,
but I've gotta be
prepared for them.
This is your basic .44 Ruger.
This is, uh
If I'm going to the bathroom,
if I'm cleaning up
around camp,
whatever I'm doing,
this is what you wear
to protect yourself.
You come around the corner,
a wolverine meets you
and charges you,
you want something
you can grab quick that's got
a little bit of boom.
You undo these and tie them
around your legs,
so you can walk around
like John Wayne going,
"Fuck with me, man."
(LAUGHS)
This little baby right here
is longer range.
I get a lot of bear activity,
83 grizzes within
10 miles of camp.
If you have a dangerous
predator charging you,
I have 10 of his friends
that are right in here
that say, "You're gonna stop."
I got caught
with my panties down
once before,
laid there 10 days
before I got found.
This helps me to feel that
that won't happen twice.
ANDY: I moved out here
to live my dream of living
in the woods,
to be as self-sufficient
as I can be.
I just love the isolation
and I love the quiet.
Yukon River is a really
powerful river.
When it decides
it wants to do something,
you better get out of the way.
There's no way of stopping it.
My name's Andy Bassich.
I've been living in Eagle
for 30 years,
I met my wife, Kate,
in Dawson City
in the Yukon Territory.
Every year, the river
freezes up sometime
in November or December,
we never know when.
We're kind of landlocked in
until it's safe to get across
and we can put trails in.
I'd say we live about 14 miles
from the nearest point
of civilisation here.
Every year
when the river freezes,
the ice packs in
and blocks our path to town.
In order to get out,
we literally have to
cut a trail
to create a path
for our sleds.
We don't have roads.
In Alaska, most of the rivers
are the highways for people.
Putting a trail across
a river takes me sometimes
two days to do it.
And this opens up all the
areas where I cut wood,
where I get logs for building,
and almost more importantly
than that, it opens up
all downriver for me.
Iceberg, Gilligan, sit.
KATE RORKE: My name is Kate.
I first came to Alaska
as a tourist 10 years ago.
I love it here.
I wake up every morning
and I think I'm the luckiest
woman in the world.
I met Andy in Dawson City,
in the Yukon Territory.
He brought me to Eagle
during that time.
I fell in love with the place,
I fell in love with him.
My life is perfect.
It's a life everybody
should lead.
Everybody should have
this kind of peace.
ANDY: What I love about living
out here is the freedom to
develop the life I wanna live,
and then living that life.
(ICE SHATTERING)
KATE: Okay.
ANDY: I gotta go check
this ice, though,
this could be hollow up here.
You have to be careful
'cause you never know
when you're gonna hit bad ice
on the Yukon River here,
especially early on.
There's soft spots,
there's weak spots,
and it's real easy
to go through.
If you go through,
that's it, you're gone.
-(THUMPING)
-Sounds pretty solid
here so far.
See what happens here.
I have to say,
I'm just a wee bit nervous
standing right here right now.
There's dangers everywhere
and I don't know how
I put them out of my mind,
but I guess
I'm a little insane that way.
If you disappear under the ice
in the Yukon,
you can't swim up
against the current
and you basically
just get swept away.
(THUMPING)
Every time I go out
on that river, even when
I know it's safe ice,
in the back of my mind
I'm thinking, you know,
"What happens
if I go through now?"
All right, I think we made it!
-Yeah!
-It's good?
-Yeah, we're good.
-All right, we're almost done.
This is kind of
a big day, you know,
to open up the river,
to start feeling like we have
the world kind of opening up
around us.
Big day.
ANDY: Come on, Kru, get her!
-Get her, Kru!
-(KATE LAUGHING)
Get her, Kru!
Come on, Kru, get her!
(KATE LAUGHING)
SUE: I've accepted
I'm a food group,
and that's the way
I live my life.
It's a gamble, it's a risk.
Are you gonna make it?
Toss the coin, heads or tails.
(DOG BARKING)
The doctor just gave me
the green light,
so I can pack my shit
and leave Fairbanks.
Next stop, Deadhorse,
grab a bush plane.
-(ENGINE STARTING)
-One hour to the right,
and I am home.
I've been in the
Fairbanks area now
for roughly three months.
I had to come in
and have surgery.
You know, about two years ago,
I took a nasty fall
out at camp,
broke the leg in three places.
And a few years back,
I got attacked by a grizzly,
tore up the hips,
the spine, um
Created some problems for me,
you know, healthwise.
The break of the leg and the
subsequent healing of it
exacerbates that.
So, between the bear injury
and the breaking of the leg,
you know, I wasn't
walking correctly,
haven't been
walking correctly.
All the top predators,
they cull the injured animals.
They look for something
that's slower, not right,
and that's the first thing
they pursue.
It's very difficult
to have something
put its jaws on your head,
you know, it's like
the teeth marks here,
you feel it go into
your scalp,
you feel the skull
being compromised,
you're hoping
he doesn't crush it.
Um, I try not to think
about it too much.
In the first person,
I don't mind
talking about it a little,
but I don't like
bringing it all back up.
Laying there, you know,
for so many days,
you don't know,
"Am I gonna get out
of this one?"
You don't know if this is
gonna be the year
your kids are gonna get
the call that says,
"You know, your mom
was a tough bastard,
"but she's not here no more."
The word that I've gotten is,
looks like I have a bear
denned up in my cubby
that I live in.
I may have to walk
500, 600 yards
through the snowdrifts
to get to my building,
dig in to the door,
only to deal with a bear.
CHIP: This is just being
a man. It's an ancient
way of doing things.
This is actually wealth
without money.
You can feed your family
with subsistence.
(SCRAPING)
CHIP: 'Cause if that's
the river right there,
and over here is
the other half of the river,
then the fish travel up
this way,
so we put our net there.
We do our work
and get our reward.
Just like payday.
(SAW BUZZING)
CHIP: The fish
that we're trying to catch
are valuable to us
because we can
eat them ourselves,
we can feed them to dogs,
we can trade them to people,
and we could sell them
outright if we wanted to.
And this is an important
time of year,
because it's the
one time of year
that they have eggs,
and the eggs make
them so nutritious,
they make the caloric value
in them so much better.
And they're tasty. (CHUCKLES)
They just taste good.
There's my wife,
there's my son,
there's my oldest daughter,
and my wife's cousin.
We all fish together
all the time.
It's never a safe deal.
Should be safe
in another month, though,
when she's a foot thicker.
(LAUGHS)
AGNES: I don't think
my mother would like it
if I gave up fishing
because she taught me
and my sisters to fish,
and, I don't know, I just
don't think I'd give that up.
I bring the kids out
most of the time.
They always know never
to go by the ice holes,
and they always
travel in pairs.
We're gonna take this
yellow line here and
we're gonna pass it under
from hole to hole
to hole to hole,
until we've got
this dozen holes or so
all the way to the rope there.
Then we're gonna
feed it in and use the rope
and pull it back.
CHIP: I thought
you pulled the rope.
-You really pulled
-TINMIAQ: (GIGGLES)
You got it, Dad.
TINMIAQ: Got the rope.
CHIP: Pull it, pull it.
CHIP: Oh, it just
came off again.
See you can't stop
and give it slack,
it's like a fish.
CHIP: Today, we're
setting nets. We're trying
to get our adjustments right
to where we get to where
the fish are.
And we're just keeping our
wits about us as best we can
to where we can get this
set and still do it safely.
CHIP: There you go,
pull it, Ag, pull it.
Pull it, Ag, pull it.
Keep pulling it, Ag.
Keep pulling it
before you lose it.
AGNES: I was looking at it.
CHIP: I know,
I can see it, too.
I can see it right from here.
AGNES: Now.
CHIP: Did I go through
the iron?
AGNES: Now, now.
CHIP: Pull it out.
Finally! Put one through
the eye of this dang thing.
(EXHALES)
CHIP: We're hoping to get a
couple hundred fish a day.
This is an important
time of year,
because it's the one time
of year that they have eggs.
Our preference right now,
while they're here,
are the egg-laden whitefish.
And that's why we use such
a large mesh on our nets.
It's because we want
the smaller, skinnier ones
to pass through
and the big, fat ones
to get caught.
Grab that corner, son.
(STRAINING)
TINMIAQ: Oh, that one
that was rolling
CHIP: That one
Yeah, that was real timid?
Look, he's on the inside
of the net, Agnes.
CHIP: I do this the way that
folks around here do it,
because the way
the folks around here do it
is the right way to do it.
So, of course I copy them.
I learn from them,
I emulate 'em
and I teach it to my kids.
CHIP: We got one around
here somewhere.
I see eggs on the ice.
Right now,
we'll be eating the fish,
and someday
they'll come for theirs.
We're all gonna die.
Can't be scared of death,
you just gotta be scared of
the pain it takes to get dead.
(LAUGHING)
(TINMIAQ MURMURING)
CHIP: Yep. That's good, huh?
KATE: The river
will take us someday.
I always say that
we'll die on the river.
ANDY: You have to think ahead.
If we just go blindly
doing things,
it'll bite you real quick.
(DOGS HOWLING)
Hey, I just checked
the river ice
and I think it's probably
good enough.
I can try and make it to town.
So, I think what I'd like
to do is, I'm gonna hook up
a relatively small team
and see how far I can
make it up to town today.
Every time he leaves
to go on the snow machine
or with the dogs,
something can always go wrong.
I mean, you can
Lose your sled,
fall, hit jumble ice,
crack your head open.
Okay, well, just don't do
anything stupid.
-Yep. This time.
-You can wait a day or two
-(ANDY CHUCKLING)
-No, I'm serious.
You know, you always gotta be
the first person on the river
when it's ice or water.
You're the first one on
and the last one off.
Yeah, but it's where we live,
and you know how
I love the river.
-I do, I know that, but
-I can't stay off of it.
-(CHUCKLING)
-It's gonna get you
one of these days.
Well, if it does, it does.
(DOGS WHINING AND BARKING)
ANDY: You know, the river's
our highway, both in the
summer and the winter,
so in the winter,
if we can't access
the Yukon River,
we can't get to town.
If we can't get to town,
then we can't get mail,
we can't get supplies.
No, you can't go over there.
(BARKING AND HOWLING)
I depend on my dogs 100%
to get me safely
from point A to point B.
I currently have 24 adults
and one puppy.
They're good companions,
they can travel through
just about any terrain
there is.
Dogs and living
in the bush, man,
that's the only way to go.
All right, let's go!
Hoo-hoo, on by!
Attaboy, straight ahead.
Straight ahead, on by,
let's go!
I want him to be kept safe,
I mean, you know,
I've had him come home
soaking wet, the dogs wet,
from going in the river
and almost dying, so
those things enter your mind.
ANDY: Gee! Gee!
You have to be really careful,
because you never know
when you're gonna hit bad ice
on the Yukon River here,
especially early on.
There's soft spots,
there's weak spots,
'cause the current's still
flowing four miles an hour
underneath this ice.
It's real easy to go through.
If you go through,
that's it, you're gone.
ERIK: If you're living
out in the bush
you never know when
something's gonna
come through,
and so, you know, there's
a certain sense of security
in having a firearm
in your home.
(FIRING)
(FIRING)
Hopefully it won't
freeze again.
Yesterday was
a pretty cold day.
I had a gun malfunction.
My firing pin froze.
I took it home last night,
took it apart.
We had to modify it
a little bit
and use some grease that
doesn't freeze so easily.
I think the gun's
gonna work well,
and hopefully we'll have
some success to avenge
yesterday's failure.
It's about negative four here.
Could be as cold as
negative 20 once we
get out of the trees.
I'm gonna go ahead and
cache my pack and my sled
right here by this tree.
Hopefully we'll be
back soon and dragging
a caribou home tonight.
I'm a subsistence hunter.
A rifle or a pistol to me
is no different
than a hammer is
to a carpenter.
I don't think I'd do too well
working in a cubicle.
My office is 100 million
acres of wilderness.
We're on a fresh track here.
I expect it'll be
over the next rise.
We'll catch up with it.
Pretty deep snow here,
hard walking.
Hopefully I'll be headed home
with some fresh meat tonight.
I've spotted a good
caribou over this way.
It's a dry cow, a lone cow.
It'll be the fattest meat
that we can get
at this time of year.
(FIRING)
I eat meat every single meal,
every single day.
I buy absolutely no meat
whatsoever from the store.
Every bit of the meat
that I eat is harvested
by myself.
I love it.
Well, luck paid off.
I caught a caribou.
It's a yearling here.
Should be some tender meat.
There's no ego involved
in subsistence hunting,
it's all about getting
some good-quality meat
to feed myself.
We'll be eating fresh caribou
meat tonight.
Let's get to work.
If you don't gut these
animals immediately,
they start to purge,
so it's very important
to take care of your meat.
We freed up the stomach,
and now we're gonna cut
the diaphragm,
reach inside and free up
the internal organs here.
Kind of pull it all out.
Here's my favourite part
of any game animal
here in Alaska,
the heart.
Fresh blood, good heart blood,
warm your hands up
on a day like this
when it's 28 below.
And that is my supper tonight.
Nobody's taking this
away from me,
this is my favourite.
Beautiful piece of meat there.
We're gonna flop it
back up inside.
You gotta keep your
exposed skin covered here.
And, like I say,
it's 28 below,
about to get dark,
the temperature's dropping.
Meat is of the utmost
importance here
in Northern Alaska.
Load it up in our sled.
CHIP: I'm still learning.
Got lots to do, lots to learn,
lots of new stuff yet,
and I ain't dead yet.
We can keep catching whitefish
till the ice is too thick,
but once that happens,
whitefishing is over
till spring.
So, no matter what I do,
I have to get out there and
catch what I have to catch.
Are you slack?
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
CHIP: Where's the net stop?
Here, you guys start here,
I'm gonna check the net.
(GRUNTING)
CHIP: It's not moving?
Can you move it at all?
There's a float stuck here.
It might be stuck
in a crevice in the ice.
It might be stuck
where it cracked.
What bullshit, man.
I hate it when this happens
and you have something
perfectly set up.
We're gonna open up a hole
here and free our ice net
and check our net.
I dressed for being
next to the village,
not for being gone
for an extended
amount of time.
I anticipated a couple hours,
I anticipated getting wet
on the outside,
but I don't anticipate
swinging an axe for an hour
to get through this ice.
The top of our net's float
is frozen, right there,
you can see the white float.
CHIP: Pull it, Jeff.
(ROPE CREAKING)
(AXE CHIPPING AT ICE)
-(ROPE SCRAPING)
-(CHEERING)
Hey, about time, huh?
I'm so happy, I could shit.
Whoa, salmon!
You don't need money
to be rich.
You gotta have
a good attitude, work hard.
Persistence is the key
to subsistence.
SUE: I need to get home
way too much.
You know, people get
afraid of break-ins.
My break-in involves teeth,
claws and a hell of a lot
of bad weather.
I'm in Deadhorse right now,
got this far up the road.
It's 500 miles so far,
now I got about another
100 to go.
I've been away from home
for three months, and I can't
take it a minute longer.
For me, it's very exciting.
I'm very nervous getting ready
to go wheels-up.
This is the last leg
of civilisation
before I get back to my world.
We don't know what
the conditions at Kavik are.
My best guesstimate, I may be
looking at anywhere 70, 75
below zero, wind-chill factor.
There's no electricity.
The only light is right here,
what's on my head.
You know,
it's a no-man's-land.
Whatever you leave
laying around,
it's either the wind,
the snowdrifts, the animals
Nature will take over.
You know, my buildings,
they'll get 22-foot snowdrifts
that cover them,
so I've gotta go dig
inch by inch, foot by foot,
reclaiming everything.
Brand new ankle,
brand new surgery,
only a couple of months.
It's gonna be a challenge from
the time I hit the ground,
it's gonna be
a running challenge.
That's what life is for me.
When I get off the aeroplane,
I'm not gonna know
if there's something
with fur, claws and teeth
sleepin' in my bed.
So, there is a concern
whether or not there's a bear
waiting for me.
So, I've gotta have
my guns ready.
-When we do go out
-BOB GILL: Yeah?
if we can, if you can
fly over low and slow,
let me at least
view the material
on the tent and
the big dining hall.
-Yeah.
-If it's been compromised
by that bear at all,
then I'm gonna be able to see
all the ribs.
It's gonna look like
something got into it,
it won't be taut.
And that way I know I at least
gotta have something
in my hands when I'm going in.
-Okay. We can do that.
-All right, thanks.
When I get out of the
aeroplane and he takes off,
there is no turnaround.
I'm there by myself
and that's it.
(ENGINE STARTING)
My world will be survival
at that point.
But, being able to
go out there
with no help, no light
and no anything,
get everything turned over
and be successful
at living in a tent,
it's what I'm good at.
It's what I do well.
(BANG)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(SUE AGREES OVER RADIO)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
BOB: Uh
(BOB OVER RADIO)
SUE: I've got to get home.
I have to get home.
I can't stay here any longer.
-It doesn't smell good.
-Doesn't smell good.
Doesn't smell good.
Things break, things,
you know, things happen.
Yeah, that's not
how I scripted it to go.
You know, it's just I get my
hopes up, I get my hopes up.
You know, I mean,
I've travelled 500 miles
to get here, now I'm waiting.
There's still that chick side
of me that wants to cry
'cause I can't get home.
My little foxies are
waiting for me,
I need to I got work to do,
I got things to do,
and they don't involve
being in Deadhorse.
It's time to go home.
But tomorrow's a new day.
ERIK: I don't even
view it that I work
or that I have a job.
I just have a good time,
and I get up every day
and do what I need to do,
eat a big meal
and hit the sack.
We're gonna skin this caribou,
take the hide off of it
and expose the real trophy
here, which is the meat.
This animal here represents
about two and a half,
three weeks of food.
I butcher animals
inside my house
in the wintertime.
The number one reason
is because it's cold outside.
If the only meat
that you're eating is the game
that you're killing,
it's actually surprising
how not far it goes.
It's, uh
You eat it up pretty quick.
Wild game meat
has many advantages.
There's a lot of people
that don't understand
how healthy the meat is,
it's very lean.
You don't have that luxury,
that peace of mind,
with store-bought meat
or, as I like to call it,
"government meat".
Gonna finish
getting the hide off,
and then we're gonna separate
all the muscle groups,
lay the meat on the table
and get it processed
into meal-sized portions.
This is the tongue
of the caribou.
It's one of the fattest parts
of the caribou,
and it's my personal
favourite part to eat.
Everybody in nature
recognises its goodness.
I'm gonna get that going.
Now that you have
a whole quarter here,
what you're gonna do is you're
gonna go ahead and separate
the muscle groups.
This first one I'm gonna
pull here is the ham roast.
And that's a nice roast.
Perfect roast.
What I need, what I want,
what you need,
what you want
What people think
they need or want,
it's all subjective.
Comfort is subjective.
This is, like, a plush life,
in my mind.
This is, like, really plush.
ANDY: You know,
if you fall through that ice,
you don't have a lot of time
to react before you're
pretty hypothermic, so, uh
Just don't take chances.
ANDY: You know,
without access to the river,
we can't get to town.
If we can't get to town,
then we can't get mail,
we can't get supplies,
which means that if we can't
access the river,
we're just totally
isolated here.
Gee, gee!
Atta-boy, gee, gee!
Gee, gee!
Little more gee!
Attaboy, attaboy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Whoa! Whoa!
(ANDY SHOUTS)
The only places on the river
that are gonna be unsafe
right now
are the places
where it froze up
and there was open water
in between the pack ice.
Oh, man, looks like it jams up
in there pretty good.
This is pretty big ice
right here, and, uh,
I don't wanna get in
the middle of it and then
have to turn around in it,
so I'm gonna take
a few minutes, walk up,
just kind of scout it out
a little bit to make sure
it's safe to go up this way.
ANDY: You know,
the main problem
with getting to Eagle
is jumble ice and thin ice.
The Yukon is
a contained river valley
and it's not very wide.
If the water level comes up
to a certain height,
it can jam that jumble ice
right up to the bank
into the willows,
and it creates a barrier
to try and get around.
(THUMPING)
Yup, look at that.
That ice is only about
two inches thick or so
right there, two and a half.
You look right over here,
you can see there's
open water bubbling up.
That ice is just
a quarter-inch thick or so,
and you can see
that dark colour.
That's deep water,
so we're definitely not going
out on the ice around here.
It's just not safe.
Kate, Kate, you copy Andy?
KATE OVER RADIO:
Yep, I copy you now.
Okay, I'm down at the end
of the overland trail.
The ice just doesn't look
safe right now,
so I'm gonna turn around
and come home now.
So, I'll be home
in about an hour.
I'll be home before dark.
KATE: All right, take care
and come on home.
I got some soup ready for ya.
ANDY: Gee, gee!
Atta-boy. Gee, gee!
Gee, gee!
Just stay along
the shore there, Iceberg.
Attaboys. Looking good.
(DOGS BARKING)
I'm gonna have to work
pretty hard
to put a trail into Eagle,
it looks like, this year.
But I don't trust this ice
right now,
and I'm just gonna have to
come back another day
and explore
trying to get to Eagle.
-Hey.
-Hey.
So, pretty rough trail.
Tried going up on the river,
and it's
I mean, we'll be able to do it
later in the winter,
but it's not good right now.
Anyway, it is what it is.
-(CHUCKLES)
-KATE: I know. You gotta do
what you gotta do.
Mother Nature does her thing.
KATE: The river's
a precarious thing.
You can't predict
what's going to happen.
If you live
anywhere like this,
sometime I think Mother Nature
is going to win.
(HOWLING AND BARKING)
SUE: All that's on my mind is,
"I got to get home."
SUE: You know, yesterday,
we tried to make it to Kavik.
A lot of things happened.
A magneto went out
on the plane,
then we ran out of light,
so today we're gonna take
a stab at it again.
I do know
that the plane is fixed.
What we're fighting is
a big 80-mile-an-hour storm
coming in tomorrow,
and it's going to last a week.
Next storm coming in,
it's gonna be balls-out bad.
So, this is my window.
Today. I gotta get out today.
You know, once I approach
Kavik, circle around,
see if I can pick out
if anything's destroyed
my buildings,
if it's still living in there.
Don't have any idea of the
condition of the runway,
I could get dropped off
as far away as a mile.
The ankle, you know,
that I had surgery on,
I mean, there's been some pain
associated with the cold,
but this is gonna be
the big test.
(ENGINE STARTING)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(CONTROL OVER RADIO)
SUE: You're landing into the
twilight zone, the unknown.
I know I probably have
22-, 30-foot drifts
covering my doors.
I may have somebody
sleeping in my bed.
I'm looking, trying to beat
an 80-mile-an-hour,
five-day blow.
This storm, the reality is,
if it's 60 below zero and
you put a 100-mile-an-hour
wind with that,
you're looking at almost
200 degrees below zero
on your skin.
I mean, that's the importance
of getting in today.
Getting dug out today.
Getting the heat on today.
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
Yeah.
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
SUE: All right.
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
CHIP: Where I live,
beyond the end of the road,
where the Earth
stops going north,
food is pretty important.
We're hoping to get a
couple hundred fish a day.
We've started out
with 57 today.
You know, we're thankful
for what we can catch,
and when we catch it
and what we catch
we'll be really thankful for.
But being a provider is really
what it's all about.
I'm more happy
to be a provider
in a direct way, this,
than I ever would be
with money.
'Cause money can be
so misspent. It's crazy.
You can't misspend fish.
I love this place because
people won't give me
any trouble.
They look at me for what I do
and how I contribute,
and they always honour
a provider.
That's all that matters
to them.
Dinner.
(WIND WHISTLING)
ERIK SALITAN:
There's nothing that prepares
you for this way of life.
You're either into it
or you're not.
SUE AIKENS: I don't want them
to eat me.
They want to eat me.
You know, life is on
life's terms, not mine.
CHIP HAILSTONE:
Everything I need
to make a living is out there.
I can build my house,
I can feed my kids.
SUE: I've got to always be
prepared that every day
may be your last.
ANDY BASSICH: Being free means
being able to carve out a life
on your own terms.
You gotta remember,
the country can eat you,
just as quick as you can eat
anything from the country.
(GUNSHOT)
Anytime you can
dance with the devil
and come out on top,
it's not a bad feeling.
ERIK: What you need,
what you want,
it's all subjective.
This is, like, a plush life.
CHIP: Can't be scared
of death, just scared of the
pain it takes to get dead.
(LAUGHING)
I am the last frontier.
SUE: You let your guard down
once and you end up
going home in a body bag.
(DOGS BARKING)
CHIP HAILSTONE:
I'm Chip Hailstone. I've been
living in this region
for 25 years now.
I met my wife, Agnes,
and I've just stayed with
her and she stayed with me.
I love this place.
I'm gonna have my bones
picked clean by the birds
here someday.
AGNES: I'm Agnes Hailstone,
and I'm an Inupiaq Eskimo.
I was born and raised
around the Kobuk River area.
Right now we're
catching the whitefish
and the mud sharks.
CHIP: Today we're
setting nets. We're hoping
for quite a few fish.
It's just, when you want
to make a good living
and you want to do it
from the country,
you gotta remember,
the country can eat you
just as quick as you can eat
anything from the country.
(ENGINE REVVING)
I fish the Inupiaq way,
and we go to the same place
where my wife and her family
and her mother
and her mother's mother
have been fishing.
And it's possible it's been
going on for hundreds, if not
thousands of years there.
(SNOWMOBILE APPROACHING)
Where I live,
beyond the end of the road,
before the Earth
stops going north,
food is pretty important.
Late fall is one of the
last chances to get
a large bunch of whitefish,
and setting the nets on
thin ice is probably one of
the more dangerous things
that we do during the year.
But death is
a big part of our life.
It's kind of our doings.
This is Hunting and fishing
is dealing death.
The changing seasons,
the changing conditions,
that all keeps me
kind of apprehensive.
But as long as
you're paranoid,
then you're worried,
and as long as you're worried,
that's the first step
to protecting yourself.
Well, the far side
is one-inch ice.
One-inch ice
we don't put our weight on.
But this is highly dangerous.
This killed my wife's mother,
this killed my wife's brother,
this killed my wife's
brother's girlfriend.
A lot of people every year,
so we just gotta be careful.
It's pretty risky.
Nobody will grab you,
'cause you'll go under the ice
and the current will take you.
This is a strong,
fast-running river.
There's no coming back.
Every day, I kiss my kids,
if I don't see them again.
Yep. It's kind of scary
sometimes. (CHUCKLES)
We're hoping for
quite a few fish.
We're trying to be
as safe as possible.
We've only got
a couple inches of ice
underneath us.
(CRACKING)
Two-inch rule.
AGNES: I lost my mother,
my brother and his girlfriend
to the ice.
Ever since then, I'm real
cautious of where I step.
When I pass away,
I would like to go to the
Happy Hunting Grounds
where my ancestors are.
(CRACKING)
CHIP: That's over one inch.
AGNES: Okay.
-That's as far as we go.
-(CHIP LAUGHS)
That's as far as we go.
ERIK: Being a registered
guide outfitter in Alaska
is something really special.
My guide licence number
is 1,273.
Ever since I was a little kid,
I always was really
into the outdoors.
It was something that was just
born into me.
My name is Erik Salitan,
and I've lived in Alaska
for 10 years.
I'm a registered
guide outfitter here
and I live in the Brooks Range
above the Arctic Circle.
I buy absolutely no meat
whatsoever from the store.
Every bit of the meat that
I eat is harvested by myself.
(SNOW CRUNCHING)
Here's another wolf track.
I'm gonna say that
this wolf track is probably
a week old.
This wilderness is the
last true wilderness left
in North America.
There is no other
true wilderness left
but right here
in the Arctic of Alaska.
That's it.
This is a hindfoot,
the track somewhat obscured
by the frost coming up
out of the ground.
But you can see the five toes
here and the claw marks here.
It's bigger than
my hand is across.
We're probably looking at
a pretty big bear.
Let's follow them
and see where he goes.
(WHISPERING) There they are.
We're gonna move along slowly
and see if we can get in
good range here to get a shot.
We've spotted a medium-sized
herd of caribou.
They're mainly
comprised of cows.
We're gonna target a dry cow,
a cow without a calf.
That's the best meat
at this time of year.
That's the fattest animal,
and the meat is what's
important to us.
(CLICKS)
Another dud.
We had a gun malfunction here,
you can see the bolt.
It's just, like,
slow motion here, I gotta use
my forward assist to close it.
It's all frozen up.
I had one chance with these
caribou here. (COUGHS)
They've taken off now,
it's cold,
my gun malfunctioned.
Better luck next time.
(SNOW CRUNCHING)
I came to Alaska the day that
I graduated from high school,
and I've lived
here ever since.
There's nothing that prepares
you for this way of life.
You're either into it
or you're not.
There's no school that you
can go to, there's no training
that you can take
to come live out here
and do things like this.
Some people take
a job in a factory.
I rolled out and came here.
I was crazy to begin with,
so it wasn't a problem.
SUE: I've always craved
extreme isolation.
I don't wanna be in town.
I wanna go home.
Nobody wants to get
attacked by a bear.
I mean, it's not what
most people think about,
what most people
have to worry about.
But I do.
I live at Kavik River Camp,
which is a camp up on
the North Slope,
and I am its sole caretaker.
My address is
a GPS coordinate,
69.4 North, 146.54 West.
My closest neighbour would be,
I don't know,
300, 350 miles south.
I live at the top of nowhere,
in a tent,
have no desire to change that,
and my closest neighbours
might be a bear
right outside the door.
Back in June of 2011,
I was rewiring the camp
up at Kavik,
fell, and I broke my leg.
I needed surgery to fix it,
ended up having
to come to town.
So, I just had the surgery
and getting better.
The doctor just gave me
the green light to go home,
so I am packing my shit and
getting the hell out of Dodge.
I don't know the conditions
I'm gonna be walking into,
but I've gotta be
prepared for them.
This is your basic .44 Ruger.
This is, uh
If I'm going to the bathroom,
if I'm cleaning up
around camp,
whatever I'm doing,
this is what you wear
to protect yourself.
You come around the corner,
a wolverine meets you
and charges you,
you want something
you can grab quick that's got
a little bit of boom.
You undo these and tie them
around your legs,
so you can walk around
like John Wayne going,
"Fuck with me, man."
(LAUGHS)
This little baby right here
is longer range.
I get a lot of bear activity,
83 grizzes within
10 miles of camp.
If you have a dangerous
predator charging you,
I have 10 of his friends
that are right in here
that say, "You're gonna stop."
I got caught
with my panties down
once before,
laid there 10 days
before I got found.
This helps me to feel that
that won't happen twice.
ANDY: I moved out here
to live my dream of living
in the woods,
to be as self-sufficient
as I can be.
I just love the isolation
and I love the quiet.
Yukon River is a really
powerful river.
When it decides
it wants to do something,
you better get out of the way.
There's no way of stopping it.
My name's Andy Bassich.
I've been living in Eagle
for 30 years,
I met my wife, Kate,
in Dawson City
in the Yukon Territory.
Every year, the river
freezes up sometime
in November or December,
we never know when.
We're kind of landlocked in
until it's safe to get across
and we can put trails in.
I'd say we live about 14 miles
from the nearest point
of civilisation here.
Every year
when the river freezes,
the ice packs in
and blocks our path to town.
In order to get out,
we literally have to
cut a trail
to create a path
for our sleds.
We don't have roads.
In Alaska, most of the rivers
are the highways for people.
Putting a trail across
a river takes me sometimes
two days to do it.
And this opens up all the
areas where I cut wood,
where I get logs for building,
and almost more importantly
than that, it opens up
all downriver for me.
Iceberg, Gilligan, sit.
KATE RORKE: My name is Kate.
I first came to Alaska
as a tourist 10 years ago.
I love it here.
I wake up every morning
and I think I'm the luckiest
woman in the world.
I met Andy in Dawson City,
in the Yukon Territory.
He brought me to Eagle
during that time.
I fell in love with the place,
I fell in love with him.
My life is perfect.
It's a life everybody
should lead.
Everybody should have
this kind of peace.
ANDY: What I love about living
out here is the freedom to
develop the life I wanna live,
and then living that life.
(ICE SHATTERING)
KATE: Okay.
ANDY: I gotta go check
this ice, though,
this could be hollow up here.
You have to be careful
'cause you never know
when you're gonna hit bad ice
on the Yukon River here,
especially early on.
There's soft spots,
there's weak spots,
and it's real easy
to go through.
If you go through,
that's it, you're gone.
-(THUMPING)
-Sounds pretty solid
here so far.
See what happens here.
I have to say,
I'm just a wee bit nervous
standing right here right now.
There's dangers everywhere
and I don't know how
I put them out of my mind,
but I guess
I'm a little insane that way.
If you disappear under the ice
in the Yukon,
you can't swim up
against the current
and you basically
just get swept away.
(THUMPING)
Every time I go out
on that river, even when
I know it's safe ice,
in the back of my mind
I'm thinking, you know,
"What happens
if I go through now?"
All right, I think we made it!
-Yeah!
-It's good?
-Yeah, we're good.
-All right, we're almost done.
This is kind of
a big day, you know,
to open up the river,
to start feeling like we have
the world kind of opening up
around us.
Big day.
ANDY: Come on, Kru, get her!
-Get her, Kru!
-(KATE LAUGHING)
Get her, Kru!
Come on, Kru, get her!
(KATE LAUGHING)
SUE: I've accepted
I'm a food group,
and that's the way
I live my life.
It's a gamble, it's a risk.
Are you gonna make it?
Toss the coin, heads or tails.
(DOG BARKING)
The doctor just gave me
the green light,
so I can pack my shit
and leave Fairbanks.
Next stop, Deadhorse,
grab a bush plane.
-(ENGINE STARTING)
-One hour to the right,
and I am home.
I've been in the
Fairbanks area now
for roughly three months.
I had to come in
and have surgery.
You know, about two years ago,
I took a nasty fall
out at camp,
broke the leg in three places.
And a few years back,
I got attacked by a grizzly,
tore up the hips,
the spine, um
Created some problems for me,
you know, healthwise.
The break of the leg and the
subsequent healing of it
exacerbates that.
So, between the bear injury
and the breaking of the leg,
you know, I wasn't
walking correctly,
haven't been
walking correctly.
All the top predators,
they cull the injured animals.
They look for something
that's slower, not right,
and that's the first thing
they pursue.
It's very difficult
to have something
put its jaws on your head,
you know, it's like
the teeth marks here,
you feel it go into
your scalp,
you feel the skull
being compromised,
you're hoping
he doesn't crush it.
Um, I try not to think
about it too much.
In the first person,
I don't mind
talking about it a little,
but I don't like
bringing it all back up.
Laying there, you know,
for so many days,
you don't know,
"Am I gonna get out
of this one?"
You don't know if this is
gonna be the year
your kids are gonna get
the call that says,
"You know, your mom
was a tough bastard,
"but she's not here no more."
The word that I've gotten is,
looks like I have a bear
denned up in my cubby
that I live in.
I may have to walk
500, 600 yards
through the snowdrifts
to get to my building,
dig in to the door,
only to deal with a bear.
CHIP: This is just being
a man. It's an ancient
way of doing things.
This is actually wealth
without money.
You can feed your family
with subsistence.
(SCRAPING)
CHIP: 'Cause if that's
the river right there,
and over here is
the other half of the river,
then the fish travel up
this way,
so we put our net there.
We do our work
and get our reward.
Just like payday.
(SAW BUZZING)
CHIP: The fish
that we're trying to catch
are valuable to us
because we can
eat them ourselves,
we can feed them to dogs,
we can trade them to people,
and we could sell them
outright if we wanted to.
And this is an important
time of year,
because it's the
one time of year
that they have eggs,
and the eggs make
them so nutritious,
they make the caloric value
in them so much better.
And they're tasty. (CHUCKLES)
They just taste good.
There's my wife,
there's my son,
there's my oldest daughter,
and my wife's cousin.
We all fish together
all the time.
It's never a safe deal.
Should be safe
in another month, though,
when she's a foot thicker.
(LAUGHS)
AGNES: I don't think
my mother would like it
if I gave up fishing
because she taught me
and my sisters to fish,
and, I don't know, I just
don't think I'd give that up.
I bring the kids out
most of the time.
They always know never
to go by the ice holes,
and they always
travel in pairs.
We're gonna take this
yellow line here and
we're gonna pass it under
from hole to hole
to hole to hole,
until we've got
this dozen holes or so
all the way to the rope there.
Then we're gonna
feed it in and use the rope
and pull it back.
CHIP: I thought
you pulled the rope.
-You really pulled
-TINMIAQ: (GIGGLES)
You got it, Dad.
TINMIAQ: Got the rope.
CHIP: Pull it, pull it.
CHIP: Oh, it just
came off again.
See you can't stop
and give it slack,
it's like a fish.
CHIP: Today, we're
setting nets. We're trying
to get our adjustments right
to where we get to where
the fish are.
And we're just keeping our
wits about us as best we can
to where we can get this
set and still do it safely.
CHIP: There you go,
pull it, Ag, pull it.
Pull it, Ag, pull it.
Keep pulling it, Ag.
Keep pulling it
before you lose it.
AGNES: I was looking at it.
CHIP: I know,
I can see it, too.
I can see it right from here.
AGNES: Now.
CHIP: Did I go through
the iron?
AGNES: Now, now.
CHIP: Pull it out.
Finally! Put one through
the eye of this dang thing.
(EXHALES)
CHIP: We're hoping to get a
couple hundred fish a day.
This is an important
time of year,
because it's the one time
of year that they have eggs.
Our preference right now,
while they're here,
are the egg-laden whitefish.
And that's why we use such
a large mesh on our nets.
It's because we want
the smaller, skinnier ones
to pass through
and the big, fat ones
to get caught.
Grab that corner, son.
(STRAINING)
TINMIAQ: Oh, that one
that was rolling
CHIP: That one
Yeah, that was real timid?
Look, he's on the inside
of the net, Agnes.
CHIP: I do this the way that
folks around here do it,
because the way
the folks around here do it
is the right way to do it.
So, of course I copy them.
I learn from them,
I emulate 'em
and I teach it to my kids.
CHIP: We got one around
here somewhere.
I see eggs on the ice.
Right now,
we'll be eating the fish,
and someday
they'll come for theirs.
We're all gonna die.
Can't be scared of death,
you just gotta be scared of
the pain it takes to get dead.
(LAUGHING)
(TINMIAQ MURMURING)
CHIP: Yep. That's good, huh?
KATE: The river
will take us someday.
I always say that
we'll die on the river.
ANDY: You have to think ahead.
If we just go blindly
doing things,
it'll bite you real quick.
(DOGS HOWLING)
Hey, I just checked
the river ice
and I think it's probably
good enough.
I can try and make it to town.
So, I think what I'd like
to do is, I'm gonna hook up
a relatively small team
and see how far I can
make it up to town today.
Every time he leaves
to go on the snow machine
or with the dogs,
something can always go wrong.
I mean, you can
Lose your sled,
fall, hit jumble ice,
crack your head open.
Okay, well, just don't do
anything stupid.
-Yep. This time.
-You can wait a day or two
-(ANDY CHUCKLING)
-No, I'm serious.
You know, you always gotta be
the first person on the river
when it's ice or water.
You're the first one on
and the last one off.
Yeah, but it's where we live,
and you know how
I love the river.
-I do, I know that, but
-I can't stay off of it.
-(CHUCKLING)
-It's gonna get you
one of these days.
Well, if it does, it does.
(DOGS WHINING AND BARKING)
ANDY: You know, the river's
our highway, both in the
summer and the winter,
so in the winter,
if we can't access
the Yukon River,
we can't get to town.
If we can't get to town,
then we can't get mail,
we can't get supplies.
No, you can't go over there.
(BARKING AND HOWLING)
I depend on my dogs 100%
to get me safely
from point A to point B.
I currently have 24 adults
and one puppy.
They're good companions,
they can travel through
just about any terrain
there is.
Dogs and living
in the bush, man,
that's the only way to go.
All right, let's go!
Hoo-hoo, on by!
Attaboy, straight ahead.
Straight ahead, on by,
let's go!
I want him to be kept safe,
I mean, you know,
I've had him come home
soaking wet, the dogs wet,
from going in the river
and almost dying, so
those things enter your mind.
ANDY: Gee! Gee!
You have to be really careful,
because you never know
when you're gonna hit bad ice
on the Yukon River here,
especially early on.
There's soft spots,
there's weak spots,
'cause the current's still
flowing four miles an hour
underneath this ice.
It's real easy to go through.
If you go through,
that's it, you're gone.
ERIK: If you're living
out in the bush
you never know when
something's gonna
come through,
and so, you know, there's
a certain sense of security
in having a firearm
in your home.
(FIRING)
(FIRING)
Hopefully it won't
freeze again.
Yesterday was
a pretty cold day.
I had a gun malfunction.
My firing pin froze.
I took it home last night,
took it apart.
We had to modify it
a little bit
and use some grease that
doesn't freeze so easily.
I think the gun's
gonna work well,
and hopefully we'll have
some success to avenge
yesterday's failure.
It's about negative four here.
Could be as cold as
negative 20 once we
get out of the trees.
I'm gonna go ahead and
cache my pack and my sled
right here by this tree.
Hopefully we'll be
back soon and dragging
a caribou home tonight.
I'm a subsistence hunter.
A rifle or a pistol to me
is no different
than a hammer is
to a carpenter.
I don't think I'd do too well
working in a cubicle.
My office is 100 million
acres of wilderness.
We're on a fresh track here.
I expect it'll be
over the next rise.
We'll catch up with it.
Pretty deep snow here,
hard walking.
Hopefully I'll be headed home
with some fresh meat tonight.
I've spotted a good
caribou over this way.
It's a dry cow, a lone cow.
It'll be the fattest meat
that we can get
at this time of year.
(FIRING)
I eat meat every single meal,
every single day.
I buy absolutely no meat
whatsoever from the store.
Every bit of the meat
that I eat is harvested
by myself.
I love it.
Well, luck paid off.
I caught a caribou.
It's a yearling here.
Should be some tender meat.
There's no ego involved
in subsistence hunting,
it's all about getting
some good-quality meat
to feed myself.
We'll be eating fresh caribou
meat tonight.
Let's get to work.
If you don't gut these
animals immediately,
they start to purge,
so it's very important
to take care of your meat.
We freed up the stomach,
and now we're gonna cut
the diaphragm,
reach inside and free up
the internal organs here.
Kind of pull it all out.
Here's my favourite part
of any game animal
here in Alaska,
the heart.
Fresh blood, good heart blood,
warm your hands up
on a day like this
when it's 28 below.
And that is my supper tonight.
Nobody's taking this
away from me,
this is my favourite.
Beautiful piece of meat there.
We're gonna flop it
back up inside.
You gotta keep your
exposed skin covered here.
And, like I say,
it's 28 below,
about to get dark,
the temperature's dropping.
Meat is of the utmost
importance here
in Northern Alaska.
Load it up in our sled.
CHIP: I'm still learning.
Got lots to do, lots to learn,
lots of new stuff yet,
and I ain't dead yet.
We can keep catching whitefish
till the ice is too thick,
but once that happens,
whitefishing is over
till spring.
So, no matter what I do,
I have to get out there and
catch what I have to catch.
Are you slack?
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
CHIP: Where's the net stop?
Here, you guys start here,
I'm gonna check the net.
(GRUNTING)
CHIP: It's not moving?
Can you move it at all?
There's a float stuck here.
It might be stuck
in a crevice in the ice.
It might be stuck
where it cracked.
What bullshit, man.
I hate it when this happens
and you have something
perfectly set up.
We're gonna open up a hole
here and free our ice net
and check our net.
I dressed for being
next to the village,
not for being gone
for an extended
amount of time.
I anticipated a couple hours,
I anticipated getting wet
on the outside,
but I don't anticipate
swinging an axe for an hour
to get through this ice.
The top of our net's float
is frozen, right there,
you can see the white float.
CHIP: Pull it, Jeff.
(ROPE CREAKING)
(AXE CHIPPING AT ICE)
-(ROPE SCRAPING)
-(CHEERING)
Hey, about time, huh?
I'm so happy, I could shit.
Whoa, salmon!
You don't need money
to be rich.
You gotta have
a good attitude, work hard.
Persistence is the key
to subsistence.
SUE: I need to get home
way too much.
You know, people get
afraid of break-ins.
My break-in involves teeth,
claws and a hell of a lot
of bad weather.
I'm in Deadhorse right now,
got this far up the road.
It's 500 miles so far,
now I got about another
100 to go.
I've been away from home
for three months, and I can't
take it a minute longer.
For me, it's very exciting.
I'm very nervous getting ready
to go wheels-up.
This is the last leg
of civilisation
before I get back to my world.
We don't know what
the conditions at Kavik are.
My best guesstimate, I may be
looking at anywhere 70, 75
below zero, wind-chill factor.
There's no electricity.
The only light is right here,
what's on my head.
You know,
it's a no-man's-land.
Whatever you leave
laying around,
it's either the wind,
the snowdrifts, the animals
Nature will take over.
You know, my buildings,
they'll get 22-foot snowdrifts
that cover them,
so I've gotta go dig
inch by inch, foot by foot,
reclaiming everything.
Brand new ankle,
brand new surgery,
only a couple of months.
It's gonna be a challenge from
the time I hit the ground,
it's gonna be
a running challenge.
That's what life is for me.
When I get off the aeroplane,
I'm not gonna know
if there's something
with fur, claws and teeth
sleepin' in my bed.
So, there is a concern
whether or not there's a bear
waiting for me.
So, I've gotta have
my guns ready.
-When we do go out
-BOB GILL: Yeah?
if we can, if you can
fly over low and slow,
let me at least
view the material
on the tent and
the big dining hall.
-Yeah.
-If it's been compromised
by that bear at all,
then I'm gonna be able to see
all the ribs.
It's gonna look like
something got into it,
it won't be taut.
And that way I know I at least
gotta have something
in my hands when I'm going in.
-Okay. We can do that.
-All right, thanks.
When I get out of the
aeroplane and he takes off,
there is no turnaround.
I'm there by myself
and that's it.
(ENGINE STARTING)
My world will be survival
at that point.
But, being able to
go out there
with no help, no light
and no anything,
get everything turned over
and be successful
at living in a tent,
it's what I'm good at.
It's what I do well.
(BANG)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(SUE AGREES OVER RADIO)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
BOB: Uh
(BOB OVER RADIO)
SUE: I've got to get home.
I have to get home.
I can't stay here any longer.
-It doesn't smell good.
-Doesn't smell good.
Doesn't smell good.
Things break, things,
you know, things happen.
Yeah, that's not
how I scripted it to go.
You know, it's just I get my
hopes up, I get my hopes up.
You know, I mean,
I've travelled 500 miles
to get here, now I'm waiting.
There's still that chick side
of me that wants to cry
'cause I can't get home.
My little foxies are
waiting for me,
I need to I got work to do,
I got things to do,
and they don't involve
being in Deadhorse.
It's time to go home.
But tomorrow's a new day.
ERIK: I don't even
view it that I work
or that I have a job.
I just have a good time,
and I get up every day
and do what I need to do,
eat a big meal
and hit the sack.
We're gonna skin this caribou,
take the hide off of it
and expose the real trophy
here, which is the meat.
This animal here represents
about two and a half,
three weeks of food.
I butcher animals
inside my house
in the wintertime.
The number one reason
is because it's cold outside.
If the only meat
that you're eating is the game
that you're killing,
it's actually surprising
how not far it goes.
It's, uh
You eat it up pretty quick.
Wild game meat
has many advantages.
There's a lot of people
that don't understand
how healthy the meat is,
it's very lean.
You don't have that luxury,
that peace of mind,
with store-bought meat
or, as I like to call it,
"government meat".
Gonna finish
getting the hide off,
and then we're gonna separate
all the muscle groups,
lay the meat on the table
and get it processed
into meal-sized portions.
This is the tongue
of the caribou.
It's one of the fattest parts
of the caribou,
and it's my personal
favourite part to eat.
Everybody in nature
recognises its goodness.
I'm gonna get that going.
Now that you have
a whole quarter here,
what you're gonna do is you're
gonna go ahead and separate
the muscle groups.
This first one I'm gonna
pull here is the ham roast.
And that's a nice roast.
Perfect roast.
What I need, what I want,
what you need,
what you want
What people think
they need or want,
it's all subjective.
Comfort is subjective.
This is, like, a plush life,
in my mind.
This is, like, really plush.
ANDY: You know,
if you fall through that ice,
you don't have a lot of time
to react before you're
pretty hypothermic, so, uh
Just don't take chances.
ANDY: You know,
without access to the river,
we can't get to town.
If we can't get to town,
then we can't get mail,
we can't get supplies,
which means that if we can't
access the river,
we're just totally
isolated here.
Gee, gee!
Atta-boy, gee, gee!
Gee, gee!
Little more gee!
Attaboy, attaboy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Whoa! Whoa!
(ANDY SHOUTS)
The only places on the river
that are gonna be unsafe
right now
are the places
where it froze up
and there was open water
in between the pack ice.
Oh, man, looks like it jams up
in there pretty good.
This is pretty big ice
right here, and, uh,
I don't wanna get in
the middle of it and then
have to turn around in it,
so I'm gonna take
a few minutes, walk up,
just kind of scout it out
a little bit to make sure
it's safe to go up this way.
ANDY: You know,
the main problem
with getting to Eagle
is jumble ice and thin ice.
The Yukon is
a contained river valley
and it's not very wide.
If the water level comes up
to a certain height,
it can jam that jumble ice
right up to the bank
into the willows,
and it creates a barrier
to try and get around.
(THUMPING)
Yup, look at that.
That ice is only about
two inches thick or so
right there, two and a half.
You look right over here,
you can see there's
open water bubbling up.
That ice is just
a quarter-inch thick or so,
and you can see
that dark colour.
That's deep water,
so we're definitely not going
out on the ice around here.
It's just not safe.
Kate, Kate, you copy Andy?
KATE OVER RADIO:
Yep, I copy you now.
Okay, I'm down at the end
of the overland trail.
The ice just doesn't look
safe right now,
so I'm gonna turn around
and come home now.
So, I'll be home
in about an hour.
I'll be home before dark.
KATE: All right, take care
and come on home.
I got some soup ready for ya.
ANDY: Gee, gee!
Atta-boy. Gee, gee!
Gee, gee!
Just stay along
the shore there, Iceberg.
Attaboys. Looking good.
(DOGS BARKING)
I'm gonna have to work
pretty hard
to put a trail into Eagle,
it looks like, this year.
But I don't trust this ice
right now,
and I'm just gonna have to
come back another day
and explore
trying to get to Eagle.
-Hey.
-Hey.
So, pretty rough trail.
Tried going up on the river,
and it's
I mean, we'll be able to do it
later in the winter,
but it's not good right now.
Anyway, it is what it is.
-(CHUCKLES)
-KATE: I know. You gotta do
what you gotta do.
Mother Nature does her thing.
KATE: The river's
a precarious thing.
You can't predict
what's going to happen.
If you live
anywhere like this,
sometime I think Mother Nature
is going to win.
(HOWLING AND BARKING)
SUE: All that's on my mind is,
"I got to get home."
SUE: You know, yesterday,
we tried to make it to Kavik.
A lot of things happened.
A magneto went out
on the plane,
then we ran out of light,
so today we're gonna take
a stab at it again.
I do know
that the plane is fixed.
What we're fighting is
a big 80-mile-an-hour storm
coming in tomorrow,
and it's going to last a week.
Next storm coming in,
it's gonna be balls-out bad.
So, this is my window.
Today. I gotta get out today.
You know, once I approach
Kavik, circle around,
see if I can pick out
if anything's destroyed
my buildings,
if it's still living in there.
Don't have any idea of the
condition of the runway,
I could get dropped off
as far away as a mile.
The ankle, you know,
that I had surgery on,
I mean, there's been some pain
associated with the cold,
but this is gonna be
the big test.
(ENGINE STARTING)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(CONTROL OVER RADIO)
SUE: You're landing into the
twilight zone, the unknown.
I know I probably have
22-, 30-foot drifts
covering my doors.
I may have somebody
sleeping in my bed.
I'm looking, trying to beat
an 80-mile-an-hour,
five-day blow.
This storm, the reality is,
if it's 60 below zero and
you put a 100-mile-an-hour
wind with that,
you're looking at almost
200 degrees below zero
on your skin.
I mean, that's the importance
of getting in today.
Getting dug out today.
Getting the heat on today.
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
Yeah.
(SUE OVER RADIO)
(BOB OVER RADIO)
SUE: All right.
(BOB OVER RADIO)
(SUE OVER RADIO)
CHIP: Where I live,
beyond the end of the road,
where the Earth
stops going north,
food is pretty important.
We're hoping to get a
couple hundred fish a day.
We've started out
with 57 today.
You know, we're thankful
for what we can catch,
and when we catch it
and what we catch
we'll be really thankful for.
But being a provider is really
what it's all about.
I'm more happy
to be a provider
in a direct way, this,
than I ever would be
with money.
'Cause money can be
so misspent. It's crazy.
You can't misspend fish.
I love this place because
people won't give me
any trouble.
They look at me for what I do
and how I contribute,
and they always honour
a provider.
That's all that matters
to them.
Dinner.
(WIND WHISTLING)