- Holy .
A bear had ended up stealing fish out of my cache.
He just started a war.
- Every day I'm here, I will fight missing my son.
But that's why I have to block it out.
- I can build a raft, paddle out, and start fishing.
No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
- I just stabbed this musk ox to death.
I'm worried about a wolverine or a bear
getting on this thing.
male narrator: For the first time,
ten participants will fight to survive the Arctic
for longer than anyone in "Alone" history:
a grueling 100 days.
- This is the ultimate challenge.
- 100 days in the Arctic is no joke.
If they can endure,
they'll win the biggest prize ever:
$1 million.
- Oh!
- Oh, .
- You can't tap out
when there's a million bucks on the line.
- Oh, my gosh.
- How hard can you work for $10,000 a day?
- It looks like frostbite.
- Oh!
- Oh, .
This is "Alone: Million Dollar Challenge."
- They're just surrounding my shelter.
- Good mornin'.
Welcome to another episode
of Great Slave Lake's "Cribs."
Inside my shelter,
I've got all my dried fish
and then dinner for tonight on top.
If we move on, we've got our kindling and our fuel wood.
We've got where I sleep,
we got my chair, and yeah.
I really love my side table.
Beyond that,
the antlers I found, I put up top
just as fire prevention,
and I also put these rocks up top
because from underneath,
all those sparks were going up into this
and making me real nervous.
So...
That's my shack.
I'm in love with it.
Good news: nice fresh snow on the ground.
Makes great for tracking, hunting.
It's really nuts how much things have changed
in the last ten days.
I've looked at fish as my main priority
since I've been out here,
but trying to change my mindset a little bit.
I saw promising tracks,
so I'm gonna add a rabbit snare
or two or three or four.
So we got a really good rabbit trail
going right through here.
Let me go ahead and pop a snare.
I can be thankful I've done so well
so far with food.
When I came out here,
I thought, it's gonna be the worst-case scenario,
there's not gonna be any food,
it's gonna be really, really tough finding it,
and now,
the last five days have been exactly what I expected.
I think we're gonna see
my body go through a transformation,
doing okay to not doing so okay,
but I'm gonna keep my spirits high
for catching rabbits.
Can't just make a loop, right?
You wanna make it to where,
when the rabbit touches the bottom,
it closes
much further...
than what you originally had it set for.
Now it's about finding a good anchor.
Then I'm gonna check my other trap line.
All right. Just came across this.
There's rabbit fur and blood and no rabbit.
That sucks.
I was really looking forward to catching that guy.
Fox.
And...
fox urine.
See that little yellow speck?
This fox came up here, he's marking his territory,
so there's a lot more fox in the area,
so great.
I went from food
and catching food and stuff
to zero food and competition for my food.
Hoo! All right.
It's getting real.
- Pretty dark in Rock House.
That's one drawback,
having it all tight and insulated.
No light.
Yesterday was all butchering,
hacking and slashing,
and then got it all to camp.
You gotta get as much distance
between the kill site and your meat as possible.
Boy, he had a set on him.
We're gonna clean skin his nuts off.
In old times, they always made pouches
out of the buffalo scrotums.
There's a musk ox scrotum pouch.
Yeah, they're big and they're already pouch-shaped, you know?
No sewing involved.
Here's the nut.
Great Slave Lake oyster.
Musk ox testicle. It's big.
Big as my hand.
Testicles, they're good.
I'm not kidding.
I want that 100 day title as much as the money,
so we're gonna eat this
from the horns to the hooves.
This is gonna make an award-winning soup.
Yeah, they're fatty. They're rich.
There's all kinds of goodness in a set of nuts.
The Eskimos that I hung out with
up on the Kuskokwim
always put a high, high value
on the fat of the animal.
I might not know the science of it and things,
but I know about the fat behind the eyeballs.
The Eskimos always eat the nose off the moose,
so therefore, I know to eat the nose off the musk ox.
Perfect.
Pot's full,
and now we're set up with tenderloin.
Oh, baby.
Holy .
Day 100, there ain't gonna be
a whole hell of a lot of that musk ox left.
It turned out perfect.
Last bite.
Oh, dear Lord, that was so good.
A guy can just flop.
Feels good.
Everything's really coming together in Rock House.
It sure is.
Making the guitar has now inspired me
to make a good size eating bowl.
That's not just a crafting. That's a need.
Would just make life so much easier
to be able to transfer my food into the bowl
and then I can use the pot to boil water,
so I can have boiled water and my food at the same time.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I think this should do quite nicely.
I feel very in sync with the land,
with what I'm doing.
I feel like I'm doing the right thing.
I don't feel, like, any need
to go and absolutely pillage the land
and just catch and catch and kill and--
I've got almost two weeks of fish fillets
up in the food cache,
which could be looked at as a month of food
in survival mode.
Oh, Joel.
Just keep going.
All right.
Let's head back to camp.
My legs are heavy.
My legs have taken a toll out here.
Yes, I've been eating,
but I feel I've lost a lot of muscle on my legs,
especially my calves.
The physical fatigue
that comes with this whole experience
is freaking tough.
Like, they have that saying, "bone tired."
I know the meaning to that saying now.
Legs, legs, legs.
I'm looking for a decent size bowl.
I want no little itty-bitty.
It's hard to physically keep up with the workload
and then doing other fun projects
that you wanna do,
being on your feet all day, you know?
Wow, guys.
That's coming along.
Freaking arm's about to fall off,
but it's coming along.
But most of all, it's so hard
to be completely out of touch, separated,
such a long distance from your family,
from a young kid just learning to speak.
Just probably can't comprehend what's going on.
He was here every day, and now he's gone.
Why?
He's a tough little bugger, though.
I just have to keep doing what I'm doing.
I just gotta keep myself in the right headspace.
Really, really makes you feel good.
I've been wanting this for a while,
and it's now in the making.
So get some coals in here
and burn it out and clean it up.
By tomorrow evening, be eating out of this thing.
Being freaking paranoid.
I hear it, a little noise,
and I think it's, like, something in my food cache.
So come on.
Let's just go and take a quick look.
Just go and make sure.
Oh, I don't see nothing.
Let's see.
Damn it.
Get outta here!
- Damn it.
Wolverine.
Get outta here.
Hey!
Get outta here!
There he goes.
Get outta here, wolverine.
It's my food cache, hear me?
Bugger!
Well, he wasn't up there, but I bet he was trying.
I am, just for safekeeping, gonna take just a few steaks
'cause I don't have any food spare in the shelter.
Oh, God. My sixth sense just kicks in.
Oh, !
He did pull some fish down.
So he gets up here.
No way!
He pulled it out through the bottom.
Damn it.
This is all coming in the shelter.
Not leaving it out here and letting it get eaten.
Bugger!
How much did he get?
I've got one,
two, three...
Part of one that is--
this is what he didn't manage to get.
It was on the ground.
Four, five.
He's taken about ten--
he's already eaten about ten pieces this size.
Damn it!
That does not leave me with a lot.
Welcome to the winter in the Arctic.
Everything just wants your food.
All right.
Maybe I could scrape four days out of that,
but I had stores for, like, you know, ten days.
All that effort,
those calories spent
in building that food cache and that brush wall
and that...
Nope. Didn't matter.
If he wants it, he's gonna get it.
Just shows me that it's, like-- there's just no stopping
an animal like that when he's hungry.
Man, what a tough place to keep food.
What a tough place.
- This is my brain pouch.
There's the brain in there.
I'm wanting to put a little bit on my gloves.
That's gonna tan that so nice.
Little bit of this goes a long way.
You can just feel how greasy it is.
Like lanolin.
Good thing we tended to 'em.
That'll help keep 'em from cracking as well,
this brain juice.
See how that looks?
Now, you can tell it got oiled.
I just want some on my hands.
It's like putting lotion on.
My hands are sore.
You can't believe how sore my hands was
from building Rock House.
It's even good for chapped face.
When the wind blows your face and chaps it.
I don't think we're gonna eat this brain.
We're gonna save it for...
Skin and leather treatment.
Everything has a use out here.
Aw, yeah.
Nice and supple now.
Now they're ready to go build meat cache.
I have to move the meat away from Rock House,
so I'm gonna build a meat crib
that's gonna be just like a log cabin,
notched on the ends,
and we're gonna fit 'em tight so nothing can get in there.
It'll be bulletproof.
And I'm gonna clear all the poles I need,
you know, to 100 yards from Rock House
in a straight line.
That way, I can look out my door
and see down here.
I'll shine my headlamp and hopefully see eyeballs.
Well, hopefully not,
but if there's something around,
I'll see eyeballs.
I think I'm gonna cut little poles
and place on the bottom.
That way, they'll be pinned under these ones.
Then it'll have a floor.
It'll be damn hard
for anything to come in under it that way.
Ha.
My mother died while I was preparing for this quest,
so I'm trying to remember her a little bit through this all,
but I know if anybody's with the Lord, she is.
That woman was devout, man.
So she's probably got her finger
on some of this too.
Hi, Mom. You hear me?
I'm here,
Rock House, building my meat cache.
Thinking of you, Mom.
Not bad.
Pretty damn good, actually.
That's a tight little cube we got happening there.
I know I was kind of a difficult...
little [bleep] to raise up.
I sure hope some of the stuff I've done
has made you proud though.
I'll see you soon, Mom.
I'm right behind you.
That's it for the walls.
It turned out pretty good.
Now that's a lot of freezer space.
Now we need eight big, heavy stakes,
about yo high.
They're gonna be driven in each corner,
inside and out,
and then tied at the top with my fencing twist.
You won't be able to pull a log outta here no how.
Pretty snug.
Oh, yeah.
That's tightened that end right the hell up.
Do it half-assed,
a wolverine will jump right in there
and have a party.
I'm building the meat crib wolverine- and bear-proof.
I got a big game kill, and I'm gonna win this baby
if I'm smart.
I cannot let nothing get this meat.
I ain't putting it up in the [bleep] damn air,
'cause that don't work anyway.
Climb like a [bleep] acrobat every day
just to see how much [bleep] damn meat got stolen.
You don't keep a [bleep] wolverine down.
I don't care if you skin the bark
off the whole [bleep] damn tree.
There ain't nothing out here a wolverine can't climb.
Lock it in.
There by a beaver.
What a [bleep] damn ordeal.
- Have I mentioned this is the only diet
I've ever been on?
And I'll tell you what,
I do not recommend this diet.
I'm sure there's better ones out there.
But if you want fast results...
Maybe this is the one for you.
This place went from fruitful with bears
and fish and berries
to the first real snowfall,
and now there's nothing.
But this is survival.
I've gotta keep pushing forward.
Gonna check my trap line.
I might get lucky.
I don't know if it's a good thing
or a bad thing when I--
walking down, I see a good patch of reindeer moss
and I'm like, yeah!
This is a humbling experience,
gathering moss
for your food, right?
But reindeer moss isn't gonna do it.
I gotta find food.
What is that?
Oh, my gosh.
- All right. So hey.
Came out here today
and...
we trapped this guy.
Little fox.
Caught him 'round the waist.
He's not injured.
Coming out here and seeing an animal in your trap
that has this much food,
it kinda sucks.
I haven't really eaten that much.
But sometimes, you just gotta do the right thing,
so we're gonna let this guy go.
We're gonna try and do it
without getting injured, obviously.
But we don't wanna hurt him.
Life isn't all about gaining stuff.
Sometimes, the biggest gains you can get from life
are just by doing the right thing.
So...
this is him.
This little guy is fine.
There's nothing wrong with him.
So we're just gonna let him go.
All right.
Gonna go check the rest of my traps.
Yeah!
Got myself a rabbit.
Look at this guy.
Pretty sure I just gave him a heart attack.
Super happy.
Man!
I snared a fox today, I let him go,
and I was able to snare a rabbit.
Fuzzy little bunny.
Got food again.
Great day.
I'm gonna get him outta here real quick
and go check the gill net.
I truly, truly believe that was karma.
I just had a trifecta of a day.
I got a fish!
Man!
I been waiting to catch another fish for so long.
Yeah! Whitefish!
It's really neat being able to take things
from the water and from the land,
especially all in the same day,
and give back.
How's that for a day's catch?
Man, I can't be happier.
I am so happy.
Yeah!
If I didn't believe in karma before,
I am a believer now.
- So here's my thoughts.
This is the front end corner of my shelter,
and I'd like to build this little box
in the corner here for-- to store my fish,
keep them fresh.
Cut ourselves a digging stick.
After the wolverine's visit,
I can't leave the food out in the food cache.
Obviously, he's still gonna get it.
So what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna make a little bush refrigerator.
I'm just gonna dig down,
around about a foot is what I'm shooting for,
and then also pack snow inside there.
Hopefully, the geothermal cooling
and the insulation of the ground
will lock in that temperature.
That is pretty good right there.
Next, I'm just gonna use stakes
and spruce boughs to create some insulation
and the structure for the box so it doesn't collapse in.
Kay.
All the hard work's done now.
Oh, man.
Everything I do...
is just so exhausting.
I feel like I'm lacking electrolytes
and definitely feel my body going into full ketosis.
There is definitely a reduced pep in the step.
Just try and create a good seal around.
Mmm. Such a nice smell.
The trick is to compact it
very good.
We'll put just a couple of these in the bottom
just so we don't create frostbite on the fish.
And then let's load 'em in.
I don't really want the fish on top of each other
so that they don't have that moisture
trapped between them.
Now we compact everything in spruce boughs
to add insulation.
Yeah, and the lid goes on top.
And there we go.
Beautiful.
From now forward,
I look forward to keeping some frozen fresh fish at hand
all the time.
We're gonna be making a fire very soon,
but I'm still not satisfied with the firewood.
I still need much more.
Kay. Let's do some cutting.
I've worked a lot of hard jobs in my life,
like working in sewage tanks
and working, like, without sleep for a couple days
and, you know, being at sea with machinery broken down
that I gotta repair at 4:00 in the morning,
and it's all taught me how to work hard
and just get in the right mindset
of "just get it done."
The $1 million prize is definitely a big motivator
to get to day 100,
so I will push my body to its limit.
Frick.
Oh, .
Oh, legs, oh, legs, oh, legs.
You're giving up on me.
I've already asked so much of my body,
I just hate to keep abusing it,
but I don't wanna leave.
Ah, it sucks.
Joel, do not let this bum you out.
Come on, Joel. Just come on.
[bleep] pull yourself together here.
It's not the nicest position to be in,
but it's just how it is.
- Cravings this morning...
just a cup of coffee with cream.
I'd take a croissant on the side.
A croissant.
Fresh.
I got up this morning with my bow in hand.
You never know what's out there.
Today is the day to get something...
To make me feel like I'm still on top of it.
What a way to live.
Food'll do me good.
Oh, look at all those moose tracks.
Right there.
There.
I'm okay with trying to stick with snaring rabbits,
but I'm not giving up with big game.
Hopefully I catch something today in my snares.
Empty.
The reason I'm doing this
is because I want to do my husband, Dave, proud.
Nothing.
And I wanna do myself proud
because I know that I'm blown away
with Dave and his abilities.
We joke about the money a lot, like, "Oh, if we win,
we're gonna get a boat that doesn't leak."
Nothing.
And, like, "Oh if we win,
then Dave's gonna go to the South Pole."
So there's lots of things that, you know, it'd be like,
"Oh, if we win..."
Nothing.
Nope.
Done checking my traps.
No bunnies today.
It knows I'm here, you know.
It's running away.
Damn it.
Just the prospect of having that much food.
It's like...
It was right there.
That's the good news right there.
That's good news.
They're coming 'round here.
So I shouldn't give up.
- Look.
So the little short-tailed weasel
just poked his little head.
He was right there.
There he is.
Hello, little friend.
What do you think you're doing, little dude?
I have so many things to do,
but instead, I'm playing with the short-tailed weasel.
Really, I should probably just scare him outta here
so he stops coming in,
but it's kinda nice to have a little friend.
That's the problem.
The animals that are gonna, like, take my food--
I kinda like 'em, so...
I'm not really motivated to kill them.
There--geez--they go.
You gonna come back, or was that it?
All right, trap line, here I come.
Keeps getting colder around here.
And it is windy.
It's drier. The snow's drier.
So Arctic winter, here we come.
Now the adventure really begins, right?
I'm burning tons of calories
because this place is beautiful
and I'm just hiking all over it.
So I need to be focusing any calorie expenditure
towards food procurement.
Oh.
I caught a rabbit.
Poor little guy's frozen solid,
but we have a sweet little--
a sweet little bunny.
So that makes me very happy.
Oh, my heart is seriously overflowing
with joy and gratitude.
Just yesterday, I was all worried,
you know, that I was losing so much weight
and not getting enough food,
and then I get blessed up with a rabbit.
Oh.
Another rabbit.
It's a two-rabbit day.
You're too big to see.
White as the snow.
Sweet, sweet little guy.
All right, let's keep going on.
Oh, my gosh.
There's another rabbit.
Three rabbits!
Oh, my gosh.
Are you kidding me?
Four.
What?
What did I do to deserve this good fortune?
Oh, my gosh.
Look at this abundance.
We're going back to camp with four rabbits!
Look at this!
Can you believe this?
These rabbits gave their life for me,
and it's powerful to know
it takes a death
for me to have energy for the day.
That makes me appreciate that I have life,
that I'm alive.
I wanna be connected to my food,
and out here, I get to be.
Thank you, Great Slave Lake!
Thank you, Arctic.
Thank you for feeding me.
Thank you for teaching me.
This place is raw and wild,
and I'm becoming a part of it.
My thoughts have been with the Hadza
for all they've taught me.
I felt compelled to thank the land in Swahili.
Last night was pretty miserable,
I'm not gonna lie.
Just could not sleep.
I just--it's getting worse and worse.
My legs will collapse from underneath me.
When I lose balance,
my mind will tell my leg to move out to stabilize myself
and my leg just won't do it.
And the bottom line is that
I just don't trust my body anymore.
And after half of my fish has been eaten
by Mr. Wolverine,
I don't have the energy
to go and get back on track with food again.
I am now risking my safety a little bit.
I promised my wife, made her a promise.
The deal is that if my body gets to the point...
Where I can't be safe,
that I would call it.
And I have to keep that promise to her.
What's so important to me is that I choose to go.
Hi. This is Joel here.
I am officially tapping out.
Disappointed in my body.
I can't help it. I'm just disappointed.
I just would've loved to have gone home
with that money, you know?
But that's not gonna happen.
It's come to that time.
My mind is so rock solid.
So alive out here in this place.
I could go for so much longer.
It's just my body's not giving me
what I need anymore.
And I don't wanna go home in a--
don't wanna go home in a heap.
It's time.
I have to go.
I am very conflicted about leaving the Arctic.
I feel like I was forced to.
I feel like I've let my wife down a bit.
She sacrificed a lot
for me to be away for this long,
and I just would've loved to have gone home
with that money to reward her.
I'm not certain how I'm gonna move on from here,
but I do know one thing:
it's experiences like this
that really make you realize what's important in life.
The real blessing is my family.
That is the most important thing to me in my life
above everything else.
- I get to look at Max today.
I like showing him off.
Look at that baby.
I pull my picture of my son out every ten days,
and I look at him, and I think about him.
And I've done that to kinda make sure
that my head's in the right place, you know.
I make cute kids, I know.
Crazy, huh?
It's just not good weather to be outside.
Maybe I'll start working on a horse for Max,
a little toy horse, like a wooden horse.
Never made a horse before.
I've got a block to work with.
Might help if I draw it out and then cut it out.
Horses are a passion of mine
and something that I strive to get one day,
and I really hope
that Max gets to grow up with horses.
Horses and animals and a small little farm--
that's something I'm trying to do for Max.
I'll make it happen one day, bud.
So here's the horse.
I just took a board and burnt it in,
and I cut it about that thick, split it.
Damn good horse.
If I won $1 million,
I'd take it and I'd just buy a house
in the country
in order to have the type of house
that Max can grow up with the same things that I had
and to let him pick his path in life
and what he wants to do.
Hey, does he wanna work with animals?
Does he wanna work in the city?
Either way.
But I wanna make sure
that he at least has that childhood growing up.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to give him a life that I think he'd love.
It is not easy at all to be out here
feeling that you're missing everything
that your son's doing for the first time.
I'll never be able to get that back.
When I get back, I'll have to reintroduce myself.
I'm gonna get there, he's gonna be like--
he's gonna look at his mom
just like, who the heck is this?
The whole point of this is to show him
that quitting isn't always an option
and to push through the hard times.
Once we reattach this leg,
it'll look something like that.
That's better now. I'll fix it.
Let's see.
Ya!
I just lit my [bleep] shelter on fire.
That's not good.
Ah, we're gonna have to fix that
real [bleep] quick!
Oh, !
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[bleep] you. [bleep] you!
Nope. Nope.
This ain't happening.
Oh, .
Holy !
- Welcome to "Alone: Tales from the Arctic."
I'm Colby Donaldson
here with Roland, Mark, Callie, Joel, and Kielyn,
discussing everything they just went through.
Before we get into Joel's tap-out
and find out what he's doing now,
let's talk about day 40.
Now that winter has set in,
a lot of you are seeing that those food resources
are beginning to dry up.
Joel, how much of a factor is that,
in terms of just the resources and how they change
as winter sets in?
- They change pretty drastically,
and it was almost like a light switch went off.
I noticed a drastic increase in predators.
Look at that--four, five toes.
Part of the weasel family.
We'll have to keep an eye out for him.
To think of all this work and calories
that I'm using to lose to a wolverine.
Be devastating.
Rabbits were blending in with the environment,
so they were much more challenging to see and hunt,
but the fish seemed to still be active for me,
so that was always my go-to.
Good old fish eggs.
- Mark and Callie, you two have a similar thing going on
in what Mark describes as karma.
Okay, Callie,
you let the weasel live to see another day,
and Mark releases that fox
that was in his snare.
Do you feel like, Callie,
you know, there is something in your actions
when you're out there and how the world gives back?
- I certainly believe that we reap what we sow,
and any relationship I'm in,
whether it's with a person
or animals or the land,
I want it to be in balance,
and I want to be giving as much as I'm receiving,
and so I wasn't there just to take everything I could.
I wanted to also be a caretaker
of that land as well.
- Mark, do you agree with Callie
that, you know, releasing that fox from your snare
had a direct effect
on you then later catching some fish that day?
- Yeah, absolutely.
What I thought was exactly what Callie described.
Doing the right thing,
and the right thing is gonna come back to you,
and it was just absolutely evident there,
so it was good.
- One of my favorite parts of the episode
was when we get the "Cribs"-style tour
of your home there,
and knowing how much you cared about
and the pride you took in your shelter,
it had to be a major blow when that thing caught fire.
- . - Tell me about that.
- Yeah, when that thing caught fire, it was game on,
because I spent a long time and a lot of work
and a lot of energy making that thing,
so right when I saw that roof on fire,
it was time to take action.
- Well, and the truth is, you know,
the longer you guys are out there,
your shelter basically becomes a big tinderbox.
All the material you're using just continues to dry out.
Roland, does that play a factor
in determining what type of shelter
and how you build your structure from the outset?
- Yes, it does, Colby.
It has a lot to do with living in the woods.
Everything I do in camp,
the way I move around camp and work in camp
all reflect a healthy respect for fire.
- Let's switch the conversation to big game for a bit.
Roland, now that you have the musk ox,
you must be feeling pretty positive at this point, right?
- Oh, yeah, it was a high.
It's probably the greatest kill of my whole life.
Oh, Lordy!
Lordy Lord!
Mwah!
- Let's talk about that brain for a second.
For anyone who hasn't brain-tanned an animal,
how important is it to have that resource?
- Stuff you can do with brains is real important
in long-term survival,
and 100 days is long-term.
I mean, it's a good asset.
- And, Kielyn, speaking of big game,
we've now missed two opportunities with moose.
How frustrating is that for you?
- It's frustrating, but it's also a part of it.
You know, I came into this whole experience
knowing that I was not a big game hunter.
Just practicing.
But that I was willing to take as many opportunities
and use strategies to get big game.
You know, I've been calling moose since day one.
So it's not just happening upon these moose.
You know, I've been working towards those encounters
and the timing so far hasn't lined up for me yet.
- Yeah.
Callie, where do you stand
on the need for big game
in this entire experience and process?
- Yeah, I mean, I was hoping for big game,
I think, like everybody, because it's huge security
to have that much food laid in,
and there's endless resources on a big game animal,
but you know, big game does come
with a mixed blessing, though.
If I got a big game animal, then at that point,
all of my energy would be going towards protecting it,
so it's definitely, you know, a mixed bag.
I'm here with Roland, Mark, Callie, Joel, and Kielyn.
Joel, expand on the comment you made in this episode,
when you said everything in the Arctic wants your food.
- It really humbles you.
When you're out in the environment
where you feel like you're a little out of your depth
and you know, these animals, these wolverines
thrive in this type of environment.
All that effort
that I put into building an elevated structure,
not even an issue for him.
Man, what a tough place to keep food
on the outside.
I really was in their territory,
and they knew exactly what they were doing,
where I was learning a lot as I was going.
- Well, and you knew there was a wolverine in the area
even before he got into your food cache.
I mean, you even made an alarm for him.
Here is some never-before-seen footage
of you doing just that. Let's take a look.
- So this is a musk ox carcass,
and I spooked a wolverine eating on it today,
and I couldn't get that on camera.
But this is a fresh kill,
and it's not very far from my shelter,
and I'm kind of hoping to use that to my advantage,
because I'd hunt the wolverine for meat.
I think he's gonna come back
and try and get the marrow out of these rib bones.
I'm gonna take all these bones...
Kind of put them in a pile...
And then I'm gonna use the two tin cans that I found today,
put a couple pebbles inside,
and I'm gonna put this on top of the carcass.
I'm hoping that that'll alert me,
and I can come out and take a shot.
I think he's gonna come back. I really do.
- All right, Joel,
did the wolverine ever trigger your alarm?
- No. No, the wolverine never triggered the alarm.
I figured that he might have been scared off of the area
and wouldn't come back, but man, was I wrong.
- Yeah.
Roland, you took a totally different approach
to the food cache.
Where did you come up with the design idea for the meat crib?
- Well, that's just engineered out of my own head.
It had to be something nothing could penetrate.
It had to be bulletproof.
The platform thing I knew would give me problems.
- Well, I've got to say,
that is indicative of Roland's experience
in the northern bush,
and it is my lack of experience with wolverine.
I honestly underestimated the animal, and...
Hey!
Yeah, it was a failure,
and I definitely learned from it.
- Well, and at this point, you know,
all of you are ruminating on family.
How strong is that pull back home?
Mark, I'll start with you.
- So when it comes to survival,
you want food, water, shelter, fire.
You could care less about family,
especially in the beginning.
What's going through my head?
Work, work, work, work, work.
That's what's going through my head.
But the longer you're out there,
the more you miss what you already have,
which is those relationships,
and talking to stuff like that.
- And what viewers don't realize,
if they've never done something like this,
is that one day
feels like the longest day
you've ever experienced in your life,
but it does give you so much time
to dwell on things that are important
to you in your life.
- Well, and continuing on with that, Joel,
in terms of introspection,
a million dollars is a lot of money.
But at some point in this experience,
does it become maybe less important
than it was when you first arrived out there?
- Yes.
I did have a lot of introspection out there
and realized I have it so good.
I have health. I have a family that loves me.
The money would have just been the cherry on top,
but I knew that either way, when I go home,
I need to count all my blessings,
because I am rich in every way.
- Joel, tell us about that process of transitioning back
after 40 days of being out there.
- Oh, that process is absolutely miserable.
When you're out there,
you tap into a total different level of consciousness,
where you feel so alive
in a way that you've never felt before,
and when you get put back into this environment,
you feel so overstimulated.
All you want to do is just clutch onto that feeling
that you had out there,
and everything in the modern world
is just slowly trying to suck it back out of you.
That, I deal with every day,
you know, and I'll probably deal with it for a long time.
It's a constant battle.
- Looking back on this experience,
any regrets or anything you might have done differently?
- I wish I had just laid down
and just waited it out
and maybe pushed out another ten days.
- Kielyn, what did you think, watching this show,
when you saw Joel tap out?
- I felt for him,
because it could have happened to any of us,
and you are out there, and you are doing it,
and you made the best decision.
I think you should be really proud of yourself.
- Thanks, Ki. That means a lot.
- Well, that is it for "Alone: Tales from the Arctic."
I'd like to thank Roland, Mark, Callie, Joel, and Kielyn.
We'll be speaking with the participants all season long
after each episode,
so make sure you stay tuned in for that.
Until then, and as promised,
here's a sneak peek at next week's episode
of "Alone: Million Dollar Challenge."
- I really want to track this porcupine,
but we got a wolf.
There's a lot of competition for food.
- The fox.
It's not afraid of me.
Go away! Go away!
- Uh-oh.
Huge prints. Lynx.
Damn!
He found my cache.
- Did I just hear a wolf?