- I gotta get moved in.
I didn't think I would be this far in
and no long-term shelter finished.
Feeling winter gaining on me.
It was right there.
- Four rabbits!
I am so thankful for this four-rabbit day.
- !
My body's not giving me what I need anymore.
- I am officially tapping out.
I'm not certain how I'm gonna move on from here.
- I just lit my shelter on fire.
Holy !
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.
- A hundred days in the Arctic is no joke.
If they can endure,
they'll will the biggest prize ever:
$1 million.
- Whoa! - Holy !
- 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.
- Holy !
This is "Alone: Million Dollar Challenge."
- They're just surrounding my shelter.
- Oh, !
I just lit my shelter on fire.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, nope.
Nope, this ain't happening.
No, no, no, no, no.
Get the [bleep] away
from my [bleep]damn shelter.
Nope.
Go burn somewhere else, bitch!
Whoo!
Holy !
Whoo!
Oh, my God.
I think that should burn out.
Yeah, that just happened.
Well, we've got...
A patch missing out of my shelter now.
Pretty big one that's still smoking up here.
What happened was all this soot sticks
to these dried moss and dried pine needles,
and an ember went up, and it just lit everything up.
Doesn't help that it's so damn windy, either.
That...just made for a very interesting night.
Talk about fighting fire with your freaking hands.
Man.
That's not how I'm going out. [bleep] that.
Oh, God.
Oh, man.
Here I'm, like, freaking out and seeing things, but...
I had to stop that. That would've been it.
That would've been my story.
So tomorrow...
I'll be fixing that, obviously.
That's priority number one now.
You gotta be so careful out here.
And obviously I'm not using the same materials
I used last time.
So Max can't really talk right now, right?
He's only, like, a year and two months old.
But he has a lot to say in my head.
Every morning, he tells me-- he says, "Dad, get up."
And immediately, I get out of bed.
Um...
I don't feel the best, but that makes me happy.
Last night was the coldest night
'cause I'm missing a really huge chunk
out of my shelter right now.
So we got some remodeling to do.
Gonna have to start with taking down my drying rack.
If you wanna stay out here
and you wanna make it to the end,
you gotta do whatever it takes.
And we haven't even hit November yet.
It's just tough being out here, you know?
It's work 24/7, which-- kinda what I expected.
But I'm gonna try and push through it and overcome.
So probably gonna use this tarp over this spot
because the embers won't catch the tarp on fire.
And with a tarp,
the soot won't really stick to it that easily.
And even if it does,
it's easy to clean off and wipe off.
Not gonna lie. Pretty tired right now.
I'm gonna take a break. I gotta warm my hands up.
Haven't been stretching much.
It's kinda tough to do when it's no good flat spot
and you can't put your hands on the ground.
Then I'll do...
Just stretch the arms out.
Pull the shoulders down.
Tilt the neck a little bit.
Reach the fingers out. Oh, yeah.
Roll the wrist in circles.
Roll the shoulders.
Feel that open up the chest.
Never been to a yoga class or anything, by the way.
But I've had girlfriends that do yoga, so.
This is like that, right?
I'm putting a lot of work into this shelter right now,
but it's a tough balance in my priorities
between protecting myself from the elements
with this shelter
and trying to obtain all the meat that I need--
fatty meat, hopefully,
to keep my weight up.
I'm getting fed.
Got lots of hare...
and that could probably keep me going,
but it's not gonna keep me going while working hard.
And from the beginning, I felt myself losing weight,
and it doesn't seem to matter how much I eat.
I'm definitely losing weight out here,
and I'm expending a lot of energy,
and it's starting to get tough.
Either I get extreme fatigue or I get crampy.
All right, break time.
It bothers me that I'm losing weight this early in the game.
There's gonna be constant work to do.
I'm gonna have to cut up more trees and logs
and haul brush to work on my shelter.
And I feel like I'm sort of in a race against myself
with this weakening body.
Got some damn good-looking logs coming in, though.
I've got three ready to go
on top of what you see right here.
So that's gonna get us up another...foot and a half.
But as long as I can maintain the strength
to get this shelter built
and then keep bringing in enough food
to just maintain and stay warm,
I don't think this is a problem for me.
I'm feeling hungry last few days.
I've been eating less and less fish,
and I've been losing a lot of my body fat.
I need some other game
so I can have a real stash of food for the long haul.
'Cause I do have some fish,
but how long will that last, you know?
Bunny tracks over here.
When I was growing up in El Salvador,
I will go to the countryside to snare iguanas,
and that's when I started learning to hunt.
So I wanna give it a try that way.
Oh, somebody walked through here.
That looks like a fox.
Right next to the shelter.
That's not good.
There is a lot of competition in the area.
There's a lot of animals that would love to get
their hands on my food.
I don't have a spear,
and it's one of the things that I wanted to do
from the beginning.
I wanna use it just in case a big predator
is trying to get into my shelter.
I could have at least a spear to hold them off,
'cause anything can happen like that so quick,
and it's just seconds.
I hear a rabbit in my snare.
I gotta really hurry up.
I bet a fox right now is looking for it.
Come on.
My first snare worked.
Let's get in the shelter before...
before we get another animal
in here because of the crying sound of this guy.
Somebody else might want my bunny.
Like a fox.
Wow, what a rush.
My first snare.
Yes! More food.
More food, more days here.
Wow.
- Good morning.
Guess what I'm chewing on.
I like to chew on a little spruce,
you know, and brush my teeth with it.
It's great, and now my mouth feels fresh and clean.
Thanks, spruce.
All right, clean mouth. Gotta start the day off right.
Let's go on an adventure.
I'm kinda curious to see
if there's any fresh tracks around the lake.
I'm catching a lot of rabbits, and I'm eating really well,
but I'm still losing weight too.
There's not a ton of fat on the rabbits
and that's the thing I'm worried about,
is not getting enough fat to eat.
Having fat is necessary to make it to 100 days.
What do we got here? Some tracks.
Okay, so I think this is my good friend Mr. Porcupine.
Porcupines have a bunch of fat on them.
This could help fuel me for the winter.
Wait a minute.
There is another line of tracks coming in.
That is very interesting.
Check this out. Guess who else we got?
Wolf.
So I really wanna track this porcupine,
but we got a wolf going the same way.
Hopefully, we can catch up to him.
There's a lot of competition for food.
All the animals around here wanna eat.
So here we go.
I gotta just make sure I'm not overlooking anything.
Being out here,
I feel like I've kind of dropped back
into another time,
and I think of the ancestors often
now that it's getting cold
and getting a little bit harder
because I know that the ancestors
went through some really hard times,
but they made it through,
and they didn't have a red button to push.
They had to keep going. They give me so much strength.
Yeah, the tracking's way harder in here.
His tracks...
just get totally covered up...
by all this rabbit.
See, now, I don't see where a porcupine goes.
Darn.
I was really hopeful, but there's another porcupine,
so I can come back up here
and hope for some fresh tracks.
And in the meantime,
I'm just gonna set a few more snares up here.
- I have some work to do today.
It was late when madness happened outside.
Fox.
He's not afraid of me.
Go away. Go away.
Go away! !
He don't care.
Can't believe he walked just in front of me like nothing.
Do not come back here. The bunny's mine.
Whoo! He doesn't wanna go away.
He knows that there's food here.
He's coming this way now.
Do not come back for my food over here.
Come on, I'm telling you.
Holy , man, this fox.
Sorry guys, but I'm starting to feel
like this fox might be a danger for me.
That's right.
You don't listen.
Do not come back here.
That was getting too close.
Yeah, I think that will deter the fox.
Might make him a little more scared of humans.
Just surrounding me, stalking me like that--
that's too much.
- 40 days is the longest
I've been out in the wilderness.
That was with Dave.
Big difference, though, being alone.
I don't like it.
Dave and I have been married for eight years.
We have created a homestead together.
We do everything together.
It's what actually sparked us to start our business.
Oh, I miss his hugs.
Today I miss his hugs.
So now, one of the most significant experiences
in my life is without him.
And that's a hard pill to swallow.
Yeah, I just feel lonely. Just have to keep busy.
Let's go and check the traps.
My whole story has been about
failing at the moose, failing at the fish.
Failing at the moose again, failing at the fish again.
Then sprinkle in a couple rabbits.
My will-- my will is slipping.
Okay. I'm back up to my snares.
Damn it!
Bad news. Someone found...
Found my catch.
Ugh!
Damn it!
Ugh, another one!
Look.
Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
How serious this can be.
I'm finding it hard to be motivated now.
I don't have anyone here to hold my hand
and anyone to tell me it's gonna be okay
and anyone to show me the way.
It's all me, and that's a scary thought.
It's the first time that I actually want to be home.
One bunny left.
I really miss Dave.
I know this is super weird, but...
I'm just really a huggy person.
I like to hold hands.
I like to kiss.
But here, the only time I've touched something living
is when I'm about to kill it.
To have no...
You know...
no physical contact is, uh--it's just...
it's like a...
An emptiness that just sort of slowly appears.
And you realize, you know, something's missing.
- Can't somebody invent a snagless zipper?
It's, like, one in five times I use a zipper,
it gets hung up on something.
But it's nice to have this clean, dry rock
to stand on for changing my clothes.
Man, so much luxury in this space.
Definitely wanna line my floor in big, flat stones like this.
I'm gonna do that. That's my goal.
Have the first shelter on "Alone" that requires a broom.
Go out, check my snares again.
Might have another hare. We'll see.
Oh, we got a hare.
This is a beautiful guy right here.
Kind of ideal size.
All frozen up.
I'm gonna throw this guy in my front pocket and take off.
Oh, there's another hare.
Holy smokes, it's still alive.
Dang, that's not what I want.
Sorry, dude, but thank you for your life.
Hoo, another hare this morning.
Unfortunately, another one that I'm gonna have to dispatch
out here in the field.
This isn't pretty. I don't like this part--
taking of a life-- but I'm extremely grateful,
and this is with purpose here.
I do need to eat, and being able to put away
more food is something that I feel very fortunate to do.
All right, one last snare to check.
And another hare. Holy moly.
It's a four-hare day. Holy smokes.
I think it's a lucky day. It's a beautiful, lucky day.
I think there's a lot of wisdom in just consuming
the nourishment that you have on hand
and not trying to ration it out,
and phrasing it as "keeping your momentum."
I definitely gotta keep my momentum.
Without my momentum,
I don't think I'll keep bringing in food.
I'll just start tapering off on all fronts.
Did I just hear a wolf?
Can you hear that?
Oh, .
That just unleashed, like, so many potentials of, like,
what other mysteries lie out here for me.
I wonder if I should be scared of wolves--
scared of wolves coming and trying to get my bunnies.
Thinking about dealing with the predators,
there's a potential that they could be
a threat to my safety.
But the best thing I can do is just cross that bridge
when you come to it, and if you have to,
you take down that animal.
I'm gonna have a hard time killing a wolf,
except in a moment of desperation
or maybe for $1 million.
- Man, I had a [bleep] up dream
that I woke up from a little while ago.
It was about the drag races, which I do with my dad.
For some reason, the track was set up so the finish line
was at the end where the spectators are,
which is never the case.
And I was there with, like, all the "Alone" participants,
who were talking about, like, whether they could make it.
'Cause it's very possible that no one makes it 100 days.
Is not trying worth giving up $1 million?
No.
The thing I think I'd be most proud to finish
is this shelter.
Like, if I'm gonna finish one thing out here
before it gets really, really cold and windy
and that lake's frozen, it's gotta be that.
But whatever the opposite of energized is--
spent, pooped, bushed, whatever that is--
I'm feeling it, man.
Not too much higher to go on this little side.
Oh, that sucks.
I can just feel it.
My stomach is taking so long
to digest these protein-rich meals that I'm trying to eat.
And I go out and feel like I should be energized,
and I just crash.
Oh, yup.
Legs are wobbly again. What's going on?
My stomach's, like...
"You should lay down."
Oh, the change is occurring.
I'm becoming lethargic.
It's what I am.
At this point, I'm attributing it to the hare
takes energy from me while I'm digesting it,
which I think is a pretty safe hypothesis.
I've got a lot of hard work to do here.
It's, like, if I don't have the energy
to do that effectively, I just can't do it.
That's the bottom line.
And that's not a scenario that I think is viable.
- Hands are warmed up.
Toes are cold.
Exercise the toes.
We're doing toe exercises right now.
And a one, and a two, and a three, and a four.
And a one, and a two,
and a three, and a four.
, you going insane out here.
Fixing my shelter took a lot of energy.
My body is just shot.
I feel tired for everything.
It has been so much work.
I mean, it's got its rewards. Don't get me wrong.
Looking at my home right now, that makes me happy.
But nobody to talk to.
You're sitting out here; you start wondering.
You're like, "Why? Why am I doing this?"
And my reasoning for doing this
is to not quit.
But every single stinking day is rough.
Man, I'm tired!
So I've noticed that I keep getting more and more hungry.
And I have food. And I'm starving.
But I'm hungry. I don't know.
It's just, like, I can't stop the hunger.
And to kinda put it into perspective for you,
for breakfast, I had fish.
I had dried fish.
An entire fillet.
Like, an entire side of a fish, not just a fillet.
I've tried to ration things out.
And I keep eating. And I keep eating.
And it's, like, I can't get enough.
So it's not a good situation.
I've had to think about it a lot, obviously,
and I'm, like, "Whew, come on, come on.
Get your head in the game. Get your head in the game."
All it takes is all you get, but...
I'm not sure I'm willing to give it everything that I have
to be able to stay out here.
And it's the-- it sounds bad, right?
It sounds real bad.
This whole thing is, "Hey, don't quit.
Don't quit."
But...
You miss everything.
Everything that you want, you already have.
That's a good feeling.
So I don't know.
Tomorrow, I'm hoping, is gonna be better,
and we'll see what happens.
One day at a time.
- I can see why people die of a lonely heart.
Day 100, it just seems so far off.
- I am eating more. I'm eating a lot.
I'm eating basically as much as I have time
to process in a day, but I have to reckon with
the potential reality that I don't have a high likelihood
of being the last person standing out here.
I know my body really well. And I push my body.
And this is getting to the point
where I'm actually worried about my health.
Coming out here and pushing my body
to a point where I may do harm to myself,
that's putting my pride over my son.
- You guys aren't disappointed, are you?
Hi.
I've been feeling myself getting smaller and weaker,
and the days have gotten difficult.
And I just feel my body isn't getting what it needs
to be all it can be, and I wanna be--
I wanna be 100% me, so.
I wanna walk away in good health,
and I wanna come home to my family and friends whole.
You know?
With or without a bunch of money.
I of course love the idea of leaving victorious
with, you know, my best buds showing up
and congratulating me on winning
and maybe $1 million richer.
I really think that the way I was building my shelter
was the way to do it in the long run,
but I needed more fuel
to power myself through that project.
But I'm just working with what seems realistic right now,
and I'm not gonna be the guy that comes out here
who's just so full of pride that I'm just gonna try
to push through real physical hardship to the point
of doing myself harm.
I'm just not gonna do that.
- There's a lot of good books
written about northern Labrador.
It makes you--it's a--
makes you romanticize going there...
if you like that sort of hardship.
Actually, there's a book called
"The Lure of the Labrador Wild."
It's how we got our name for our company,
Lure of the North.
That's how we feel about the north.
It has this pull.
It'll bite your head off if you're not careful,
but it'll also provide for you what you need.
I gotta keep pushing today.
Kinda running low on energy,
but it takes energy to make energy.
Despite all my talk about being lonely,
I think I just need to just come to terms
with what I was feeling.
And I'm just going through a moment, that's all.
Hmm.
Is that a bunny? What is that?
That's excellent. I got a rabbit.
Means there's still alive bunnies around.
Good start to the day.
So I've been thinking about stoicism.
Specifically, stoicism is about action,
and it's about setting yourself up
to overcome obstacles
and then having the will to endure and persist.
Whoa.
All right, guys. I came across another one.
That's two for the day.
All right, all right.
And to try everything that you can to overcome the obstacle,
and if you can't, then see the good in the bad.
Ay, caramba. I get another one.
Holy shmoly. That's three today.
Very grateful.
Really grateful.
And that, to me, is stoicism.
Good day on the line.
Three bunnies.
Let's skin a rabbit.
Nice amount of stomach fat on this one.
That's nothing to scoff at. You see all that?
It's quite a bit.
Hopefully that means good things
for the arms and behind the shoulders.
Just trying to keep all the fat on this body, not the skin.
There's still hope for me, guys.
- Do you guys ever, like, talk to yourselves?
What I mean by that is, like,
"Man, what do I gotta do today? Okay, I gotta do this.
Gotta do that. Da-da-da."
Right? You talk to yourself.
I do that all the time.
But yesterday, I'm sitting there...
And I was, like, arguing with myself.
And you're, like, "Hmm, is that normal?"
I don't know.
But I bet everybody that goes insane
thinks they're sane, right?
I'm doing this for Max,
but been miserable for quite a long time out here,
and I'm trying to stay happy about it,
but when you catch yourself talking to yourself
a little bit too much and you're just not smiling
and not having fun, it wears on you.
Max, man, this is rough.
And I'm sorry,
but buddy, I'm coming home to see you.
And I'm not sorry about that.
Hey, this is Mark,
and, uh, I'm officially tapping out.
Fox.
You coming to thank me?
You coming to thank me for letting you go?
Yeah, you're welcome.
Did a lot of good things, and I'm tired.
I'll let the fox have the rabbits.
Hey, that way.
Keep heading west.
Well, here it is.
Bittersweet moment to see you guys.
This experience has been, for me,
what with Max,
there's a lot of things I'm missing, that I missed.
Him walking for the first time;
him talking, saying different things.
'Cause at his age,
it's been a struggle to be away from everything.
The whole reason why I'm doing this was to show my son
what it's like to do something really hard and not quit.
But I want my son to know that it is okay to quit something
when you are worried about your health.
You gotta be smart enough to know when to call it.
Push yourself as hard as you can,
and then make sure that you're happy with your decision.
I remember saying when I came out here,
"I'd rather die than quit."
No, I wouldn't.
I'd rather live.
I wanna go back and appreciate all the little things
I never appreciated before.
Pain, misery, and suffering.
I've dealt with it enough.
I'm done.
- Trick or treat!
I'm a porcupine!
Happy Halloween.
I'm honoring-- honoring the porcupine,
because that is who first greeted me here
and gave me food to eat on this land,
so I'm a porcupine for Halloween.
Good evening and happy Halloween.
So I'm burning an outside fire to celebrate the ancestors,
and I'm having an ancestor feast.
I'm putting a whole rabbit in the pot.
I'm gonna eat this whole rabbit tonight.
No porcupine, but I'm so thankful for the rabbits.
Just really taking care of me in a big way.
To me, Halloween's, like, a celebration
of the life-death cycle, and honoring all the ancestors
and all the ones that have passed.
And death has been a pretty big part of my life
because two of my brothers have died.
So it's, like, whatever you lose
you don't take it for granted anymore,
and I just love my family so much.
And they're on my mind today.
Connecting to the rabbits, to the porcupine,
to my brothers, and all my friends and family
that have passed on and all my ancestors
that I haven't met before.
It's such a powerful realization, you know?
Like, there's all these conveniences,
and they're all nice,
but there's something missing from it.
And that thing that's missing is right here.
It's a connection. It's a relationship.
It's a depth.
And it's here, and it's in this rabbit,
and it's in this fire, and it's in this land.
And I feel more free than I've ever felt
because I get to do what I love.
I love my family,
but I'm loving this alone time, you know?
I just know that the longer I am away,
the sweeter it's gonna be when I see them again.
Because this is an opportunity to go deep.
Deeper into the wild, deeper into myself,
and I want to suck the marrow out of that.
I wanna go as deep as I can.
All right, that looks like a good dinner to me.
We are having a party tonight. Oh, yeah.
I got so many people that I love and care about,
and I wanna do good for them.
The prize money, it wouldn't just benefit me.
It'd benefit my family,
my friends.
I just can't say it enough.
I am just getting started out here.
- Welcome to "Alone: Tales from the Arctic."
I'm Colby Donaldson,
here with Mark, Callie, Joe,
Amós, and Kielyn.
There is so much to discuss.
Two tap outs. Wolves.
Amós and his run-in with a fox--but first, Mark.
Let's talk about that shelter fire.
- And so, I look up.
I see my shelter's on fire.
And I'd like to turn around
and just start being able to fight it immediately,
but I grab the camera, I get to my door,
finally get it untied, get outside.
So I chuck the camera in the snow,
and luckily, I got a good enough angle.
You guys could kinda see what was going on.
- Yep.
- This is not happening.
Go burn somewhere else, bitch!
- Mark, at one point, you said,
"That would've been my story."
Specifically what did you mean by that?
- If it goes up and all my equipment's in there,
I would not have been able to continue on,
especially my safety equipment.
Stuff like this is still smoldering.
So that would've been my story.
I would've been done at day 40.
- Yeah.
Callie, you're really starting to see signs of predators.
You know, in the porcupine tracks,
there are wolf tracks following those.
Is it any coincidence that you were starting to see
more competition for the food at this point?
- I don't think it's a coincidence.
Winter's really coming on strong,
so all the wild animals are feeling that pressure.
They all know how much work it takes
to be able to stay there for the arctic winter.
And they wanna get all the food that they can,
so it's no surprise that we're all seeing
more and more sign of predators.
- Amós, that was a pretty bold fox
you had an encounter with there.
Talk us through that.
Tell us what was going on in your head
just with his behavior.
You know, he didn't-- he didn't seem
very frightened of you, that's for sure.
But the fox and everybody else out there is looking for food.
And he knew there was a fresh kill on-site.
So I didn't want the fox to just stick around.
I seen examples of previous participants
losing a lot of their food to animals like the fox.
- Yeah, that little bunny buster
put a pretty good wall up on him.
I mean, he went down there for a second.
I think he's gonna remember that shot for sure.
- I told you that was going to hurt.
You don't listen.
- Kie, you were also experiencing animals wanting
and ultimately taking some of your rabbits from the snares.
How frustrating is that?
- Yeah, I was actually surprised
that it hadn't happened sooner.
I had over 200 snares
out on my line.
And thankfully, I had a rabbit back at camp already.
- Yeah.
There was a moment there which was
one of the most vivid explanations
and really hit home for me and I'm sure many other viewers
when you described life out there and you said,
the only time you touch something living
is right before you kill it.
How does that affect you mentally and emotionally
in a situation like that?
- I'm very much all about connection--
connection with the land, the animals,
and people, and...
I was feeling like I needed someone to talk to
besides the camera, and, um,
the bunny just, you know, reminded me so much of my cat.
And, you know, just holding that paw of that bunny
was some sort of comfort for me.
- Right.
Okay, Joe, at this point in the episode,
clearly, the lack of progress with your shelter
is beginning to weigh on you a little bit.
At what point did you realize that you might've
made a mistake in terms of that balancing act--
you know, taking a little bit more time to build the shelter
than maybe you should have?
- I think as I--my energy level started to decline,
I really recognized that carrying around
these heavy logs wasn't as tenable of an option
as it had been earlier on.
- I know hindsight's 20/20,
but if you had to do it all over again,
is there anything you would've done differently?
- You know, if I could shift a few things around timewise,
I would've liked to have gotten my gillnet in the water
and stockpiled more food.
But if I could do it all over again,
I don't think my decisions
would've been that much different.
And I think that deciding to leave when I did
was the right choice for me.
- All these months later,
are you still at peace with your decision to tap out?
- I'm at peace with it-- I mean, I definitely
have played the "should've would've could've" game,
but ultimately, when I decided to leave,
what played the biggest part in that
was not wanting to fully deplete myself.
- Well, we were glad to have you on the show.
Mark, 40-some odd days in, and you're starting to note
that you're getting a little crazy out there.
Shed some light on that.
- The longer you're out there, the more
you're just gonna be yourself and you joke around more.
But when I caught myself arguing with myself,
I was like, pshh, stop.
Let me think about this. Okay, that's not right.
I'm gonna stop cussing.
They wanna--you're a good man.
Except when my shelter catches on fire.
What the ?
- Callie, any psychological effects starting to--
to weigh in or take effect on you at this point?
40-some odd days in?
- Oh, yeah, but I would say it's a positive one,
and one that I would welcome.
It was a huge transformative process,
and I feel like it takes about that long
to start dropping into that mental space.
- Mark, it seemed like a big part of this experience
wasn't just about your son, but also a lot of it for you
had to do with your fellow Recon marines.
You even took the time to carve out
the five paragraphs of the Recon creed.
And we have that in some never-before-seen footage.
Let's take a look at that.
- I made a Recon Jack. It's the one that's on my arm.
Something in the Recon community
guys get if they've earned it.
That's my Jack.
Recon sniper.
But it's little things like that
that I look at and I'm like,
man, you're doing this for more than yourself.
So the Recon creed--
I'm carving it into the wood.
Never shall I forget the principles I accepted
to become a Reconnaissance marine--
honor, perseverance, spirit, and heart,
conquering all obstacles built large and small.
I shall never quit.
There it is--
all five paragraphs of the Recon creed,
written out in tablets on wood.
Forever shall I strive to maintain
the tremendous reputation of those who went before me.
- Mark, what is your reaction to that?
- You know, while you're out there,
you've gotta do things that motivate you--
my son, priority number one,
but then also what I've achieved
and what I've done in the past in the military,
and carving that creed out with my knife,
and I made sure that I was abiding by it,
'cause I am representing not only myself,
but all Recon marines and scout snipers.
- And what does that creed mean to you
in the context of the "Alone" experience?
- To never quit,
to surpass failure,
to overcome, to adapt.
- You seem to be doing pretty good out there.
And then all of a sudden,
you being to say you're tired and exhausted.
Was there a pivot point? What--
I know there was some deterioration there.
Take us through that.
- Man, day 35 was such a game changer physically for me.
My energy levels plummeted
and it started getting difficult to breathe.
I had a pain on the right side of my back.
And my vision was going. I thought it was my diet.
And so I knew that I couldn't sustain at this rate.
And it's a pretty humbling experience to be able
to know yourself well enough to quit when I did.
- So once you get back to base camp,
your journey didn't end there.
Take us through sort of what transpired after the evac.
- My liver and my spleen were enlarged and infected
and I had fluid behind my right lung.
They told me that my heart was in the condition
of an 87-year-old man who's had a massive heart attack.
So it turns out that I had trichinosis,
a parasite that can go from not that big of a deal to,
it'll kill you in four to six weeks.
And that's what had put it into perspective
that I am super grateful that I left when I did.
I'm lucky to be sitting here
and be able to see my son every single day,
so I couldn't be happier about my decision.
- Wow, ended up being the exact right call to make.
For sure.
That's it for "Alone: Tales from the Arctic."
I'd like to thank Mark, Callie, Joe,
Amós, and Kielyn.
We'll be speaking with the participants all season long
following the shows, so make sure you tune in for that.
Until next week, as promised,
here's a sneak peek of that episode.
We'll see you then.
- All right, well, I guess I gotta try fishing.
Oh! !
- I need fish.
I need this ice to come in.
This is so risky.
- Holy .
- Muskox everywhere.
- No, no, no, no, no.
They're surrounding my shelter.