JOHNNY: Java, come here.
You need to let me know if you want to come or not.
What do you want to do?
Do you want to go with, or do you want to go in the cabin?
All right, that's her answer.
I'm going solo today.
JOHNNY: I've gone ice fishing on the lakes that surround my camp
with no success.
So, the goal is to get back out on these lakes and I wanna
try different methods.
It's challenging to be persistent and stay at it.
There's no guarantees of when and where your food is.
But this point, failure isn't an option.
I'm finding my place within the food chain and proving to
the land that this is where I belong.
JOHNNY: So, I landed here,
I'm about 200 yards from the shore.
And there's a little bit of an inlet river
that comes into this lake,
and my understanding is that a lot of migratory fish
like to hang around the mouths of rivers.
So, I'm gonna try fishing that mouth right here.
JOHNNY: Instead of hovering over just one hole and jigging,
this time, I want to put out lines that do
the fishing for me.
And they're called set lines.
I think that's clear enough, so I'm gonna start drilling a
hole with an auger.
The beauty is I can set multiple of them.
That way they're fishing 24 hours around the clock
and you just wait for the fish to come by, snag that bait,
and hope that the fish will be on the end of that line when
you come back.
So, I have cordage here, and I also have a stick.
And the plan here is to make a set line.
These fish eat off the bottom, but nobody passes up a meal,
especially out in this place.
You know, everything out here is just dying to live and
hanging on to life.
So, I'm just like them.
Trying to get a meal.
I got a lot more to set, so I'm gonna work my way down
towards shore and make a lot more of these.
There's multiple reasons why catching a fish would be
a huge success.
So, to catch a nice, oily, fatty fish
and be able to have that food source
consistently throughout the winter would be paramount.
A very peculiar workout.
They don't have this at the gym.
The other thing it's gonna do,
it's gonna tell me the patterns,
the movements, when they feed, what they feed on.
It's education because I am new out here
at trying to track these fish down.
[exhales heavily]
Whew, that's what I'm talking about.
That's what I call a new man.
Splash a bunch of cold water on your face and you come out
feeling like a new man.
I don't know if it's something I need to prove to myself,
I don't know if it's something I need to prove to the arctic,
either way, I'm not coming home until I have a fish.
JESSI: Everybody wants to succeed.
And that's truly all I want to do out here,
is be successful.
I want to do everything that I can to live this lifestyle.
[laughing]
CHRIS: Awesome.
Wow, this snow is really deep.
JESSI: Yeah, it is.
CHRIS: Well, I figure we're headed in the right spot.
I see where those two hills come together,
and we're supposed to follow where the crack of where those two hills
come together and there should be a totally vacant cabin.
JESSI: Okay, so we need to go right about that way, right?
CHRIS: Yeah, there should be an old trail that punches through.
I'm not sure exactly where it's--
I mean it hasn't been used in 40 or 50 years,
so I'll probably just kinda go up and down looking for a way
to punch in and then we'll just punch through the woods.
JESSI: Okay.
Try not to buck me off!
CHRIS: It's been a pretty piss-poor hunting season.
We've hardly seen anything for animals.
The last time I was back in town my dad told me that
there's a six-sided cabin a couple miles upriver from here
from way back in the 70s.
He said there's always tons of moose sign,
there's always beaver and lots of stuff to trap out there.
This could be a wild goose chase,
but at this point we don't have an option.
The only way to survive out here is to push out farther.
Look at all these willow branches,
they're all chewed off up here.
Let's pop up on top and just kinda see what we can see.
Wow, this is gonna be tough to get up here, huh?
Wow, holy moose prints up here.
Wow, check it out.
All through here, wow.
That's a really good sign.
I haven't seen moose up here in, like, five years.
JESSI: This is super promising, for sure.
CHRIS: Dad said go up to these lakes and that there'd be moose.
We're getting close and we're already seeing moose sign.
JESSI: Lots of moose sign, and recent.
CHRIS: Yeah.
JESSI: I mean, the tracks are maybe last week.
These bites though, this is really, really fresh.
You can see that it's like a light color.
That one was just bit, so he's still out here snacking.
CHRIS: These moose are close by.
This is awesome. Good sign.
JESSI: Yeah, this is fresh.
With this bad, dismal trapping season, it's been hard.
Getting a moose out here would be huge.
CHRIS: Tracks go back up into the woods as far as I can see.
I see tracks all the way back there.
I wanna make sure to mark this on my map
when I get back down to my snow machine.
JESSI: Sounds good.
It's like we're going on a Cosna treasure hunt.
ALEX: A lot of times people wait until a disaster happens,
and then they try to do something.
If I did things that way out here,
I'd probably be missing some fingers and toes,
or maybe not be here, at all.
ALEX: Got some food for birds here.
This is just the leftovers of that pike I cooked,
I figured the birds or whatever can have it.
But I won't be doing this for very much longer,
uh, because this will attract bears.
Pretty soon, they'll be coming out of hibernation
and then, uh, when they do,
this kind of thing would bring bears from, for miles.
So, it's not something I'm gonna put off until the last minute.
I have to take care of it now.
ALEX: The sun's getting higher in the sky,
the days are getting warmer, and pretty soon all the bears
that are hibernating right now are gonna be coming out.
And they're gonna be hungry.
So, what I want to do is make a platform and get the food
stored high up in the trees where bears can't get to it.
Yeah, these small-sized spruce trees, I use for everything.
Today, I'm using them for something new though.
Something I haven't done before.
In order to get my food up in the air,
I'm gonna need to get myself up in the air.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do is make myself a ladder.
There we go.
So that's gonna be a good part of my ladder there.
I'll do my best to make it as sturdy as I can,
but it won't be as dangerous as if I got a hungry bear
snooping around my camp, so, just gotta do what I gotta do.
At Bear Creek, I had a little more security
because I built the cabin out there.
But here I'm just in a tent.
The only thing separating me from a bear is
a very thin fabric that he can just claw right through.
I'd rather not have one tear through my wall at night
and say hello, because at that point,
you know one way or another, someone's gonna die.
Okay, that should be everything I need for my ladder.
So, I'll just start getting to work.
This is my way of kind of having a little treaty
with the bears, you know?
I'm not gonna put down anything that's gonna tempt you,
and then you don't come around sniffing around.
Okay, all I gotta do is do that ten more times now.
This is the same-- same cord I, that held parachutes together.
That I jumped down with when I was in the army, so.
If we could just avoid going to war with each other then,
you know, everyone's gonna have an easier life.
[grunts]
Well, it's not the most dangerous thing
I've ever climbed, but it's probably close.
BRITTANY: Wherever you live, you tend to learn
the survival of that area.
It's no different than here.
We learn what we have to do to survive
in the environment that we are in.
Hello!
KALEB: Hey.
BRITTANY: What are you guys up to?
KALEB: We are having a little lesson on trapping.
I'm thinking that's a good place to start in
the wilderness school of hard knocks.
BRITTANY: Yeah.
KALEB: Our goal is gonna be
to be out marten trapping,
and you guys can learn how to do all that.
BRITTANY: All right, Ellie and Gilbert.
KALEB: So, let's go get the snow machine loaded
KALEB: and head out into the woods. BRITTANY: You go with Daddy.
KALEB: Today I'm planning on taking the kids out
on a trapping trip.
I'm gonna have my snow machine outfitted with the tools that
are needed to go on a super light expedition.
Using these traps as a kid and getting out into
the wilderness and cutting trail
set me up as the adult that I am today.
We're ready to go.
ELOVIE: One more thing.
KALEB: Oh, Gilbert's gonna bring his hatchet.
GILBERT: Yeah, so I can use.
BRITTANY: Sounds like a plan.
KALEB: It's important for the kids to learn how to go
through the motions of an expedition.
BRITTANY: Let's go!
KALEB: All right, let's do this!
Seeing what it takes to come out of the woods with all of
your limbs attached, no frostbite, unharmed.
They need to learn how to survive.
Ooh, this tree looks like a good spot for marten set.
BRITTANY: Here we go.
KALEB: So, we're gonna use this limb right here for our set,
and the idea is that the marten will come out on the
the limb here and reach out for the bait,
which will be out past the limb and our trap will be
waiting for it right here.
So, we need to make a loop out of our chain, 'kay?
And then we'll take our bait, our nice little moose right here
and we'll stick it straight out like this so that it--
so the marten can't just come up right here
and reach out and paw at it.
BRITTANY: Okay.
KALEB: We want him to have to come down this branch
and get caught while he's trying to reach out for this.
BRITTANY: Last meal. KALEB: Yep.
BRITTANY: Kids at five and seven are really sponges.
They soak up everything you're telling them.
I think as much as we can get down on our children's level
and just really add to that memory bank,
the more they're able to pull on it when they're older.
I think that's so valuable with where we live.
KALEB: There we go.
That's ready to catch a marten.
And we're ready to go down the trail.
KALEB: I think it's important to teach these survival skills,
because as they get older, they're gonna want to explore
more and more.
And I'm not always gonna be there to help them out.
[engine revving]
[Kaleb groaning]
KALEB: I think we're done. BRITTANY: Oh, dear!
[engine revving]
KALEB: I think we're stuck.
It's not going when I pin and wiggle.
BRITTANY: Well spotted.
KALEB: Um, so I guess this begins our scenario.
BRITTANY: Yeah.
KALEB: We need, we need to make some shelter.
In order to teach Gilbert and Elovie
that not everything goes according to plan.
I get my snow machine stuck and I get it stuck .
My idea is they need to learn how to survive in freezing temperatures.
This is a plausible situation that happens to trappers
all over Alaska all the time.
ELOVIE: I am nothing.
KALEB: We just need this snow cave
to be big enough to fit a body in.
The whole idea with a snow shelter like this is to get
a stranded trapper out of the elements.
Without a snow cave like this, it would suck all
the warmth out of a person's body
and literally freeze them to death, in place.
Now that we got our trench built,
we gotta line this floor with spruce boughs.
BRITTANY: Okay.
KALEB: And this will insulate the snow from our bodies,
so we don't put a whole bunch of heat through our coat
and melt the snow underneath us,
which would get us all wet.
Then we'd get cold.
BRITTANY: We like to teach our children young,
that way as they get older, if they're ever in a situation
like this, they have their memories of what to do.
KALEB: Now, I'm gonna work on getting us a lot and a lot of
branches to throw on top.
No chainsaw.
ELOVIE: I wanna...
BRITTANY: Here's the last one.
KALEB: There you go. You cut a tree down.
BRITTANY: Boom.
KALEB: Now, I think we just need to start covering this up
with great big chunks of snow.
And the idea is to stop any wind that might come up
at night from filtering through and making us cold.
I'm hoping that they store this nugget of
information away to be used at a later date.
BRITTANY: Good job, Gill.
KALEB: When things might not be going their way.
BRITTANY: Ta-da!
KALEB: I think that's looking pretty good.
BRITTANY: Oh, I think the kids are in there.
What do you guys think of this?
KALEB: Is it warmer in there than out here?
ELOVIE: Yeah. KALEB: Yeah?
Now we need to establish a fire.
CHRIS: There's only one way to be successful in the Cosna,
and that's to work hard.
But it's not just gonna be handed to me,
I have to work for it.
JESSI: What the [bleep]!
Oh, my goodness!
[laughing]
CHRIS: Wow, look at all the sign in here.
JESSI: Whoa!
CHRIS: This is awesome.
Check this out, Jess.
If you look up over here, got the twin hills that come together,
I can see where the crook comes down,
and we're in the birch forest.
JESSI: This is the birch forest.
CHRIS: So, we follow the birch forest,
we should find that six-sided cabin.
This looks like a great area for moose hunting.
Look at this lake.
Look at this. Bear marks.
Marking his territory, and then a bigger bear,
and then even a bigger bear marked way up there.
JESSI: There's no way, that's like ten feet up the...
CHRIS: Yeah, they're massive.
We've seen grizzlies up here.
Every time we find a good area to trap, bears move in.
And when you're looking up in a tree and you see a bear that
can reach 12 feet in the air, that does not make Jessi,
or I feel good.
This guy is less than two years old
and he's probably about my size.
Right?
But then if you look up one more step,
there's his parent. That's a full-sized grizzly bear.
That is a big bear.
Holy cow.
That gives me a little worry.
JESSI: I don't want anything to do with that bear.
CHRIS: No. Wow.
JESSI: This is the best place that we've found
on the Cosna so far, hunting wise.
CHRIS: So why wouldn't a bear be here?
I mean that's just kind of par for the course.
We gotta move in and show him that we're the predator.
There's bigger, badder predators out here than we are.
That's just the name of the game out here.
There's no way this bear's gonna stop us from trapping this area.
I'll fight for it if I have to.
Well, let's keep looking for that cabin.
I mean at this point...
JESSI: Now, it's like a really survival cabin if we decide
that we're gonna hunt here.
CHRIS: Yeah.
I'm gonna be thinking about him tonight.
That's a big bear.
JESSI: Yeah, I don't wanna meet him.
That's crazy, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here!
CHRIS: I'm gonna go get the machine, yeah. I'm ready to leave.
JESSI: I was so excited just moments ago.
ALEX: I didn't wanna go out and contend with mother nature.
I wanted to let mother nature change me into what I feel
like I was supposed to be.
This is definitely the heaviest thing I've lifted in a while.
Sturdy's not the word I would use to describe this,
but as long as it doesn't fall apart, it'll be safe, you know?
I'll just have to be like a monkey climbing trees.
I've never gone up a ladder like this before.
I don't wanna over commit myself to anything
because the risk is deadly.
This is my anchor, it's gonna go between these two trees.
You know, so I gotta get up probably on this second to
last rung here on the ladder.
So, I wanna get it up out of the reach of bears.
So, the higher I can get it, the better.
The first thing I gotta do is take another spruce pole up
and I'm gonna hang it between two trees.
All right, here it goes.
Kinda like I got a giant football field goal post.
And from that I can hang a rope that will haul up the platform.
Is it scary? A little bit.
If I fall and get hurt, I'm on my own.
I don't wanna lay on the ground,
bleed internally and freeze to death.
So, I just wanna take it slow and careful.
These toe straps are basically leftovers from job sites.
Once they start getting some frays in them,
they say that's not safe anymore,
throw it away and get a new one.
And then I get 'em.
Each step I take could be my last.
I'm just totally trusting my life
to these ratty old toe straps.
Oooh. Nope, nope, nope, no, no.
That feels-- no.
ALEX: Oooh. Nope, nope, nope, no, no.
That feels, no.
That thing felt like it was going.
I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm going down."
Okay, that won't go anywhere.
Now I can get my second loop for the other end of the log setup.
I got one side of the spruce pole that will be my anchor up.
Now I got, have to do the other one.
This is not a drill, this is the real deal.
Let's do what we came here to do.
Now it might not look like a traditional log cache,
but I'm not concerned with meeting modern professional
building standards here.
Okay, now just loop that in.
I think it's good enough for government work.
I'm just concerned with getting the job done.
So now, I got the cross beam up there,
that's the dangerous work done.
Now I gotta do, start doing the kind of the figuring.
I need to start getting materials
to build the platform from.
Get to work.
There's no telling when exactly the bears are gonna wake up.
Could be a month from now, could be a week from now,
maybe they're waking up right now.
Maybe that one right there, that's probably the right size.
I have to perceive problems before they happen
and try to do something about them.
If one comes out early, he's gonna be really hungry
and I don't wanna find out then
that I stashed my food too late.
Okay.
You know, I like the bears,
but I don't wanna be seeing them that much.
And I don't want them to think that I'm the food man.
Because then one day if I don't got food,
they might start to think I'm the food.
This is, should be enough materials to make my,
my platform from.
So, I'll just grab my tote right here,
measure it out and then I'll cut it to length,
and then all I gotta do is just cut off a lot of ones
to lay in the center.
The main purpose of the platform is to keep my food
out of reach of bears.
The platform will help disassociate me
and kind of my smell, my presence, from food.
I don't want the bears to ever confuse the two.
When I got Sipsy with me,
I don't really worry too much
about animals 'cause he'll, you know,
he's always aware when they come around.
He barks at 'em, but I don't have
that security system with me right now.
And I won't, you know, this spring, so, um...
Until I get Sipsy back up here, you know,
I gotta be alert all the time just like he is.
The food in these totes is my wealth out here.
It's essentially this platform is my bank and it's where
I have all of my wealth, all of my money is in this bank.
So, if a bear gets into this, and he trashes my food supply,
then I'm gonna be in a true survival situation without
a way to get help.
Yeah, so these are good and strong.
So, I'll start figuring out how this will get strung up.
Just one problem at a time.
JOHNNY: I don't think that you can have failure
and still be alive out here.
It's survival, you have to keep fighting, keep trying,
that's what it means to live this secluded and this isolated.
Back at the first hole, my hopes are that I have fish on
all these setlines.
I got several hooks set.
They've been working all around the clock.
I'm here to check it out, see if I got a fish.
Now fishing out here is a very different type of fishing.
I don't know where the fish are,
I don't know what depths, what locations.
It's feeling light.
It's essentially an aquarium that I can't see.
And I still got bait.
Definitely not a fish on the end of this one.
So, I'm gonna send it back down and let it keep working.
And that's the beauty of setline fishing,
I just let time do the fishing for me.
Well, that's the first hole.
I got several more to check so on to the next one.
It's never easy to figure everything out all at once.
You gotta put the time in, you gotta put the effort in,
you gotta stay with it.
'Cause I have faith, I have hope.
All right, so let's see what we got here.
Oh, I'm missing bait on this one.
Don't wanna be presumptuous but I think it's safe to say
that there's some fish down in here so I'm gonna put some more bait on it,
send it down and let it soak overnight again.
On to the next hole.
You know, these fish are designed to outsmart me.
My job is to outsmart them.
Look at that.
Bait gone again.
It's a constant battle of who's outsmarting who.
And these fish want to prevail.
Another bait gone.
You know, the odds are generally against you.
This is the last one here.
Bait is gone, once again.
Man, that's a bummer.
I've spent a lot of time drilling through four feet of ice.
[sighs]
At this point I think I gotta come up with another plan.
So, I think what I wanna do is, I'm gonna jig.
And I'm gonna just sit there and work an artificial lure,
and I think that's gonna tell me a lot of what's going on down there.
And that's the plan.
Everything is against me in catching a fish today.
I'm fighting way more than getting bites or not getting bites.
I'm fighting the elements.
Those winds are just howling out here.
You know I've been out here in white outs.
You get spun around, you don't know where you're at
and it's hard to tell which direction you're trying to walk in,
what direction's home.
And I can barely see where the ice hole is at this point.
Now my bag's just getting buried in snow.
My sled's getting covered,
it's just smart to get out before it whites out
and you can't see.
JOHNNY: There is no such thing as failure to me out here,
but there is death.
That's what keeps you alive out here,
knowing when to call it quits.
KALEB: Out here where people are few and far between,
it's very important to rely on yourself
to get what you need done.
KALEB: Because you don't always have someone to bail you out.
All right, the snow cave looks great.
We did an awesome job.
BRITTANY: Yeah.
KALEB: So, now we need to light a fire,
but we don't have a lighter to use.
So, what I'm thinking is we'll wire some poles together to
make a little raft to light our fire on,
and then we'll light the fire next to the snow machine
and then we'll move it over to here.
BRITTANY: Okay.
KALEB: Let's get started.
We'll have us a fire in no time.
Teaching the kids how to survive in the wilderness is
like teaching a second language.
It's all about repetition.
We've got lots of, lots of pitch here,
which pitch burns really, really hot and is a great fire-starter.
It's getting these memories of a situation
in their heads so that they can someday think back
"Now what did Dad do?"
Gonna pull out a whole bunch of wire.
This is one thing, when you're trapping,
you always have wire with you and it's such a valuable
resource in a situation like this,
so we'll just take it and do a twist.
ELOVIE: Is that a trap?
KALEB: And just keep working your way down.
Learning how to use the tools and the resources around you
is critical to living in such a remote location.
You just give it a nice tug.
I think the best way to light a fire without the use of
a lighter is to take my tow rope and drop it in my fuel tank
and soak it in gas.
Then I'll take wire and arc it across my battery
on the snow machine and get a spark
before that gas evaporates.
And then I'm just gonna...
Come on, gas, light.
There we go! [laughs]
KALEB: I think being able to have a problem
and immediately move onto the solution
shows the kids that there's a way around
bad situations.
There's always a way.
We did it, succeeded in lighting a fire without a match.
Nice job, Team Rowland.
You just have to come up with an idea and try it.
We learned how to build a fire without a--
without a mechanical lighter.
BRITTANY: It was amazing that it worked.
KALEB: I really hope you kids have learned something,
a little nugget of wisdom that you can take away from this.
BRITTANY: Yeah, use what you have when you have it.
KALEB: Yep, I think it's time to head back and, uh,
call this training scenario a wrap,
and I think it's time to move on down the trail.
Go check our sets.
JESSI: I never thought that it would take so much effort,
so much work, but that's the way that we make it.
We love it out here.
We want to live off the land.
CHRIS: Might have to get the chainsaw out here.
CHRIS: I feel like we're on the right track.
Things are starting to come into focus.
We just need to keep pushing farther.
Maybe I can find that old six-sided cabin that my dad
was talking about.
JESSI: What do you think?
CHRIS: I might be able to just push it down.
JESSI: Kay. CHRIS: You wanna try help push?
JESSI: Yeah. Ready?
CHRIS: Yep.
Here it goes!
Come on!
Watch out.
Almost.
Come on!
JESSI: Whoo!
CHRIS: There. Cool.
JESSI: You wanna see if we can get the chainsaw, cut this up?
CHRIS: Yeah.
See if I can get this thing to start.
It's covered in snow.
JESSI: There we go.
There's a cabin somewhere out there,
and we don't know what's there.
What if there's stuff that's hidden in the ground?
What if it's a fantastic hunting spot?
Just possibilities upon possibilities,
these stories that we've been told.
That's the adventurous fantastic part of this.
Who doesn't love a good treasure hunt?
Great.
CHRIS: I'm gonna try and check out my map and see if this is,
uh, where we think we are.
Let's see here.
Oh, check this out.
We are on the map exactly where Dad told us to go.
There's the hillsides come down, right?
We're gonna wanna go that direction.
JESSI: Like that?
CHRIS: Right that direction.
I mean pretty much towards the crook of the hill from here
should be that cabin.
JESSI: This is wonderful.
Let's go over there. Let's check it out.
CHRIS: Yeah.
I'm feeling pumped right now.
The opportunity to build out an old cabin could be a game-changer.
Coming out and following this treasure map,
it's not gonna be complete unless I find that six-sided cabin.
Check it out.
JESSI: Oh, my goodness.
CHRIS: Oh.
♪ ♪
[laughing]
CHRIS: Not much left.
Ha, the old man was right.
Huh.
JESSI: What?
CHRIS: The logs are really, uh,
they're not in terrible shape.
That's surprising.
Oh-ho, this thing's awesome.
JESSI: Nobody's been out here for decades.
This could be our new hunting spot to sustain us
for another year, another two years.
This is like a thread to our future.
I wanna come back here in the summer.
CHRIS: Me, too.
JESSI: You know what I mean, what does this place look like?
What's underneath all of this?
CHRIS: I'd love to find an axe or the saw that made this cabin.
JESSI: That's exactly what I was thinking,
I wanna come and find, like, dude probably left
some of his tools here.
CHRIS: Everybody was trying to come up and get free land
but living out here for three years, it was tough.
It's tough this day and age with GPSs and satellite phones,
imagine what it was like before that.
JESSI: In the 70s before any of that.
Incredible.
CHRIS: I'm sure it broke a lot of green people up here.
Let's go check out some stuff out here.
JESSI: Yeah, let's go towards the river.
CHRIS: Look around a little bit.
JESSI: You see this coming straight.
CHRIS: Ah, these are big prints.
JESSI: Coming straight from the cabin over here?
CHRIS: That looks like moose prints.
Wow. Right at the cabin.
This is awesome.
JESSI: Right? I mean this, nobody's been out here.
CHRIS: This is really cool.
Seeing the moose prints here seals it for me.
The fact that we've got moose, we've got bears,
we've got lynx, we've got beavers.
We have it right here.
We've got three lakes and a river.
JESSI: It's got, like, the best parts of
every part of the Cosna out here.
CHRIS: Yeah, what a treasure map Dad gave us.
ALEX: Anyone can come out here and just suffer.
You gotta be able to find that balance between enjoying
the work that you're doing and still meet the demands
of mother nature all at the same time.
ALEX: Here's my platform.
And I got my anchor waiting up there to haul it up.
What I'm gonna do is get it in position, get my totes on it,
and then last thing I'll throw a rope over the anchor up there,
lower it down and then give it a lift.
I came out here to Deadman Lake because I wanted to
be able to get more food from the land.
I'm starting to do some of that.
I didn't come out here to live against the other predators
that live here.
I came out here because I wanna be like them.
Me and the bears, the lynxes, all the predators out here,
we're all playing the same game: get the food.
That's the goal.
I think what we'll do is throw a line up over this,
put a little tension on this
and start to raise it a little bit,
and then I'll be able to adjust all these to the right length.
What this cache is gonna help me do is help me make sure
I'm playing the game of get the food
and I'm not playing the game of fight the other predators.
If I give other predators the opportunity to rob me,
then it's gonna be war.
It's like they say: the only thing necessary for evil
to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
I have to be the good men who does something.
Otherwise, it's gonna be war.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Let's see. Let's measure how high that is.
Let's see if I accomplished my goal.
I'm six foot.
This stick is maybe about a foot shorter than me
so that's probably...
me plus five foot would be, um, uh, 11.
Uh, so it's not quite 12 feet.
So, the biggest, tallest grizzly could feasibly reach it.
Yeah, that's actually a real problem.
Uh, you know, a black bear could easily climb this tree
and then if he can get up there, he'll--
if he's messing with it, he'll dump it over.
You know bears are persistent so he's probably gonna just
smell the smell up there, start climbing to get it,
reach over, you know dump everything.
Sheet metal is an important tool out here at Deadman Lake.
So, the last thing I'll wanna do is, uh,
make these trees to where a bear can't climb 'em.
So, I'll just wrap 'em with sheet metal
and then that'll be slick.
A bear won't be able to get up it.
And that'll be the final, that'll be the final touch.
Then I'll have a 99% bear-proof cache here.
JOHNNY: Some people like to say there's no guarantees out here.
But I think there are guarantees.
You could easily starve if you don't put in the effort
to find food, so that's a solid guarantee.
All right, it's a new day.
The weather's changed.
It's beautiful today.
I haven't had a bunch of luck with the setlines on the other
one's that I'd had set.
Uh, got skunked on all of them.
But I'm hoping that, uh, some of these will yield some fish.
It'd be a huge bummer to know that I've pounded all these
holes through the ice, that I've sat out here through
the beginning of an arctic storm, and there's no fish.
It feels a little bit light weight.
Nothing.
I got more set though and I'm gonna keep the spirits high
and, um, go check those out.
Onto the next one.
There's no second option.
The only option is to keep being persistent
and keep finding a way to get solid food sources.
Nothing.
I'm gonna drop it back down.
Cross my fingers, hope for the best.
Maybe the fish gods will come
and put some fish on the end of these hooks.
Onto the next one.
I'm walking into the freezer section of my grocery store
and it's like I'm blindfolded
and I don't know if anything's on the shelves.
That's essentially what ice fishing is out here.
All right, this is the last setline.
It's just like, like every, every attempt I've had on this
lake has come up empty and, uh,
I don't know if it's the cold.
I don't know if it's the time of year.
I've tried so many different methods: jigging, setlines.
I'm starting to think this whole ice fishing thing
is a huge hoax out here.
All right.
Oh, does that feel...
I feel a little tension on this one.
Could just be the weight.
Oh.
No way! Oh, [bleep]
♪ ♪
JOHNNY: Look at that. Oh-ho-ho-ho.
Lake trout. That is awesome.
There is fish in this lake.
For my first arctic lake trout,
this is gonna be a good meal.
This is awesome.
Sweet, sweet feeling of success to see that lake trout.
I've tried so hard out here.
I've put in days of backbreaking labor.
I now know where I can get food from this lake.
I'm gonna get this sucker off the line,
probably go find a place amongst the trees.
Hunker down inside the wood line
and cook it up over a fire right outside.
There's no other way I should be eating this fish except for
out here in nature.
It wasn't an easy task, but the next time I go out fishing,
I know where to go, and I know that next time
that I come back out here, I'm coming home with food.
I feel like I finally sealed the deal with this lake.
CHRIS: Ah, no way.
Wow, that thing is in there.
JESSI: No way. Ah!
I can't believe it, I can't get it out!
CHRIS: Yeah, it's been in there for 40 years.
Wow. That's in there.
[laughing]
JESSI: I did it.
CHRIS: Wow, look at that.
We got our treasure.
CHRIS: It's always how it is out here: the harder you work,
the more you suffer, the more the Cosna rewards you.
JESSI: What a find.
CHRIS: I know.
I'm looking forward to the future.
I'm hoping that our family homestead just lives on
generation after generation.
BRITTANY: Oh, man.
KALEB: Oh, man. The trap is snapped.
BRITTANY: And the food's still there.
KALEB: Yeah, do you wanna eat my bait?
GILBERT: I would!
BRITTANY: Just dust off the copper a bit.
KALEB: There you go.
If the marten can eat it, I can eat it.
BRITTANY: Yeah, right.
KALEB: At the end of this survival scenario,
I feel a lot more confident about the kids going out
into the woods in real life now.
All right, you wanna throw this in the box?
BRITTANY: Yeah.
KALEB: This ends our survival simulation trapline tragedy.
And I think you guys all did a fantastic job today.
BRITTANY: So, we all get A++?
KALEB: A++. BRITTANY: Yay.
ALEX: Okay, the platform's working good.
Um, the only problem is it's not 100% bear-proof yet
because bears can climb up these trees and, uh,
and then they'll be able to reach the platform
and, uh, get to my food.
So, if I can use some sheet metal here,
wrap the sheet metal around it,
and then its claws can't sink into it
and he can't climb any longer.
ALEX: I came out here first it's just about
keeping myself warm in the winter.
Then it was about getting water,
getting food, now it's about,
"Okay, how do I store that food?
How do I keep it safe from predators?"
I don't want the bear to be able to beat me
just through persistence, you know?
I have to, I have to make it really hard for the bear.
Now when I go and get food,
I've got a place to store it safely.
You know I--I feel pretty comfortable leaving my,
my food here.
It makes me feel a lot safer inside my tent.
I don't gotta worry about a bear
coming and sniffing around there.
This is one more important milestone that's gonna help
get me firmly established here at Deadman Lake.
It's another rung on the ladder.
JOHNNY: I'm starting a little fire here.
While that's warming up, I'm gonna lay the lake trout here
and just cook it right on the side of this lake.
JOHNNY: I knew it was gonna be a lot of work
trying to figure out these fish in this lake.
You know, I went into it knowing that.
So, coming out of it with a fish finally,
it's a big deal for me.
The birds will like this.
Not only did I learn about a new food source,
but I learned new methods that I've never tried before.
I've never done setlines
on a frozen lake in the middle of the arctic.
Here we go.
It's been a long few days.
This is what it's all about right here.
You know I could look at this like another notch in my belt.
Something I can continue to go back and have a renewable
sustainable resource of food.
'Cause that's what life is out here for me.
I don't have any other options.
This is it. This is my food.
It's time to peel into this guy.
The bones just come right out.
Oh, man, that's so good.
All that effort, all that trial and error.
The ebbs and flows, it was well worth it.
JOHNNY: To me, these are the pillars
that all Alaskans share:
perseverance, persistence,
the energy to come out here,
do all this back-breaking labor,
day-in and day-out.
Even if you aren't successful, turn around,
you come right back out, do it again.
This is Alaska baby, this is what it's all about.