Narrator: In the wild, the right skills
Can make the difference between life and death.
- Ahh!
Narrator: Now some of "alone's" best competitors
Are taking on a new mission.
- This is like some indiana jones-type stuff.
- They'll have just three days...
- Oh!
Narrator: And limited tools.
- Here's the fun part.
Narrator: For a build challenge
Devised by one of their own.
- Time is ticking.
Narrator: At stake for the winner...
- Whoo!
Narrator: Bragging rights.
- You guys have your work cut out for you.
Narrator: Tonight's challengers,
Joel van der loon, 40-day survivor
From season 7.
- Oh, this is really good fried.
Narrator: Clay hayes, 74-day survivor
And winner of season 8.
- Yeah!
Narrator: And jordan jonas, 77-day survivor
And winner of season 6.
- Yeah!
Narrator: Let the challenge begin.
- Bam!
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[twangy music]
- Hi, guys. Amós here. You might remember me
From season 7 of "alone."
I was at great slave lake for 58 days.
I think we got fish first night on the shift.
And I prepared an awesome challenge
For clay, jordan, and joel.
- Hello there again.
Got us a box here.
I'm very curious to see what's in here.
Let's open this sucker up.
♪ ♪
- "your challenge is to build an elevated shelter
With a food storage area."
- Oh.
- That's something I've built a lot of over the years.
- Huh.
- Unfortunately, I didn't do a great job on "alone."
Ugh.
That whole gallon tub of kidney fat is gone.
I'm so mad.
And I just wasn't expecting a wolverine.
Let's see what amós gave us to work with here.
All right. So got bushcraft knife.
Nice.
Got a silky saw here.
And some paracord.
Let's check out this tarp.
That looks like a good, heavy-duty, oil canvas cloth.
- No ax.
[chuckles]
This little guy is going to be doing a lot of work.
"to complete this challenge your build
Must be 12 feet tall,
"support your weight for a night,
"have an animal-safe food storage area.
The challengers are joel, clay, and jordan."
Joel and clay are two of the more talented individuals
That have been on "alone."
- Talk about throwing a bunch of things at us.
- The biggest challenge here is going to be the 12-feet tall.
- All right. Here we go.
♪ ♪
- All right.
Let's just scout the area little bit
And try and figure out where we're going to do this build.
This location is ponderosa pine forest,
So plenty of materials.
Oh, this looks great.
Here's my plan.
So these three trees are going to be a basis for my platform.
There's going to be two poles on either side,
Which is going to create a sort of bridge,
So what I can do is, I can climb up on these rocks
And walk out to that tree.
♪ ♪
It's going to be really quite a challenge.
♪ ♪
As my wife would say, I love hard work.
I could watch it all day long.
Oh, not quite.
There we go. Ok.
[grunts] there we go.
The start of our bridge.
But the important part is, I have to cinch those logs
To the tree to avoid them from slipping down.
Feels really nice and stable.
And what I'm going to be doing now
Is making rungs for my bridge.
[grunts]
These rungs, if you want to call them that,
Underneath are there to support the weight.
[grunts]
Look at that.
Oh, man, and it's stable.
♪ ♪
Whew.
- I was able to search through the woods,
Find a pretty nice spot.
So a huge scaffolding could really do the...
Whoo. Whoo-hoo.
So I want to make my scaffolding
At least six feet high
So that can reach where I need.
All right.
Let's see.
So now I am 12-feet high.
At least I got my height.
I'm right level with where 12 foot is here.
All right. Welcome up on my platform here.
We are just attaching these upper poles right now.
I'm gonna do jam knots, and then to make it strong,
I will add some lashing.
♪ ♪
Our base for our raised platform.
All looking good.
♪ ♪
- So I am excited about this build.
It is going to be challenging, but I think these two trees
Right here, they're going to have about
The right spacing at the top so that I can have,
Like, an a-frame style.
What'd I do with my saw?
There it is. Let's go cut some poles.
♪ ♪
1 down, about 15 to go.
♪ ♪
Oh, [bleep].
I just broke my saw.
Oh my god.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
So I got my saw in a bind, snapped the tip right off.
A freakin' broken saw is going to make things
That much more difficult.
But this is enough to get started.
We'll just see how the build goes
And then cut more if I need 'em.
All right. I'm going to go ahead and see
If I can knock out a ladder.
Benefit of taking the bark off is that your poles
Will last a lot longer.
They dry out faster.
If you leave that bark on it holds
Moisture against the wood and causes it to rot.
Bam, there you go.
♪ ♪
I'm going to have to use my knife.
[thunder booming]
It's thundering.
Ok.
[thunder booming]
Time to go.
It's quitting time.
♪ ♪
- Plan for today is get the platform up there secured.
That end and that end needs to get tied to those trees.
I'm going to put some trust in a couple of these branches
To get up there.
♪ ♪
Every muscle is engaged right now.
Ok.
I've got enough of a cinch and a binding
On this to where I can actually trust leaning my weight
On this, which is great.
Done.
I've got those two ends secured,
Which is--that's a big win,
Because that's really high, man.
Now I need to get a pole under that,
Because otherwise, it is going to flex.
Talk about perfect.
[grunts]
♪ ♪
Yeah, I mean, there's no flex, so we have a platform.
I'm going to start laying some decking here
Loosely and cutting to size.
I've got all the components to my deck.
So with the paracord, what I'm going to do
Is pull these inner strands out.
And now I'm going to go under the main piece
And then over like that.
And that holds it in place.
♪ ♪
There we go.
Finished deck, which is awesome.
I want to get the roof done,
Definitely get the bed and the fireplace done,
And then the food cache and yeah,
Actually, there's still quite a bit to do.
♪ ♪
- All right.
My ladder is working great.
I've got my platform about 12 feet high,
And it's sitting on five trees, so it's really sturdy.
I need to climb up on the shelter,
Try to visualize what kind of food cache
I'm going to put up there.
So I'm thinking towards the back,
I'm going to get a bunch of logs this big,
Bring them up here, and stack them into a little square box.
Might be easier to pull them up using the rope
Than to carry them all up.
♪ ♪
Ok.
Pop it around.
Line it up.
And make another.
All right I've got this meat box,
Storage box pretty much framed in.
And I think that's a decent-sized meat fridge.
All right, so I'm going to finish the food cache.
I'm going to line my whole cache with some moss.
If they have access to your food cache,
Birds will just peck away at it.
So you want to make sure they can't get in there.
Now I need a top for my food cache.
♪ ♪
All right.
So the meat box is complete.
A little food cache.
This you push down.
Boop.
And that's how it opens.
Pop open both of those.
And like that, it's closed.
So now hopefully I can get enough done
To where I'm satisfied with my living arrangements up here.
Oof.
[gasps]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Yikes.
Hope you didn't break.
Good quality cameras.
You're heartless, amós, to make us do this
12 feet off the ground.
Cruel, cruel stuff.
♪ ♪
- Let's give this thing a shot here.
Got the ladder done.
So I'm going to make a platform
At least 6 feet wide.
Think I'm going to go ahead and just put a couple of supports
Out this way to support my floor.
The weather's been a little bit sketchy,
So hopefully I'll be able to get this thing knocked out.
That thunderstorm yesterday set me back,
And I'm a little behind today.
The floor is down.
I'm going to do an a-frame roof over the top.
I'm going to drive a peg into each end
Of a cedar cross piece
And stick them in the grommet
So that this thing's going to basically
Hang poles between there and push these out.
I think that's going to wrap it up for today.
I would like to put a rail around it,
Because it's pretty high up,
Kind of sketchy if you roll around in your sleep at all.
But then the other thing, we have to do the food cache.
I think I can pull that off, but we'll have to see tomorrow.
♪ ♪
- All right, it is the start of day three.
Pressure's on.
So I've got this 8x10 tarp.
I'm going to take it up and see what
The best configuration is.
I'm thinking lean-to style,
A beam going from here over to there
And a beam going from here angled down to over there.
Something like that.
♪ ♪
Pretty good.
So I like this for a summertime shelter up here.
Amós, vote for me to win, and you
Can come stay here any time.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
- Now, I am going to build the food cache.
I see rocks as a much harder way for any game
To be able to get to any food that you want to store.
Now what I'm going to do is create, like, a grate.
You can see, there's my little platform.
Now I'm going to cover this side with rocks.
Yeah, a little bit behind.
I wonder what clay and jordan have got up to.
- I'm in a rush.
So I need some way to store my food.
I'm just going to make a very simple bark basket.
Ok.
- Come over to these rocks.
Peel off some moss.
You got to sleep in the shelter to test it out.
No need to torture yourself, huh?
♪ ♪
- Rock food cache finished.
- The light is fading fast.
I'm just going to hang a bark basket off this tree here.
Food storage, check.
- Tackle this fireplace next.
My plan is to build a wooden base,
Then add some dirt, put rocks next to each other.
I'm hoping that that's enough insulation to keep
This platform safe, isolating all of the heat above the fire
And not burning through to the wood.
Not too much more to go, but I do need to work on my bed.
- Gonna make a beautiful mattress.
Do my best to make things look nice, but that is not my gift.
- I don't want to waste too much time on this.
That's going to be my bed.
- This is kicking my ass.
♪ ♪
- [laughs]
Oh, man.
♪ ♪
- Clay, jordan, and joel did the elevated shelter.
I only sent them a canvas tarp, a saw,
A knife, and some paracord.
The criteria for this build
Was that it has to be at least 12-feet tall.
It needs to support your weight for one night,
And it needs to have an animal-safe food storage area.
Let's see how they did.
♪ ♪
- Well, amós, my friend, first night about to be spent
In my shelter for the test.
I'm going to get a fire going.
♪ ♪
There we go.
Here I am with the fireplace 15 feet off the ground.
I have got the food cache set up.
Nice chunk of steak.
♪ ♪
Closed off for the night.
All I've got to do now is get through a nice night's sleep,
Not get woken up, and then it's all in the hands of amós.
It's going to be interesting.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- All right.
It is test day.
Let's cook up some food.
Wild mushroom medley.
Put some grease in there.
Mmm.
So I'm going to put my fat in this food cache overnight
And make sure nothing gets up here.
♪ ♪
- Got a squirrel to cook tonight.
Whoo-hoo.
Look at that right there.
Bam.
Little leg of rat.
It's actually not too bad.
I've got my leftover squirrel here;
Going to drop it in my food cache.
See y'all in the morning.
♪ ♪
Well, it's about 5:00 in the morning.
It probably started raining about midnight or so,
But the shelter's doing well.
There's no leaks in here.
The food cache worked.
I'm happy with it.
I'm happy with the way things turned out.
Can't wait to see what the others came up with.
♪ ♪
- I actually slept pretty well last night.
♪ ♪
It held my weight
And didn't collapse.
All right.
Let's see if our food's intact.
Oh, look at that.
Nothing in there.
We have a shelter you can sleep in.
It's dry.
It's got a safe food cache.
Got everything you need.
I'd feel really secure living in here.
Definitely like it.
♪ ♪
- Good morning.
I am very glad that I decided to put in the effort
To get complete coverage with this top,
Because it's been raining for about two hours this morning.
You can see that fireplace is all wet.
And then underneath me, I am completely bone-dry,
So it's actually been really pleasant.
I did not hear any noise from the food cache last night.
There we go.
Safe and sound.
That's a wrap on the shelter build.
I've achieved all of the requirements.
It's over to you now, amós.
♪ ♪
- So now that we've seen their builds,
It's time for the judging.
This is a really difficult decision to make,
Because all three of them did amazing.
So, clay...
It was a really beautiful build,
Really strong and secure with the trees that you used.
It's a shelter that will be very useful
In a real survival situation.
♪ ♪
In terms of the food storage,
It was a really good and safe approach.
It doesn't take a lot of calories
To have it hanging on a tree.
♪ ♪
Now jordan.
♪ ♪
Your shelter was really impressive,
And you seemed super secure with the five-pole base.
It was nice and closed in the back.
I like the creativity for your bedding.
Also, I feel like you went above and beyond
In terms of the food cache, because really
Easy to access on the top.
Then joel.
- [grunts]
- I like how you used the landscape, the rocks
To go up.
That was really creative.
Your food cache I like with the stones.
But I think the shelter seemed a bit more open,
Because you needed the tarp for the hammock.
♪ ♪
They all did really amazing, really awesome shelters.
All three of them are shelters I would trust.
They checked all the boxes.
But I think the one that checked all the boxes
And then went a little further...
♪ ♪
Was jordan's.
♪ ♪
I like how easy to access to the food cache area is.
His shelter seemed the most secure with the five-pole.
So all those things added up to
Making you the winner of this challenge.
- All right, amós.
I'm glad you liked the raised shelter.
I had fun building it.
Joel, clay, you two are some of the best outdoorsmen
Out there, so it was an honor to be a part
Of the challenge with you.
And I hope everyone learned something cool.
Cheers.
♪ ♪