Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero,

Alaskans battle winter's icy grip.

Water!

Sue braves the open tundra to expand her arsenal.

I'm not used to driving.

Glenn digs deep for survival.

GLENN: I can feel it in my feet. It vibrates.

Chip scrambles to beat the freeze.

CHIP: This is subsistence heating.

NARRATOR: And a novice fights for a foothold in the wild.

ANDY: Snowshoes aren't exactly modern technology.

SUE: I have a little journey I'm gonna go on.

So, I want my bullets, my tiny medical kit.

My mobility and ability

to get to other locations,

I'd like to widen my sphere with that.

And so, I ordered up and had specifically made an Argo.

It's an eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle with tracks.

So that I can have a mode of transportation.

Bob's gonna be coming in in about an hour,

picking me up, and Ermie.

I don't feel comfortable leaving her

for an undetermined amount of days on her own, out here.

NARRATOR: In order to retrieve the ATV,

Sue will have to face the thing she's spent years avoiding...

Civilisation.

SUE: When I go to town I am bombarded

by jets going over, people having conversations everywhere.

It's just way too much info.

Living like this is not something you do on a whim.

I live alone.

I'm very comfortable being alone.

I've always craved extreme isolation.

I register that I live alone,

but that does not mean and does not go hand in hand with being lonely.

When I go away, I'm preoccupied with making it bulletproof

as I can, from the elements

and from possible people coming in.

The windows, the doors, are they shut?

That one's shut.

Those windows are secure.

That door is shut.

Go check the other side.

Looks good on this side.

You know, in a really strong wind,

these trailers will be buckling and, you know, twisting

and it will pop the door.

I have no control over the weather.

It blows like a son of a bitch out here

and the snow drifts build.

(WIND WHOOSHING)

The winds that I get out here

can be upwards of 100 mile an hour.

Let that go a few days, and your camp is done.

I mean, I could lock every door in the place,

but a lock only keeps out an honest man.

Bush law states you always leave the door open,

you always leave some food, and fuel, and a note.

And that's just the way it is.

"This is Sue.

"There is food and fuel available,

"please leave me a note if you do use anything.

"Remember, this is my home, treat it with respect.

"Thank you, Susan."

ANDY: It's a good life but it can be a hard life.

It's one of these lives living out here

that if you screw up, nobody pays the piper except for you.

(DOGS BARKING)

When you go to set these,

that's called the dog, that goes back.

Push down.

You always leave that one up.

-Okay. -Okay?

Pinch it with your fingers.

That goes over top of it.

And then you use your finger from underneath, to hold the pan there.

When I moved out here,

I didn't know jack shit about anything.

I really had no trapping skills,

but it became very obvious I needed to find a way to make a living.

And I was fairly successful at marten trapping.

NARRATOR: Marten furs are coveted by trappers,

typically fetching close to $150 per pelt.

Cody's got to make a living and that means going out trapping.

NARRATOR: Cody Allen recently moved up from the lower 48

in order to learn the subsistence lifestyle from Kate and Andy.

These are fairly powerful. They'll hurt your finger.

They're not gonna break your finger if you get caught,

but it's gonna hurt like hell if you do it.

We're gonna basically wire these up,

we're gonna boil some water outside, get this oil off of them,

and then we'll be set with that.

First thing I think I'd like you to do,

is just take a pair of wire cutters,

I've got this bailing wire here.

Okay?

-You're gonna take this... -Yeah.

Put a couple bends in it.

What that's gonna do is, when we make the set,

this is gonna go around a pole or around a branch, right?

And tie it off.

This second thing I want you to do,

is you take the wire, you go through here,

so that it's basically like that. Right?

Bring that one around,

and this one, you want to tie fairly tight, onto there.

-So just grab it. -Okay.

-Twist it, so it's fairly tight. -And turn it up?

Yeah.

ANDY: Probably, the first year or two,

that's gonna be your only way of making any money.

As much as you don't need money out here,

you still need money out here.

You're gonna have to buy ammo. You're gonna have to buy some food.

Trapping is kind of an issue down in the lower 48.

You know, there's a lot of people who don't like fur,

people who do like fur.

And I've never actually seen what it takes to get fur.

Never reach inside of there,

-'cause if it snaps shut, it's gonna hurt. -Yeah.

Your trap's sitting there, it's on the pole.

The animal runs up the pole

trying to get to the bait that's hanging.

It steps one foot, sometimes, two foot into that.

It gets caught, jumps off the pole,

and then he's hanging off the pole.

-Okay? -All right.

So we're gonna boil these to get all the oil and everything off of them,

and then take them out, hang them up,

-and let them cool tonight, okay? -Okay.

(CHUCKLING)

CODY: Yeah, buddy.

ANDY: Got it? That'll work. CODY: Yeah.

ANDY: We gotta get these things boiled up,

and get the oil off of these things.

When they make them at the factory they put a lot of oil on them,

to keep them from rusting.

I want that oil off 'cause the animals could smell that.

I also like the traps to take on a little bit, a slight rusty colour.

We'll let those dry up overnight,

and then, tomorrow, we'll put them in a box with some spruce boughs and stuff.

All right. Those look good.

Let's get those hung up.

We'll get all of our gear together tomorrow,

and do some hiking up in the mountains.

So, hopefully, we'll get a little bit of fur for you.

CODY: All right. Sounds like a plan.

CHIP: If we're not having fun, we just don't do it.

We'll just walk away. We'll quit.

When the fun's gone, there's no point in it.

This is the Arctic, and right now

it's about zero degrees.

And I'm gonna go get me some firewood,

so I can quit burning some stove oil.

I prefer to use the stove oil to heat just my water up,

and maybe let me sleep at 4:00 in the morning,

so I don't have to stoke a dying fire.

But I can't really afford the stove oil.

NARRATOR: In Noorvik, heating oil is just over six dollars a gallon.

Every dollar Chip saves on fuel

is money that he can spend on his large family's needs.

If my sled's not up to snuff, I can't use it.

This is a cargo sled.

This is something I would put wood, gasoline.

If I have a tarp with it, I put some meat.

But this is an all-round utility sled.

It was on rocks quite a bit,

and the rocks have taken off the heads of my screws

that are holding down my runners.

This last one gave out, so I gotta, kind of, be on top of all that.

That's the best that one's gonna go.

People can't ride on it. It'll beat them to death.

You need a basket sled for that.

This right here is pretty important to me, 'cause this does a lot of work.

This is my pickup truck bed.

(CAROL SPEAKING)

CHIP: It seized.

Yeah.

CHIP: It might be a shattered piston, I don't know.

I'm gonna take it apart and fix it, I guess.

I still got to go get wood.

Would you do me a favour?

Take this in the house so it thaws out, and I can clean it up.

And I'll take it apart tonight and put it on the workbench, okay?

Thank you, babe.

Tell your mom, if I don't come back until well after dark,

it's only because the chainsaw is messed up, okay?

-Okay. -Thanks, bun.

That changes my day. It's gonna slow me down quite a bit.

NARRATOR: With the chainsaw out of commission, Chip must chop wood by hand.

It does suck big time, that's a $350 chainsaw.

But I can sit here and pitch a bitch,

or I can just get to working with what I'm going to do,

and I just prefer to get the day over.

I don't want to be mad anyway.

I'll find out later what happened,

and then I'll decide whether I should be mad or not.

(CHUCKLES)

If I can manage it, I'll knock off enough wood to sell, to buy me another chainsaw.

Trees aren't very big here.

They burn fast.

We have eight-month winters.

It's the Arctic. It's cold.

So, this is a constant chore.

GLENN: I think it's a good idea to live in the moment.

You don't want to miss the moment

thinking about the future or the past too often, do you?

NARRATOR: Seven months ago, Glenn Villeneuve left his remote camp

to spend time with his children in town.

Now that he's back living his chosen isolated existence,

he must load up on his most vital resource.

GLENN: Since I got back to camp,

I've been melting snow for water,

and it's fine for getting water to drink,

but it takes a lot of work

to get enough water to do dishes,

to do laundry, take a bath.

When I take a bath I use five gallons of water.

I'd have to melt probably 15 gallons of snow to get five gallons of water.

I'd be here for hours.

So today, I'm gonna go out and chisel a hole through the ice,

get water out of the lake.

Once I have a hole and I can take out 20, 30 gallons of water at one time,

and then I can take a bath, I can do my laundry, I can do my dishes,

and I got plenty of water for anything I want.

Even though it's 34 below zero, I got to take clothes off

because I'll just get overheated and I'll start perspiring,

and my clothes will get damp,

and then, later, when I stop working, I'll get cold.

I make a square here about three paces each side,

because if I leave this snow on the ice,

and I just make a little, tiny hole through the snow where I drill my ice hole,

this snow will get all packed down around it.

It will be a big mess.

The snow turns to ice after it gets water dripping on it.

I plan to keep this hole right here, until spring.

That's good.

Got the ice all exposed.

I'm gonna put a hole right in the middle of it,

and I'm gonna put on a face mask.

I just need to protect my skin from freezing.

It's 34 below zero

and I can just feel my ears and my nose getting a little cold.

I like to put in a pretty big hole.

It's easier for me to keep it open.

It's easier for me to get water out of it.

I don't know how long this is gonna take.

I don't really care.

I have all the time to do it that it's gonna take.

I just don't like to look at a watch out here,

or think about hours and minutes. I just keep track of the sun.

I think about time very differently out here

than people think about it down in civilisation, you know.

I don't think about how many hours I'm gonna spend cutting wood.

The sun just goes around in a circle in the summer,

the moon goes around in a circle in the winter,

those are the time keepers out here.

I don't know how thick the ice is,

but I think it's probably at least three feet thick.

I can feel it in my feet

that when I strike the ice now, it vibrates.

I'm getting close.

Water!

Yeah.

Nice.

Hit water.

As soon as I hit water, the hole filled up.

But, I still have to make it the same diameter, all the way to the bottom.

I need to get all the ice out at the bottom,

so it doesn't refreeze too quickly.

Look at this, it's ripping the leather off my glove

when it, I just splashed it and I froze my glove, 34 below zero.

Once I get the hole the same diameter all the way down through,

then I don't have to worry about it refreezing so fast.

I'll be able to leave it open the rest of the day.

That's the stuff down at the bottom I'm chiselling out right now.

I can feel it.

Now I'm gonna take a slush scoop and just clean that ice out.

I do have to be careful walking around the hole

because these mukluks, they're warm but they don't have the best traction.

The lake water is so nice and clear. It's so nice to drink it.

I never purify the water or boil it.

I just drink straight out of the lake.

You can't do that in a lot of places any more.

Up here, things are still clean enough, you can drink right out of the lake.

Happy to have a hole through the ice now and get my water out of this lake,

instead of having to melt snow every day.

Okay, I'm gonna go get my sled, and my buckets,

and get some of this water.

First thing I'm gonna do with this water is take a bath.

ANDY: Pretty much everything I've learnt to do out here, I've learnt on my own.

Trial and error.

Seems like more error than trial.

(DOGS BARKING)

Attaboys.

Up we go. Straight ahead.

NARRATOR: If Cody's going to make a life for himself in the bush,

he has to master

the fundamentals of trapping fur.

ANDY: Attaboys. Straight ahead.

Attaboy. Little more. Gee.

The trail's over there. There you go, buddy.

Cody and I are getting ready to set a walking trap line up in the hills.

Attaboy! Good job. Right there.

Good job, Iceberg.

Good boys.

We'll picket out the dogs,

which means to basically tie them off to a cable between two trees.

And that way, they can just lay down, take a nap,

and wait for us while we're out setting the traps.

I'm gonna take one dog with us.

Good boy. All right. You know what work is all about, huh?

Iceberg is gonna have a pack on him.

He'll be carrying baits, traps, snares, things like that

so that I don't have to pack it.

CODY: Say I'm a little bit nervous and apprehensive about today.

I mean, still kind of on the fence about it a little bit.

We'll see how I feel about it when it happens.

I mean, it's not that one-shot, quick, clean kill.

It's a little bit more harsh on the animal.

ANDY: Let's go.

Come on, buddy boy.

I don't know how much Cody's walked around on snowshoes.

It's a completely different way of moving through the country.

Snowshoes aren't exactly modern technology.

And it takes some practise to know how to step, and where to step,

and how to negotiate steep inclines.

CODY: This one's not set up right,

so every time I step, it's not letting my toe slip past the front,

and walk like I should be.

Taking off some of the clothes right now.

I'm gonna keep myself from getting too wet.

When you start working you gotta strip down,

and start the day cold.

'Cause you're gonna get hot during the day.

CODY: This is difficult all around.

I mean, I'm just now learning how to walk in snowshoes.

They're not making for a very enjoyable hike.

(EXHALES DEEPLY)

Please stay on.

God damn it.

Son of a bitch.

Gee. Gee, up.

CODY: I kind of feel like I'm out in the middle of nowhere,

having some extreme issues,

and I know Andy's probably farther up that hill.

Come on, boy!

Pump it.

He's doing pretty good.

I don't think he's used to walking on snowshoes and that takes practise.

I think he's having a lot of problems with slipping, falling.

And that gets really exhausting.

I'm working on it.

My dog just had a 10-minute nap waiting for you.

This is where the fur is.

So I wanna make a couple marten sets around here.

CODY: I noticed a lot of tracks.

Just pick a tree.

-Go do your thing. -All righty.

Best case scenario for today is gonna be

getting some traps set up in a good position, with bait,

getting back down to the bottom of the hill, and warming up.

Get this bait set.

Right here, we got a piece of nice salmon steak.

Normally it's dog food, but today it's gonna double as bait for a marten trap.

And you just hang it so a marten comes up, walks down this guy,

and as he's trying to get to there,

he's focused on this and not so much looking at this.

And when he steps across, snap,

and we've got ourselves a little bit of money in the pocket.

ANDY: He's picking up the trapping part pretty quick.

A lot of enthusiasm. He's paying attention.

A few things a little awkward,

but that's normal for anybody doing something for the first time.

Shit.

The whole trapping idea in my head at first,

I was kind of up in arms about it, just 'cause of, it's trapping,

you know, it's not one shot, one kill. It's not clean.

But after hiking and working my butt off to get up that trail,

and setting traps, and setting the bait,

if I don't catch something, (CHUCKLES) I'm gonna be quite disappointed.

Should work.

Hopefully, I get some money out of it.

SUE: I wonder sometimes if people really realise

how much ever-present noise there is.

Jesus Christ.

It makes me batty.

Come on, girl.

You better get your business done.

Ermie and I have to get out of camp.

I made a new acquisition,

and this is something

that cannot fit in an aeroplane,

and definitely won't go in my back pocket.

So, we are on a journey to retrieve it.

Come on, Ermie.

(SUE GRUNTS)

(CHUCKLES) I can't pick her up that high with my back.

(SUE SPEAKING)

SUE: I am excited to be going to Deadhorse, going to town.

You know, there are some luxuries there that I don't get,

but a lot of trepidation, too.

This is exactly one year since I was in Deadhorse.

This place stinks. (LAUGHS)

This is an industrial place.

It's got... Ugh!

Exhaust smell, engine smell,

noise, lights.

It's daunting.

I've got my own little world going on up there.

I can give myself the illusion that I am the centre of my personal sphere.

But when I get into town, I'm just another ant in the ant farm.

Okay, that's unusual to me.

If I'm not running it, what the hell is that doing moving?

You know, there's other people here.

But I want that. I want that.

That's cool. I want one.

Next stop, Prudhoe Bay Hotel.

I mean, I talk about everything is alien and it's, ah, a little creepy,

but they have hot showers.

I could put up with a hell of a lot of creepy

to get some scrubbing going down.

CHIP: We don't have roads, we don't have speed limits,

we don't have stop signs. We don't have flashing red lights or green lights.

My driver's licence expired in 1991.

NARRATOR: With plunging winter temperatures in Noorvik,

Chip has two choices to warm his home,

spend cash on heating oil or head out on his snow machine

and chop down firewood.

CHIP: I go to the last spring's break up ice,

hit the banks, and knock these trees over.

And they've been drying all summer.

Nobody else has been here. I don't see a mark on them.

They haven't been claimed.

So, I'm free to get what I want

off the riverbank.

(EXHALES DEEPLY) So that's what I'm doing.

I have a lot of chopping to do, and not much sunlight.

So I'm gonna get to this.

I need heat whether I have a chainsaw working or not.

Like Abraham Lincoln said,

he who cuts his own wood warms himself twice.

So, I think I'm gonna be pretty freaking warm here for a while.

This is subsistence heating.

This is getting heat from the material around us.

Oh, I got an accident for you.

Last summer, I was cutting wood in my yard.

My axe handle broke,

my double bitted axe flew up, stuck in my forehead.

And this scar right here is where I pulled the axe out of my head.

I got a big piece of bone that came out of the cut,

and is lodged right here, making a lump.

And I bled all over the place.

That's my axe story, and I'm sticking to it 'cause it stuck to me.

This is another tree.

The pine needles are dead on it.

It's dry and it's going home with me.

I think that's enough for today.

It's almost dark and there's no more dry ones laying around.

Whoa.

I got some heat here for the next few days.

Three trees together, I have three days' worth of wood.

I hauled a lot of wood and I saved a lot of money,

not buying a lot of stove oil.

I need a fire started pretty quick

inside the house in the wood stove.

If you're lazy about heat, it'll be what we call parka time.

And that's when people who have run out of heat completely

put their parkas on and sit in their house.

Probably next to a candle.

Kindling.

Tomorrow, I will borrow someone's chainsaw.

AGNES: Wow, I find a pretty good dinner for tonight, Idi.

Care to join us for a good nook back?

Yeah, even muktuk.

We're gonna have a feast night tonight.

When we sit down and eat native foods,

it's a nook back.

And when we're eating, it's nika piak took.

Frozen foods, dried foods,

and all your berries to sweeten stuff up, and all the fats.

Yummy.

CAROL: My card wouldn't go on it!

So what? My card's still on there!

-Then mine will go right there. -Cheater!

CHIP: Fairly normal dinner here that we've got going.

I wanted tongue, so there's tongue.

There's a bible, which is a ruminants bag

and it's full of the tundra that the caribou chewed up.

This is one of their stomach chambers.

And we boil this up,

and we'll chop it up, and we'll add it to rice.

These right here are from caribou that we got up here on Kobuk River.

AGNES: Carolyn. The big one. Right in front of you.

-(GUNSHOT) -Got it!

CHIP: This is qualghuq, which is a kind of green that we get from the tundra

and we boil and ferment.

And this is pretty tasty.

And then over here are aqpiks, which they call salmonberries in other places.

And it's a pretty good berry. It's full of Vitamin C.

This here is seal oil blubber from the seal that my wife and my son brought home.

One, two, three. Go.

Hey!

This is a soft, half dried caribou.

And this is pretty good stuff.

Then I have some completely dried and crumbly.

This is pretty freaking hard stuff.

It will shatter if you break it up.

And then these are pike from this last summer, that we dried up.

Food is kind of what it's all about.

We basically make a living on the chase for food.

This is a salmon from when we were down in our salmon camp.

When we were at Kookoochaiq.

It's all for good health.

Everybody has their hand in this stuff

and everybody knows where it came from.

So, it always makes it taste a little bit better.

Come on, kiddos. Come get a plate.

Excuse me.

CHIP: I'm drizzling seal oil all over it.

It's a way of taking all these lean meats and fattening them up.

And it's got a flavour I kinda like.

And I don't know, it's just good. It's my dinner. (LAUGHS)

For me, the social setting here is the same at these kind of dinners,

as it was when I was a kid.

Our family got together on weekends and especially at dinnertime.

That's when I saw my mom and dad the most.

And it's kind of, like, the same way with us.

We all gather again at the end of the day.

Mom, what is this called?

It's greens. Qualghuq.

-QUTAN: You told him... -Greens.

CHIP: The chase is a good healthy thing.

The food is a good healthy thing.

Knowing the proper preparations

makes for a smart person.

And you live long, live good,

and you don't rely on anybody but yourself.

SUE: Can't be Mary Poppins about it, man.

(LAUGHS)

It's not always a beautiful day in the neighbourhood.

Sometimes, it's game on.

I'm here because I've got some new equipment,

and made it to my specs,

and I need to get ready, go over and see it for the very first time.

NARRATOR: Travelling across the Arctic tundra requires specialised equipment.

Today, Sue is picking up an all-terrain vehicle

she hopes will give her greater mobility in and around Kavik.

SUE: I know in my mind what it looks like,

but kid in a candy store, it's different when you actually get to see it.

I feel like I'm on the moon.

The first thing that hits me is the change of colour scheme

in Kavik, because I don't get the sun yet,

it has to, it's still below my horizon.

Very much in the way of yellow light.

I get a little bit of pinks because the sun can reach my clouds,

but not, you know, my landscape.

So, this orange and yellow, that's brand new.

I haven't seen that since October.

I don't get the opportunity to buy things for myself,

and this represents... It's not just a vehicle.

It's not just a tool.

This is so emotional.

It represents getting my personal freedom back, my ability to explore.

Okay. There's tyre tracks.

Oh, wow!

Oh, it's so cute!

Check it out, home fries.

Maybe, I should've counted on the fact that I'm a little fat.

(ENGINE STARTING)

(HORN HONKING)

This is a really unique rig,

specifically for these kind of conditions.

It's an all-year-round vehicle.

I'm not used to driving.

I'm mobile.

If I wanna go see some amazing site, I don't have to worry I'm alone,

and I can't do it on foot 'cause I'll freeze to death.

I'm overwhelmed that I'm gonna have my mobility back.

I'm gonna have my freedom.

It's a little smaller than I anticipated,

but it's pretty cool.

It's, uh, it's mine.

GLENN: I think when you have fewer things, you have a clearer mind.

And you definitely have a different relationship with the things you have.

They mean more to you.

One thing I really enjoy about living out here,

is all these jobs, you know.

Because you get a very concrete reward out of it.

I really enjoy living this way.

I like heating my water this way, cutting my firewood, taking a bath outdoors.

It just keeps you fit and alive,

and I don't know, I just feel really vital out here.

Water's good and hot.

I'm just adjusting the temperature.

I want it about as hot as I can tolerate ideally.

Yeah. That's just right.

And then I like to leave the stove going, good and hot,

so that when I come back in, I can warm right up.

I tell you, I remember getting pretty strung out one time,

with just too much going on, and I didn't take a bath for a long time.

I mean, one winter I really didn't bathe hardly at all that...

I was just, I was too busy.

So, I realised, "Wow, I haven't taken a bath or washed my clothes in ages."

What a nice day for a bath.

It's up to 28 below.

As long as the water's hot enough, you can actually take plenty of time.

You don't really have to worry too much about getting frostbite

if there's no breeze.

If it's calm, I'll take baths down to 40 below, no problem.

Maybe even colder.

Sometimes, you feel the hairs getting a little frozen,

but as long as the skin doesn't get frozen, no problem.

With the hole through the ice like that,

I can take a bath as often as I want to.

If I'm melting snow, I don't take a bath very often.

Oh, that hot water feels so nice, though.

Okay.

Out of water.

Okay. I'm starting to get a little chilly.

So I better slip these boots on.

I've only been out here a few minutes.

Look at that view. Isn't that beautiful?

ANDY: The way of doing this life is,

you get ahead by needing less.

CODY: Today, Andy sent me out here

to come check on the traps by myself,

and kind of a little bit nervous.

Wanna make sure I don't get lost, but you know with the snow how it is,

I should be able to follow my tracks pretty easy.

Still kind of a little freaky to be out here by myself.

That first set's right there.

It's gonna be a hard day.

I'm still on the fence about all this.

I mean, it's taking an animal's life.

Can't ever feel good about that, but you gotta make money to live.

If you ain't got cash in your pocket,

you're pretty much broke and on the street.

Looks like the first trap came across here, and nothing here right now,

but you know, hopefully I'll come back another time and might be something there.

But for now, we're just gonna leave it and keep on pushing on.

I think my biggest problem is just gonna be, maybe coming up on an animal in a trap,

for the first time.

You know, if it's still alive, I'm gonna have to put it down.

Got another trap over here,

and from the looks of it, nothing's really been through here.

I don't see any fresh tracks coming through here.

Should probably just leave it alone and come back another day.

Make sure I mark my trail, and blaze some trees.

With the snow, it's not too bad,

but you know, you want to have a good sight line going up and going back down.

You get caught in a blizzard up here,

it'd be pretty damn easy to get turned around.

Well, trap still looks good.

Bait looks good.

Everything looks fine, just no animal.

It's gonna be depressing if none of these have anything in them.

A lot of work for nothing.

Yeah, there's freaking marten tracks everywhere,

and haven't caught a single one.

I got one more set to check.

Hopefully, there's something in there.

If not, this was a hell of a long day for absolutely nothing.

Gotta keep on keeping on.

First trap on this line is a bust.

These traps I set pretty close to each other

so I'd be able to kind of eye one from the other,

and I can already look at my next trap down the row,

and tell there's nothing in it.

This is really starting to get depressing.

Every time I take a step, I'm sinking down, like, two feet.

So, throw on the snowshoes.

Snowshoes keep you from sweating and working a little bit too hard.

Son of a gun.

This is starting to piss me off.

I don't feel so bad for those animals any more.

They're elusive little bastards.

Losing motivation every time I see a trap empty,

but I only got so much light left.

So I need to go get the rest of these checked out,

and get my butt back down the hill

while I can still see my trail good and clearly.

Otherwise, I could find myself in a predicament

I really don't wanna end up in.

Son of a bitch!

I'm a little bit more off the fence,

I guess, about it now.

It's definitely a fair fight.

If they're smart enough to avoid this or not go after a nice piece of hanging fish,

then they're smart enough to live another day.

I got one more coming up.

If there's nothing in that, then we got skunked.

This should be the last set in my trap.

As soon as I come around this brush,

find out if I got lucky or...

I got nothing.

This trapping thing has just created mixed feelings this entire time.

I mean, I'm staring at this right now just wishing there was an animal in it,

and, of course, there's not.

And that's a paycheck gone right there.

I guess I kind of had it in my mind that we'd come back

and there'd be animals in every single one,

and I'd have a whole bunch of cash in my pocket.

It's gonna be a lot tougher than I thought it was.

GLENN: Just being connected to the whole flow of nature out here.

When you're living in town, you can even lose track of what phase the moon is in.

Like, that would be totally unthinkable out here.

I'm gonna go down now

and I'm gonna cover up my water hole with snow to insulate it.

If I don't insulate it, that thing will freeze solid

and I'll have to start all over again.

There'd be a whole lot of work chiselling it out again,

but if I insulate it real well, next time I open it up,

there might only be a couple inches of ice.

This hole's frozen over now,

and I can tell by the cracks in the ice how thick it is.

It looks like I've got already about a half an inch of ice.

So there's plenty of ice to cover it with snow.

It's about 30 below zero out, and that water's about 32 above.

So this is gonna keep the heat of that water in there.

Keep the hole from freezing in too fast.

With this snow I might have 2, 3, 4, 6 inches of ice

when I want to open this up in three or four days.

Without this snow,

I could have a foot-and-a-half or two feet of ice

to chisel through, easy.

I spent seven years getting ready to move out here.

Seven years before I ever came out here,

I decided this was what I wanted to do, just go live in the wilderness

in the Brooks Range, and during that time period I was preparing,

arranging my life so I could do it.

Studying the information I needed in order to do it,

and then, of course, you come out here and you learn more.

You know, when you see how things

work and don't work.

The way I live is a mental comfort to me.

It's comforting to be close to nature,

and to be really connected to all the resources I use.

Physically it's a demanding way to live,

but psychologically, I actually find it easier

than living in modern society.