Original subtitles

(SUE SPEAKING)

(ENGINE STOPS)

NARRATOR: Sue Aikens recently purchased a loader,

a vital piece of equipment to maintain her camp.

SUE: Well, Little Betsy, it's you and me now.

But during her 86-mile journey from Deadhorse to Kavik...

The vehicle got stuck in deep snow and ice,

and she was forced to call for rescue

and ship the loader across the tundra.

SUE: All right, see you in Kavik.

NARRATOR: With the convoy 13 miles out from Kavik and conditions worsening,

Sue must head out and steer them away from overflow

to make sure the crew and loader reach camp safely.

SUE: It's a safety issue.

You're not gonna find overflow on any map, on any GPS.

But I know it's there,

so they're close enough, I'm just gonna go help 'em out.

Let's keep going.

Argh!

(THEME SONG PLAYING)

My helmet is fogging and icing up.

With it not working, it's really hard for me to see.

Hard for me to distinguish the white from the fog,

from the snow that's blowing,

from what's happening in my helmet.

Right now, I could go probably 200 yards away from 'em,

and not see it.

We could be two ships passing in the night.

If I lose my way,

and I can't see,

I could get myself into trouble.

That's not gonna help the situation.

Important for me to get that loader here safely, the guys here safely.

But I can't jeopardize my life to get out there.

Once I have to lift that visor up like that,

it's, you know, 20, 25 below zero.

When the wind is beating you, I can lose my eyesight, my fingers.

It's not worth it.

GLENN: It takes knowledge to live out here in this environment,

and it takes different kinds of knowledge.

Right up here, caribou like to travel along that ridge.

And a lot of times, I'll spot them from down here on the lake.

By the time I get up there, they're already gone.

I want to go up there and see if I can find a place where there's enough snow

to build some type of snow shelter.

Caribou are very important animal to me.

They make up about half of the meat that I eat every year.

With a snow cave, I'll be able to spend the night up there,

and wait for the caribou to come to me.

All right, I'm off.

Being able to stand on your own,

being independent, being able to take care of yourself

is a very important part of this lifestyle.

It's not for everybody.

Some people rather wouldn't have to.

Some people would rather be able to turn to somebody else for help when they need it.

I'd rather have the challenge of having to take care of myself.

You can deal with a lot on your own,

and you'll feel better when you do.

Here it starts to get really steep.

I'm gonna take my snowshoes off here.

I'll leave my snowshoes right here.

It's gonna be too steep up higher to use 'em.

Just got to plough through it.

I'm getting up a little higher.

Snow is getting really deep here though.

It's hard to get through.

Just one step at a time.

Fresh wolf track right here.

They come up here 'cause it's good caribou hunting up here.

That's why I came up here too.

Hey, here's a little drift.

Could be big enough. It's hard to tell.

It looks about six feet deep.

I'm standing on some rock.

I don't know if the rock goes up there or not.

I want to dig into it a little ways to see how it goes.

I've never built a snow cave before, so I'm gonna try it.

This would be an ideal location.

I'll be able to spend a lot more time up on this ridge watching for caribou.

It's just a question of, is there enough snow here

that I can excavate a cavity big enough to fit in without it all collapsing.

CHIP: Sometimes, taking the long way is the best way, 'cause it's the smooth way.

NARRATOR: After harvesting enough muskox to feed their family,

Chip and Agnes Hailstone

are preparing to tow the meat supply home to Noorvik.

CHIP: One more. One, two, three, up.

Today, we're gonna be heading home towards Noorvik

and leave our Kiwalik camp just the way it is.

We plan on coming back here.

We want to make sure we get the meat all the way to Noorvik,

that's our main goal is the meat

because, if we leave the meat out here,

and we don't get right back to it, there's other animals and predators out there

that'll just go take all that free meal.

My snow machine's broken down for now

and it's not gonna be any use out here,

so we're gonna just end up towing it home,

along with a sled-load of meat.

NARRATOR: With one snow machine down,

the Hailstones will be forced to tow their broken vehicle along with the sled.

Dragging such a heavy load across the tundra

with one snow machine will be dangerous.

CHIP: We need to take your belt off because we don't...

We need to be able to, uh, drag this thing in without moving the motor.

So when you take the belt off, just the track moves.

CHIP: No resistance that way.

Well, that's the reason why I always make sure there's two machines.

What if we'd only come out on this one?

We wouldn't have a sled-load of meat. You know what I mean?

This one just wants to overheat, and overheat, and overheat, didn't use it.

And now it's time to take it home.

We're not skunked by any means. It's just this dang engine.

Basically what I'm doing is towing home my wife's machine 'cause it got a bum engine.

I had a load of meat on the sled,

so I tied a really strong rope

to the last two of my crosspieces,

and I've got it over here on the right side of my sled.

I tied the rope to the left side of the snow machine.

I can't control the momentum of the snow machine behind me,

but I can brake slowly and come to a halt slowly.

If I had this sled behind the snow machine,

it would be a lot more uncontrolled weight

that I'd really have to be leery of coming in behind and smashing into me and Agnes.

Snow machine will do its thing.

You're gonna have to keep an eye on it for me, though,

-keep looking back, okay? -Yep.

AGNES: Everything points toward home.

Broken down snow machines, we got a load of meat.

Kids are home.

Our goal is to get the meat home.

We can shed the snow machine,

we can shed all the other stuff,

but, uh, me, Chip and the meat must get home.

It's a long ways and it's, uh, adventure,

and we love to do this every single year.

And every time we do it, it's always different.

ANDY: I believe that experience is knowledge,

and if you don't get out and do things,

if you don't make mistakes,

you don't get that knowledge.

This winter, I had kind of a major malfunction with my, uh, wind turbine.

I lost one of my blades off of it,

so my wind turbine's been pretty much down most of the winter.

The big challenge for me right now is gonna be getting my bulldozer started,

so that I have something heavy enough

that I can lower this tower down with it.

You know, if I can get this working again,

it's gonna ease my mind and make life more efficient

and, uh,

you know, I'm gonna be back, back off-grid,

and that's what I want.

NARRATOR: In winter, Andy Bassich relies on his wind turbine

to power his camp along the Yukon River.

Fixing the device is crucial,

but doing so will require him to get another key piece of equipment up and running.

Well, the main thing I got to do,

is get these batteries charged up.

Try and get some heat to these batteries too,

'cause batteries don't like cold weather.

The warmer I can get these,

the better I'm gonna get performance and that's gonna be the main thing.

Can I get this engine to turn over quick enough to get it going and everything?

Pump as much heat underneath this thing as I can,

warm up the engine, warm up the fuel system.

The hotter I can get it, the better chance I have for getting this thing going.

(ENGINE STARTS)

Yeah, buddy, that's started good.

Better go get my canopy.

I'll stretch this thing out.

It's really big. It should cover the bulldozer pretty good,

and hold that heat in.

All right, I'm making heat.

It's all puffy.

That's good.

Think I'll go and get started shovelling out now.

Got a lot of cables and pipe and everything to dig out,

so I think that's next on the agenda here.

We'll let this thing heat up,

and, uh,

check it out later.

It's really kind of critical to me to get this going again.

I don't like the idea of having to burn generators all the time.

I like to be self-sufficient,

I like to use what the land has to offer,

and I like to be creative in how I live my life out here.

That's what makes it all worthwhile. That's my payoff.

So I guess we'll just see if it's gonna kick over or not.

That's gonna depend on the battery, more than likely.

If I can't get that bulldozer going,

this is gonna turn into a completely different project for me,

because I'm gonna have to be very, very creative

in how I get this thing down and back up safely.

So it all kind of hinges on the bulldozer right now.

(IGNITION CLICKING)

That's not good.

(IGNITION FIRING)

(ENGINE STARTING)

Yeah, buddy!

I got lucky that thing started up.

I wasn't expecting that at all.

I figured it was gonna be a real battle to get that thing going.

The hard part's done right now, I think.

We got my bulldozer going.

So the next thing I gotta do is start lowering the tower some.

This is the line that's gonna end up, uh, lowering down the tower.

It's gonna wanna flip down pretty quick here.

There it goes right there.

All the weight's on the dozer, so I should have pretty good control with the dozer I hope.

Slow control is what you want when you're doing something like this.

No speed, no momentum.

Just the opposite of what you do with dogs.

If this thing starts coming down and hits,

then, game over.

The whole mechanism failed here.

The metal broke, the part that's supporting it.

That's a major failure.

It's wearing on the metal here.

Probably when that blade came off, it tweaked everything.

I managed to get the pole, the whole tower to come down.

Um, it came down pretty good,

and, uh,

right now, it's resting on a couple of barrels.

It looks like the unit,

where it connects up a bunch of metal, fatigued and broke,

so, pretty major repair, it looks like.

Hoping I have everything I need so that I can get it repaired fairly quickly

and get it back up and operating.

SUE: The weather is king out here.

You can lay all your plans in

and Mother Nature will take you right down to your knees in a heartbeat.

The visibility is so poor, they could be 200 yards away,

I would not be able to see them.

NARRATOR: With her loader on its way to Kavik,

Sue attempted to meet the convoy

to guide them to camp safely.

But dangerous conditions forced her to return home,

and checking on the status and safety of the delivery crew is a priority.

SUE: Hecka cold. I mean, coming in,

we dropped in temperature severely.

In the end, I mean, I feel bad that I didn't get out there,

but, uh, I'm not gonna be much help to anybody

if I can't keep myself safe.

Holy crap.

You don't really want to rub your hands together, but I'm cold.

I personally haven't frozen my fingers that hard, I don't think, ever.

I better go call Jim.

(SIGHS)

(LINE RINGING)

Hey, buddy, how you doing?

JIM: I'm good, yourself?

Oh, man, you know, I went out there and tried to meet up with the convoy

and it's so damn foggy, I don't even have 200 yards of visibility.

-And... -That sucks.

Yeah, so I went four or five miles,

and I'm like, "Fuck this shit, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get, uh, frostbite.

"And that won't help anybody out."

-Well, I just talked to him. -Okay.

And I figure they're between three and five miles away from you.

All right, buddy, well, I'll keep an eye out for 'em

and I'll just send you an e-mail then

when they get in, just so you know.

-All right, thank you, Suzy. -All righty. Talk to you later.

Well, shoot.

SUE: The Cat train and myself were probably right next to each other.

And he says they're three to five miles out.

That's exactly where I was.

Visibility's so poor, we couldn't see each other, so...

But even at that distance away,

they may shut her down and get some rest.

Safety, safety, safety.

They've got their little travel trailer.

They can handle that.

I'll be here whenever.

It's just hurry up and wait.

CHIP: Anything in life that you rely on

you have to take really good care of

or you ain't gonna have it long.

AGNES: We made it.

CHIP: Yep, we're halfway home.

AGNES: Not bad of a ride.

CHIP: No, just incredibly slow.

We've been burning a lot of gas

'cause we're going so slow and the engine's working really hard.

But it's staying cool and it's doing the job,

and what really needs to happen the most

is that me and Agnes get home.

We need to take our meat home,

and we need to get her machine home

so that we can fix it and repair it and she can rely on it.

We'll get the whole thing repaired,

and we'll be back on the road.

Well, we're at Gallahan here, which is a shelter cabin.

And we're halfway between the Kiwalik and Noorvik on the Kobuk.

There are places where you get out of the weather.

The weather here is terrible. It's the Arctic.

It gets really cold, so usually you can find

a place to get out of the wind and get heated up.

If you've got trouble out here

and you can make it to a shelter cabin,

you pretty much figure it out after that.

CHIP: At least we're halfway home.

We just got to cross the inlet and then get into the river.

Once we're in the river, we'll be all right.

At least we got rid of the gas.

Moved the weight. That's why it's so bad.

Well, I think if we just carry on and get to the mouth of the river,

and from the mouth of the river get up the river and get home, we'll be done.

We're pretty much past the rough ice, yeah?

-I don't know, we'll see. -Hopefully.

-Just get ready and go now? -Yep.

I'd say we got about three hours of light left.

So if we start leaving now, we'll probably get home just about sundown.

It's nice to step out of the wind for a little bit.

-AGNES: Yep. -But we need to carry on.

(CHIP SPEAKING)

AGNES: Chip! Chip! Stop!

My snow machine crashed!

CHIP: Well, it tipped over on its side as we were going along.

My wife gave me a couple good stabs to the kidneys and I came to a halt.

Looked behind me and it was laying on its side.

Well, the windshield's cracked a little bit.

That can be repaired.

It's function not form that we're after.

Looks like a crack here.

It just tipped. There was no rider, you know, stabilising it.

Also, another reason why we don't leave another rider on there.

Just got to keep watching. It's likely to happen again.

This is gonna be a pretty rough trail until we get out

into the middle of the Spafarief Bay out here.

Really, that's how it was when we came in.

-AGNES: Yep. -So just do me a favour,

-no real good kidney punches. -I'm sorry about that.

Just a couple love taps

-and we'll be fine. -Okay.

AGNES: You had to stop.

CHIP: Yes, I had to, but I felt it too in a way.

I felt it do the jerking.

-AGNES: I know, I... -It was all wrong.

AGNES: I won't do that.

-CHIP: Ready? -Yeah.

ANDY: The more knowledge you have, the more you can do

and the more you can do, the better your life is.

Hey, Topey, want to help me build a shelter?

I had a great day when I lowered the thing down,

and then the weather kind of came in

and kicked my butt a little bit here.

NARRATOR: For Andy, repairing his wind turbine

is critical to having power in camp.

But protecting the equipment from the elements is crucial,

and an onslaught of snow

will force him to build a shelter for the labour.

So once again, adapt to wherever, whatever's happening.

Hopefully, that'll do it.

They call this "the can."

This is the part that broke.

I think the biggest thing when you're doing projects like this

is you just got to really, really pay attention when you take it apart,

so that when you put it back together,

it goes back together the way you took it apart.

The big thing about the wind turbine is just the fact

that my whole premise of living out here

is I want to be self-sustaining,

and the wind turbine allows me to be that way.

If I could spin this fast enough, I'd be making power.

Really, the final step for this

is putting the... Mounting the blades on.

It feels really solid now.

This is all back together.

It's ready to go up in the air.

Luckily, I got all the parts that I needed

and, uh, I feel like it went pretty good for the most part.

So pretty much, I'm back to like-new condition right now,

and I'm hoping I can get another six or seven years out of this

before I have to deal with this again.

I got a few more hours left in the night before it gets dark.

I think I'm ready to try and raise the power up.

GLENN: In order to survive out here you got to have knowledge.

You got to be able to take care of yourself,

and if you don't know what you're doing,

you don't belong out here.

I'm just not sure there's enough snow here.

The drift might not be deep enough.

But if I can fit inside of it, I'll be safe.

If I can get in here, I can get out of the cold,

get out of the wind, get out of the elements,

I can survive the night up on this mountain.

NARRATOR: To increase his chances of intercepting caribou

as they migrate through the Brooks Range,

Glenn is building a snow cave that will provide shelter on the ridge for later hunts.

If I get a good cave built here that I can get shelter in,

this'll last the rest of the winter.

I'll be able to come up here hunting anytime I want.

I'll be able to spend a lot more time up on this ridge watching for caribou.

It's gonna get really cold when the sun goes down.

It can get 40 below zero out here,

but if I'm under the snow, this is good insulation.

I just wonder if it could collapse on me.

That's the only thing I worry about.

I do not want to end up in a snow coffin.

It's a little cramped in here.

I do not want to end up buried.

The ceiling, the walls, if you touch them, snow falls,

so it's important to be real careful with movements.

I'm gonna start putting my stuff in my snow cave now. I got it all dug out.

It's getting late.

I'm getting extremely tired.

I just want to get in my sleeping bag now and try to get some rest.

Wow, got a match lit. That's the first step.

There's my moose fat lamp.

I think I'm gonna have a hard time getting it going.

It's so cold, all the moose fat's frozen really hard.

And all I have are a few matches here.

See, my matches all, almost burned out.

I'm gonna have to let go of it and I didn't get it lit.

Well...

I can try another one.

Come on.

Come on.

Oh, look, it's starting.

There's a little bit of heat.

It's not enough that it's melting,

it's just enough to take the chill off.

Feels really good.

I think I could stay here for a while.

This is really gonna expand my horizons.

I got a snow cave on top of a mountain.

I can live anywhere now.

Get up tomorrow, look around, see what's up here.

CHIP: This is what we call the first step

of a journey of 1,000 miles.

NARRATOR: After being stopped in their tracks

while towing their meat and broken snow machine,

the Hailstones have secured their cargo

and are back on the 40-mile trail to Noorvik.

They must make it home before darkness falls

and conditions become too dangerous for travel.

What we're trying to do today is get home the sled-load of meat,

my wife's bum ride and ourselves as well, all in one go.

You never know really what it is you're gonna be seeing out there.

We might have to go along detours and distances around,

we might have to leave some things behind.

A breaking down snow machine isn't nearly as upsetting as going home

if we didn't have a sled-load of meat.

A sled-load of meat's really the prize.

The rest of this just gets us there.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

-Hey, we made it. -Hi, girls.

Phew! We started out early today.

Hi, loves.

AGNES: We made it!

AGNES: You girls look like girls who are having fun.

Hi, puppy! We brought meat!

CHIP: Yep, we got a sled-load of meat. AGNES: Yeah.

This machine's running good.

Your mom's machine is being junky.

We towed your mom's rig home.

But we got a heart and tongue from the muskox for dinner tonight.

Gonna go inside, warm up and make soup.

-AGNES: Yeah. -You up for that?

CHIP: Yeah. AGNES: Yeah.

SUE: I'm just a mid-50s-year-old fat chick trying to eke out a living.

Ooh, look at that.

Looks like they are...

Looks like they're just another mile,

two miles or so, right up there.

It's been a long time coming for it to get here.

NARRATOR: After travelling 86 miles across the frozen tundra,

Sue's loader has finally arrived in Kavik.

But getting the heavy machine off-loaded in unpacked snow will be challenging.

SUE: So what they're doing now

is he's gonna build a little snow ramp

so that they can bring the sleds next to it.

And the plan is to drive it straight off.

But as it's newly-moved snow,

it's not exactly packed down super tight.

It's not solid enough, I don't think, for my loader to make it off.

I don't want to watch.

Oh, see, he's stuck.

It's too soft.

You get 53,000 pounds of loader on,

you're gonna bury it.

They have tracks.

That's solid tyres.

In the world of machinery, it's a world of difference.

What up, home skillet?

Stuck?

Uh, it's pretty heavy.

-SUE: A little bit. -Yeah.

SUE: Kind of like me. A 1960's model with a lot of ass.

(MAN CHUCKLES)

So, now, he's gonna use a 90,000-pound winch

to yank the equipment off and put it in place.

Come on.

Come on, little... Come on, little kitty cat.

Damn it!

You busted your chain.

Well, see, you know.

They're right around 50,000 pounds, 53,000 pounds.

That winch'll do 90,000, but you're asking it on a thin chain.

That's where your... All of it hits.

So he's gonna use a beefier chain.

I am grateful that the loader is here.

But, you know, it just showed up,

so I need to put it through some of its paces.

This is not new, but it's new to me.

I'm excited it's here.

It's going to be, I think, a great addition.

But there's a huge learning curve.

This is one of the largest gambles I've ever done.

And it's either gonna pay off big,

or cost me a fortune.

This is the next step up.

It's like going from the trailer park to the split-level.

It ain't no penthouse, but it's not the basement either. (CHUCKLES)

The fact that it's here,

takes me from being a little boy camp to a big boy camp.

And now I can get some things done that the big companies can do.

You know, I might have been a gnat on their backside before,

now I'm a fly in the ointment.

CHIP: Glad to be back home to girls.

They're what it's all about for me. All this is for them.

Oh, that's a pick too.

CHIP: These are the kind of meals that you get off an animal,

you know, when you first catch him

and they're kind of a delicacy.

There's only one tongue,

there's only one heart on an animal.

I got a muskox tongue here and a muskox heart

that I saved up from a hunt that I just did

and this is the first meal we're gonna have home with our kids

and I'm kind of looking forward to it.

My kids like tongues.

They love muskox.

For us, it's like the progression of seasons, you know?

Pretty soon, this is all gonna change.

It'll all melt down, the rivers will flow,

we'll be hunting different animals.

We'll be in different methods of transportation, be wearing different shoes.

It's all coming up.

Dinner is ready, gals.

Did someone say dinner?

Yeah, I got an unusual amount of carrots on my top,

but that's okay.

I think I'm having an extra big bowl today.

CHIP: Here you go.

You girls got to count yourselves lucky to have this heart and tongue

because, man, I coulda ate it at any moment.

This is delicious.

This heart is just perfect.

GIRL: The best, been waiting.

AGNES: So after we caught our sled-load of meat,

then my snow machine wasn't running good,

we decided to just pack up and come home and go have muskox dinner with you girls.

We knew you girls would be waiting.

GIRL: So glad you guys came home.

CHIP: We're gonna fix our rides, we're gonna gas back up.

We already brought one load of meat home,

so we'll be pretty confident

leaving you girls behind this time.

We'll go back for caribou,

see if we see any seals because it's warming up. Might come across a bear.

You never know, the seasons are changing.

Birds'll be back soon, then we'll be in boats.

That was some really good ox, right?

It's like the flavour of the season,

like turkey at Thanksgiving.

-Did you girls like that? -GIRLS: Yeah.

AGNES: The girls love muskox

and it's a delicacy for the whole area

'cause we don't usually get to hunt very many muskox.

It's a permit-hunt only.

So, um, Chip and I and our girls are lucky to be able to do this hunt.

So, it's been a pretty good season.

We accomplished pretty much everything we wanted to

and thought about this year, and I'm real thankful that,

you know, we've been able to travel a lot,

either by foot and by snow machine,

and checking out the whole area.

It has lots to offer.

We actually went downriver towards Emonakrov

and we went and put a structure down there for a base camp,

our new properties we acquired during the last year,

so we've been improving and building on that place down there.

We snared some rabbits.

We went out sheefishing, so we have holes,

so anytime we feel like sheefishing,

we go back down there and go hooking.

And we just had a real awesome time this year.

I always say, "Lucky me, my work is play."

ANDY: Every week I screw up and make mistakes,

but every week I learn something.

Right now I want to see if I can't take this anemometer down from here

and rig up something on my wind turbine.

This gives me wind speed,

temperature, barometer.

The whole nine yards.

And it transmit wirelessly

down to a receiver at my house,

so be a pretty cool little invention to have this on the wind turbine.

I'm mounting this anemometer on here is gonna allow me

to gauge the performance of the wind turbine

and let me know when it begins to fail,

so I don't have a bad catastrophic failure again.

In theory.

Everything's always in theory.

All right,

think I'm ready to go up with it.

Bulldozer time.

It's always challenging when you do a big project like this when you're by yourself.

Over the years I've invested a lot of money in tools and equipment

so that I can be productive.

And I can be productive working alone.

Once you get going, I like to just keep the tension on it,

keep it coming up nice and steady.

I don't like it jerky.

I can tell it's upright by the line of slack,

so there's no more tension with it wanting to go back over.

So I feel okay right now.

I'm gonna just go up and start pulling cables off

and start attaching cables to secure it for the night.

It's always nerve-wracking when you start

taking the cables off and transferring 'em.

If a gust of wind comes when that happens,

there's no support for your pipe.

Once that tower gets up in the air with these blades on it,

it's got a lot of force and you're really not guide off very well

until you get everything tied down.

Holy shit!

Way out of alignment.

This is the part that is really difficult to do by yourself.

You've got to pull the wires tight

and try and get the pole nice and straight

and it's nice to have a person here

that you can just say, "A little tighter, a little looser."

Just want 'em tight enough 'cause the tower has to be able to flex too.

The tower can flex when you're putting a lot of stress on it.

There's a lot of force on this tower when you're running

a 40-knot wind.

Cables almost act like a spring.

Like anything, if it can flex, then you have a chance.

But if it can't flex,

it's gonna break somewhere.

Oh, that's actually looking pretty good.

I got one blade turning one way

and one turning the other.

Yee-haw.

I'm feeling pretty good right now.

I'm feeling like I'm up and running again.

Between the wind and the solar,

I'm free. I'm living off-grid.

That's what gets me jazzed up.

That's what makes it all worthwhile.

That's my payoff out here.

Life is, in the bush, is all about transitions,

from one season to the other,

from one resource to the other,

from one activity to the other.

That's what life is out here.

It's this constant circle.

It goes around from year to year.

I'll remember this trapping season.

There we go.

I'm liking this day.

Feast to famine.

Oh, yeah! Yeah, that's a nice-sized marten too.

It's the same way with every log

and every board that I cut around here.

I can still remember the day that I go and harvested that tree

and cut that log and that's why I live out here.

I love doing that.

I feel really lucky

that I've been able to develop a homestead here,

create a life that I have out here

and, um, live very comfortably.

It's hard work,

but it's only work if you think it's work.

If a man loves his work, he never works a day in his life.

There aren't too many places in the world

you can brew your own beer,

cut your own logs, build your own house.

You can here.

Cheers to a good winter,

and looking forward to a good summer.

GLENN: Being able to stand on your own, being independent,

being able to take care of yourself

is a very important part of this lifestyle.

It's not for everybody.

I'm amazed at how well this shelter's working out.

I've been keeping the lamp going a lot.

Course, the big thing is just to keep hydrated.

I've been drinking as much as I can drink.

I'd say the temperature's got to be

right around freezing in here.

This lamp, it makes all the difference.

I got to get dressed, go outside, look around,

see what's going on. In here, I've got no idea.

I'm gonna go up to the top now and have a look around.

See what's on the other side of the mountain.

It's a little breezy up here.

A lot different from being in that snow hole,

all protected from the wind.

From up here, I can see not only what's going on at the mountain,

I can see what's going on down in the valley better than when I'm at my camp.

Doesn't look like there are any caribou on this mountain today,

but oftentimes caribou do cross this ridge.

And now that I've got a trail all packed up here,

and I've got a snow cave right up high,

I can stay in that snow cave and intercept caribou on this ridge

more easily than if I have to travel all the way from my camp.

It's just been a great fall and winter

out here in the Brooks Range.

I've had so much going on, so many experiences.

Just watching the changes, watching winter set in,

the ice forming across the lake.

The Northern Lights coming back again.

Hunting in the fall,

getting my moose to get through the winter.

Got him.

Building a new camp.

So, I've explored a lot of different places on this Earth,

but there's no place for me that's as intense, as alive,

as beautiful and as interesting

as this spot right here.

And that's why I'm here.

There's nothing like it.

I love it.

Life just keeps getting better.

SUE: It's a learning curve. That's what I like about it here.

It's always a challenge, it's always a big learning curve.

I feel every ounce of my age today,

I tell you that much for free.

You know, I guess that's part of what I love about remote Alaska,

is there's a tenacity and a will to thrive and survive.

You can get by in life, or you can live life.

One is just sitting on your ass

and the other denotes getting off it.

A few of the highlights for me of this past winter,

ponying up to the challenge of the snow machine.

Not letting it getting the better of me.

(EXHALES) Big day.

This makes it almost one year

since I've gotten on any kind of snow machine.

It's a learning curve. That's what I like about it here.

It's always a challenge, it's always a big learning curve.

To me, it's been...

Kind of a unique gig getting the hunting this year.

Went after the caribou and got the ptarmigans.

I went after a wolverine, got the caribou.

(PANTING)

The bigger things that I've had to invest in over the winter, the loader.

There's projects that have to be done

and I have the equipment to do it now.

So that's what I feel I did this winter

is got off my booty and got a bunch of things done.

Successful in the end,

but a hell of a journey getting there.

(CHUCKLES)