Original subtitles

[geese squawking]

-I love you. Have fun. -Mmm.

-I'll be at Murder Lake. -Okay.

[Tinmiaq speaking]

[Chip] Oh, yeah. Go catch my goose!

The geese are just arriving.

It's pretty nice to see the birds come back.

This is what we consider spring.

I've got a bunch of white sheets and some rope. I got a shovel.

I'm gonna go over and go start on a blind,

a large blind for us all to stand in and hunt from,

and we're gonna get us up a bunch of geese, hopefully.

I'm hoping, anyway.

You guys keep doing what you're doing.

I'll get to my shovel work here.

And I got my shotgun ready.

Well, the oldest son, Doug, he joined us from Deering.

So he's with my daughter Idi-bitty's boyfriend, Edward.

We're here at Murder Lake and we're just tying up some tripods real quick,

and set them all up, make like four or five, six tripods,

and then just fill in the gaps with the rest of the willows.

Yeah, just the end to the end to the end, and then we're gonna make

a couple arches that we can put the sheets on top of.

We're trying to just hide ourselves, so we're using sheets.

And they look like snow. If you have cotton sheets, they look a lot like snow.

The thing is, we gotta get hustling.

You know, this is kind of a little short hunt.

It only lasts three or four days.

The snow is melting, and the snow is adding to the river,

so the river's starting to swell up a bit.

And the geese will spread out then.

The best part of the change of seasons is right now, 'cause the birds are here.

This is something we've really waited for and we really like to do.

We kind of anticipate all this coming on, and we look forward and plan for it,

and now, here we are.

I got a good blind built.

The ladies, they're gonna go sit over there with us.

Now we gotta get our hunt on.

[imitating goose call]

[narrator] The Hailstones have returned to their camp on the Kiwalik River,

where they will spend the summer hunting, fishing,

and gathering resources for survival.

The break-up of the river brings the return of birds to the region,

and the family must take advantage of the opportunity to hunt springtime fowl.

[Anges] Here they come. Two at a time.

[imitating goose call]

[Chip] Nope, not yet.

Lots of false alarms in this kind of stuff. [chuckles]

These guys made a pretty cool blind.

Quite a few of us are able to fit in here, all five of us.

Hopefully we'll, um, get one or two this evening, or a whole bunch.

[imitating goose call]

[Anges] When you see birds that are single and looking for a mate,

you can easily call them all in.

So, just keep trying to make all different kinds of bird noises

and see which one comes. [laughs]

Sometimes it gets a little funny, but they're all good.

[Chip] We built this blind in anticipation of a lot of birds coming.

And there's a few birds over here.

But we have to be ready, 'cause one of these days they're gonna come,

and they're gonna be over us.

Or maybe one of these minutes. [chuckles]

[imitating goose call]

[Chip] Those are swans!

[imitates swan call]

Right there, one swan!

[imitates swan call]

He's turning.

[imitating swan call]

Not... Not even a feather.

[imitating swan call]

Bah humbug!

Well, you know, the sun's going down,

and the birds are pretty well scared off

by me shooting at a swan that I missed, so...

[laughs]

They're not coming back tonight.

The fresh ones, the new wave, they'll be in tomorrow,

so getting this done now is gonna pay off in not having to do it in a few days

when they would really, really see us.

So we know that there's not too many birds yet,

but every day it's gonna multiply.

This place is gonna be swamped with birds soon.

[Andy] Every single day, the conditions are a little different.

Every day is a different day on the Yukon River.

This is kind of an exciting time of year for me.

My blood gets pumping a little bit, 'cause it's break-up.

And break-up to me is like New Years to most people.

So I start my calendar year the day the river breaks up,

and looking at the river, break-up is gonna happen real quick here.

So, I got all my food.

Dry good food-type supplies here.

And next step I gotta do is I gotta get going on getting some boats together,

create an ark for me and the dogs in case we flood.

I'm always nervous, after the flood in 2009.

You never know what this river's gonna do.

It can be your best friend or it can kick your ass.

[narrator] In 2009, Andy Bassich experienced

one of the most devastating break-ups of the Yukon River in recorded history.

The resulting flood cost him valuable equipment and machinery,

and took the life of a member of his dog team.

Having spent years rebuilding his livelihood,

it's critical for Andy to take every precaution against the impending break-up

in order to protect his home and the lives of himself and his sled dogs.

My next job is, I gotta get my army boats turned over,

get them stern to stern, and then connect them up to each other.

And that'll make about a 40-foot-long barge.

That's the ark.

It's really important to create a safety net at break-up, here.

So I'm gonna have to get some boats put together,

get it set up for dogs, have some food in there, some water in there.

'Cause you never know out here at break-up time.

This could be what we call a slush-out,

where the river just breaks up and goes out nice and easy,

or it could be an ass-kicker.

And if it's an ass-kicker,

I might be in a boat for 24 hours waiting for the water to go back down.

Although it creates a lot of extra work for me,

it's a whole lot more work if I don't do this prep.

In 2009, the water level came up from river level

to flooding this property in probably less than 15 minutes.

Twenty feet of water rise in 15 minutes,

you don't have a whole lot of time to react.

Right now, my mind is all wrapped around priorities.

Take care of the material things around here

that will get ruined in a flood,

and then the second top priority is the safety for me and the dogs.

In the boat! Come on!

Come on, Coug. Yeah!

Come on, Briggus! Come on, Brig!

Come on, Brig!

Yay!

Good job. In the boat.

Good job. In the boat.

So what'll happen is, I can clip them in and they're secure.

Come here, Jack.

There you go, buddy.

So I can go through and just secure dogs in like this,

and then everybody's under control.

Okay, the flood's over.

The flood's over, go play.

Okay, everybody out of the boat! Let's go!

Come on. Let's go!

On to the next job.

[Sue] You have to be able to think on the fly, do things off the cuff.

"If I can't make this work, how can I make that work?"

You've gotta be able to blend the old with the new.

Next chore on the menu is opening up the greenhouse.

We've got just a tremendous amount of chores this time of year.

But this is one of my more rewarding ones.

This is the thaw.

The tundra is now getting over winter and into spring.

Every single bit of food that I could grow or get for myself

is money in the bank, really.

[sighs]

Whew! It is hot in here.

[narrator] Isolated in the tundra and 500 miles from the nearest city,

Sue Aikens must rely on hunting, gathering,

and growing the food she needs to survive.

She built a greenhouse that allows her to harvest produce

in Kavik's brutal environment,

and taking advantage of the brief summer growing season

is critical to her food supply.

The growing season here is so short,

I'm always coming up with new ideas on,

you know, "Can I try something different?"

"Can I grow more?"

"What can I do to be a little bit more self-sufficient in the winter

"so I don't have to fly up or count on other means to feed myself?"

And one of the other problems that I have up here in the Arctic,

there is no soil here.

You can't go out and dig soil and plant something and have it grow.

It's just way too far north. We don't have any soil.

So what we have are rocks, moss, peat.

And that peat can mix right in

with some of the dirt that I have around camp, and the silt,

and just create a better medium.

The growing season here, my spring, summer, and fall

encompasses all of it in two-and-a-half months,

maybe three if I have a real hot year.

It's not a lot of growing time to go from seed, to plant

to maturity, to harvest, to can it.

So my best interest right now, cool this down,

I'll bring the plants out in a bit.

But I need to go find some peat, see if I can't get some medium.

I need to go out and trawl the river.

The river's still a little bit at flood stage.

I'm not quite thawed out yet.

All righty.

You're looking for a layer of rocks and silt.

And then this stuff right here is peat.

It's a vegetative material.

Not a ton of it here, but there is some.

You know, you can see what I'm doing here. You got little chunks of it,

you crumble it up. Look at that.

You've got a nice medium that you can mix in.

But those plants are gonna be happy.

For me to order a plane just to bring up dirt or something,

or bags of peat moss, it's $5,000 for that plane to fly up.

Or just an afternoon of being in the sun, listening to the birds, and finding it.

This is absolutely beautiful.

That's a really good piece.

I mean, what a great gift.

Nature's providing.

It's a resource.

May not be gold and it may not be silver, but the plants think it is.

Onward and upward.

Here we go.

So what I have is a nice starter batch of the peat.

I'll get this back to camp and, uh, keep going on my gardening project.

[Glenn] You might want it to be smooth sailing all the time,

but that's just not the way it goes.

Obstacles present themselves you'd rather not deal with,

but there's no choice about it.

I need to get some water.

There might be some under the snow here.

There's some water.

This is easy water.

Here on the river, I can just scoop up water and drink it.

[narrator] Glenn Villeneuve has been walking across the Chandalar wilderness

to scout the area for new resources.

After three days of hiking across the lake, river, and valley,

he has just 10 miles left on the trek to his cabin in the Brooks Range.

But rising temperatures are causing the snow and ice to melt.

He must get over the mountain and back to camp

before the terrain becomes too difficult to travel.

[Glenn] I followed this river as far as it's gonna take me.

Now, I gotta get over these mountains right here.

My camp's right on the other side.

Everything's warming up fast.

This river I've been travelling on, it just melted out from under me.

And the snow is melted.

I gotta get over this mountain while I still got good snow to travel on,

while it's still getting cold enough at night.

The sun's going down. It's gonna start cooling off.

That's the time to travel.

Any time you gotta walk through the woods out here,

it's hard-going this time of year.

The snow is deep, it's soft, it's wet, it's heavy.

Every step you have to work for.

There are no hiking trails out here.

When you travel through these mountains in the Brooks Range of Alaska,

you make your own route, you find your own way.

And there are obstacles.

[sighs] I got a big ravine here to deal with.

It's steep on both sides.

I can hear water flowing down the bottom.

And if I get my feet wet out here, it's over.

This is what you call a terrain trap.

If I go down there, it looks like it gets even deeper.

Up this way,

looks like I'd have to climb halfway up the mountain to get around it.

Guess I'm gonna have to go straight through it.

Just gotta make the best of it.

This doesn't look good.

[exclaims]

The snow's really icy and so cold.

Even slippery.

I gotta be careful here because there's water flowing.

And if I get my feet wet out here, it's over.

It's cold, there's very little dry wood around here to build a fire.

I gotta make sure and keep my feet dry,

and I gotta keep my sled dry, too, when I go across there.

Definitely don't wanna get my feet wet.

There's only one way to go now, and that's through these mountains.

I gotta get home.

Gotta get back up out of this ravine.

Sled's pretty heavy to pull up a steep hill like this.

[grunts]

Going uphill like this, this sled's nothing but a liability.

[grunts]

When I'm up on a mountain, I have to keep walking.

There's no choice about it.

[grunts]

You might be sick, you might be hurting,

you might have something going on where you feel like you wanna stop,

but a lot of times you don't have the choice out here.

A lot of times, you can't stop.

[panting] There. Made it.

[exhales]

Made it through that ravine.

Just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I'm getting close, now.

[Chip] You know, if you're not patient, you won't be a good hunter.

You could go out looking for animals and you won't see them at all,

maybe even for a whole season.

But if you know when to let things come to you,

and you know when to go pursue, you'll probably do a lot better.

[imitating goose call]

[imitates goose call]

[gun firing]

You don't always hit. Sometimes you got to try again.

[narrator] In Kiwalik, the Hailstones are hunting water fowl as they migrate,

a vital source of meat and protein for the family.

After building a blind on one side of the river,

they've added a second blind that will widen their hunting radius

and increase their chances of harvesting a bird.

[imitates goose call]

[Doug] Edward Kelly got here a little earlier than I did,

and he found a spot where me and my brother used to have our old blind.

He fixed it up and added more willows.

[Edward imitating goose call]

[guns firing]

[Edward] .22.

Whoo!

First goose of the year. One of many. Many to come.

[Doug] First goose of the season here in Kiwalik.

Pretty awesome. [chuckles]

Yup, set it up right here. Get a little stick.

[Edward imitating goose call]

I got the front one.

[guns firing]

Tinmiaq, go get it.

[Doug] Sometimes you shoot them and you wound them enough.

Instead of using the .22,

you catch them up and just wring their neck.

Grab them.

[Doug speaking]

This is my first time here in Kiwalik, and it's pretty awesome.

A lot of game here. A lot of birds fly every day here.

[laughs]

[Andy] Everything I do out here is just hard, physical work,

and that takes its toll.

Come on, mud daubers!

[laughs] You guys are braver than I am to walk around out on that ice.

Holy moly.

Big, big changes since this morning.

All the ice is floating now, even the shore ice is lifting.

So, uh, not too far away.

[narrator] With temperatures rising in Eagle,

break-up of the Yukon River is imminent.

In order to prevent damage to his camp and ensure his safety,

Andy must constantly monitor the behaviour of the ice

and make sure his structures and equipment are secure.

Right now, I'm looking at a really docile river.

In 24 hours or less, I could be looking at a beast.

Believe me, when it starts rolling,

all you can do is try and get out of its way.

There's not a darn thing you can do, but get out of its way.

Not a lot of time to get the last finishing touches done here.

So I gotta get this fish wheel tied up.

This is by far the most important piece of equipment, as far as my dogs go.

This fish wheel provides

thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of food for me.

The last thing I wanna do is have this thing go away.

I'm just gonna take this, tie it off, back up into the trees,

and then, hopefully, it'll stay attached.

This is probably one of the most powerful forces of nature

that I've witnessed, when the ice goes out.

Right now, I'm feeling pretty nervous about it.

I still got a ton of work to do today,

getting some land cleared on a high spot,

getting some of my equipment moved.

It's always tick-tock, tick-tock.

Seems like you're always kind of fighting the clock.

Sometimes the clock's ticking a little faster than other days,

and today it's ticking real fast.

I gotta get my heavy equipment up to high ground.

I've got a lot of money invested in heavy equipment, on tractors, bulldozers...

I need to get that as high as possible, so it doesn't flood.

Word is the river's been moving upstream of me,

so I'm expecting break-up sometime today, maybe as late as early tomorrow morning.

Looks like it came up another six or eight inches.

What do you think, Briggus? Gonna have break-up soon?

I think so. Maybe tonight.

Looking out here, the ice is really rotten.

It's... There's no white colour to it any more at all.

It's just kind of a brownish colour now so, uh,

it's not gonna take much to get it moving.

If it goes out today, it'll be two days earlier than the earliest record.

Maybe we'll be going for a new record this year.

As long as we don't break the record flood stage of '09, I'll be happy. [laughs]

Bottom line, if the ice kicks my ass, I gotta reassess what I'm doing,

what my plans are.

I don't wanna have to start over somewhere, but you know,

if I get totally wiped out here, that's twice in six years.

I gotta rethink what my long-term plans are.

I don't know. I just hope I don't have to cross that bridge.

[Chip] When these birds show up, it's spring.

When the salmons show up, it's summer.

It's a good time of year, and it's all coming to.

We're just starting. We got a lot to look forward to.

Looks like you guys have done well.

[Doug] How'd your guys' day go?

Oh, I went and got wood, and your mom just did chores.

I come out here and I see a few meals' worth of geese out here,

and I see they put their time into making a second blind over here.

Everybody seems to be kind of dialled in, so we'll get happy with it.

Yep. We'll get our goose hunting on.

I don't do the Specklebellies very easily, but you sure could.

[laughs] He's a magnet, man. That's awesome.

It's good to have you along.

It's really cool to be able to bring a young man along here

who has a lot of potential to become a really good hunter.

If he's a potential son-in-law, I want him to know this place.

Well, if you guys have got it set down right here, I wouldn't move a thing.

So me and your mom are gonna go over and go work the other blind,

and we'll see which side of the lake they wanna come to.

But you guys are doing really good.

-Shall we... -Yeah.

All right, we'll see you guys after a while.

You get bored, stop by.

You know, it's springtime, and this is a new flavour for us.

It's a time of year when we really wanna have this stuff going on, you know?

We wanna be able to jar these up or send them home,

put them in the freezer, or just eat a fresh meal of a whole new flavour

that we haven't had since September.

[imitating goose call]

-Oh, it's them now. -[Edward] Huh?

Right there, right over them.

[imitating goose call]

[Doug speaking]

It's all good. Live decoy, it's good.

[Chip] We like to call them live decoys,

because other geese see them and come on down.

And a lot of times, they'll end up flying over where we're at.

Look like the goose is getting comfortable out there,

so hopefully more will come land.

[Chip] He's just sitting over there. He's making noise.

Maybe other geese will come along and see that fella.

Yup.

If they come along and see him, maybe they'll fly low and wanna land, too.

We'll see.

[imitating goose call]

[guns firing]

[Chip] Damn.

Not their finest hour. [chuckles]

They take enough shots, you'll miss.

You don't expect someone to be an expert sniper shot,

but for that amount of shells I could've got one. [laughs]

Well, the birds are flying now, aren't they?

[imitating goose call]

Well, I put two geese in front of it for lead,

took a shot, and I probably shot in front of them.

Black powder shotgun doesn't push it near as fast or hard as a regular shotgun.

It's a trick to learn, I'll tell you that.

We've got about, maybe two hours,

two-and-a-half hours of daylight left and...

Probably just need more action.

More birds.

[Anges] Here they come.

[Chip imitating goose call]

[gun fires]

[all cheering]

You got it! [laughs]

-Did you see that? [laughs] -Yeah.

[Edward] He got one.

That was a hard hit.

I got one goose down.

First of many, though. I'll tell you that.

I always feel good when I got fresh food.

My family will be happy.

You know, I'm happy. This makes me happy.

Oh, it's a good big goose.

Awesome.

The guys over there just got a couple geese each,

so there's enough geese around for a real good meal.

Yeah, Canadian. And I got it right upside the head.

Right in the neck. No meat wasted.

I can match those boys for a good meal, now.

-[Anges] We got dinner. -Yeah, we got dinner.

We'll go over and go pluck them up, and eat them up.

Yeah.

[Chip] This is the start of an excellent spring.

[Sue] It's hard to explain just how important the quiet alone time

enriches me and who I am, and calms me down.

Today, I decided I was gonna open up the greenhouse and get that going.

So I went and I collected peat

from the tundra and from the riverbanks.

[narrator] Living 500 miles from the nearest grocery store,

Sue relies on Kavik's greenhouse to grow food to survive the winter months.

She's re-opened the greenhouse for spring,

but with a storm looming, she must get her crops planted quickly

or risk the plants being killed by the sharp drop in temperature.

These plants need to get planted.

So I'm gonna have to do it inside instead of outside.

Sometimes, plants have to change in order to be completed.

I'm damn close to 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle,

and just a stone's throw away from the Arctic Ocean.

It's a very tough climate to grow things in.

They're saying we may have another hard freeze coming in, and I don't want that.

This 24-hour daylight will keep them from freezing too hard in here.

I mean it's always a gamble.

Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle,

gardening's a freaking gamble.

But it doesn't stop me from trying.

The plants that I'm wanting to grow aren't necessarily native to this area.

So I have to baby them, pamper them, and alter a little bit of what I'm doing,

so that it's a blending of the harshness of this environment

with the comfort they need to survive.

My old dog, Ermie, that passed away...

I had straw leftover from what I used to use for her bed in her area.

I don't have Ermie any more.

She doesn't need her straw any more.

So I'm trying to just utilise what I have the best that I can,

because what I'm gonna do is take some of these plants and poke them inside of here.

And the dirt and the straw will act as a good growth medium for them.

Just the basic idea of doing this kind of a garden,

it saves me a ton of money, it's a healthier product.

You know, I'm working on my health

and I'm arming myself from the inside, not just the outside.

Sixteen, eighteen, twenty. Two, four, six, eight. Twenty-eight.

This is hydroponics, it's gonna work with the water.

I don't naturally have soil here, yet plants grow.

I like edible flowers.

So you can make, like, almost a jalapeno jelly out of them, you can pickle them.

But the flowers are edible, everything on it's edible.

They get soaked so that they are accepting

of the moisture that I'm gonna give them.

The water comes in, floods all of this, and there you go.

I'm gonna get to meet some potatoes and onions pretty soon.

It's a little extra labour-intensive on my part for my little plants,

but the reward is gonna be,

I may be sitting there at Thanksgiving having fruit pie and kohlrabi

and fresh smashed taters that I made myself and grew.

That'll be a pretty good feeling.

All right, there's really not a lot more I can do tonight.

I'm gonna try to keep some of this heat in.

A little bit afraid of how cool it's gonna get tonight.

But there's not a lot I can do about it, so good luck little guys.

I will see you in the morning.

[Andy] Like so many things in life,

if you just do a little bit of prep work ahead of time,

you can just save yourself a heck of a lot of heartache.

Oh, yeah. A lot of change.

It was a good night's sleep, but one with one eye open.

And just listening for break-up.

I woke up this morning, about five o'clock, and looked out the window,

and the ice was still there, so another day of reprieve.

I don't think we're too far away.

Right now, I feel pretty good.

I got the equipment, tools, all that's up high.

There's no way I can pick up everything and totally flood-proof everything.

So I think, at this point in time, I'm just gonna play the wait-and-see game.

None of this ice is connected to shore any more,

it's just out there floating in the middle of the river.

The only reason it's not moving is just it's a giant sheet of ice.

Once something starts pushing on it, it's starts breaking, it's gonna go.

It's just Mother Nature.

Mother Nature does her thing, and we're just pawns on the chessboard.

Think I'm kind of ready.

I mean, there's always a lot of little pick-up to do, but for the most part,

bring it on.

[Glenn] I love walking out here.

I love travelling this country, but it doesn't come easy,

and you never know what the difficulty's gonna be.

But there's no choice about it.

I'm getting really close now. Now, I'm back in familiar territory.

These are mountains I know.

This ridge right up here, that's the last ridge before I get into my valley.

This is home. I'm getting back into my home territory.

Like, all these mountains behind me, I hunt up there.

There's been days I've walked all over these ridges up here behind me.

I'm getting really close.

Just one more ridge, and I should be able to see my camp.

[narrator] Glenn is on a 40-mile trek through the Chandalar wilderness

to return to his camp in the Brooks Range.

With home less than 10 miles away,

he must get up and over one final ridge.

But melting snow and steep terrain will make for a difficult climb.

Almost there.

[panting] Not too much further.

[exhales]

It is really heating up out here, today.

Travelling up the river is one thing.

Travelling through these mountains is another.

I wanna get across these mountains as fast as I can.

[panting]

Made it to the top of the ridge.

[exhales]

I gotta go take a look. Should be right over here.

I should be able to see the camp.

Wow!

That's where my camp is, right there in those trees on the edge of the lake.

It's been a while since I laid eyes on that lake.

Now I'm up on top and I'm thinking about how to get down.

And I'm thinking maybe, just maybe,

I can ride this sled part of the way down. Save myself some walking.

It's been a long time since I rode a sled,

but I'm gonna see if I can slide down that slope right there.

Save myself a little bit of walking.

Come on.

Gotta hold on here.

Let's see what it does.

Whoo-hoo!

[grunting]

Darn! [laughs]

[exhales]

All right, yeah.

I'm gonna put the rope under it, try and slow it down.

Okay.

Whoo!

Whoo-hoo!

Whoo!

[panting]

Made it.

That was a fast way to get down the mountain.

Whoo! Never did that before.

Awesome.

Well...

Put my snowshoes back on here, head across the valley, I'm almost home.

[exhales]

That was a fast way down that mountain.

Especially for the sled. [chuckles]

Normally, I don't take a sled way up on a mountain.

It's just not an easy way to travel, dragging a sled around in the mountains.

But hey, I had it with me, I needed it for the first part of this journey,

so I used it on the last part, too.

Worked out great.

I tell you, I'm excited about getting home.

I'm gonna make it tonight.

That's awesome.

[Sue] If you make yourself the warden of any area,

you better gosh damn be sure that you're vigilant.

Look here, I've got a berry growing already.

More berries there.

It's only been a few days, but it's 24-hour light.

These guys have had to suffer with freezing weather.

I'm expecting more freezing weather, unfortunately.

Each type of plant is a little bit different.

My stevia... That's what this is...

You see where that's not exactly the healthiest part?

Gonna cut that.

You know, when you transplant anything, they kind of go into shock a little bit.

But you can see the new growth.

It's a little bit time-consuming, but any time you are transplanting,

you know, you're gonna have to take the time to trim back the unsavoury qualities.

Take off the icky part.

There's new parts growing here, new leaves growing there.

Look at my blueberries. I got little blueberries all over.

So these little dudes are happy.

Just after a couple of days.

I got little tiny guys coming up here,

so that's really... That's nice for me. That's really good.

It's such a unique environment, here.

It is challenging

and I enjoy the challenge of trying to find just the right things

that'll grow in the medium that's available here,

to make it cost-effective for me to add to my food supply.

Later on this evening, I'll come maybe if it gets really cold,

if it does go down to the 20s, I'll have to turn on a little heat.

But really, for a little bit of effort, I may have a whole lot of reward.

So, happy with my little garden.

[Glenn] Always have to be able to make it back. That's the difference.

When you're living in society, you don't have to be able to get anywhere.

When I'm up on a mountain, I have to keep walking.

There's no choice about it.

I've walked about 40 miles, and I've got about half a mile to go.

Almost there.

Hey, what's this track?

Oh, look at that.

Looks like grizzly bear.

Grizzly bear track, right there.

That's a back foot.

It's walking along through this snow.

Back foot's coming right down on top of the front foot track.

[exhales] Hope he didn't find my cabin.

I've had it happen before. I've come back here in the wintertime,

whole place ripped apart by a grizzly bear.

It's always a possibility.

Only the second bear track that I've seen all the way since Chandalar Lake.

Forty miles of walking.

That's only the second bear I've come across.

There are not a whole lot of bears out here.

But this one's within half a mile of my camp.

So I gotta be careful walking over there. I'm gonna get my gun out.

In the winter, I shot a few caribou.

I killed a moose last fall.

I got some food stored over there.

It could've gotten into it.

I wouldn't walk up to the cabin without a gun out.

If there's a bear over there that got into it

and he's like, hanging out, it's his territory, now.

He's gonna defend it.

There's the cabin. I'm only 50 yards away, now.

I gotta walk up cautiously, check it out, make sure nothing's been around.

So far, so good.

Don't see any signs of anything yet.

There's not tons of bears, but there's a few grizzlies around.

It can get dangerous.

It's really quiet.

I don't hear anything.

I'm looking around in the snow for tracks.

So far, everything looks good.

Don't see any bear tracks.

Gotta look around and make sure there's nothing wrong here.

Looks good.

No damage.

Everything looks intact.

Didn't have any unwelcome visitors.

Looks good.

Just like I left it.

[Chip] When it turns from winter to spring, it's like, ka-boom!

I got so much to do down here, this place is like a wild circus,

and I gotta go see it all.

[Tinmiaq] Awesome start to the season for the geese.

These are the first geese that I'm gonna cut up and cook,

and we just caught them earlier.

This one is still warm while I'm plucking it.

Gotta be careful so I don't rip off all the fat.

The geese are here, it's my birthday in a couple hours.

Before I was born, my dad and my uncle were going to the hospital,

and the first geese of the year came over and circled them and took off.

That's... The day I'm born is the day the geese come back.

So they named me Tinmiaq, which means "goose."

I pretty much plucked the goose.

Dinner is just about done!

First geese of the year. Yum!

[Chip] It's always worked, both sides of the lake, huh?

If the one side ain't doing well, the other side will.

This all came together really good. It's good to have your family around you.

We know when to divide up, we know when to work together at the same place.

They're opposing blinds of the other end of the lake,

but we're not opposing teams. We're on the same team.

Crispy. On the outside.

[Tinmiaq] So Edward got the first goose this year!

Yeah, he did. The very first. That was awesome.

That's the magic of this place.

You know, we all got to come together.

Doug came on over from Deering,

and then Edward shows up and we're making new memories. There's new things to do.

And he's an addition to our family now,

so, you know, we want him to be down here and be successful, too.

We wanna take him around, we wanna encourage him,

we want him to get some success in. It's a family thing.

When the birds show up here, the thaw has begun.

[Anges] The thaw has begun.