Alone

Washing my clothes. I'm just gonna boil them.

Ah!

! Ow.

Having my hand burned, I can't shoot my bow.

Stupid.

I need to get out of the temporary shelter.

So I'm gonna push, and I think, when I'm done,

this place is gonna be bomb-proof.

Gotta be careful standing up so quick.

It's easy to forget how much I haven't eaten.

The biggest game here is down!

I've butchered plenty of large animals

that I know how much work this is gonna be.

I'm gonna burn up a lot of energy doing this.

Yeah.

Boom.

Got him.

I strongly believe that

when nature throws you a tidal wave,

you build a bush craft surfboard and ride it out.

Yeah!

I'm officially tapping out.

I just couldn't deal with the social isolation.

I'm not tapping out.

I'd rather die.

Here goes nothing.

Whoa!

Yes!

Holy .

This is the harshest location possible.

We're 125 miles in the Arctic Circle.

Never had an environment

make me feel like a complete amateur before.

Everything is against us out here.

Mother Nature went and bitch-slapped me.

Looks like I got grizzlies and wolves as my neighbors.

Holy crap.

They're just hunting the shoreline.

Mother Nature is about to dim the lights on us.

We're heading into total darkness.

Hey, bear.

The cold and the dark is going to sap people's souls.

Really makes you wonder if it's worth it.

There is no camera crew.

There's no support system.

I'm completely alone.

Yes!

People go in one way...

Stop bleeding.

And they come out entirely different.

This is the most difficult

survival challenge in the world.

$500,000.

That's completely life-changing money.

It's beautiful.

Whoever can thrive the longest.

If they out here, they ought to be afraid of me.

- Whoever can push through... -

Wins.

I hope I made the right choice coming out here.

I can package the smoked meat,

get it in my food cache.

That's a lot of meat.

So I decided to boil some spruce and shave.

See how this works, shaving with an arrowhead.

Think that's about as good as I'm gonna get it.

Oh, well.

I need to start moving around because I'm getting cold.

But I really want to construct the bed in my shelter.

That's all I'm gonna do today, as far as work goes.

My energy level is zero.

My winter supply of meat is done.

My moose meat is smoked and it's in a cache.

It's very secure.

Now I can start moving into my shelter.

OK.

I'm gonna go about making a bed.

I'm gonna make a wood frame and then a bough bed on top of it.

My strategy starting now is to do the bare minimum,

as little as possible physically.

My shelter smells like smoked meat big time.

That's not gonna bother me at all.

And eat as much as I can,

try to build some longevity into my physique.

I have to raise up the bed off the ground for maximum warmth.

I'm really tired, and I shouldn't be.

My strategy always was to work really hard

for the first couple or three weeks to get things set,

and then do a strategy shift.

But the moose complicated it so much that

it might have been just overdoing it.

That might be good.

The way I've gone about these last three weeks

will drive me out of this competition soon

if I keep doing it that way.

I'm having a rough time, just physically today,

a very rough time.

So that might be one of the life lessons

I have to learn while being here.

I got... I got just a start

on making the bed in there.

This is sad.

I've never been this inept unless I was totally sick.

I really gassed myself during the first three...

three weeks here.

So I'm paying for it.

I got to recoup.

Well, I have decided that I must be getting sick,

coming down with something.

It's the only explanation for how I'm feeling today.

I've started to sweat and then get cold

and then sweat and then get cold.

I'm worried about it.

Hot, cold, chills, sweat.

Not a great day.

The moose could easily and ironically be

the thing that would take me down.

Sweating again.

I've got to get through whatever this is.

Place your bids. Here we go.

Anybody got a giddy up, go.

Antique log going, starting the bidding at 10 bucks.

Here we go. Anybody gonna go 10 now?

Here we go, 15.

Anybody want to go 25 here, anybody go 25 bucks.

There is no log on the face of the Earth

with the same grains and beauty as this sumbitch.

Now, come on. Anybody gonna go 40?

40 bucks. Can we get a 41?

Sold!

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together...

for the young lady in the back

who bought this amazing piece of lumber

for $42.

Sold.

All right, that's enough fun, Dub.

No fun allowed here in the Arctic.

It's all work, bro.

It's darn cold out today

on a pre-winter day in the Arctic Circle.

Food and firewood are the two things

that are gonna be hard to come by in about a month.

All right. Let's go check the gill net.

What scares the hell out of me more than anything

is that period of a couple weeks

before I can walk on the ice on this river.

If that happens, and I don't have food stored for that...

I can't ice fish.

I can't fish this open water and I can't ice fish.

So that'll be two weeks.

Two weeks of me not eating is a tap-out.

I'm too skinny, so I can't...

that can't happen.

That could happen to just about anybody else

in this competition, but that cannot happen to me.

Gill net.

Drumroll, please.

A bunch of... a bunch of garbage in there.

There's no fish in here.

Nothing in the gill net.

Must fish.

I must fish at all costs.

And I must do it almost every day.

I really would much rather be hunting right now.

But...

I also know...

this is a smart thing to be doing right now with my time

that's not burning calories.

I think something's hitting this one.

I don't know if I should wait for it to spring

or just grab it.

I'm just gonna spring it by hand.

Holy crap, that's big.

Stay on there.