Life Below Zero

That is, uh, the average DC-6.

That's a bigger plane than, uh, has been here in a while over 10 years.

Why haven't I seen it?

The runway's almost 80 years old and it's degrading.

I have got 16 years now dedicated to working the runway to make sure

these guys are safe.

This is the culmination of over a decade to get that plane in.

I don't want anything going wrong.

If this goes well, I'll be able to get more in less often,

overall saving some revenue.

yeah, that was a beautiful landing.

The largest plane in over a decade landed on the strip today.

So, that's a complete validation for a decade of my life.

My name is Susan Aikens and I live at 69.4 north by 146.54 west.

A geographic location close to the Arctic Ocean.

I am a safety outpost.

I'm the only fuel station in an area the size of a third of the state of California.

This is the reason I'm here.

Keep the planes safe, serve them fuel, and keep them flying in the air.

I have less than three months to make the revenue for the entire year.

If I am not profitable, I cannot stay.

Sometime in September usually is the last person I see.

I spend the next 290 days alone.

Not only surviving but thriving the winter conditions here.

Very harsh, very austere.

In the summer, everything wakes up.

It's a migration of growth and change up here.

The only thing you think from the first time you see the sun come back up

over your horizon is,

"Oh, my God, winter's coming. I better get to work."

I've got the Bobcat. I do not have forks.

No worries, we'll figure something out.

But if anything else, we can just hand these down here, will do.

All right.

I have 15,000, 16,000 pounds of goods coming out.

But I've got clients coming.

They need more buildings than I have.

So, they're bringing tents out.

I've got to get them up before they arrive.

Are you sure it's not too heavy for me?

-1,600, okay, you gonna give me a little ballast?

I'm rated for 780 pounds.

I'm moving 1,600.

If you're too far forward with your weight, you got to get a little bit

more in your caboose.

Straight back?

It's a little stuck.

I'm trying to get it to go down.

I'm gonna have to tilt it.

Keep going. No. Down! Down!

-Are you okay? -Okay, go down.

.

-It's a little unbelievable that A, I'm okay.

B, I boned it.

How the hell do I get myself out of this?

I had a guy on the back providing ballast.

Like any good person riding a dirt bike, when you get in trouble, throw the bike away.

So, when the load started going, he knows, save yourself,

the load's not worth an injury to anybody.

All right. Sorry, man.

Now, I'm nervous. That's my first load.

I've got 24 more thousand pounds that I got to deal with.

In the end, clients are coming in.

No matter what it takes, no matter where you need it, and no matter when,

I'm going to get that (bleep) to you.

All of this is to put up buildings for them.

This is show time.

I don't know if I've said it often enough.

The thrill I get by hearing the throatiness of those motors,

it's a privilege for me to be able to be around those.

Those airplanes are my life blood.

They're the ones, as a remote person, that get me out when I need it,

fuel me up when I need it, bring me the food when I need it.

It is so integrated into the quality, and perseverance, and preservation of my life.

Hot damn.

What a good sound and what a good feeling that is.

Suzie's back, and (bleep) I brought my airplanes with me.

If you don't plan ahead, you don't get good results.

If you don't plan ahead, you don't do things well, and you work a lot harder

than you need to.

Oh, come on.

All right.

This is an important part of having good production, but it sure is a time suck.

Anything I can do to reduce my weeding efforts is money in the bank, time in the bank,

effort in the bank.

The most important thing for me in the summer is growing some really

high-quality foods.

And to do that, uh, it's quite an effort to do my gardening.

It's a lot of time and a lot of work to water my plants and to work the soil.

What I wanna do is I wanna get drip irrigation into my outside garden.

I installed it this year into my newly revived green house and I'm loving it.

And I need to get that out here so that I don't have to spend all this time pulling

all these weeds.

I can water only the plants that I wanna water and not the weeds around them.

Because the secret to gardening up here is sun and water.

We got lots of sun.

I got to provide the water.

Every bit of water that I put into this garden has to be pumped from the

river into holding tanks.

So, anything I can do to reduce the time and the money spent to have to haul water

from the river to my garden is a good thing.

What I really wanna do is I wanna take this tank, and then I wanna be able to run drip

irrigation around to my peas.

Come down here, run two big pipes, feeder pipes along my, uh, main row.

And then I wanna branch off and put the drip, uh, systems into each and every row.

And that will make this operation way more efficient and way less work for me.

This is the fun part, building everything.

Right now, I have to pump water twice a week up to my holding tanks.

My goal is to get that down to once a week.

If I can put in the drip irrigation, reduce my water output,

and get it directly to the plants, I can make my whole operation

a lot more efficient.

All right.

So, the manifold's done, so it's time to just merry this up to the tank.

All right, the moment of truth.

Ooh, that one runs good.

Right on. Manifold's in.

Time for building some irrigation systems.

I put a lot of time and energy into this and I want results for my time and energy.

I don't mind working hard as long as there's a good payoff.

I hate working hard and having no payoff.

Final step, putting emitters in.

These are half gallon per hour emitters.

I'm gonna put them about eight inches apart and I'm hoping that's gonna be enough to,

to water this.

I can always add more later if I need to.

It's time for a test.

Let's go see if we get some drip-age.

Oh, yeah. Look at that. Started right up.

That's looking good. I'm really happy.

The plants like it if they stay moist.

You can see this ground was getting really dry.

Even though I water this, it dries out quick.

This soil isn't that, that great yet.

I'm still working on composting and, and all that.

So, I need to keep building this soil up.

It's still a little bit on the sandy side.

I'm feeling real good.

Rocking and rolling.

Calico Gardens.

I got to be ready to grow, and expand, and do a better job every season.

This isn't where it ends. This is where it begins.

I got a King net that I strung up myself, all about doing things myself out here.

For myself and for my dogs.

So, go get this thing out in the water upriver and pray for the best catch.

King Salmon are a very big fish and they're full of high oil content.

They're one of the best fish that we get up here.

There was a spot I was fishing for the last couple of years.

I know it's taken up, so I'm going to have to go a little further upriver,

find a good spot.

Just have to work a little harder on all this and then it'll all come together.

Got my boat up at the smoke house.

Along the Nenana River, Jessie Holmes recently constructed a new smokehouse

to prepare for the King Salmon run.

The structure will allow him to store and preserve his catch for the coming months.

But with the brief run already underway, getting his net into the water now is vital.

All right, T, let's go.

Everything's kind of clicking right now.

The water just come up high enough that I can get the boat into the smokehouse.

So, now when I get these fish, I'm gonna be able to bring them right to my smokehouse,

right to my table, have water right there, cut these King Salmon,

get them hanging in the smokehouse.

I got to find a good location, and that's the hardest part.

You got to really pay attention to the river, the way the currents are running,

keep following this river here and see what it does.

Try to figure out where a good spot's gonna be.

Looking for a good eddy.

Back current of water and the fish will be resting on their swim upstream.

Right now, we got a lot of high driftwood coming and that's gonna be a problem.

I need to find a place that's not catching a lot of driftwood and gonna catch

a lot of fish.

This is it.

This is where I'm gonna set the net.

It's a good eddy.

Sticks are going upriver right here.

Eddy kind of stops right here and then it shoots out,

so I'm gonna run my net out right here.

I'm gonna cap them off and I'm gonna make it to where they can't get out of the eddy

without hitting my net.

This new net that I've stitched up has larger mesh and deeper dip,

so it's designed to catch Kings, as opposed to, I mostly fish for chum and summer chum,

so it goes to show how far ahead I'm starting to get every year.

And now, I'm ready for each season of fish.

Got it ready to go.

I'm hoping it'll come out there real nice.

Check it out and make sure it's all set good.

Good set.

It's covering a good spot of the river and a good eddy.

You never know how long the King Salmon run is.

Usually, there's three pulses of fish that shoot up.

I've already missed the first pulse of fish that come through and now I got to hope

that I can get out there and catch the second pulse.

The only thing to do now is let it sit out here overnight and hopefully come back and

have some fish in it.

Time to head back home.

Ready, Tobias?

Life out here demands a high level of fitness.

You got to stay in shape or you're just not gonna be able to do it.

I really like to push myself physically.

I like a challenge.