Life Below Zero

Survival bag.

You have enough oil and spark plugs?

Yeah.

Today, me and Tinmiaq are going to be packing up and taking the snow machine and

sled to Kiwalik.

We're going to be picking up a freight sled down there.

It has our tarps and teepees that needs to come back to town and get repaired so

they'll be ready for use next season.

The Hailstones live nomadically in Northwest Alaska,

tracking and harvesting the area's resources for their survival.

But with Agnes's husband, Chip, serving a 15-month sentence in Anchorage,

she and her five daughters have been forced to endure dark winter on their own.

With spring approaching, the family will soon be setting up their camp in Kiwalik where

they will hunt, fish, and gather throughout the warm months.

They must retrieve their teepee to make critical repairs or their seasonal

harvests are at risk.

It's gonna be pretty much six, seven hours of total riding today at good speed.

It's not gonna be the best weather.

It's gonna be cold, stormy.

We're gonna hopefully get to camp and come back without getting lost.

Ready then?

Yes, ma'am.

It's gonna take us 120 miles to get there and 120 miles to get back.

It's just gonna take a lot of time.

We're just gonna go all the way to camp today and get our freight sled and hopefully

we'll come back safe.

Whoa, what was that?

My snow machine's not going anywhere.

I just burned it up.

Not going nowhere.

Just cruising along the trail and stuff, and just going, and then all of a sudden,

it just stopped.

I think this cancels our trip for now.

We're not even one mile away from town, and so, this is kind of messed up.

Just doesn't seem like we're gonna be able to go anywhere now.

The only place this is going is right back to the shop.

I could almost cry.

This ain't going anywhere.

I just take the belt off and.

Ready to be dragged back?

-Ready to be dragged back to town.

There's absolutely nothing we can do for this snow machine.

That's it.

I guess it's better off we break down right here next to town,

than in the middle of the whole adventure.

Or we get all the way to camp and then break down.

(bleep),(bleep).

-Look like we're not gonna be going anywhere today, except back to the house and

work on the snow machine.

And if the weather's still good tomorrow, we can just try again.

At least we got our own trail.

It's the little everyday things that you don't pay attention to that come back to

bite you oftentimes.

Puppy, puppy, puppies!

It's a new day today!

You guys get to be big dogs today!

You guys get to be big dogs today!

No more feeding in the pen.

For Andy Bassich, using sled dogs along the Yukon River is a way of life.

The dogs allow him to access winter resources and haul heavy loads year-round.

Maintaining a kennel requires him to breed and train new dogs,

and today is the first day of school for his two newest puppies.

-Come on, let's go out, let's go out!

Let's go get chow-chow.

What I'm trying to do right now is transition the puppies from living in the dog pen to

big dogs in the kennel.

And the first step of this is to associate food with being in the,

the kennel with the big dogs.

Come on Naty, Naty, Naty, come!

Where'd she go off to?

Okay, you get your chow.

Come on over here, G.

Right here with the big dogs.

There ya go, big guy.

Oh boy, Naty, Naty, come on!

Chow-chow.

G is definitely ready to go.

He's ready to be in the, in the dog lot and transition.

Naty's being a lot more aloof.

She's obviously realizing there's some, some change in the routine.

Come on, Naty.

Let's go, let's go, come on.

Oh, you're getting to be too big a dog to carry, Nat!

.

Look at that girl.

Let's go get chow-chow.

Let's go get chow-chow.

So I'm gonna have to take her over and give her a positive experience to get fed today.

Here, you want some of that?

Mm-hmm, that's pretty good stuff.

They're at an age now where their head space is good.

My goal right now is to get 'em into the team, and learn all of the routines that go

into being a sled dog.

We're just gonna hook up like, nine dogs.

Take a run downriver and hopefully the puppies will follow.

Good boy, G.

Okay, let's go, hup, hup!

In the course of my 30 years of mushing, I've probably had 150, 200 dogs.

It's all about good-quality food, good training, and consistency.

Woo-hoo, all right.

The puppies are doing good.

If I can transition 'em this spring into being an active member in the team,

then next fall when I begin my training, they're already into it.

They know what to do, and then they will actually be a working,

productive member of the team, instead of just a tag-along.

Up we go.

Come on, Geo!

Come on, G-man!

Hey, all right, good boys!

Good run!

These dogs did great today.

They had a lot of fun.

Plenty strong enough, plenty fast enough, and now they need to be in the team and just

keep doing this over and over and over again.

And pretty soon, they'll be sled dogs.

You only get a certain amount of time in life.

Why spend it sitting idle?

You only get one shot.

It's been snowing for the past week really heavy.

Wet snow around here, and it's really accumulating deep and more snow than we usually

get around here.

The last week, we've gotten nearly two feet of snow.

Gotta start digging everything out and try to get this snow out of my way,

so I can actually function around here.

For Jessie Holmes, recent storms have buried his camp in deep snow.

He must take advantage of a break in the weather to clear the snow so he can resume

training his sled dogs for races, his source of income in the bush.

-Get cold again here soon, and none of these jobs are gonna be that easy to do

in the cold.

'Cause everything will harden up.

So I was trying to get this all done before the cold comes and makes it

twice as difficult.

Just getting my dog food cooker dug out here.

Dig some fish out of the snow.

Get my dogs' food cooking up, and then I'm gonna start digging all the dog houses out

of the snow, and it's coming to where there's just too much snow and it's coming right

into the dogs' doors as they go in with their chain, the straw's getting wet.

So I need to get these dog houses all popped out of the snow.

Now what I gotta do is go get some hot water, get it in here, and get a fire going.

While that's heating up to boiling, I'm gonna go dig out some fish,

get some fish in there.

I've only got a couple months of winter left here, and got a lot of fish that

needs to be cooked up.

The fish saves me a lot of money.

Maintaining this size of dog kennel, you spend a lot of money doing this,

and a lot of resources doing this.

It's gotta pay back for itself somehow.

Water heating up.

I'm gonna go get myself seven to eight fish to put in there.

Right now, I'm just gonna get myself enough fish to throw in the dog food cooker.

But once I got the dogs' houses all busted out, I gotta come and excavate this whole

pile of fish out, and get it to where I can easily use it.

'Cause it's not gonna be efficient for me to come over here and pop seven

fish out every day.

All right, looks like my snow thawed out.

My water's warm.

All right, let that do its magic.

I'm gonna get to popping these dog houses out.

Right here is what the problem is, is all this snow's starting to spill

right into his dog house, getting way too high.

I'll get your house fixed for you, buddy.

Running dogs is a lot of fun, but what it boils down to is a lot of work.

I'm a little bit behind the curve right now, but I'm gonna dig myself out literally.

Dig myself out from the snowstorm and get things jumping efficiently

around here again.

Time to get these guys some dry straw and get 'em comfortable for the night here,

'cause the temperature is starting to drop quick.

Good boy, Flash.

Tomorrow's gonna be a whole 'nother day, it's gonna be a lot colder out.

It's probably gonna be pretty hard popping all those fish loose,

so just get these guys fed, get myself something in my belly and rest up for another

hard day out here.

The job's never done.

365 days a year.

I just take advantage of the opportunity, wherever it comes up.

That's one great thing about it out here.

I never know what the day's gonna bring.

The breeze is picking up.

This is just what I've been waiting for.

Because with this wind, I'm gonna be able to try out a new tool I've got.

I'm gonna be able to try out my paraglider.

What I need to do is practice.

The first step is to try it out right here on the lake.

I'm gonna take this wing out on the lake and try flying it right here first.

Once I get that mastered, then I'll head up the mountains.

This winter, I went down outside Alaska for the first time in seven years,

in order to study about paragliding.

And I brought a paraglider back with me.

A paraglider is something like a parachute, but it's designed so that you can take off from

a mountain just by running.

If I can really get this mastered and learn how to fly this paraglider well enough,

I'll be able to go up on the tops of all these mountains here.

It's gonna open up all kinds of possibilities.

What might have taken me two or three hours to walk, I might be able to fly

in ten minutes.

Gotta make sure I got this harness on right.

I don't wanna fall out of it.

I wanna get my wing out and practice flying it like a kite, right here.

Once you get kiting really mastered, then you're ready to actually take to the air.

Whoa, there it goes!