Life Below Zero

Spring has sprung.

It's time to move into my new year of building.

I'm feeling really apprehensive about starting my sawmill up.

Dangerous piece of equipment and I learned that lesson the hard way this fall.

And I had a bad accident and lopped off the end of my pinky finger and I haven't started

the sawmill up since I did that.

I gotta say, walking up to the mill and having that feeling that I had when that happened,

it has me a little bit queasy.

You know how it is when you fall off a horse, it's kind of hard to get back on sometimes.

But, out here, I got no choice.

All right.

And then the moment of truth.

This fall, I had a pretty bad accident and so it's been a little bit nerve-wracking

using the sawmill again.

I'm being very careful now about where I put my hands working around the sawmill.

But I'm getting into a rhythm and hopefully I can take this wood and turn it

into a modified greenhouse.

Along the Yukon River, Andy Bassich relies on his greenhouse

to produce 80% of his yearly food supply.

Modifying the structure will improve its efficiency.

But the summer's growing season is brief, and he must begin work now or

the year's crop is at risk.

I'm trying to modify my past gardening techniques to hopefully get an

extra week and a half, two weeks' worth of growing this year.

It should cut a lot faster than that, so that blade is definitely getting dull.

I think I may have busted it though.

I didn't have the carriage back far enough and I brought the saw down for the next cut

right on top of the log and it just snapped it.

These blades are incredibly sharp.

You have to always wear gloves around them.

I'm gonna go get another blade, stick it on there.

Try to figure this out on my own and I know there are probably more

efficient ways of doing things.

That's kind of a learning process.

Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

Big part of why I live out here is I like doing things for myself.

Every board I cut here is probably equivalent to about three or four boards going to

town and buying them.

So it's a big savings for me and the satisfaction of going out getting the trees and

doing it myself is probably a big part of why I like doing this too.

If I had to spend a day milling lumber just to make the boards that I needed to do

the next step for this greenhouse, the best thing I can do is get that

greenhouse up and operating early.

And that way, as the springtime sun comes out, I can get my plants planted

earlier and hopefully I can get a little better harvest out of everything.

I made a nice stack of lumber today to do the greenhouse makeover.

So, I can get going on this project tomorrow.

Try and focus on the positive as much as possible.

Very important concept in life.

This is a really cool spot.

I've looked at it from the air when I was flying over,

but this is the first time I've ever walked here.

For Glenn Villeneuve,

warming spring temperatures make for ideal travel conditions,

allowing him to explore new territory and improve his knowledge of

his surroundings in the Brooks Range.

He's traveled 20 miles by water, ice, and land to Thru Creek Pass,

which he's never explored before but exploring means uncertainty,

and Glenn must be wary of his new environment.

-I'm in a different habitat now from what I'm used to.

Whoa. That is a grizzly bear track.

You can see where the claws are.

When you see a track that size, you have to think about the bear.

I really enjoy watching grizzlies.

The track's exciting but I wanna see the bear.

In the whole summer, I only saw 11 bears.

Over here, I can see that there are definitely more bear around.

Feels different walking on this trail.

It's an animal trail but I'm an animal too.

Why not use it?

And for whatever reason, the bears like traveling through here.

Talk about bear tracks, holy cow.

There's all size of bears.

I just don't see this much bear sign over around my cabin.

Every place is unique.

You go someplace new, you see new things.

I'm up a little higher in the mountains.

It's really steep terrain.

It's rocky.

The lake here is smaller.

The forest is a lot sparser.

I wanna explore this valley for a while.

And I wanna camp nearby this lake.

I want a good view.

If a bear comes through here, if there are sheep on the hillside, I wanna see 'em.

So I'll look around.

I'll find a place with good level ground and a good view.

That's what I'm looking for.

I'm a determined person who's self-sufficient and gets the job done no

matter what it takes.

I got myself a nice pile of boards here.

I'm gonna build a new smokehouse.

I got a nice dry piece of ground.

It's gonna to be about 14-foot-wide by 14-foot and that's to enable lots of

circulation of the air to help cure the fish.

Last year, I built a smokehouse far away from here and it never worked

out that good.

It's too small, gets too hot.

And it's not close enough near my dogs to where I can tend it constantly and

make the quality of fish that I need to put up to sustain myself through the winter.

I got king salmon running down the river right now.

I missed my opportunity to get kings.

I'm gonna to have to wait again until next year.

One of the next things I got to do is start knocking down some more of these trees.

I'm cutting these trees down, create some air.

It's gonna to make firewood and it's gonna make smoking wood for smoking my fish.

Killing two birds with one stone.

Some of this cottonwood that I cut down will be perfect for smoking or spruce will

go in for firewood.

That's the way I like to live, is using the land around me for what I do and build.

That was an important stage to get done.

Now I gotta lay out where I'm gonna put my smokehouse at.

Fifteen.

Now that looks nice.

See the key thing is, is I don't want it too small.

Then it's just gonna build up heat and it's gonna be cooking my fish.

I want my fish to slowly cure with the smoke.

I'm gonna to set my uprights.

I need a hole to put them in.

It ain't easy, there's roots in the ground.

This pointed bar here just helps to break it all up.

Part of what I like living out here, is staying in great shape,

doing practical things that need to be done. Keeps

me strong.

All the projects in the summer keep you strong for the winter.

That there ought to be deep enough.

Ay yi yi.

There we go. Come on.

There we go. Yes. There we go.

I sure got it tall enough.

Go big or go home.

If I can get one in, I can get them all in.

Things are just really starting to come together but it's still got a ways to go.

If I'm a stranger in a strange land, we have to move where the animals

are and where the resources are.

-Hi, Dad. -Hi, Dad. Hi, Dad.

-Thought I recognized the sound of that ride.

Yup.

-Well hey, I'm gonna head down to the beach and jump in the boat myself.

-All right. We'll be here.

-If I got troubles or something, head that way.

Yeah.

-Love you, Dad. -Love you. -Careful, now.

-Love you too. See you later. -See you later.

I'm gonna go off and go look for a few ducks.

Black ducks are my goal 'cause they're ocean ducks.

So I wanna go down and try to get the last of them really big ducks before

they're gone with the ice.

I wanna take my double barrel 12-gage black powder and see what it takes to

knock things down with.

I know it's not a modern 12-gage but it will still get the job done.

The Hailstones survive by harvesting resources along the various

trails and waterways near Noorvik.

Today, Chip is embarking on a solo hunt through the river channels for black ducks,

a rich source of fat and protein.

But the window to secure this delicacy is already closing as the birds will

soon disappear when they pair off and mate.

-Well, I'm gonna go boat around for a while, check out the sea ice.

So now the river's been clear of ice, two weeks now but over here in the ocean,

it's a whole different story.

This is where the ice is right now.

It's June, it's our springtime, our ice in the river's gone out,

now the ice in the ocean needs to go.

So I'm gonna go down there and see what's prowling around down there.

I'm no stranger to hunting by myself but this is what I was doing 25 years ago,

when my kids were little and I couldn't take them along.

This is what I do.

I don't always take other people with me.

And it's what I want to do.

This is what I'm doing for fun.

I'm just gonna keep at it until I'm dead.

Let's see what I come home with.

This is the arctic and the spring has sprung.

We got one big long day ahead of us with this 24-hour sunshine.

And I plan on making it a good day.

Lower 48, some people might call them sea scoters.

Up here, they call them Tuungaagruk.

Black ducks are delicious.

If I can get four or five of those, boy, we'd have a good meal.

They're really big ducks too.

It's a duck.

(bleep), misfire, huh?

It doesn't always go off.

It's been like that since I got it.

About half the time, it'll go off.

It's just not my fate right now.

Chip is on a solo hunt for black ducks, a rich source of fat and protein

that's only available this time of year.

But due to a legal issue, Chip can only use a black powder gun for the hunt,

an antique weapon with an unreliable firing mechanism.

There's a bird all right.

Ah. He dove.

I took a shot and he dove.

There it is. It's a duck.

Ah. He dove again.

I'm not really a big fan of this black powder but it's gonna have to do.

There he is.

He doesn't seem to be too ruffled up yet.

I'll go ruffle his feathers.

Well, that really sucks.