Alone

For the first time ever on "Alone,"

ten international participants from around the world

compete to win the title of "Alone" World Champion.

Deep in the Arctic Circle in Canada's Northwest Territories

lies the Beaufort Delta,

the traditional homeland

of the Gwich'in and Inuvialuit peoples.

Nestled at the foothills of the Richardson Mountain Range,

bordering the Yukon to the west

and extending all the way up to the Arctic Ocean,

this remote wilderness is home to Dall sheep,

caribou, moose, wolf, and grizzly bear.

Here, Arctic winds hammer the landscape

with temperatures as low

as negative forty degrees Fahrenheit,

causing frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.

Heavy snow and ice blanket this territory

for up to eight months a year.

And polar night steadily creeps in,

cloaking the land in a full month of darkness.

It is this rugged landscape chosen as the ultimate arena

to hold the first-ever

international survival competition,

crowning the "Alone" World Champion.

The process of choosing locations for "Alone"

requires a year of planning and on-the-ground scouting.

For the "Alone: World Championship",

however, finding the most rugged

and remote region possible

meant the production team must also build a home base

from the ground up

that can survive the ravages of a polar winter.

All right, just arrived back at boats.

They've been here in Inuvik in storage for two years.

And they just got a service and looking good.

So we are on our way to the site

for the first time.

We're almost there.

We had a pretty good run, just under four hours.

So we have a local land-clearing crew

that will be working on the site

of the production hub today,

making sure that everything is suitable

to have a full kind of production,

safety, survival hub.

And it's also where we'll have our orientation camp.

All right, we've just landed.

And...

this is what we're working with.

As the clearing of the home base location begins,

back in Inuvik,

the tents, refrigerators, fuel, bedding,

food, communications gear, camera equipment,

and all other necessities for a full camp build

have come as far as it can by road.

Now it is all being loaded onto a barge

to make the 33-hour trip

to the site of the production hub.

Between now and the arrival of the barge,

the crew must clear the site

of all small, fast-growing willow and alder trees

to make space for the build of an off-grid production hub

that will house up to 28 people,

including the 24 full-time crew

who will live here for the duration

of the participants' time in the wilderness.

After three days, the bulk of the small trees are removed,

and the barge arrives with larger machines to fully clear

the location and level out the ground

so that the build can begin.

So ground is looking nice and clear.

And you can see all the piles of brush along the edges

of the forest there.

This gives the camp-building team

relatively even ground to build on...

and, yeah, get going on our camp build,

because we've got a bunch of crew starting

Monday next week coming in.

So, yeah, the sooner we can get tents built,

the faster we can get everyone on site

and get the project running.

Over the next 12 days,

the structures of the hub are built,

including sleeping quarters, a kitchen...

laundry room, and showers.

With the hub coming together, the final piece

is building a floating dock to moor the four boats

and allow easy access

for yet even more supplies and crew.

With a fully functional hub nearly complete,

attention is turned to the participant orientation camp.

All right, so everywhere here is where the participants

are going to be.

This is the fastest we've ever put it up,

so pretty happy with that.

People arrive tomorrow.

- Big days. - Yeah, big days.

For sure. - That's for sure, yeah.

But everyone's working so hard here.

So we can definitely feel a bit the pressure to get it ready.

And we want it to look good when people show up, so...

All the amenities that we provide

for the participant...

each of them has their own tents

in which they have a bed,

a mattress, a wood stove.

We provide fire starters and a lighter.

And we have the mess tent.

There's wood stoves as well.

So we provide heat.

We will provide food... so three times a day.

We'll have a little snack table

for whenever they're hungry.

We'll provide an area as well for archery practice.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think, for me, what's important

is that people are feeling happy.

They're not feeling too stressed,

because this show is already so stressful for them.

So, if they have warmth, if they have food,

and it's a good energy around camp,

then I think that's the biggest thing for me.

With just hours to go before participants arrive,

the production team's home base

is finally up and running.

Though comfortable, the living conditions

for the next four months are basic at best.

Being this remote means that the crew must work

with what little resources they have

to make the best of their time here.

This is a 16-by-40 camp tent.

And these tents are all for Arctic mining and explorations.

And when we walked in, it was totally empty.

And it's slowly been built out in the last month.

We usually are in a lodge or some sort of a kitchen,

like a commercial kitchen.

So this is a new kind of way of cooking.

And these camps are usually "camp cooking."

So these are simple...

a lot of cans, a lot of frozen things.

We've had to adapt.

You know, it's like, we don't have commercial ovens,

which is a certain size for cooking for 70 mouths.

And just the wear and tear of things...

like, we may have already broken one oven.

So...

But we're making it work.

In the front here is craft services.

Here's a little bit of our kind of, like, dining area.

And then here's our little dish pit.

Usually, we have a commercial dishwasher.

We didn't get a commercial dishwasher this time.

We got a dishwasher that takes an hour and a half

to do a load.

We don't have an HVAC.

And so an HVAC pulls all the air out,

you know, like, all the "grease-laden vapors,"

they call them.

This is our kitchen.

This is our "Alone" gym setup.

So I just made tripods,

tied them together, so I can do my pull-ups.

I can do push-ups. I can do dips.

I got some rings to train with.

So that's a good way to stay in shape.

And of course, you can run.

You can run, like, 1K that way and about 1K that way.

So that's 4Ks.

So that's about the variety of physical exercises

for the crew.

It's like Muscle Beach on the Peel River.

We don't have conventional flushing toilets here.

We've got one better.

So let me take you down here and show you

where everyone makes a visit.

Let's have a look what's behind the door in "Schittz Creek."

The Incinolet...

so you might wonder kind of how it works.

It's a waterless system.

Pop the lid.

Pull out one of these proprietary Incinolet bags.

In it goes.

And then...

Press the button.

Listen for the fan.

Make your deposit.

I'd say, done and dusted,

literally going to be turned to ash.

The Incinolet...

Every remote camp should have one.

Their multi-day journey from all over the world,

including Portugal...

Let's go to "Alone" season 13.