Life Below Zero

This net is in rough shape, but it's gonna, it's gonna have to do for now.

I've got to get moving because those salmon are going by

and I'm sitting here playing with the net.

I've only got about two weeks or so to get the king salmon.

They come and they're gone.

And they're going by right now, so I got to get my butt out there.

But I'm up against a, a whole new challenge this summer.

Last winter, there was a major landslide on the Yukon.

An entire mountainside just came down, slid out into the Yukon River.

Created a huge eddy out there.

One of the biggest ones I've ever seen in this part of the Yukon.

It's really important when you're fishing with a net to set it in a good eddy.

And so I wanna get out and start trying to catch some king salmon.

However, it's full of debris.

I'm sure there's all kinds of trees and stumps and roots.

And sometimes they're really dangerous.

People die every year drowning in the Yukon,

messing around either on the ice or setting nets.

It's going to be really critical for me to make sure that this net is set

in a safe place in this eddy.

This net gets tangled up in just about everything, including you.

It could easily drag me into the water.

For me, there's nobody to come help me if I screw up.

I don't care if I make a mistake, as long as it's not the last mistake I ever make.

.

It's not often you see a whole mountainside just slide into a major river.

Seeing a force of nature like this, kind of, gets the butterflies going in your gut.

You can see all the debris from the eddy is, uh,

concentrating right along this line.

I definitely don't want my net there.

Ideally, what I'd love to do is have this net running right off this point right here,

close to this strong current line right here, and that would intercept any fish

trying to leave the eddy here.

It's just a matter of if I can set it in a place where there isn't any debris.

Ah, let's see how deep it is here.

It's about eight or nine feet deep right there.

I think I'll turn my depth finder on.

See if I can see some stumps or see what this bottom looks like with the depth finder.

A couple years ago, I would have had to just take a chance on it,

but because I have technology now to, to kind of help me out a little bit,

I could take a chance on setting my net here because

that's well below the depth of my net.

I've done the best I can to sound it with a pole and I've done the best I can do looking

with a little bit of technology to see if there's any big obstacles under there.

This is kind of an old beat-up net, but,

it's the only one I have for getting the king salmon right now.

So, if I lost this net, I wouldn't have anything else really to

catch king salmon with this year.

If this fishing spot works great, I'm going to catch a lot of fish right here.

If I get snagged then I'm screwed.

Okay. Let's see what happens.

There's a lot to look out for when your dropping nets in the river because it can kill you

if you fall in this river and get tangled up in the net.

They catch everything, a buckle on your lifejacket.

I don't fear this river, but at the same time, every time I go out on it,

I have a lot of respect for what it can do for me and what it can do against me.

All right. I've got my net stretched out.

So far, this went really well.

Now it's just a waiting game.

I'm going to have to just come back tonight or tomorrow, see if there's any fish.

Hopefully, everything's going to pay out pretty nicely.

Preparedness meets opportunity gives you good luck.

That's really how it works.

All the possibilities out here are open to us.

Once we get the boat out and we get everything all packed inside the boat good

and proper, it's off to Kookoochiaq.

We're going down to Kookoochiaq to go stay,

but we're going to be at a lower camp they call Nuluk.

While we're down there, we're gonna go fishing and gather some firewood and

do all the other things that you do while you're camping, so it should be a lot of fun.

We got stove pipes to fix the stove when we get there.

There's that little cabin there.

My wife built it when she was 17.

She has a lot of pride in that little cabin.

This last winter, there was a tree that fell on it and then in the wind,

it sit there and swiped back and forth.

It damaged the stove pipe.

It needs to be fixed.

That's all there is to it.

Part of living this life is once you've got a cabin or something,

you take care of it.

We've got all of our food.

We've got gas.

We've got everything in order.

-We pretty much have everything.

Now, let's get in and go to Kookoochiaq.

Let's go see what's happening.

-One, two, three, go. -Okay.

The Hailstone's live nomadically, traveling between their various camps

in pursuit of resources to survive in northwest Alaska.

Today they will travel to Kookoochiaq to harvest fish from the area's waterways.

But before they can reap the camp's benefits,

they'll need to make repairs to the family cabin.

My wife's dad and his family before him,

they had that place where they would rest and they would keep a cache.

People that cross the lake, live along the sides,

that'd be the place where you'd stop and sleep.

A lot of people up here used to measure things in sleeps.

How far they travel, how many sleeps it would take.

Today we can get there quicker.

-There it is! Oh, it's still there.

We're here at Kookoochiaq finally.

Fun. Okay, girls.

Well, girls, we're going to make ourselves comfortable here before we go,

so we can come back to something warm.

So I'll fix the stove pipes the best I can.

We'll get some firewood up and we'll make sure that the place is ready to receive us.

-Hey, it's like going from one home to another.

Any way I want to go, whatever I want to see, if something catches my interest,

that's where I'm headed.

I'm just having a great time this summer out exploring.

Checking out areas I've never been to.

200 miles from civilization,

Glenn Villeneuve's survival depends on his knowledge of the

landscape in the Brooks Range.

To broaden his horizons, Glenn has traveled 15 miles from his camp to Thru Creek,

a region he's never explored before.

Today, Glenn has set out on a quest to find the remnants of abandoned camps,

in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of the area's past.

The history of this area fascinates me.

I was talking to my friend, Jack, and his dad was a hunting guide.

And almost 50 years ago, they started hunting in this area.

And they had a camp, and if I can find that, he gave me directions to get from there

to the spot where primitive hunters used to camp, where there were stumps that had

been cut by stone axes.

When you think about that, it's pretty amazing because the Stone Ages up

here was only 150 years ago.

I've never found any artifacts out here of primitive people

and that's what I wanna try and find today.

While I'm out looking around this area today, I'd like to also find some food to eat.

And right here in this lake there should be fish.

I've got a little net with me.

If I have my net out here all day,

I can go out exploring while my net's doing the fishing.

To set this net, I'm going to definitely need a stake made out of a big pole

that I can go out and stick right in the bottom.

I need to find some materials to help me out here.

This looks like a good pole right here.

I'll cut it with my saw.

I got a chainsaw with me, but it doesn't have a motor.

I'm the motor.

I don't care if I'm using a chainsaw.

I like to stay in shape.

I like to get my exercise.

I like the peace and quiet.

Yeah. I mean, a little bit of muscle power and you don't even need a chainsaw.

I don't know how this is going to go, but with a net out, even if only one fish comes

along all day, I got a chance of catching it.

Okay. I got to walk out, stick this pole down into the mud on the bottom, tie the rope,

and then pull the net out.

The water's cold. Okay.

I'm wanna see if I can reach the bottom here with the pole.

Oh, it's deep.

If I'd known it was gonna be this deep, I would have cut the pole a little longer.

I think it's gonna work.

Whoo, I got it.

I'm gonna tie my rope on it.

There. I got it.

Whoo, that water's cold.

If any fish come along this shoreline now, boom,

they're going to go right into that net.

This could work.

I got my net in the water, now I can go explore.

I wanna have a look around.

I'm really curious what I can find here.

Who knows, I might even find that campsite where those Stone Age people used to hunt.

Opportunity is something you got to seize up here.

You wait one second, it's one second too late.

You ready to go up river, Tobias?

I'm loading up my boat here with all the tools that I'm going to need to go up the

river about 20 miles and start locating some pretty good-sized logs

to build a raft with.

I need a large amount of firewood to be able to sustain myself through the winter.

Wood heat is my sole means of heat up here and I'm trying to speed up my wood gathering

process and be more efficient.

So, goal is to build a raft, so I can load a lot of firewood on top of it.

It's bound to be a brutally cold winter.

And, uh, if I don't have wood, I'm not going to survive and neither are my dogs,

so the trick is get all the wood ahead of time in the summer so you're ready for winter.

So today I'm going to go up river.

I'm going to locate a few big logs.

I'm going to attach them together just as I would for a fish wheel raft.

And I'm gonna load on top of that all my dry wood.

I'm just coming back here to look and see if there's any of these logs

I can snag out of here safely enough to start my raft with.

Uh, I could get pinned by that current, pressing against that.

Ain't worth it.

It's pretty dangerous, a lot of these spots where there'll be really good wood at.

You don't want to get up on a drift pile in the current.

It could flip even this boat.

There's a nice long log up here.

I might be able to tie off to it and pull it in with the boat.

Just depends on if I can get to it safely.

Hope this will work.

It's a really nice-looking log.

This is the kind of log I'm looking for.

It's already floating real good.

But I got to hurry up, before I get down to these cut banks.

If I'm attached to this and I run into that bank tied onto it, not good.

we're getting pulled in there pretty quick.