[music playing]
We are here to document the lives
of people living in Alaska.
The harsh reality is the environment we're up against,
it makes it tough to do our job.
Get out of there.
Working on life below zero can be very dangerous.
Gun's here, camera's here.
Never know what to expect.
Hey, hey!
You [bleep] see that?
Gonna be tough, but we're going to get the shot.
Every scenario, we got to prepare for this.
But we're still smiling.
We're having fun, still making like below zero.
Yes!
Bring it on.
[ice cracking]
[music playing]
This is what keeps me up at night.
We arrived to the Hailstones' Kiwalik camp
just before dark last night.
Unfortunately, the storm that we're expecting
could be a little bit worse than what we thought.
Winds gusting to up to 65 miles an hour,
which is a hurricane level windstorm.
And it keeps getting worse.
We actually had to abandon our camp
and come and take refuge in the teepee with the Hailstones.
Survived the night and the crazy winds and woke up.
And we came outside.
And the temperatures dropped about 40 degrees.
The wind just shifted to the West, which is really unusual.
And it pushed up the high tide underneath the ice,
totally flooded this delta where our snow machines were parked.
Yeah, this is deep, a couple of feet of slush.
If we don't get them out really quickly,
they're going to become encased in new ice, which is just
going to be a disaster for us.
So we're going to get some help from Chip
and tow these machines out as quickly as we can.
[motor humming]
This is half the fun.
[chuckles]
Yeah, looks like it's good to me.
[motor whirring]
There's one.
And that's the worst part is the basket sled.
You get that frozen in, and it's horrible.
This is a fun winter task, tying
knots under water in 10 below.
OK let's do it.
Ready?
[engine revving]
Yep pretty good system here, takes a lot of manpower.
We got a deep one here, last one, sitting pretty low.
Let's do it, boys.
[engine revving]
Good job, guys.
That was a close call.
Nothing's going to stop us.
We're undaunted.
Yeah, we'll get through it--
Yep.
--storms, floods, whatever.
Bring it on.
It's not going to stop television.
In five years on "Life Below Zero,"
this has been one of the craziest 24 hours for me,
for sure.
Now we need to go back to our camp and assess damage.
And who knows what we're going to find there.
We need to rebuild our shelters and assess our gear situation
and make sure that everybody can stay warm and safe.
It's a matter of life and death in the Arctic in the winter,
having good shelter.
There's no one we can call out here.
There's nowhere we can go.
We're out on the coastal plain of the Arctic Ocean.
We need to be totally self-reliant.
This is about as extreme as it gets.
We made it back to camp.
It's become part of the ocean.
[wind rustling]
Whoa, there's a tremendous amount of water underneath.
The floor of the tent is like a waterbed right now.
It's kind of surreal to be in 10 below zero
in the middle of winter in the Arctic and have water issues.
We prepare for snow and ice and wind.
But you don't expect your tent to flood
in the middle of winter.
It's really kind of surreal.
Lesson learned, I guess.
It takes such an effort to get out here that once we do make
it out here, we really want to make
it work, because the logistics are just so daunting.
And this place is incredible.
It's really brutal, beautiful, and wild,
and makes for really wonderful television.
It's going to take some more work on the part of the crew.
But I think we can do it and keep it functioning
and get back to filming till the next storm.
We're celebrating Ben's birthday today, probably not the way
that he expected.
But we're having fun and making the most of it.
Food, food, food, food, yay!
[laughs] Let's eat it while it's hot.
Yeah.
So I feel very grateful and fortunate right now.
I'm getting a very memorable and unique birthday experience,
my birthday caribou.
Yum.
It's an arctic gourmet.
It's awesome.
It's a great birthday dinner for me and for the whole crew.
It's a little hot, Kevin.
Thank you.
[wind blowing]