Les Stroud's Survivorman

In 1987, I had this idea that a great way to teach wilderness survival would be to head out into the woods and do exactly that.

Survive.

Now I need the skills because I'd be filming myself alone.

And you, the viewer, would be made aware of that.

And I thought, what a great way to make these skills more relatable to you.

Problem was, the technology was not available for me to film myself beyond the old grainy camcorders as we used to call them.

Well, fast forward to the year 2000, 13 years and indeed the technology became available.

the take home information.

And the skills that you would learn from this series would make you more confident in nature.

You'd stay warm, dry and safe, and therefore you'd be able to reconnect to the natural world.

What you're about to watch is raw and real, and not to be confused with reality television.

These are my journeys into the world of survival and around the planet.

These are the skills that can keep you alive and open the doors to nature.

The only reality that matters.

(upbeat music) (helicopter whirring) - This time on "Survivorman," I'm heading deep into the Rocky Mountains.

I've hired Matt Callahan, an experienced mountain pilot, to fly me well into the range where I have to spend the next seven days alone.

(upbeat music continues) (helicopter whirring) The flight in will give me a chance to have an aerial look at some of the terrains I'll be up against.

Towering 7,000 feet above sea level, the mountain summits are exposed to high winds, driving rain and snow.

The summit of a mountain is one of the most extreme environments on earth.

The weather this time of year, when you get up onto the tops here, I mean, how unpredictable is it?

- It changes every five minutes.

You'll go from getting 20 degrees and sunshine and the next minute there'll be a big old thunderstorm rolls over followed by four days of rains.

Powerful systems moving in and out, but being in the mountains, you know, you don't see it 'till they're right on top of you.

To bears on a weekly basis.

For the most part, it's a non-event.

There's guys that have been out in the bush for 20 years, never carry a rifle and never had a problem.

There's other guys that step out of their Jeep and get mauled.

Something to be wary of.

- Wow, that's a big glacier.

Nearly every mountaintop has a crevice-filled glacier on it.

I have to survive here for the next seven days without a tent or sleeping bag, without matches or food, and I have to film everything myself.

I'm being dropped on the mountain completely alone, and for one week, the mountain will test me.

(upbeat music) (helicopter whirring) (helicopter whirring continues) Home sweet home.

(upbeat drum music) (mountain whirring) On the top of a mountain, and whatever happens, I'm on my own.

Woo!

(intense music) ("Survivorman" theme music) The Canadian Rockies.

Just saying that out loud conjures up images of majestic mountain peaks.

Rugged yet pretty hackable, but challenging to traverse.

It's the kind of place where the phrase one wrong step and you're in big trouble.

It makes a lot of sense, Sometimes when I think about these survival missions, I think, well, what little trick or technique can I employ?

Maybe what gadget and I would I would search on the shelves in the store for something that boasted survival, necessity, or see something in a book.

And that's how I got the idea of why don't I try actually having to smash my camera?

People get lost with cameras all the time.

No way to start a fire.

Smash the lens of the camera, start a fire that way.

That's how that came about.

Now, one thing a little behind the scenes story here is that I had to delay the shooting of this particular episode because of a deluge of rain.

I would book my survivor man mission around a full moon.

I love doing that.

It just meant I had that much more almost light at nighttime, assuming it wasn't cloudy, but the rain was another story altogether.

And this was the Rocky Mountains.

So you don't like the weather?

Wait around five minutes.

As the saying goes, that's the mountains for you.

Mountain's got its own way.

This time on "Survivorman," I'm heading deep into the Rocky Mountains.

This fast range is more than 300,000 square miles of barren mountaintops, cold glacial rivers, and steep valleys.

The mountains test not only your skill level, but your will to live.

Up here, the combination of the cold and the altitude, sap your energy and can lull you into what's called a fatal sleep.

Up here, there's a saying.

"Stop thinking, and you'll stop trying.

Stop trying and you'll die."

Oh boy.

What did I get myself into this time?

Oh my gosh.

Somehow the word overwhelming, it just doesn't do it.

I can see greenery anyway.

It's just a question on if I can get to it.

(helicopter faintly whirring) There they are.

Guess they're getting their one last glimpse at the lone man on a mountain.

(helicopter whirring) Man.

(helicopter whirring) I am not getting paid enough for this.

(logo swooshing) I have to survive here for the next week, but without any form of shelter, the first thing I need to do is get off this wind-swept summit.

(intense music) As far as I can tell, I've got cliff, cliff, glacier, and just more cliff.

About the only route I can see is down this way, just beneath the snow there, I can see green.

I can see trees and greenery and one thing's for sure, the only path I have to safety right now is down.

At this altitude, the thin air makes hauling more than 60 pounds of video camera gear a tough job.

I know that spending a week on the top will be foolish.

I'm heading down.

A night up here would be brutal.

I gotta slow down, let this sweat dry.

Deadliest thing of all in a survival situation is to get all sweaty when you are in cold weather.

The top of a mountain is about as inhospitable a place as you can get.

Besides being completely exposed, there is little to nothing in the way of food, another reason why I have to get moving.

(upbeat music) There is crystal clear water everywhere, so at least dehydration is not a problem.

(upbeat music continues) Just ridges everywhere.

Those trees don't look any closer.

Right now, can't even see them.

It'll be easy getting down, then I gotta go back up again.

Oh boy.

This could be tricky.

(intense music) I have to survive alone for seven days.

The first thing I need to do is get off the summit and down to the valley bottom.

(crampons crashing) (ice crunching) I looked all around and I can't find any other way to get to that patch of green, except across this glacier.

Heading out onto a glacier alone anytime in the year is foolhardy.

Going out now, right after some fresh fallen snow.

(water pattering) (intense music) I have to cross about a mile of this crevice-filled glacier, and the new snow can cover and hide most of the dangerous areas.

(upbeat music) Crossing this glacier alone is precarious.

I'd feel a lot safer if I was roped up to a party.

(upbeat music continues) (ice crunching) (upbeat music continues) This is by far one of the spookiest things I've ever done.

I mean, once I've been on the glacier, that's where I came from, that's where I'm going.

Oh man, here comes the rain again.

Because, man, I'm in and out of freezing bitter cold rain, and when the sun does come out, I start sweating.

It looks like the weather's coming in on me.

I don't like that.

I'm getting bored out here and there's a few things I'd like to tell you about with these glaciers.

I'm a little freaked out at the amount of crevices in my way, so I just wanna get off of this thing.

These glaciers move about 15 meters a year.

Their movement opens up huge cracks.

These crevices can be five stories deep.

If I fall into one, I'll never be found.

Oh, sometimes I wonder what I get myself into.

(ice crunching) (ice crunching) Woo!

Well, there you have it, and sunshine too.

Wow.

(wind gushing) Pretty spectacular.

(logo swooshing) I can see the trees.

They're way in the distance.

What's between me and them, I'm really not quite sure.

(eerie music) I'm still many miles from the tree line, and it's not all downhill.

(upbeat music) It's a constant up and down and over rocks and ridges.

I can't take the time to go through what little gear I have.

I need to find shelters before dark.

The rain is relentless and the sun is going down quick.

(upbeat music continues) (crow cawing) All right.

Well, this may not look very comfortable, that's because it isn't.

I have not been able to make it down off of these rocks and into the tree line yet and night is coming in and I don't wanna get caught.

This big rock here, at least I'm out of the wind, and if it rains, I'm even out of the rain.

This is it.

This is where I've gotta do my first night.

Oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.

(wind swooshing) So tonight, survival means sleeping under a rock while the rain comes down.

(eerie music) It's been blowing and raining for hours.

I didn't sleep much last night, but when I did, I'd wake up really quick with that chill running right down my spine.

It's just right on the edge of hypothermia.

So I'd squeeze all the muscles in my body and relax them, squeeze them all, and relax them.

It gets the blood flowing through my body, try to keep the chill out.

That's a little too close hypothermia for my liking.

(sinister music) I don't have a tent, I don't have a sleeping bag, no matches, no food, just a packed full of heavy camera gear, the rain, the wind, and six days to go.

(wind whistling) Oh yeah, mountain blueberries.

(rain pattering) I think it's been about 48 hours now since I've eaten and I'm getting hungry.

This rain is miserable.

I'm freezing out here.

I'm hunkered down under the rock, trying to keep away from it, but I gotta move, I gotta get off the top of this mountain, get into the meadows.

Know what it's like?

Just imagine turning your garden hose on full on top of you standing outside, spread eagle.

Just see how long you can stand there with that kind of cold water coming down on you.

That's what it's like here right now.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) It's an old wolf den.

There's wolf scat all along the bottom of this.

So the wolves will come in here and den up when they need to.

I might even consider staying in a crack like this, but if it doesn't look very comfortable, so I'm gonna keep going.

(wind whistling) I'm soaked right through.

There is just no shelter out here.

These are very wet, slippery and steep rock faces.

Breaking an ankle here could be a death sentence.

Yet, getting shots like these means climbing them twice.

This may look like a pretty cool shelter, and for one night it'd be all right, you know, but you gotta think about things like earth tremors and the fact is, all around me are fallen pieces of rock.

They're down there for a reason.

These things break off all the time.

You bring in something here like a fire, the hot and cold can break pieces off, so maybe a one night quickie shelter is fine, but this rock is really cold on my body and I wouldn't wanna be in here for a long time.

You think I'm kidding about these rocks?

Look at this guy here.

You can tell it's come off pretty recently.

You know, I even heard of a story where a guy was out on a day hike and a rock slide trapped him by his arm.

He had to break his arm with a rock and sever it with his own penknife.

(upbeat music) It's well in day two and all I've had to eat is a few berries, but after a long day of traveling, the first touch of forest greenery brings me a renewed sense of spirit.

I'm slowly descending into more hospitable terrain.

(hopeful music) Looks like a paradise.

I am hoping that tonight I'll be able to build a shelter and stay dry.

(hopeful music continues) (grass crunching) All of these meadows that I'm walking through right now are just riddled with animal trails, like the one down there left by woodland caribou.

Up here they call them mountain caribou, moose, and of course, grizzly bear.

Hey, all of this moss was easy to pull up from the ground.

I could use that for the bedding, try and keep myself up off the ground.

I'm in a bit of a gully, and normally that would be a no-no in terms of a shelter, but I'm sort of up on this knoll here and that actually keeps me out of the wind a bit more.

I shoved in as much of the moss as I could all along this outer side here and then I started gathering boughs and sticking the boughs in.

It's a pretty sort of standard kind of bush shelter here, and I've gotta make it now because that over there is one mean thunder and lightning storm and this is, yeah, it's rumbling.

This is the last place I wanna be on the top of a mountain during a lightning storm.

The rocks and the pebbles will actually stick to your boots with all the magnetics in the air and the electricity.

Add to that tonight now I'm in subalpine territory, home of the grizzly bear, home of the cougar.

(logo swooshing) - Les is gonna be pretty ragged.

I mean, he's lugging I don't know how many pounds of camera gear.

When you're doing that, you're burning up twice, three times the energy that you normally would have.

He should be conserving fat, and what he's doing is actually burning calories.

(intense music) - Should have checked my supply sooner.

Got one of these emergency blankets.

They say that kinda like how, (emergency blanket crumpling) yeah, roast a baked potato.

We'll see just how warm it keeps me.

Huh, on the top of a mountain in the fall.

(emergency blanket crumpling) This is my view.

Looks like that storm's staying over there.

That's a long, hard day and a wet one.

I guess my biggest concern now is cougars hunt at night and the black bears and the grizzly bears will be out sniffing around.

(emergency blanket crumpling) These blankets are supposed to work great if you can get them next to your skin, but the last thing I want to do is get naked in the wind and rain on the top of a mountain.

(intense music) It's day three of my week-long challenge to survive in the Rocky Mountains, no food, no matches, no tent.

This was miserable, absolutely a miserable night.

You know, I've been three days now on this mountaintop and it has rained, drizzled or misted almost nonstop.

I've gotta get down to some lower elevations and affect my survival because up here I'm not surviving at all, I'm just endearing.

Even while I search for food, a constant challenge is keeping my cameras running in this non-stop rain.

Yeah.

Camera problems often get the better of me.

(birds chirping) Testing, testing.

Let's try it again with the better sound now.

(bleep) Okay, sorry for the swearing.

Can you tell the rain's getting the better of me?

Yeah.

Huckleberries, mm, and lots of 'em.

Check out the little bounty I got here.

(huckleberries rolling) Paintbrush, just eat the little colored, flowery parts.

(wind howling) Rain or no rain, I gotta get off the top of this mountain.

I'm just getting soaked constantly.

That's my only way down.

My only hope is it's not so bad down in the valley.

I'll see you on the bottom.

(eerie music) Making my way off the mountain, I'm heading down into the shelter of the forest.

(helicopter whirring) But the crew, whose job it will be to pick me up at the end of the week, will have a tough time tracking me in this vast wilderness.

It'll be easy for them to lose sight of me.

(upbeat music) (water rushing) Sun's coming out a bit.

That's a surprise.

But I gotta stick with that waterfall, find my way down.

The only way is to go up and around some bad spots.

(waterfall roaring) Oh.

Every little step I take could be one where I snap an ankle.

Every little step I take could be one where I snap an ankle.

I have to be so diligent at watching where I'm walking.

So tell you one thing, they'd never ever find me if I was trapped here.

(waterfall roaring) Tell you, it's a heck of a climb down from the top of a mountain, five or 6,000 feet.

What I've gotta do now is just come up with a quickie shelter, get through tonight.

I should have known this was a real possibility.

There were certainly lots of bear signs up on the mountaintop, but it's more likely that right now, this time of year, they're down low, they're down in these valleys.

Yeah!

Aah.

Directly inspired by his own survival expeditions, journeys and challenges.

World renowned survival instructor Les Stroud brings you survive, essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive.

Available for 19.99.

In addition, the book will to live Dispatches from the Edge of Survival is available, featuring Les Stroud's own top ten survival stories of all time.

21.99.

To order, please go to lesstroud.ca, and click on shop