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.

(whimsical music) Winter, it's the perfect paradox.

Beauty, silence, and stillness, unequal.

Starkness, solitude, and danger, unquestioned.

So why challenge it?

Why question it, or rather why question my ability to survive it?

Where I come from, surviving bugs, heat, thirst, and storms are tough, but surviving the cold goes well beyond a test.

(suspenseful music) (shovel scraping) After the initial success of survivor Man up in Canada, which, by the way, was originally called One Week in the wilderness with Less Stroud, the network asked me, well, what else can you do?

And I said, well, how about in the winter?

Why?

I chose the coldest time of the year to go up in the far north of Canada?

It's a mystery to me.

But there I was, on my way to one of the most beautiful places just outside of the park, called Waba Kimmi Provincial Park in northern Canada, about to experience Canadian winter survival.

you'll notice that in the multitude of television series followed in the footsteps of Survivor Man, few of them ever did any kind of winter survival.

There's a reason for that.

People always ask me, where is the toughest place to survive?

It's not about geographic location.

It will always be about temperature.

If it's cold, it's tough.

(suspenseful music) (shovel scraping) (suspenseful music) (airplane engine revving) In the far north they call you a greenhorn until you go through the frigid right of passage.

And that test is not surviving the winter.

It's freezing an appendage, and having the black dead skin to prove it.

It's the winter's version of a battle scar.

I've been here before.

Dropped down in the middle of this remote wilderness, and left to survive alone.

The personal prayers of safety I utter here will be about warmth, about just making it through the night.

Warmth during a time of season when forgiveness for mistakes doesn't exist.

One wrong decision, one moment of apathy, a lack of vigilance, and this wilderness will not forgive me.

It'll remain unmoved by any cries of pain from frostbite, unchangeable by any moans of hypothermic chills.

It'll just be what it is, a frigid, deadly landscape, helping only those who help themselves.

Ah, well, welcome to my chalet.

Well I made it through another night.

Obviously I must have got enough sleep for my fire to die.

Is that ever vital.

One thing that should be part of your plans for surviving is getting sleep, getting rest.

If you get to the point where you're slipping into exhaustion, fighting hypothermia becomes extremely difficult.

Even if all you get is, is ah, 20 minutes at a time, which is about maybe 15, which is about what I got last night, that's, that's fine.

At least, at least you're getting some sleep.

You need that rest to be able to think clearly.

The irony of the north is that you can freeze to death on a clear and beautiful sunny day.

(whimsical music) Well these are fresh marten tracks.

How fresh?

Well, he's behind me in the bush.

That's how fresh.

Didn't seem to wanna poke his head out to be filmed, but I watched him run up here just now as I came along.

I've been walking the shore going into different areas, trying to find rabbit tracks.

And that bush is so thick.

Everything sounds so easy in a book, you know?

Find yourself from rabbit tracks and set your snares, and blah, blah blah, yeah right.

Then you get out here and you try to walk 30 feet, and you're already starting to sweat.

But the best bonus I've got from walking the shoreline is ah, finding different patches of grass and cedar trees for my tinder.

That's been great, but very few animal signs, caribou tracks and now these marten tracks.

Unfortunately tracks alone don't make a meal.

I've been walking for two hours along the shoreline.

It's very cold wind when it hits up, and ah, spending a lot of calories, a lot of energy.

I'm a bit sweaty so I gotta be careful.

And ah, all I've seen is one marten, not a single animal track.

I poked my head in a few places, nothing.

And the other mistake I made was, and bear in mind, I actually looked at a map this time before I came out here.

I thought where I'm sitting was the outflow of a major river.

Well, it ain't.

I was wrong.

It was a long walk to find out that I was wrong, just to get some running water.

Now I gotta head back before it gets too late, and add to my shelter some more.

Get that fire going.

Stock up my firewood for the night.

Don't forget, when you go to stock up firewood in a survival situation, plan on needing close to five times more than what you think you need.

Make a pile, look at it and say, okay, I need five more times the wood than what I have here right now.

And you'll have enough to get you through the morning, through to the morning.

I think I'll just ah, let the sweat dry a bit and, warm up in the sun.

Know how your lips get all frozen, you can't really speak?

(whimsical music) When I'm alone in a survival situation, I don't take chances.

I've gotta keep dry, and watch my energy level constantly.

In this cold, you can burn up to 6,000 calories a day just walking.

(whimsical music) Fortunately for me, there was a big wind storm here back in the fall.

After one heavy snow, there's an awful lot of trees that are laying horizontal.

It makes it absolutely brutal for walking through the bush, just brutal.

Ah, my lips are still frozen, Jesus.

But it does help me out in that it puts a lot of the tops of these spruce trees down low to the ground.

Lots of good boughs for me to collect.

Well, I got my Christmas tree.

I just need some presents now.

(whimsical music) It's time to break out my flint striker.

And truth be told, once you get good at using this little device, it's nearly as easy as matches and often even more reliable.

Here we go.

Let see, I'm ready with my tinder.

If you're not, you're cooked, so to speak, or rather you're not cooked.

You wanna have all your tinder bundle ready, ready to go, woo.

(fire crackling) Ah, now another thing that's important.

Well actually before I get to that, I'll just mention, I'm going to now put, maybe put some logs over, but I'm gonna fortify this shelter a bit more maybe so I can enclose my fire in a bit.

I don't have to keep it so big all the time, and ah, I'll be able to ah, get more of the heat from it into my shelter.

(fire crackling) Well, it's end of day three and ah, oh man, it's cold.

If the full moon brings with it clear skies, then it's gonna be very bitterly cold tonight too.

I hope not.

(suspenseful music) (ax thudding) (tree crackling) (tree thuds) I have two cameras with me, a large one and a smaller one.

Big one's just frozen up.

It's just takes a long time to heat it by the fire.

So I'm reduced now down to one small camera.

I was able to stay warm last night.

Well, let's just say I was able to stay alive last night just by mostly feeding the fire and sitting by the fire.

The full moon helped me to be able to see the trees around me, and stock myself up good with firewood before the night fell.

But I also used another trick involving these guys, which thanks for the ax, helped me to ah, helped me to have access to.

I can't believe how cold it's getting.

Minus 37 was just brutal last night.

So other than getting up and jumping around, and stomping on my feet to keep me warm, ah, another way I was able to keep myself a little bit warmer, help, help me get me through the night, were these guys, hot rocks.

Basically you get 'em by the fire, usually about a dozen.

You'll need about a dozen to do this, well, or as many as you can get I suppose.

You warm 'em up by the fire.

Now you don't wanna get them red hot of course, and burn yourself, but you do wanna just warm them up enough, and then the hot rocks store the heat, and then they let all the heat go off again.

So I have a few in the fire warming up.

I pull them out and I tuck them in around me, back inside the shelter, put some down by my feet, up in the lower part of my back, and around my chest.

And as those ones cooled down, I'd put them back in the fire and pull out the new batch.

And it's a neat little survival trick to know.

It's hard to find, and if you're losing me in the smoke, (chuckles) sorry about that.

It's, it's hard to find rocks in the wintertime for sure.

But overturned trees often will have them exposed on their root systems.

And I found these down by the ah, down by the side of the lake, and ah, well, it's working so far.

But ah, my goodness, the nights are brutal, just brutal.

(suspenseful music) I'm just making myself some spruce needle tea.

Pine needles, spruce needles, cedar boughs, I make, well they call it a bush tea, but it actually has kept people alive, and kept them from scurvy in the past and throughout history, and the explorers.

They're ah, they're loaded with vitamin C. Some people have died of scurvy.

Meanwhile, they were sleeping on cedar boughs, and spruce boughs at night, and didn't realize that they could have made tea out of it, and gotten the vitamin C that they needed.

It's ah, tastes not too bad.

And mostly gives me a nice warm drink to sip on, help keep me, keep my body warm and a little bit of nourishment, because this one energy bar per day thing is not feeding my, my strength at all.

It's taking mostly everything I've got just to stay warm.

You know, you always hear about stamping out help or SOS, and sure enough, those will work if you stamp them out in the snow.

But it's a lot less effort just to simply stamp out a triangle, which is a sign for help, international distress signal.

And then stick some trees on the three corners, and turn those trees eventually into your signal fires.

Gotta keep moving.

Gotta keep moving.

That's what they say in the north.

Well, my three signal towers are up.

Next thing is to get lots of birch bark, dried grass, whatever I can find that'll burn quickly, and just shove it inside and reinforce those a bit, So I make sure that they don't fall down in the wind or anything.

Ugh, and I just realized after tromping around out here, and setting all this up, that I've been out here the whole time without my ice grips on in case I fall through.

Very foolish, very foolish indeed.

Maybe I need some food and more sleep.

The small rations I had in the beginning of the week are nearly gone.

So the lack of food combined with very little sleep is beginning to take away my ability to think clearly.

And I'm losing my motivation to even better my situation.

(suspenseful music) Check, check.

(suspenseful music) Well, end of another day.

It was good to get my signal stamped out in that triangle.

I've heard it suggested to do X's, of course, SOS, help, whatever.

But the triangle is the easiest to do, and the quickest, I think.

It's good to get that done.

And the importance of layering my clothing really counted today.

I didn't overheat at all.

I could take off and put on as as I needed to.

And (chuckles), and it's just, ah, it's, it's 40 below.

What else do you need to know?

(suspenseful music) Well, I'm about a hundred kilometers from the nearest soul out here.

One thing about the winter at least is the traveling can be easier.

Forget about it going through the thick bush, unless you've got snowshoes.

But at least you can get out on the lake and move around.

I know when I've done summer survival simulations, you can be trapped in one, one little location, unable to get past swamps, unable to get past the lake.

At least in the winter you've got a little bit more mobility, even if it is freezing.

(suspenseful music) Even putting a contact lens in out here is a challenge.

(suspenseful music) You probably can't hear that, but there's a big jet going right over top of me.

Don't even bother.

They're 30,000 feet up, and they can't see the biggest signal you can make.

(suspenseful music) Some cedar boughs to add to my bush tea.

You know, wild edible plants in the summer is a great thing, but it's another story in the wintertime.

I've been looking around for labra, Labrador tea to ah, my lips are still frozen, to add to my bush tea.

I haven't seen any anywhere.

Rock tripe is another, that's that black curly stuff that you see on, on rocks on the sides of lakes and rivers usually.

Ah, that can also be boiled up and ah, and softened and, and, and eaten.

It's a little hard on the system, but it does have starch and some nutrients in it.

If I remember correctly, it's what Franklin survived on, rock tripe, tripe de rush.

In a situation like this, just a small amount of pleasantries, hot drink can lift the spirits immensely and make surviving possible.

You know, I have an extra disadvantage in being out here.

My fingers freeze really easily, and when I try to work on this stuff, which is touching, ah, touching the cold bare metal, they're frozen very quickly.

It's very scary, because at times your fingers can numb up so badly, and be in so much pain, you just can't move until you can get them warm.

It's time to put my ax to good use, and see if I can get through the thick ice.

Maybe get a chance at catching a fish, and getting back some good food energy.

(suspenseful music) You wanna make sure that you hold on to your ax too.

Worst thing is you go through just in the last second, you can shoot your ax right down into the hole, not never see it again.

You can just imagine how much energy this requires.

It's a tough job when all I've got in my stomach is spruce needle tea.

(suspenseful music) You can see as soon as I chop it out, the water keeps sipping, seeping in from the side.

It's a race against each other here, between me and the water coming in.

This ice could be only a foot and a half, well two feet thick, because I'm down about a foot and a half, almost two feet now.

Or it could be five feet thick, which it gets to up here.

And if it's five feet thick, ax or no ax, I'm not catching any fish, because I'll never get through it.

The obvious danger here is getting my clothes wet.

Once I'm done the job, I'll need to stand by the fire for a few hours to dry out before nightfall.

(ax thudding) (water splashing) Success.

The water's shot up like that, I know I'm through.

So I just gotta make sure I got a hole big enough to get a fish through.

And if I don't, I'll have to get a pole, and try and make sure the hole's big enough to pull up a fish.

(suspenseful music) Probably one of the tougher disciplines out here is to not use up all my resources, or wreck my supplies by breaking and burning them.

I've been making use of my comatic here by just helping to cover up the shelter a bit, and then I pull my fire in closer to me, and I just keep a nice small fire, and it's helping me to stay warm at night, and beat some of this brutal, brutal cold.

The other thing I'm doing is I take the sled bag that's attached to the other side of it off, and ah, I wrap my, wrap it around myself and over top of myself, try and, try and keep a little bit more body heat in.

Anything you can use for shelter and warmth is fair game in the survival world.

(suspenseful music) Well, one thing you can do if you wanna keep your hole, keep your hole from freezing overnight, is get a a big pile of, just push all kinds of snow over top, six feet long and three feet high is not overdoing it at all.

If you wanna try and keep it from freezing up, you have to go all through the chopping all over again.

Now in my case, I've got the ax though, so ah, so I know at least with an ax, it's only gonna freeze a little bit.

It's not a big deal.

It's more when you don't have an ax that I get worried about it, but.

(ax thudding) (suspenseful music) This is when fishing is all about luck.

(suspenseful music) Maybe I need a new lure.

(suspenseful music) A whiteout has come in this morning, and this was supposed to be the day I get picked up.

If the weather doesn't break, I'll be stuck out here for another night, and that wasn't in my plans.

You can't fight weather.

If it's a whiteout, it's a whiteout.

Planes are grounded and so are helicopters.

(suspenseful music) Through a small window of opportunity, when the snow backed off just a little, they came looking for me.

(suspenseful music) They knew where they dropped me down, but they'd have no idea as to where I might've gone.

(suspenseful music) The signal sticks out like a beacon against the stark white backdrop, the frozen lake.

(suspenseful music) Running between them is tough.

It's still well below zero.

And even with a burning piece of birch bark in my hands, my fingers freeze while I run.

(suspenseful music) The flare shows up well, but it's short-lived.

So on its own, it may only be a small chance at getting someone's attention.

(suspenseful music) (airplane engine humming) If any of this looked easy, guess again.

(suspenseful music) (airplane engine humming) I'm always asked, which is tougher, the cold or the heat?

And after a week of dehydration and sunburnt skin, parched landscapes, and oppressive heat, I'm inclined to say it's the deserts.

They're the toughest.

But then I step back onto the snow.

I feel the chill up my spine at 3:00 a.m.

in the middle of a long winter night.

I feel the sting of frostbite, as it threatens to take away the use of my fingers.

And I feel the exhaustion, as I keep myself moving constantly in a battle to survive.

And I think, no, it's not the heat.

It's the cold.

It's always the cold.

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.

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