Solo Winter Bushcraft Camping in Alaska

Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and I've been dropped off in the wilderness of Alaska and it's up to me to get myself home. I'm going to be floating down rivers of ice, building bushcraft shelters, trying to stay warm and dealing with whatever nature sends my way. I got dropped off at a sandbar in the middle of the river here in Alaska and a helicopter's not coming back for me. It's on me to find my way home. Ah, don't let the sunshine fool you. It's 27 degrees Fahrenheit right now. Everything's frozen. We're just waiting for the first big snowfall to bury everything for the next six months. Oh my goodness, look at that. Oh man, the river is gorgeous. Oh, look at this. The wind has blown sand over the top of the ice. Got to be careful where you step. Oh, look at this. See right here? These are bear prints right here. Not a particularly huge bear. That guy's probably only about five feet. Hundreds of thousands of salmon come up this river to spawn and then they die. So you can smell dead salmon everywhere. The bears come to the river to try to feed on the dead salmon to put on weight before winter time. So there's a really good chance we might see a grizzly bear walking around one of these sandbars. Oh, look at this. Look at the size of these moose prints. See, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is some big moose prints. We can tell that this river is a lot lower than it normally is. That's because this river is fed mostly by melting glaciers. Because it's below freezing, the glaciers really aren't melting much. All right, I think for the first order of business, I got to find a spot to build camp. But I'm actually liking this big root ball. The wind's blowing this direction and so this is a nice windbreak right here. Yeah, look at more bear prints. These are a little bit bigger. Man, that's a pretty good size bear print. That's the front paw. That's the back paw. Whoa, the wind has blown silt over the top of this ice and made it look like a sand dune. Yeah. Oh, look at this. Oh, those are highbush cranberries right there. A whole bunch of them. Highbush cranberries are usually so tart you never want to eat them raw. But we've had a couple frosts so they're okay. They're just a little bit bitter. You know, the weather's pretty nice. My only complaint is the wind is a little nasty. I would like to find a spot out of the wind. Man, I can really smell the salmon here. Nice little coyote print. Spot like this is actually really nice. Got the windbreak to my back but I can still get the sun. Build a fire right there. A little bit rocky for a sleeping spot. Up in there seems like a good spot to get out of the wind. But I don't want to build a fire in there. Like grass will catch fire. Check it out. Those are bald eagle talon marks. Look at the size of that. Good looking fishing spot. I brought a fly rod along. Definitely have to do some fly fishing. I think I have a lot of good options. Spoiled for choices. Definitely feels more sheltered from the wind in between these two islands. Feels nice to get a fire going. Plus, I want to do a bit of cooking tonight. I want a nice big bed of coals. So this will be perfect. I want to eat some fresh bread on this trip. So I brought along about a pound of bread flour and I'm just going to go ahead and add some water to it. Got a leak in my bag. Well, typically what I do is I just take a bag of bread flour and add a sprinkle of yeast to it and that's it. I add water when I'm ready and then it ferments and I make bread. But to be honest, I can't remember for sure whether or not I remembered to add yeast to this. So we're going find out whether this rises or not. The warmer it is, the faster the bread dough will rise and it's pretty cold out right now. So I'm going to have to sit this by the fire if I want it to rise. Any river in Alaska that has salmon in it probably also has rainbow trout and Dolly Varden. And this time of year, Dolly Varden and rainbow trout are feasting on salmon eggs and rotting salmon flesh. This is a flesh fly with a couple of fake salmon eggs in it. It's a great fly for trout this time of year. I'm getting hungry and the sun's going to be setting soon. I think I better get some more firewood. Started thinking about making dinner. Got a gorgeous little lamb shank here for dinner. There we go. That's looking pretty good on that end. Some rosemary. Need to fill up my water bottle and get my filter out. Gravity just pulls the water through the filter, fills up my bottle. My filter's working really slow because it's so cold that there's ice getting stuck in the filter. Look at that. Crunchy water. It's that time of year again. Got to completely empty my bag and my filter. Otherwise it'll get ice in it and I won't be able to use it. You know what? I don't think I put any yeast in this dough. You can smell the fermentation really strongly when you open the bag usually. This is nothing. I managed to mess it up and there's only two ingredients. All right, I guess we'll be having some flatbread tonight. Oh, it got rendered down a bit. I think I overdid that a little bit, but that'll still work. That's good. The outside's all crunchy and tastes like rosemary and salt. It's good. Got a lamb shank wrapped into some flatbread. That's not bad at all. Get a little packet of this peach flavored barbecue sauce. Well, without the yeast, this is basically just a tortilla. It's really good though. Oh, I just heard something in the river. I can hear something walking on the ice over there. It's just past the range of my flashlight. I just heard that splashing right up next to the fire. Pretty sure there's a beaver that's trying to scare me off. If you set up near a beaver's territory at night, they'll come right up to you and splash and slap their tail and try to scare you off. They can get really aggressive. I don't want to have to fight another beaver, but I'll do it. Dang it, I put the salt instead of the sugar in there. Oh, that was a nasty surprise. All right, well, I'm that happy little surprised that it gets time to make up my bed. All right, I'm going to hop in the tent, but I'm going to leave this fire burning all night. The fire and the smoke will help keep any curious animals away. Water bottle's freezing up. Got to stick it in the bottom. Oh, hello. Oh, that's not good. That burned up pretty good. Come on, get out. That's the problem with fires, man. Every once in a while, they spit embers out at you. If that had happened while I was asleep, my whole tarp would have been on fire before I woke up. I'm going to put on some puffy pants. Oh, my pillow's got a hole in it. I'm going to improvise. All right, guys, I think it's bedtime, and unless the tarp catches on fire or I get attacked by an animal, I'll see you in the morning. Oh, good morning. It is really cold in here. I got to get up and get a fire going. It is so bitterly cold. It got down a lot colder than the forecast said. I don't have a thermometer on me, but this is a lot colder than the 20s. Oh, my goodness. Look at this. Look at the ice down the river. That is not good. There was no ice in the river yesterday. That is concerning. My plan for getting home was to take the pack raft down the river. I don't know what that ice is going to do to the pack raft, but I don't love that. All right, first things first, let's get a fire and get warmed up. I've been out of my sleeping bag maybe 10 minutes. My fingers and toes are already starting to go numb. Oh, that sun's coming out, and you can just feel it taking the edge off the cold. It's still well below freezing, but it feels better. Time to start making some breakfast. My water froze last night. I'm going to put some honey on it. I've got some food in me now, but I've been watching the river, and it seems like there's even more ice coming down than there was when I woke up. I think I'm going to go ahead and start cleaning up my campsite. Well, it's about noon, and if anything, there's more ice in the river than there was this morning. I think if I'm going to get out of here, I got to go soon. I'm nervous about this, because if I get in the water and I get soaking wet, it is going to be so cold. I'm going to freeze really quick. My backpack's taking up a little bit more room than I expected. I'm going to try something else here. Oh, that's a lot more manageable. Yeah, that'll work a lot better. I've got about 70% of my gear stored inside the raft. That'll keep the center of gravity lower and just keep it out of my way. Moment of truth. Oh, it's so weird having the ice around. We're moving at a pretty good clip. Just floating downstream with the icebergs. Luckily, this ice is nice and soft. It's just like a giant shave ice. Slush makes it really hard to maneuver. It makes it hard to see all the snags and boulders I need to avoid. See, like right there. See right there? My two biggest fears are hypothermia and sweepers. Sweepers are when you have a tree laying across the current. If you hit that, you'll get stuck under the sweeper and pinned under the water and you can drown. So avoiding sweepers and not getting wet are my two big priorities. The key to avoiding sweepers is staying on the inside of the curve. Sweepers are always on the outside of a bend. My fingers aren't even wet and they're already cold. The cold is just seeping up through the kayak and the paddle. Words cannot describe how badly I do not want to get wet. Looks like we got some rapids. Scraped my butt on the rocks, but seemed to be okay. Look at all this ice. Dang, this is a lot of ice. It's really good I'm getting out today. If I waited one more night, I probably couldn't make it. Man, if this slush was any thicker, I wouldn't be able to maneuver in it. There we go. Got some open water. It's crazy. I look at the ice and it feels like I'm not moving at all. Then I look at the shoreline and I'm like, oh, I'm ripping. One nice thing about the ice is it's keeping me moving downstream, even with this wind in my face. Normally these pack rafts get pushed around by the wind quite a bit, but the ice is having none of it. Well, I've got about four miles under my belt, but I'm starting to get a little cold, a little bit hungry. Then I remembered I packed my food inside the raft. I don't, I really don't want to have to deflate the raft to get lunch. So I might have to just power through. Ooh, it's getting spicy. Man, I want that sunshine back. Man, some of these ice chunks are getting big. Got to go around that one. You can see the sweepers right there. Those trees hanging into the water. Number one way to run into trouble on this river. The further downstream I go, the more packed the slush is getting. That was tough. That right there is a big sweeper. Don't want to get stuck underneath that. Look at that. The water's freezing to my raft. Managed to raft 12 miles back to town and my lower half is all cramped up and cold. It feels both good and painful to be walking. Floating the river was fun, but a little bit dicier than I like. Oh, I would have hate to think what would happen if I had a fallen end. If you liked that video, make sure to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And if you want to see our newest adventures, make sure to click subscribe so you'll get notifications.