Amazing Quest: Stories from Alaska | Somewhere on Earth: Alaska | Free Documentary

hmm [Music] [Music] so [Music] alaska the continent in the inuit language libby is a young american full of energy after her studies she decided to come back to live in homer where she was born to be as close as possible to the mountains and to the sea her two passions the myth of alaska is what brought lionel here this french globetrotter became a guide in the katmai region land of grizzlies a virgin land with the largest population of brown bears in the world farther north the roof of america with danial this lady belongs to the club of bush pilots a very select group [Music] there is a year that i spent in alaska my first year i never had a car i went everywhere by an airplane or a mountain bike so and to me that was a dreamland there still is [Music] the kenai peninsula in southern alaska is a land of volcanoes endless forests and fjords a land sculpted by the sea and glaciers living here means accepting nature's implacable law cold snow winters that are seven months long rain mud mosquitoes in the summer and libby loves it all for her returning to the land where she was born was the obvious thing to do this land has gotten under her skin tattooed even on her ankle eight stars the emblem of alaska after i finished university it was a pretty easy decision to come back to alaska it's just a wild open place where there's still a lot of room to breathe and you can be far away from all the hassles of traffic and shopping malls and cars and and just too many people and you can get away to where life really is which is in the mountains and in the forests just natural wonders kachemak bay near homer alaska is home to the biggest crabs in america and to the biggest greenland halibut in the pacific and that's no fish story so fishermen flock here to enjoy miraculous fishing at least once in their lifetimes and libby turns sailor to teach them the basics of fishing generally i run a wilderness backpacking school for children but sometimes i fill in on the charter boat just because it's fun and there's good money in it and i like being out on the water i think it's really fun and it's always it's always a pleasure so [Music] listen up i'm going to teach you how to fish in case you forgot my name is libby chet's the other deck libby has her sea legs on which can't be said for everyone on board the boat in this region of the far north you have to know how to adapt people living here hold down several different jobs at a time libby is an english teacher in the winter in summer she's a mountain guide and a fishing guide and she's just as at home on a boat up to her elbows and fish as she is in a classroom teaching english literature a lot of young people come back after going to university they come back to homer to work on the charter boats in the summertime and there's not a lot of work in the winter but in the summer there's more work than there are people so it's a it's a good good job to have i like fishing because it's it's fun but i definitely prefer the mountains at libby's place there's no running water just a little cistern to collect rain water that has to be boiled as for the toilet it's outside summer and winter her farm constructed by early 20th century immigrants has a long history the house was built on land granted to pioneers to grow food for the early gold hunters seeking their fortunes in alaska this little house has been home to a good many dreams it's the oldest farm in the region and now it's home to libby's dreams [Music] even is the grandson of pioneers from switzerland farmers who came in the 1930s he also has decided to stay in alaska like libby the mountains are in his blood in alaska i feel like there is towns and the wilderness goes out everywhere else in the lower 48 i feel like the wilderness is always surrounded by the towns and so people go from the towns into the wilderness but in alaska because it's so big still we the towns are very small and we go out and so it's the further you go the more danger and just the more adventure and the more opportunities there are to see things that that have never been seen and to go places where no one has ever been so i like alaska for that reason a lot [Music] the generation of libby's parents was part of the last great wave of american style pioneers in the 1960s a lot of hippies left california for a more authentic lifestyle in alaska they all found their promised land and the space in which to be free [Music] [Music] this is a small gathering of our closest family friends for my mother's 60th birthday everything's special about homer we have beautiful scenery wonderful people really nice close community there's glaciers nearby and mountains amazing fishing and just a really nice arts community [Music] have just opened a new climbing route on one of the mountain tops across the bay [Music] we're going with them on their last reconnaissance flight before winter they have to make this trip in order to evaluate the difficulty of the climb and of the glacier if all goes well they'll be bringing groups of teenagers here next summer here's a really difficult spot for the pilot to land because it's a very small valley and he has to circle around and then land anything windy and it's going to be a little bit tricky so we're on his schedule the uh the glacier pilots here and the bush pilots here they're in charge they're the number one so we just kind of work by their schedule there are a few things that i love more than being away from everyone else i'm a very solo person and when i'm out here in the wilderness that's where i really feel at peace because there's nobody to tell me what to do there is nothing to distract me from myself or from the world around me and i can really focus on what's most important to me which is enjoying life one place for sleeping another for eating one has to take all possible precautions to avoid unpleasant surprises bears are everywhere in these mountains we try to put everything away um so that bears don't come around and can get into our camp set up i do my fire like my grandfather taught me to do my fire this wood is high in um turpentine this is magnesium and opine wood the magnesium when it's lit it burns very hot so the two of them together this wood helps the magnesium catch on fire [Music] a few meters from the glacier the temperature hardly goes above five degrees celsius and this is summer we're lucky but we can't sit around the campfire for very long in a few hours we attack the glacier [Music] there are dozens of ice fields in the kenai peninsula some of the largest in the world and most of these frozen seas are practically inaccessible [Music] this morning the elements are against us on the other side of the pacific thousands of kilometers away a typhoon is starting to blow we can feel it even here and the mountain amplifies its effect [Music] just across the mountain range is the gulf of alaska and so the weather comes usually from the gulf of alaska out there and it comes over these mountains and it just comes in real fast sometimes strong winds and because the glacier is very cold it creates winds all on its own too that come and rush down the glacier sometimes so those are some weather concerns we have to think about [Music] there's all kinds of volcanoes around here we have um my augustine maliamna and mount readout mount readout just erupted in april of this year and it was a pretty big eruption it spewed ash for hundreds of miles there's ash all over homer and anchor point and all the way as far as the head of the bay up here that's what you can see all the black on the glacier is all from the volcanic ash the glacier is alive it's always moving libby and aven have to come here regularly to update their knowledge of the mountain and to evaluate the dangers this seemingly immobile mass is constantly changing crevices shift and like everywhere else in the world this immense sea of ice is receding inch by inch the valley has been the same for a thousand years the ice has moved back of course but people have not come here and you know there's no campsites and the bears don't come and eat your food because they don't even know that they can there's no reason for it to change in the past and we try to keep it so there's no reason that it has to change in the future you know you always make sure your campfire is put out and cleaned up and i try to scatter it and bury it so that you can't tell that anyone was even here that this wasn't even a campsite so that it can be preserved for the next people and for generations to come and also appreciate places like this aven's grandfather the pioneer who came to build alaska handed down this philosophy to him the earth is generous on condition you don't take everything from it it's hard to believe but even here man's insatiable appetite is putting nature at risk [Music] so [Applause] [Music] from the paris suburbs to the vast stretches of alaska there are many worlds to cross lionel has seen them all urged on by his yearning for adventure i came to alaska 30 years ago so i've been here for 30 years at first it was so i could make money to continue traveling and i ended up staying i was taken in by alaska captivated by the nature in the beginning i traveled around all over by plane by snow scooter and then i wanted to share it all with other people so after having worked as a baker and in restaurants i felt like doing something a little closer to nature i sold all my businesses and started working as a guide the seaplane is the only way of getting to where we're going lionel is a nature guide and his specialty is brown bears the grizzlies that are the pride of the alaskan people okay seatbelts on everybody seat belts yeah [Music] [Music] we're going biv whacking with lionel in the katmai a totally virgin region 400 kilometers west of anchorage [Music] the katmai is a vast uninhabited region of middle range mountains lakes volcanoes and tundra for nearly 100 years the katmai has been a protected area a natural reserve this land is sacred [Music] two or three times a year lionel sets up camp as near as possible to the bears this time around he's here with a team of animal photographers from europe when you're really isolated like this if something's missing there's no way you can get it you have to have it with you that means an enormous amount of planning a lot of material if you want to be completely safe we need satellite telephones weapons good quality tents if we forget something we do without it that's it you never know what could happen it could rain the weather in the north changes very quickly and then there are all the weather fronts that come from the east from siberia there isn't a weather station every 20 kilometers here so they have to rely solely on the satellite image and sometimes that changes rapidly [Music] this is the last sanctuary for one of the most legendary of animals the brown bear [Applause] [Music] nearly 3 000 of them have been counted in the katmai region nowhere else on the planet is there such a concentration you always want to stay with them a little longer really these animals are so mysterious and captivating close to us it's like our childhood teddy bear come alive at the end of the summer the bears gobble down quantities of pacific salmon they can catch up to 80 a day every year at the same time after an incredible journey hundreds of thousands of salmon come to lay their eggs and then die in the rivers of alaska in the exact same spot where they had been born several years earlier yeah that's perfect and the bears also come back to the same fishing holes from one year to the next the mother is dominant because she's managed to get rid of the mail with two cubs she took enormous risks she must have known that she would come out on top it must have been a male she knew because you don't often see a female with young drive off a male of that age [Music] the grizzly and the polar bear are the largest carnivores on earth the male grizzly can measure 2 meters 50 weigh 300 kilos and charge at 50 kilometers an hour it's always really impressive to see just how fast these huge hulks can move to see the speed at which they run because they're really huge creatures there's always a good deal of yeah i'd say of wonder involved when you see grizzlies so close because well they're mythical animals this is the end of the road for these bright red salmon they're living their final hours they're exhausted and so they're easy prey and that works out well because the bears have only a few weeks left to feast on them this is their last big feed before they return to their lairs for the winter but a pacific salmon however tired it is won't go down without a fight [Music] the katmai is a land for adventure seekers patrick started out in colorado and in several stages has traveled more than 5 000 kilometers in his little plane before finally flying over this territory where he has come to fish trout well i enjoy the flying uh more than the fishing and uh yeah it's it's uh it's a nice way to relax and uh you appreciate a lot of things when you have the freedom of flight you've got to be careful and you have to know your limits and uh the the way to stay alive is to be more conservative uh but but as you as you're here more there's little tricks that nature tells you that nature's changing and if you're aware of that and safe it's a good time a farmer in colorado patrick is a wide open space addict he loves alaska and comes up to pitch his tent here several times a year [Music] so [Music] sometimes we bring friends and family uh one month ago i bring my two nephews 12 and 13 years old had a nice time alaska's fun when you share it it's most fun when you share and show people the country is so magnificent and extraordinary that i think i've caught the alaska bug i try to make it back here this is my seventh almost consecutive year the moment i board the plane to return to france all i can think about is coming back again [Music] you know i feel very very very fortunate i'm uh i feel honored and i feel blessed and i feel uh i don't know something about alaska you you can't you can't explain it this this river right here might be the best rainbow river in the world and to be here first all by myself it doesn't happen too often the katmai is alaska's horn of plenty where man and animal cross paths the extraordinary becomes possible it's uh the last frontier the last place without a lot of rules the last place with no people you know the last place that you can die in two weeks they still don't know you're gone you know there's still a sense of adventure for alaska for most people fishing in this wild land is exclusively for pleasure catch and release only it's a question of philosophy right now the the trout get in behind the the red salmon the salmon are going up the rivers to spawn and lay their eggs so right now the trout will get behind the salmon yesterday i was here um i left camp at 5 30 and i got back at four you know so um my back starts to hurt them yesterday i took a nap on an island like this you always wake up looking for the bear sound of alaska [Music] you know bears if you you make yourself as big as you can with bright colors and a lot of noise most the time they leave and uh the minute you run if you're gonna walk away back up but the minute you run it's their character to chase so uh you just hold your ground and don't show any fear it's your heart this land is a magnet in spite of the danger setting foot here is like delving as deeply as possible into yourself it's an unforgettable apprenticeship of freedom its return to the rules alaska is home to more than 70 percent of north america's brown bears they are the pride and joy of alaskans who are even ready to accept a slowdown in economic development in order to protect this majestic animal this has been happening in the katmai for almost 100 years elsewhere the bears were hunted and have almost disappeared [Music] after a few hours walk in the river we find ourselves face to face with a whole family this is the magical moment of the encounter right in the middle of a feast [Music] we try to get as close as possible to get good photos but the bear is a huge predator so there's always a risk the rule is to not get closer than 50 meters to a bear but sometimes they're all over the place and if you back away from one you find yourself closer to another bear so in fact we're quite often only 15 to 20 meters away i found myself surrounded by bears but they didn't show any sign of aggressivity the most important thing to do is make yourself known to the bears so they can identify you they're gone come closer there's a female and three little ones the bear is an extremely solitary animal changing its behavior during the feeding season when food is abundant it becomes more tolerant of humans and even more tolerant of other bears we take advantage of this because when you're as close as we are now it's not a common situation if there weren't salmon all over the place it'd be impossible [Music] in a few weeks at the end of the spawning season the red salmon will be gone from the rivers of alaska and the bears will be looking out for another source of food to satisfy their voracious appetites before going into hibernation that's the sign for lionel to leave he'll have to wait another year before once again he will be able to approach these impressive predators suddenly a freezing east wind starts blowing over the katmai like a warning there's no fighting it it's time to go we are only tolerated visitors in the land of the bear [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] holds a special place in the hearts of american pilots it is here at the foot of mount mckinley the highest peak in north america that the most important moments in the history of alaskan aviation took place [Music] this village remains the dream of many pilots even today the airplane is still the easiest means of transportation in alaska [Music] danielle is one of those famous alaskan bush pilots who have the reputation of being among the best in the world she can fly in the worst of conditions [Music] i flew up here in my airplane nine years ago on a quick trip with some friends just decided to go on a long cross-country trip and then i landed here and just saw these airplanes on skis just taking off it was overcast but they were still getting to the mountain never saw mckinley but just knew they were going up some place and landing on a mountain with skis and just was yeah i liked the town there was good music in town and just i don't know just felt like a cool place i can leave here and go fly up into the mountains go hiking go around a corner run into a grizzly bear and so you kind of feel like you're not living a protected life it feels alive about 80 percent of the state doesn't have any roads to it so um airplanes are the normal day-to-day travel at one point about eighty percent of uh the people that lived in alaska had a pilot's license and about fifty percent of the people had um airplanes so some people learned to fly not because they loved it but because they needed to get to their house or cabin in winter the extreme cold brings everything to a halt come spring danielle gets more and more missions she drops climbers off at mount mckinley's base camp [Music] in summer weather conditions permitting she treats her passengers to a flight over the snow-capped peaks while they're flying up to the mountain yeah and up to the mckinley the plane is the local taxi it's the bicycle too it's a bus and sometimes it's even a pickup truck flying from morning to night that's why danielle left the boondocks of colorado to come live here [Music] most people that come here on a scenic flight uh generally want to be in a beaver because of the old radial engine you know that you know it's a classic it's like the harley davidson of airplanes for sure [Music] oh [Music] the more i get into the back country the better i feel i felt definitely i don't know more at peace my first year i spent in alaska i never had a car i went everywhere by an airplane or a mountain bike so and to me that was a dreamland or still is so [Music] it's common not to have electricity for maybe two days three days in the winter and when it's 40 below um everything will freeze after one day and that's a problem not just for water but for canned food any um anything like that will ruin there's no choice but to adapt to the climate danielle lives without running water in a converted container she chose this life far from material constraints precisely because it gives her just what she needs and no more enough to eat to live and above all enough to dream the essentials it's hard to explain but i don't feel alone feel connected to everything that goes around whereas if i'm in the city or more people i feel more lonely the more civilized thing gets the more i feel lost here i don't feel lost some mornings here my awakening um moose will come walking by one morning i have a mother moose right outside this window or her back is like this high and then the the calves are just walking around little babies in the yard and so you are reminded on how basic it is necessities of life [Music] skis for landing on mountains bog wheels for the tundra danielle knows how to handle it all in no time three shakes and a few turns of a wrench she changes her plane's landing gear i grew up in colorado and my dad my brothers were all car mechanics and airplane mechanics so weekends were out the airport and weekdays we're in the garages i like mechanics i grew up around it so yeah it's going good how's it going good there you go rafting i am ready let's go check out where we can land today's mission is to drop karloff near one of the region's many rivers i'm ready in less than an hour carl an adventure hunter will be out in the bush for the alaskans taking the plane to go rafting is like taking the bus to go play tennis even though they stopped making them 40 years ago the beaver remains the favorite plane of the alaskan bush pilots they're passed on from one owner to the next like collector's items though it's not extremely fast it can carry a very large load it was designed to land anywhere at relatively low speed it's the perfect bush plane this beaver it has a history with some of its accidents it's had but probably the most famous is there was a murder that occurred in it the owner had it on floats and landed in a river where his cabin was and then he left the airplane tied up went to his cabin and then the following day or so when he came back to his airplane someone had rigged a shotgun on the door and he disconnected the airplane from the shore and pushed off and opened up the door and got shot right in the chest from the shotgun so the airplane was drifting down the river and it took him a while to actually find the owner [Music] danielle doesn't use landing strips but just plots of open land one more improbable than the next she flies over once to check it out and two minutes later the plane is on the ground [Music] well well have a good trip okay thanks danielle bye-bye have a safe flight back yep carl is going to have to walk a little before getting into the water from now on he's on his own but that's exactly what he came for [Music] if there's a problem he'll have to work it out for himself those who don't follow the rules of the game can end up paying for it with their lives it's been raining for days now on and off and it rained hard last night and the water is still coming up a little bit and then this morning we've had rain and sun and different things but uh you know what they say in alaska if you don't like the weather wait five minutes or move five miles that's alaska no guarantees it's become popular recently pack crafting where we take these rafts of about two kilos and we carry them into the wilderness and find some river to run out in the middle of nowhere and you can take the raft out you can blow it up run a river and then take out at another point climb another mountain go to another river and it just allows you to look in a map in a whole new way in alaska there's a lot of things that can be dangerous you just really have to pay attention you've got to be prepared in many ways in my life jacket i carry waterproof matches i carry a signal mirror i carry energy bars i carry an emergency blanket i carry the bare minimum survival tools to survive in case i just lose my boat or something worse we're ready [Music] most mountain rivers in alaska are inaccessible going down them can take several days and everyone knows it's a tough place even in summer the temperature of the water rarely gets above eight degrees celsius [Music] so [Music] enjoying simple moments like this in a breathtaking landscape that's the lifestyle that many have chosen in alaska a simple and serene existence living here is feeling that you've found your place we're only 30 kilometers down from the glacier where this water is coming from this is the chiletna river which comes out of uh the many glaciers on the east side of the central alaska range it's both got some clear water from snow melts and the milky water from the glaciers now every river in alaska was named by the natives it ends in na shaletna and that's how you know it's a river in a indian name [Music] [Music] looks like you're traveling a little light i am traveling light hey you want to join us for lunch that would be great that would be great where are you stopping well you know down here just a little ways okay this canyon's gonna open up a little bit that'd be nice to get off these wet clothes for a little bit get some sun on me all right the unexpected is everywhere we run into joe another rafting fanatic he looks like a trapper but he was the talkeetna grade school teacher for more than 30 years these two are old friends hey check it out bear tracks the strength of the people living here is that they're at one with their environment when summer's over you have to get ready for the cold ice and snow and yet joe and carl wouldn't give up alaskan winters for anything in the world that's when they can really savor their alaska well i think there's a lot of emotions involved with being in the wilderness for one you have to be very honest with yourself because if you make mistakes you could easily die out in the wilderness so you have to be careful and you have to respect the wilderness for one thing you really get to appreciate your place in the world we have to live on nature's terms we can't change nature to live on our terms so we have to accept it and we have to see our part in how we fit in you know there are still wild places where you can disappear i know you could still hike out into some wild places and try to make your way and live off the land and it seems odd that uh probably most of north america was settled by humans coming from asia walking probably right through this landscape right here but they kept going because they realized that this was not exactly the best place to stop just because of the climate but now you know more and more of us are saying oh you know that that place was worthwhile let's come back and see what we can make of ourselves in that space the last one here [Music] oh [Music] this is the dream of everyone living in alaska danielle has just bought a piece of land where she's going to build a trapper's cabin the myth of the pioneer lives on this is for the floor of my cabin the smaller pieces are easier to transport in the airplane long pieces are difficult i can transport some but then the smaller pieces can go inside the airplane danielle has chosen to build her dream house on an inaccessible hillside [Music] it's a good place it's that's the fun of it is that it is a challenge [Music] this young woman has not chosen the easy way out the wind has to be just right in order to land on her little acre of paradise only danielle could have dreamed this one up i need the wind to blow in the right direction in order to land um either it needs to be really calm or the wind has to be from the right direction so um it can be small windows of opportunity to land there her own plane is a 1956 canvas-built piper that looks like something straight out of a cartoon strip [Music] it takes about five minutes to fly there um you cannot drive it takes about eight hours to hike there maybe 10 i never hiked [Music] i feel alive for sure um usually like an early morning before everybody's awake um when you first take off and feel their airplane leave the ground and it's just the smooth cold air and it's just like flying up into a blanket um it's pretty dreamy i don't know how you can beat that it's just amazing i feel fortunate that i'm obsessed with something so fun [Music] within a few years danielle became a reputable bush pilot she can land almost anywhere something that not many other pilots are capable of doing her hill is a long way from being a landing strip with a slope of more than 20 degrees landing there is a real challenge danielle's plot of land is unique with a stunning view of mount mckinley it's worthy of her dream choose this area because it looks the over the entire valley and yeah um uh most of the time is down in the forest or in the canopy um so it's nice to have a place to go to where you see over an entire valley yeah it's a perch [Music] alaska is the roof of america yeah and then this is the an awesome roof of the sitting valley [Music] the kingdom of extremes alaska land of pioneers in the gold rush carries on and on nourishing our dreams that's why so many men and women on a quest end up here in the end perhaps the true gold of alaska is freedom [Music] time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 741,424

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), somewhere on earth, amazing stories, amazing stories from Alaska, amazing quest, Alaska

Id: bZXyicpOXnA

Length: 52min 14sec (3134 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022