- That was so cool. My first grizzly bear. Beautiful. (rocks clattering) Ow! Wow, look at that fish. - Look at the color to it. - Greg's built himself
a little shelter, too, so he can tuck in underneath there. And if not, you're welcome to join me. I made enough room for both of us. (energetic music) I'm Zachary Fowler. - And I'm Greg Elvins. - And this is the 30-day
Survival Challenge, Canadian Rockies. There's only one rule: if you wanna eat, you gotta catch and cook it. (energetic music) The 30-day Survival Challenge,
Season 2, Canadian Rockies has been brought to you in
part by Dr. Squatch Soap, Hidden Woodsman Gear,
Go Prepared Survival, Outdoor Vitals, Wazoo Survival Gear, Simpleshot Shooting
Sports, and Grim Workshop. Check out the link in
the description below for the gear video of the
30-Day Survival Challenge. Good morning. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Adventures to be had. And what a view out my window. Ah, gorgeous. Gonna hike up to our hike-in lake today, our top-secret place that
Greg found years ago. It's gonna be a long hike,
but quite the adventure, worth it, hopefully the
fish are still up there. And yee-haw. (yawning) Day six. Let's do this. (quiet, upbeat music) (fire crackling) (saw rasping) (fire crackling) Ow! (quiet, upbeat music) - So, I was just telling Zach about a couple I met last year mushroom picking. And they'd been friends forever, and they did a hike-in lake
like what we're doing years ago. So the one couple played a joke on Al and he filled his
backpack with heavy rocks and then camouflaged it with
clothes and this and that. And he packed this pack all the
way to the top, to the lake. And then when he was
pulling his stuff out, he discovered the rocks, he'd
been packing all these rocks. So, it was quite funny. - Gophers are taking a while. They do take a while if you
want them to be nice and juicy, so we'll leave them on the coals. Maybe we'll eat a fish each and then bring the other toasted fish as a snack along the way
or something like that. - Well, I'm hoping we do well up there. - Yeah. - I'm hoping the hike is worth it because, you know, maybe the second lake that I haven't gotten to, maybe
there's some big ones in it because it's twice the size. Maybe in a bigger lake,
maybe there's bigger fish. - I think it's gonna
take about three hours. - It'll be an all-day thing
by the time we get back. - Yep. Be good and ready for those gophers by the time we get back, that's for sure. - Yep. Unlike you, I don't eat the heads. - Mmm, I think the smoked ones, you can eat the heads a lot easier because they've like smoked and cooked and softened all the way through. - Yeah, well, I mean,
we had that first batch on there for two days, kind of. - I totally found that the alewife, when we were doing the
wilderness living challenge, there in Mainsley, you
couldn't eat the alewife, if you just cooked and ate them. The whole body was just so full of bones, it was almost impossible to eat. But you go and you smoke
them for three days and then toast them, you
can nibble them right up and pull the spinal cord out the middle and have a nice piece of fish. You can still see all those little bones, but you don't even taste them. They're just like broke down or something. - Well, we can't really say
we've been going hungry so far. - No. - I wanna pack light, I don't
wanna bring the shotgun. - All right.
- It's too much to pack. - We'll bring just the bear mace, then? - Yep. I dug up a lot of worms this morning, so, some nice big ones. - I'm gonna bring my fly
rod, I wanna see if I do it. - Yep. - This is the first time I
haven't busted it out yet. - Well, these lakes we're going to, when I first hiked in
there about five years ago and discovered them, because
I saw them on the map, and I don't think anybody
really knows about them, and I just had 10 feet
of line and a bare hook and I couldn't find any bait. And I threw a bare hook
in, not even a lure, just a bare hook, and I
had a fish in 10 seconds. - Nice. - So, on a bare hook. - All right, let's pack it in, pack it up. (metal scraping) (clips snapping) Ready?
- I'm ready. - And we're off and away. This is gonna be a long trek. Long trek. It was worth the wait in the
morning to get the gopher on, so we'll have that for when
we get back, eat the fishes, and I ate a bunch of the
broth from last night's gopher and my gopher I didn't finish. So I'm feeling jazzed. Let's do this. You can see, Greg is very jazzed. He's already running away. - We just need the easiest
route, if possible. - [Zachary] Yeah, I think
this is a good spot. It's not gonna be fun going
through this stuff, but. - No, it isn't. - [Zachary] Nothing like
trying to climb through a cut. We're going down here, through
this cut, across the stream, and then up to the waterfall right there, and then to the top of the
waterfall, where the lake is. I hate climbing through
this kind of stuff. - [Greg] Yeah, it's not much fun. - But yesterday, when we arrived, that's the road that we had
to cut out on the stream. It goes way over there and down and down, it's way down there where that, we could've crossed the
river with the truck, but, and that would've saved
us maybe, I don't know, two kilometers, a kilometer. Good thing we didn't know at the time how badly we were estimating distance when we looked at it from up there. That's it right there? - [Greg] Yep. - [Zachary] False hellebore, Greg says. - Next to water hemlock,
it's about the most toxic in North America, second to
the water hemlock, pretty much. It'll kill you dead. - [Zachar] Cool, deadly poisonous. What else do you need
to know, move on, right? Not at all. I looked it up to see if I
could build on the knowledge that Greg was imparting to me. And turns out, this plant, sure, ingested can cause cardiac arrest, but the Native Americans
actually would harvest the roots during the wintertime
when the toxicity was down and could mix that with
other plants like salvia to reduce the effects. But they also knew that
it was still dangerous, even at that point, and
it was very important to keep it away from pregnant women. They would also dry and powder the leaves and use that as an insect repellent. And in Chinese medicine, they would take a small amount internally, which was very dangerous, to
kill parasites in the stomach. Or they would use it
externally on the skin to kill things like scabies and ringworm. And you thought plant
knowledge was boring. They almost look like clover, don't they? Somebody goes to nibble sweet clover, and they're eating columbine. Not good. - Very toxic, as well. They either, the berries aren't red yet, but this is probably red, but they come in white
and red, the berries. Doll's eyes, they call them. - All right, we made it. Little pathway down here. Now we're free of that. That wasn't so bad, though. Fortunately, we've got
road for the next mile, or mile and a half. That'll be nice. (water trickling and splashing) Having a hard time keeping my pants up. I have no butt. Kinda runs in the family,
but then I, when I'm at home, I go running, and that doesn't help. I gotta do some squats or something. I don't wanna be an
old guy with suspenders that he needs to hold his pants
up because he's got no butt. All these things, I keep losing weight, like right in the rear end and, you know, your bigger muscles are, you
lose a little bit of that, and your fat from your butt. Doing too many of these too close together and not eating enough, and doing enough of the
right squats or something. Gonna have to work on
that when I get home. I need a butt so I can hold my pants up. When I came out of Alone, after 87 days, it was like straight down my back, there was no shape until you
hit the back of my knees. I was that, pfft, everything was gone. All right, we should push on. Greg's catching up. He wants to get to his lake. (quiet, upbeat music) (water rushing) Yeah, there we go. Yep, yeah. (quiet, upbeat music) It's beautiful, isn't it? I do not relish the
hike back up that stuff over there on that side. Everything else will be downhill, until we get to that one spot, and we gotta go up all that cut area, ooh. Greg's taking a break
while I talk to my camera. Get in your rest while you can. - Well, I know what's ahead,
it's not gonna be easy. - Yeah. Oh, we just keep hiking and hiking, the mountains are just all around us, getting taller and taller. And we're not getting any
closer, it feels like. Because we're just so, it's so far. - We're getting closer. - I can hear the waterfall. - It's a long hike, I told ya.
- It is. Now, look at this little tuft of trees, they are one tough little looking trees, right there in the center of the view. Just hanging in, way up there. We want to live, we want to live! Wow. It's been about two hours of hiking. I'm pretty knackered. One fish, three-quarters of a gopher that I had left from last night, a cup of broth, and a cup of coffee. Feel like a burned those
off a couple of hours ago. - Well, we're more than
three-quarters of the way. It hasn't been the hard part yet. (quiet, upbeat music) - [Zachary] Right there, so close. (quiet, upbeat music) (water rushing) Now we've just gotta get up
somewhere in here or here, and then up there into the lake. Yee-haw, wow. That was a long way, huh? - Long ways, man. - [Zachary] Long ways. - It's not easy. - [Zachary] That place
that we started from, I don't even know where
it is, behind the hill. - [Greg] You can't even see
it, it's around the corner. - Yeah, down, probably right about there, and around the corner a little bit. Oy vey, yeah, it's definitely
further than it looks. We're gonna take a break,
scout this with a drone, and eat our two fishes
that we brought with us. (quiet, upbeat music) Oh, man, I missed it. I was flying the drone, and Greg's like, "Oh, there's a grizzly bear!" And right down here, there's a log, and like couple seconds later, while I was still bringing the drone down, right there on that log, a cub, grizzly cub comes running across. So, you know, obviously,
wherever there's a grizzly cub, there's a grizzly mom. Darn, I wish I hadn't missed that. That was so cool. My first grizzly bear, and it just, and I missed it on camera. Ah. Maybe if we look back
to the drone footage. Turns out, the drone did catch it. Here he is, going across the log, and then he heads across this
boulder field, right here, which is some pretty big boulders. Most of those were like
five, six feet tall. So the fact that he
navigates it so quickly. And here's an instant replay at 600 times digitally zoomed in. So it loses all its definition, but you can clearly see
him running across the log and the boulder field, he is booking. Looked through all the footage, but there was no sign of Mom. Well, it's still early in the adventure. Only day six, and I get to
see my first grizzly bear. But now I gotta go up that. Greg's already got a head start. Technically, it's not all that
far, but man, is it steep. Cameras will just never show you that. - [Greg] Almost halfway. - [Zachary] Quite the hike. Beautiful. The GoPro doesn't do this climb justice. It looks like it's pretty flat, but it's actually a lot more like this. And worse in some areas. This is like goat
territory, I'm telling you. It was all just crumbled rock. (water rushing) (rocks clattering) Woo, we made it! - Just about. - [Zachary] Well, we made it to a trail. - Yeah, and then we just have
to push across and over there. One more rest, or at
least, probably two more. - [Zachary] How about 20 more? It's still a ways to the lake. I don't know if we're
going back down tonight. Almost there. Look at all the, hey, look. - [Greg] Mountain goat hair. - [Zachary] We can collect all this and we can knit ourselves some sweaters. Because we're gonna be
spending the night up here, so we don't get cold. - Some bedding.
- Some bedding. We can stuff this inside of our jackets to increase our insulation value. Oh, just smells like the mountains. Beautiful. I'm collecting as much as I can. I'm gonna make a felted mountain goat. (water rushing) I might be able to make
myself a new orange hat. There's a lot of it, look at all this. Look at all that. (water rushing) Oh, I think it's just on
the other side of that tree, treeline, we're almost there. There it is, there's the lake. (shouting) There it is. Wow. And there's even another lake
beyond this one, up there. Ah, whew. A little snow and glacier
action going on up there. That's wild. Oh, I see fish! I see a fish! There's a lot of them. Lotta fish, nice. These are a decent size, too. Wow. Ah, we've just been slogging
through all of this. About a quarter of a mile,
that's all we can do. Ah, it's opening up. I've fallen down three times. I am so fried. I just wanna lie down. I just wanna make a coffee
and throw my line in and lay there, lazy man fishing. - Oh, that's good. - [Zachary] Yeah? - Yeah, gotta have some. (water splashing) - [Zachary] Ah, it looks magical. Looks magical. - I see a fish rise right there. - Just curl up right up on
a pile of moss, right here. - Well, I'm thinking like right, something like right here. - I'm good. See you in the morning. I need those batteries. - Yeah, are they in my pack? - Yeah. I give you all the heavy stuff. - Yeah. (laughing) Well, that was good. That's why my legs are sore. - [Zachary] Yeah, because you got the drone and the batteries. - Yeah. - Fell down when I was on the
way up here and broke my-- - What'd you break? - Lens cover. - Oh, yeah?
- Yeah. Not really the cover, so much
as the shader, shade thingy. I got some emergency duct tape inside my survival belt here somewhere. There it is, aha. I was about to say, what
good is a full survival kit inside your belt, you got
a saw, got snare wire, oh, I guess I do have rope
that we could repel with. Grim card, fishing hooks,
a fishing kit, more wire, fire starters, the whole kit and caboodle, and slingshot ammo. All I need is some duct
tape to fix my lens. Who were the geniuses
that rolled this stuff up and put the end right at the end? They need a kick in the teeth. They didn't make a
folded-over tab for the end. Sorry Wazoo guys, I'm a little tired. It's not your fault. You didn't think of everything. Seems to lock in pretty good. Boom. I love my belt. Most of this stuff, you
can access in the belt without taking it off, but
like my slingshot ammo, I always keep it at
this end so I can use it without taking the belt off, because you never know
when you're gonna need a little slingshot ammo. You step out of the
bank and some pine cone has something to say about your mother, or a maple leaf runs its mouth, you gotta shoot it out of the tree. I'll get a fire going, you keep fishing. - Yeah. - [Zachary] Greg's got
our first fish from the-- - And they are cutthroat. - [Zachary] Cutthroat? Cool. - All right, we're just
gonna try to hammer them. - [Zachary] Yep. Hammer them and get some dinner. I found a can here. I think we can modify that to use it as a rocket stove for our bear bowl. So, we're not the only
ones who've been up here. (peaceful music) Wow, look at that fish. - [Greg] Look at the color to it. - [Zachary] That's unreal. - [Greg] It's just so pink. - [Zachary] That's the, wow. - [Greg] I'm gonna let this guy go. Maybe it's an oddity of nature. Okay, we're letting this guy go. (peaceful music) - That's funny. Her thing that she wrote
that she loves about me today is that, your love for hammocks. (laughing) - [Greg] And we don't have one. - And we don't have them today. And the verse on the other
side is Isaiah 54:10. It says, "Though the mountains be shaken, "And the hills be removed, "yet my unfailing love for
you will not be shaken, nor," but it's just like, "the
mountains be shaken," you're like. (laughing) Hopefully we don't have
any mountain shaking going on tonight. We've already had it hard enough as it is. - That was a brutal day. I don't know if I wanna
do any more hike-in lakes. - Yeah, no, I think we're
done on the hike-in lakes. Took Greg four years to forget how miserable of a hike it was. No wonder you haven't been
up here more often, huh? - Well, no wonder the fishing's good. Nobody wants to come up here. - Yeah, yeah, nobody in their right mind goes and climbs all the way up here. (fire crackling) Those taste really different
from the other ones. - They do, every species tastes different. I don't know, the rainbows and the cutties are my favorite, I think. - Yeah, yep, they're good. - Yeah. - All right, coffee is done. Take a little cold water, that's
how you make cowboy coffee, and pour that on top and it'll make the grounds sink to the bottom. So, just not too much. And there they go. To tired to set up the camera, so I wanna take a sip of
this coffee for you guys so you're not left out
on the whole experience of everything we're up
to, but I am tuckered out. I am tuckered out, I just, and I still have to build the shelter. Woo, that's strong, I could've poured some more water on top of that. - Something warm. (laughing) - Let's see, 9:00. I was gonna set up the tarp,
as kinda like on the ground, and then I'd be able to fold
the other side over top of me and have a hot rock underneath, but I don't think we can risk it. I mean, it looks nice enough, like these blinkers are gonna blow over, but one of us could get exposure
up here, as cool as it is. - Well, that's the thing, if we get wet, that wouldn't be good. - No, if we get wet, we'd
be hard-pressed to dry out. - We didn't come up
here prepared for this, that's the thing. - No, not for spending the night. - For spending the day time, you know, but we didn't plan on spending the night. - You went, "It's just
a couple kilometers." - Well. - "And a couple hundred
feet, you know, up the hill. "I did it in a day before." - Yeah, yeah, years ago.
- No, it's... - But, I mean-- - You probably did it well fed and-- - Yeah, well, for sure. - Yeah, but we did come, we
didn't come prepared, prepared, but I did come prepared just
in case, and that's the tarp. So at least we'll be able to be dry and not get wet and get cold and get-- - Yeah, even if we don't get any sleep, at least we don't get wet.
- And get exposure, you know. So, I better get going on that. All right, let's see
what we can do over here. It's a little softer over here. But that means all this moss is wet. But if I rig it so it comes out from here, we put a bunch of boughs down, and we slept with our heads uphill, back to back in here,
and put the tarp down. I got this, Outdoor Vitals hooked us up with these, a couple of these. They're great little, just like the Warbonnet hammock covers, like a one-person sleeping cover, but tonight, it may be a two-person thing. (wood rustling) (metal clanking) Ah, let's see, ooh, there's
a little stick underneath me. Oh, there we go. Now I'm comfortable. (metal clacking) All right, that's better. Little more room, feet are in, I'm in. Feel like the princess and the pea, but instead of just one
pea under the mattress, I'm just lying on a pile of peas. Frozen peas. But, I don't know, I actually, I think I might be able
to get some sleep in here. Some of these and the who rag. Oh yeah, I'll be sleeping in style now. It's such a fragrant little shelter, too. It's just, it smells like
Christmas in here right now, it's just so, oh, that's so nice. I feel like I'm sleeping in like a potpourri bag or something. Greg's built himself
a little shelter, too, so he can tuck in underneath there. And if not, you're welcome to join me. I made enough room for both of us. If it gets really bad. - I don't think it will. I see blue skies and
we're hoping for the best. This is an emergency thing. Better to be prepared. Okay, I've pulled back half my shelter. Dug down, I've got some
happy rocks in there, you can see them steaming away. One there, one there, and one right there. So kind of like my whole
chest and lower torso area will be, hopefully, warm. I've never done it where
they're buried under that and then pine needles,
the spruce boughs on top. So hopefully that gives
me a better night's sleep. Woo, look how pitchy my hands are from making this whole thing. I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed. And you can't see it here, but
I did pin the cover back down into its A-frame shape, so
it's as close as it can be to the ground to keep as
much heat in as possible. All right, I'm in my
shelter for the night. And I've got my, I took the
bag from the covering of the, well, this covering, and
stuffed that full of pine boughs and put my who rag over the top. And it seems to make a good pillow. I took my shimog and laid that out on, why do I keep saying pine boughs? Spruce. So I'm on a big bed of spruce, so if it really starts to rain, hopefully, water goes
underneath, if not diverted away. And I got my backpack in here. And I got the bear mace, right close by. Before I go to bed here, I'll
do a couple of practice runs, pulling it out and draw,
draw and get ready with it. And I think I'm good. I got three hot rocks, and they're underneath
all the spruce boughs. So hopefully it's enough that I can get some advantage from it. They, usually, hot rocks like
that, one inch under the soil, I'll start to feel the warmth from them in about an hour or so,
so that would be perfect. I fall asleep while I'm still warm now, wearing my good jacket, put my hood up, and, don't have my beanie,
don't have my orange cap, and snuggle in here, I'll fall asleep, just before I start to wake up cold, those hot rocks should kick in. And then I get another three
hours of sleep, hopefully. Little bit of tossing and turning, trying to get the warm spot on my chest, or on my back, or my side, as I feel like there's a cold spot. Yeah, it's a whole bunch of story, you don't need to hear about all that. You'll hear if I survive in the morning. I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for watching! See you next time, Fowler out.
