Survivorman (2004) s01e07 Episode Script
Canyonlands
The actions portrayed in this show are carried out by a professional.
Do not attempt to duplicate without expert supervision.
Some scenes contain graphic content.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Les Stroud: Ah man.
(breathing heavily) (yells) Awesome.
Oh yeah.
Ow.
Whoa.
(music) ONE MAN ALONE 7 Days NO FOOD NO T.
V.
CREW SURVIVORMAN Canyonlands This time on Survivorman, I'm in southern Utah and it's among the most mysterious and unexplored regions of the American Southwest.
Ancient cultures have survived here and vanished in the breathtaking but brutal Canyonland.
I'm going in for seven days, alone.
(music) Awesome, massive country.
The ancient magic in these canyons is legendary.
I'm in for the ride of my life.
My crew will drop me in and the local scout, Desert Dave, will be camped out many miles away until I get back.
I hate this part! No water.
Predatory mountain lions.
Nighttime chills.
Disease carrying insects.
Lonliness and dispair.
These are the dangers and challenges of the Southwest Canyons.
This is winter in one of the most remote Canyonlands of the southwest.
It's no wonder Butch Cassidy and his wild bunch chose these remote parts to hide out from the law.
But for now, it's just me, my camera, my horse for the next seven days alone.
Dave knows a lot about surviving out here but he's not telling me everything.
Dave: I think people get psychologically spooked out by some of the amazing energy that runs around these canyons.
A lot of people that have come here and vanished, there is something happening here that's not like what he's used to.
Les Stroud: Well, I'm on my own now.
I have to check out my surroundings I guess.
Here we go.
(music) This is some pretty amazing biking country.
I figure if I had to, really I could probably bike out of here in about 3 days.
But hey, this is a survival show.
(tire hisses) Let's make it a week.
Yeah, I do have a pack full of gear.
It's all my camera gear and clothing.
They left it for me.
Like shooting your own horse to eat, I'll cannibalize the bike to survive.
It's incredibly quiet here.
Too quiet.
I don't really know how much sunlight I have left.
Let me tell ya, one, two, three and a half handwidths so that's about three and a half hours.
I better find a place to settle down.
Well this juniper tree behind me is going to make some pretty good shelter for me.
But first I want to get a big fire going.
I figure if it does snow tonight at least if I have a big fire going I can maybe make it through the night.
(music) It may not look like it but snow storms blanketed these canyons just before I got here.
Baked by the sun in the day and frozen solid at night.
At least there is plenty of firewood.
Can you hear the jet-way up there? Right now those people are eating lobster.
The temperatures in these parts are wild, swinging the huge extremes in a matter of hours.
Oh this is good stuff, really good stuff.
My biggest fear: Can my body adjust? Fire starter and bedding.
I gotta make a long fire that I can feed from one end, then I don't have to worry about breaking logs small.
I'm actually going to line this thing with rocks because the sand is actually pretty damp.
Survival means multitasking and getting it done without breaking a sweat.
If I sweat, the cold nights will be hard to handle.
I still got maybe two hours of sunlight left.
Work on my shelter.
(music) This pole is a little lower than I wanted so I dug a hole down a bit and then lined it with juniper bark and this grass just to raise me up off the cold sand.
And I covered all of these branches and sticks over top to protect me a bit and reflect some of the heat back once I do get a fire going.
But this is about as much work as I want to do tonight before I get too sweaty.
Sun is almost behind the mountains.
Every time I come out and try survival in a location, I like to test some kind of survival item.
Just to see how it works.
This time around I'm trying this item, a magnesium flint stick.
What I want to do is shave off this magnesium.
I need to make a little pile.
Gotta be real patient.
(scraping sounds) Well that's not a bad pile.
We'll see.
I just don't know.
Magnesium.
There we go, there we go.
Okay, okay.
Burn baby, burn.
Burning me.
Whoa! That little magnesium stick is definitely a winner in my book.
(laughter) (music) (crackling) Nice to be under this juniper tree cause it is chilling down really quickly as soon as that sun disappeared.
So I guess I should show you what I have to survive with for the week.
Always of course, my multi-tool.
You've already met mister magnesium flint stick.
And last, not least, huh.
Well, look at this: an old, shriveled up piece of energy bar.
Mmmm.
And, some corn chips.
Wow.
I would say that's about enough to last a week, wouldn't you? Inedible but useful.
Well there is snow up in the mountains and just a few miles from here, devastating flash floods wiping out everything in sight.
I hear that bobcats and mountain lions come down into these valleys at times like these searching for food, easy food.
Sleeping food.
That was one frosty night.
Ground is all frozen now and frosted over.
Really it was just a matter of sleep a half hour, wake up feed the fire.
Sleep a half hour, wake up feed the fire.
And just pray for morning.
I can't believe it.
I can't find any water in this area at all, and yet, there is a creek down in the canyon cut.
And guess what, I can't get to it because everywhere I look it's like a 30 foot drop.
I can get down in there but I'd never get back out again.
Oh look.
See what I mean? How frustrating is that? A beautiful canyon cut, flowing creek and I can't get to it.
That's called getting ledged up in cowboy terms.
Come to a spot like this, get down and you can never get out again.
Can't get to the water, you die of dehydration.
And at the moment I'm ledged up.
This is all the water I could find in this whole slick rock area.
All it is is a little bit of frost melt.
When Butch Cassidy and his wild bunch came through here they sometimes had to shoot a horse just to eat.
It's time to retire my trusty horse.
The parts on this bike could save my life.
(music) I shivered through last night because my shelter was thrown together so quickly to beat nightfall.
I'm hustling now to insulate it and the bike frame makes a great supporting wall.
Try not to take too much to hurt the tree.
Exposes them to bugs.
Out of respect for the environment I took this bark from several trees.
I think in time I can probably weave a really nice bed out of this but for now I think just pulling it in loose like this keeps it lofty, probably good insulation as a result.
This temperature can be deceiving.
I'm tempted to just kick around in the sun.
That could be the death of me.
It can go well below freezing in just a few hours.
This shelter can never be insulated enough, can never have enough firewood.
See that? Look.
Beautiful isn't it? Well, beauty fades fast especially when you are cold and alone.
A general rule that survivors use to gauge the odds of survival is called the Five W's.
Wood.
Well there is plenty of wood for burning and for shelter.
Weather.
Weather is pretty good right now.
If it did turn bad there's places that I could get in and protect myself.
Widow-makers.
Well, there is nothing tall, standing and dead that's going to come crashing down on me in the middle of the night and kill me.
Wigglies.
Scorpions, spiders, snakes.
They're all burried deep in the ground this time of year.
I don't have to worry about them.
But water.
Well, water.
There's none of it.
Without a good supply of water I may have to move on at daybreak.
Off to bed.
(harmonica) I feel a lot better with a shelter like this now, I'll tell ya.
All closed over and hopefully warmer next to this juniper bark fireplace.
(music) It's too bad I have to leave.
The shelter is just right but I need a drink and this place is dry.
The strapping from inside the bike tire is perfect to bundle up this juniper bark and the bark is great insulation, way too valuable to leave behind.
The crew will have to fly in later to clean up the site.
(music) This is an amazing sight.
You gotta see what I'm looking at here.
I'm thinking down there is water.
A big canyon like that has got to be a flowing creek.
Water is what I need so I'm going to take the chance on it.
Have to find a way down.
It's got to be at least 1,000 feet straight down.
Okay, now I'm pretty sure that I can find my way down in this canyon.
What I'm walking on is a fresh cattle trail.
That's right, I said cattle trail.
They know the way down.
There are cattle roaming throughout here, free-range.
Cattle don't mean salvation, that's for sure.
Okay, tell ya what.
As dedicated as I am to getting some good shots here, this canyon is getting too steep.
I gotta strip down a bit and stop filming.
It's too much work going up and down, setting up these cameras.
(inaudible) Alright, I'm ready to head down, take the little camera with me.
Maybe I can talk to you on the way.
Equipment weight: 55 lbs This is when the camera gear really gets heavy.
Should've taken my pants off before I walked this.
That is where I came from.
It's a long way down.
(breathing heavily) Vertical drop: 1500 feet I better check this place out.
This is not good news.
Let me show you what I just walked.
This is my creek down in the valley bottom.
Dry as a bone.
(music) Your body needs to thermal regulate.
Part of that is your cells need to shrink and expand and if you don't get a drink of water you can't do that.
You can sleep all night in lots of insulation next to the fire and still be cold all the time.
Not good news.
Survival Day 3 Utah Canyonlands It's a long way to come and not have water.
I'm getting thirsty.
My mouth is tasting stale.
My head is starting to hurt a bit.
I know that's from dehydration.
Not drinking enough.
I haven't peed in a long time.
That's a bad sign.
A small patch of snow to keep me going until I can find shelter.
I searched a long stretch of this canyon floor for some good shelter, a lot of caves that I thought, from a distance, looked great.
Up close their either too high to get to or too small to snuggle into.
And most are pack rat dens anyway.
This one is facing south and it could keep me warm on sunny days.
Desert Dave: So caves are great for people but there's a lot of creatures that have set up their living in there that are dangerous to us and they carry black plague, or bubonic plague.
Hanta, which kills you a little faster.
Anaphylactic shock from being bit by the kissing bugs that live on bats and pack rats.
I think this cave is ready for an extreme makeover.
(music) I've leveled out the floor inside here.
I put up a rock wall and area for a fire on the inside here.
Then what I need to do is get a fire going in there and start to warm up the cave, very gently and slowly.
I knew once I got my fire going that I'd probably want a big one just to get some good coals first.
So I thought I'd set up my fire up in the little flat area there, get a big fire going and I can transfer some coals over here and start a small, low fire to help warm up the gave.
You gotta be really careful.
This is a deadly situation.
It wouldn't take much to thermal crack this wall and have a Cadillac size rock come crashing down on top of me.
So I'll need to heat the cave very slowly to keep the rock in tact and maybe smoke out any pack rats that might be deep inside.
You know everywhere I go to survive is pretty intense and pretty special.
This place, it's magical here.
Not sure.
It's the strangest I've ever felt, really, is in this canyon.
I'm mean I'm just corralled in by it all and to know that the Anasazi and the Paiute and Butch Cassidy and his gang--it's a lot of history here.
One of the traditions of the Paiute people were to take this rabbit brush, take this plant, and they would burn it into the cave on their first burn just to ward off evil spirits and ghosts and such.
Seems to me like a good idea.
Les Stroud: Desert Dave told me that these canyons were the most remote in the Southwest and as a result have the densest population of mountain lions.
Locals fear coming down here as I have unarmed.
One of the fire rocks just blew up on me, sent big coals right into my bed and burned my finger trying to clear it out.
It's going to feel a little strange sleeping in here.
I'm sure I'll be thinking about this rock over my head constantly.
(music) Well it was some night.
I must have slept better because both my fires went out.
The little one up in the cave was out and cold but this one But this one just has a little tiny bit of residual heat.
Maybe I can turn it back into a flame.
Remember this guy? If I just blow on the ashes, they'll all fly away and that'll be the end of it.
But when I slip this small tube from my back down through the middle and focus it into the last bit of ash, I can gently coax the surrounding charcoal back into red embers once again this way I don't use any more of my magnesium stick, saving resources wherever I can is the survivors code.
Okay, it may be right now.
There we go.
Now I'm putting these corn chips in, believe it or not.
All that effort and a couple of corn chips was worth it.
The chips keep the first flames burning well thanks to the oil they're cooked in.
I'll show you what I mean about those corn chips.
Look, see that? It holds its flame just like a little, tiny candle.
So if you don't have much tinder and you happen to have some corn chips in your pocket, like I did, then it's a great way to help get your fire going because that grass went out quick on me.
Then you can transport your flame to wherever you need it.
Or you can eat 'em.
(music) On my trail down into this canyon along the way I mentioned that I was following a cow trail so I decided to grab myself not just your ordinary cow pattie--okay, it is your ordinary cow pattie-- but it's got a special job.
Cow pattie like that, given that it's a little bit damp, may smoulder for as long as an hour to an hour and a half which is a good thing if you want to keep the coals going in your little fire pit and not burn up your wood.
It's already day four and I haven't had a decent drink of water, yet.
Well I've been searching up and down this creek and all I'm finding is damp sand.
It's wet but it's not wet enough.
Hunger is nothing compared to a quick approaching death by dehydration.
Well, finally promising.
A little touch of water here.
There is one little puddle and by the signs of the mouse poop close by, they drank out of it, too.
So, I wouldn't advise drinking out of a puddle like this with mice around but I've got to have water.
Oh my gosh.
You've gotta be really careful entering these canyons.
Even the bigger ones, too.
Not just these slot canyons if there are storm clouds in the air or if there has been a lot of warm weather like I'm getting, it might melt the snow on the mountain tops.
You could find yourself stuck in the middle with a big wall of water coming at you and no escape.
Four days of deadly silence in these canyons, that whole "It's quiet, yeah, too quiet," kind of feel.
Makes you wonder if even the raven is real.
Ah brother raven is calling me.
I think he wanted to tell me that I was close to something good here.
(imitating raven's cawing) It's nice to have his company.
I'm happy though because I found some water here.
It looks like it's a seepage of water.
I don't think I even need a drinking tube for this one.
(raven cawing) (imitating raven's cawing) I'm glad I found some water.
Makes life a little more bearable.
Quenches my thirst a lot better than little bits of snow but I've got to make a real concerted effort to try and get some food.
(music) The only realistic meal I can catch around here is rat.
The Paiute string dead fall is amazing.
A simple but deadly bit of ancient technology, it combines cord making methods with leverage and balance principles.
Pure physics really, a stone cold end to unsuspecting prey.
See that? Got that rope tied around my little notch here and tied around this guy here, too.
Yucca--just a single leaf I guess from the yucca plant.
These little fibers.
We'll use the yucca as a binding.
This is my little bit of energy bar that they so graciously allowed me to have.
But let me show you how we can turn this, well at least I'm going to hope I can turn this into a lot more substantial food.
All I need is a little, tiny piece.
Not much at all, just to mush it up.
Be careful not to eat it.
There.
Just a little, tiny bit.
See, I don't want to give these guys food to go away with.
Because I've mashed it into the end of this stick, he's going to have to work at that to get it.
Now for the hard part.
I can keep my mind off of hunger by doing something proactive like building and setting up these traps.
Problem is, this activity is all about catching food.
Now I'm even hungrier.
Okay.
See the trigger? You got your top piece, the string, little trigger stick there which puts pressure on this stick here and it goes up underneath and lodges onto the rock.
I gotta go make a few more of these.
Wish me luck.
Another five or six traps should at least better my odds at finally having a meal.
This is a nice discovery.
There's a big pool of water.
A good inch frozen on top though.
Cool.
Ah.
Alright.
The inner tube makes for a perfect canteen.
Now have a look at what I found.
It doesn't really matter where you go, everywhere on this planet somebody has been and left behind garbage.
Mm-hmm.
This looks very promising.
One man's garbage is another man's treasure.
This is Mormon tea.
It's got Ephedra in it and it can give you a nice energy boost.
I've been gone a number of hours and that cow pattie is still red hot and smouldering.
Just add dry grass and I've got fire again.
(music) That improves life, significantly.
Even have a lid.
I spent time cleaning all the rust out of this tin can with the available sand.
Eating or drinking any wild plant is extremely dangerous unless you know exactly what you're doing.
Cheers.
Mmm.
Five days without a meal can play on your mind and this while T kick to it.
The solitude, the crazy temperature swings, the long hike down the canyon-- it's all taking it's toll.
Maybe this explains all those grizzly canyon legends of lost minds and missing souls where things get unreal.
Five days without food.
Well I'm in trouble once again.
My little puddle that was so fresh and clean is down to, well, I'll drain it out just with this right now.
And unfortunately the closest source of water other than this is that one silty puddle, very deep, but it's a half an hour walk away from here.
See these two rocks here? These didn't just happen by chance.
These were placed here.
They are the perfect fit to each other for a Paiute dead fall.
They're exactly the same type of dead fall I'm using to try to catch pack rats.
Just like this one here which is one of the five that I have set right now.
But guess what, it sprung.
I haven't opened it yet.
I don't know if I've got a meal but we're going to find out.
(music) I haven't opened it yet.
I don't know if there is anything here or if I've got a meal but we're going to find out.
With every failed trap, my hunger grows.
I actually expected to find something under these traps but they're not even knocked down at all.
I'm just going to knock this one just to show you how effective they can be.
One last trap to check.
I think it's down.
Let's go find out.
No need for big fanfare this time because the first one had nothing.
Whoa! Well what do you know.
I'll show you this guy here.
I think it's a type of a ground squirrel.
I'm going to call it dinner.
Remember the spokes from the bike? This skewer will put distance between myself and the squirrel.
The plague is still a very real possibility out here.
Time to go shopping.
Mmm.
Ground squirrel.
I'm going to need to cook this guy really well so I'm going to get him on the fire now, let him cook for a good long time.
Once again I've been able to use a piece off the bike.
It's going to help me cook this little fellow.
Just used a brake cable hooking through his head there.
Now I'm just going to let him cook good and slow.
I'm going to singe all the hair off and cook him very well just in his own case like that just to make sure everything, in terms of diseases and parasites has been taken care of.
Look, I don't like to kill anything at all but this shows you that with ingenuity and determination, you can get yourself a meal if you truly are lost and need to survive.
All this camera work combined with actual survival makes hunting and gathering any food at all vital to my ability to carry on.
These juniper berries, while they do taste absolutely horrible, eating a couple of them will help to, because of the chemicals in them, will help to prepare my stomach for eating meat, make it easier to digest.
A lot of archeology is--I can just hear the squirrel sizzling over there-- a lot of archeology is based on what they find in terms of stone tools, rock tools, things that are chipped into other things.
The Paiute around here and the Anasazi were both terrific at what's called "flint knapping.
" This is a piece of rock laying around this area and this is a hammer rock, an actual artifact from this area just laying on the ground.
You can see the chipped end.
It was used for turning big pieces of rock into little pieces of rock, into knife points, arrowheads, spear tips and those kinds of things.
That's really what flint knapping is so I'll see if I can use it.
Ah-ha! Success.
See that? That little guy is very, very sharp.
This thing is so sharp it just cuts right through.
He's definitely not cooked through yet.
Flip over, use the other side of this flint because I'm going back up the top again.
And I'm sorry if this looks disgusting but it's not different than a chicken or a pig or a turkey or anything else.
I'm not satisfied that he is cooked all the way through yet.
I'll need to cook it right through to make sure any parasites are dead.
Oh! my squirrels is burning.
Dinner.
Oh! Oh! It's pretty charred on the outside, so it should be.
Well, what I'm not gonna eat is the entrails, being the intestines and such.
But you know the heart, kidney, the liver--all good stuff to eat.
There is my meal.
What I'm gonna do is save all the bones and I'm gonna cook them even more.
I'm going to have them for breakfast.
Good bout of calcium.
So inside of here, I've got the heart.
Nope, that's the liver.
There is my squirrel.
Good.
Well tonight for a little extra warmth I'm going to use hot rocks.
I've just taken these rocks, I've got four like this, and I'm putting them close to the fire.
Getting good and hot.
I'm going to tuck these in like this as I sleep and they'll keep me good and warm for quite a long time.
I've got four and I'll just rotate two.
Two heating up, two on my body.
Two heating up, two on my body.
Just leave that in there, get a little hotter.
So water is still a big problem though.
It's a long way to get it.
Survival Day 6 Utah Canyonlands Breakfast.
Mmm.
Oh if anything will get you up in the morning it's chewing on some cold squirrel bones.
(crunching) That was a cold night.
You know I'm just not sure what the toughest part is: the constant search for water or this huge fluctuation between very hot days and bitterly cold nights.
I don't think I could do another night like this though.
The food made me even thirstier but at least cleared my mind.
Maybe these canyons had beaten me.
The outlaws used to lure law men in here to starve them out and they called it box death, film or no film.
I need more water to survive.
Alright, you know what? I'm not gonna do another day.
It's going to take me all day just to hike out of this canyon, climb all the way back up.
Total distance hiked: 30 miles I'm getting out of here now.
Survival is ultimately about getting out.
In my case, I'm still strong enough to do so so I'm heading back while I still can.
Well of course I had to come back for the camera.
What did ya think? So now begins my long climb up out of the canyon.
You know what? This time I'm making the crew come back and pick up this camera.
See next time.
(music)
Do not attempt to duplicate without expert supervision.
Some scenes contain graphic content.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Les Stroud: Ah man.
(breathing heavily) (yells) Awesome.
Oh yeah.
Ow.
Whoa.
(music) ONE MAN ALONE 7 Days NO FOOD NO T.
V.
CREW SURVIVORMAN Canyonlands This time on Survivorman, I'm in southern Utah and it's among the most mysterious and unexplored regions of the American Southwest.
Ancient cultures have survived here and vanished in the breathtaking but brutal Canyonland.
I'm going in for seven days, alone.
(music) Awesome, massive country.
The ancient magic in these canyons is legendary.
I'm in for the ride of my life.
My crew will drop me in and the local scout, Desert Dave, will be camped out many miles away until I get back.
I hate this part! No water.
Predatory mountain lions.
Nighttime chills.
Disease carrying insects.
Lonliness and dispair.
These are the dangers and challenges of the Southwest Canyons.
This is winter in one of the most remote Canyonlands of the southwest.
It's no wonder Butch Cassidy and his wild bunch chose these remote parts to hide out from the law.
But for now, it's just me, my camera, my horse for the next seven days alone.
Dave knows a lot about surviving out here but he's not telling me everything.
Dave: I think people get psychologically spooked out by some of the amazing energy that runs around these canyons.
A lot of people that have come here and vanished, there is something happening here that's not like what he's used to.
Les Stroud: Well, I'm on my own now.
I have to check out my surroundings I guess.
Here we go.
(music) This is some pretty amazing biking country.
I figure if I had to, really I could probably bike out of here in about 3 days.
But hey, this is a survival show.
(tire hisses) Let's make it a week.
Yeah, I do have a pack full of gear.
It's all my camera gear and clothing.
They left it for me.
Like shooting your own horse to eat, I'll cannibalize the bike to survive.
It's incredibly quiet here.
Too quiet.
I don't really know how much sunlight I have left.
Let me tell ya, one, two, three and a half handwidths so that's about three and a half hours.
I better find a place to settle down.
Well this juniper tree behind me is going to make some pretty good shelter for me.
But first I want to get a big fire going.
I figure if it does snow tonight at least if I have a big fire going I can maybe make it through the night.
(music) It may not look like it but snow storms blanketed these canyons just before I got here.
Baked by the sun in the day and frozen solid at night.
At least there is plenty of firewood.
Can you hear the jet-way up there? Right now those people are eating lobster.
The temperatures in these parts are wild, swinging the huge extremes in a matter of hours.
Oh this is good stuff, really good stuff.
My biggest fear: Can my body adjust? Fire starter and bedding.
I gotta make a long fire that I can feed from one end, then I don't have to worry about breaking logs small.
I'm actually going to line this thing with rocks because the sand is actually pretty damp.
Survival means multitasking and getting it done without breaking a sweat.
If I sweat, the cold nights will be hard to handle.
I still got maybe two hours of sunlight left.
Work on my shelter.
(music) This pole is a little lower than I wanted so I dug a hole down a bit and then lined it with juniper bark and this grass just to raise me up off the cold sand.
And I covered all of these branches and sticks over top to protect me a bit and reflect some of the heat back once I do get a fire going.
But this is about as much work as I want to do tonight before I get too sweaty.
Sun is almost behind the mountains.
Every time I come out and try survival in a location, I like to test some kind of survival item.
Just to see how it works.
This time around I'm trying this item, a magnesium flint stick.
What I want to do is shave off this magnesium.
I need to make a little pile.
Gotta be real patient.
(scraping sounds) Well that's not a bad pile.
We'll see.
I just don't know.
Magnesium.
There we go, there we go.
Okay, okay.
Burn baby, burn.
Burning me.
Whoa! That little magnesium stick is definitely a winner in my book.
(laughter) (music) (crackling) Nice to be under this juniper tree cause it is chilling down really quickly as soon as that sun disappeared.
So I guess I should show you what I have to survive with for the week.
Always of course, my multi-tool.
You've already met mister magnesium flint stick.
And last, not least, huh.
Well, look at this: an old, shriveled up piece of energy bar.
Mmmm.
And, some corn chips.
Wow.
I would say that's about enough to last a week, wouldn't you? Inedible but useful.
Well there is snow up in the mountains and just a few miles from here, devastating flash floods wiping out everything in sight.
I hear that bobcats and mountain lions come down into these valleys at times like these searching for food, easy food.
Sleeping food.
That was one frosty night.
Ground is all frozen now and frosted over.
Really it was just a matter of sleep a half hour, wake up feed the fire.
Sleep a half hour, wake up feed the fire.
And just pray for morning.
I can't believe it.
I can't find any water in this area at all, and yet, there is a creek down in the canyon cut.
And guess what, I can't get to it because everywhere I look it's like a 30 foot drop.
I can get down in there but I'd never get back out again.
Oh look.
See what I mean? How frustrating is that? A beautiful canyon cut, flowing creek and I can't get to it.
That's called getting ledged up in cowboy terms.
Come to a spot like this, get down and you can never get out again.
Can't get to the water, you die of dehydration.
And at the moment I'm ledged up.
This is all the water I could find in this whole slick rock area.
All it is is a little bit of frost melt.
When Butch Cassidy and his wild bunch came through here they sometimes had to shoot a horse just to eat.
It's time to retire my trusty horse.
The parts on this bike could save my life.
(music) I shivered through last night because my shelter was thrown together so quickly to beat nightfall.
I'm hustling now to insulate it and the bike frame makes a great supporting wall.
Try not to take too much to hurt the tree.
Exposes them to bugs.
Out of respect for the environment I took this bark from several trees.
I think in time I can probably weave a really nice bed out of this but for now I think just pulling it in loose like this keeps it lofty, probably good insulation as a result.
This temperature can be deceiving.
I'm tempted to just kick around in the sun.
That could be the death of me.
It can go well below freezing in just a few hours.
This shelter can never be insulated enough, can never have enough firewood.
See that? Look.
Beautiful isn't it? Well, beauty fades fast especially when you are cold and alone.
A general rule that survivors use to gauge the odds of survival is called the Five W's.
Wood.
Well there is plenty of wood for burning and for shelter.
Weather.
Weather is pretty good right now.
If it did turn bad there's places that I could get in and protect myself.
Widow-makers.
Well, there is nothing tall, standing and dead that's going to come crashing down on me in the middle of the night and kill me.
Wigglies.
Scorpions, spiders, snakes.
They're all burried deep in the ground this time of year.
I don't have to worry about them.
But water.
Well, water.
There's none of it.
Without a good supply of water I may have to move on at daybreak.
Off to bed.
(harmonica) I feel a lot better with a shelter like this now, I'll tell ya.
All closed over and hopefully warmer next to this juniper bark fireplace.
(music) It's too bad I have to leave.
The shelter is just right but I need a drink and this place is dry.
The strapping from inside the bike tire is perfect to bundle up this juniper bark and the bark is great insulation, way too valuable to leave behind.
The crew will have to fly in later to clean up the site.
(music) This is an amazing sight.
You gotta see what I'm looking at here.
I'm thinking down there is water.
A big canyon like that has got to be a flowing creek.
Water is what I need so I'm going to take the chance on it.
Have to find a way down.
It's got to be at least 1,000 feet straight down.
Okay, now I'm pretty sure that I can find my way down in this canyon.
What I'm walking on is a fresh cattle trail.
That's right, I said cattle trail.
They know the way down.
There are cattle roaming throughout here, free-range.
Cattle don't mean salvation, that's for sure.
Okay, tell ya what.
As dedicated as I am to getting some good shots here, this canyon is getting too steep.
I gotta strip down a bit and stop filming.
It's too much work going up and down, setting up these cameras.
(inaudible) Alright, I'm ready to head down, take the little camera with me.
Maybe I can talk to you on the way.
Equipment weight: 55 lbs This is when the camera gear really gets heavy.
Should've taken my pants off before I walked this.
That is where I came from.
It's a long way down.
(breathing heavily) Vertical drop: 1500 feet I better check this place out.
This is not good news.
Let me show you what I just walked.
This is my creek down in the valley bottom.
Dry as a bone.
(music) Your body needs to thermal regulate.
Part of that is your cells need to shrink and expand and if you don't get a drink of water you can't do that.
You can sleep all night in lots of insulation next to the fire and still be cold all the time.
Not good news.
Survival Day 3 Utah Canyonlands It's a long way to come and not have water.
I'm getting thirsty.
My mouth is tasting stale.
My head is starting to hurt a bit.
I know that's from dehydration.
Not drinking enough.
I haven't peed in a long time.
That's a bad sign.
A small patch of snow to keep me going until I can find shelter.
I searched a long stretch of this canyon floor for some good shelter, a lot of caves that I thought, from a distance, looked great.
Up close their either too high to get to or too small to snuggle into.
And most are pack rat dens anyway.
This one is facing south and it could keep me warm on sunny days.
Desert Dave: So caves are great for people but there's a lot of creatures that have set up their living in there that are dangerous to us and they carry black plague, or bubonic plague.
Hanta, which kills you a little faster.
Anaphylactic shock from being bit by the kissing bugs that live on bats and pack rats.
I think this cave is ready for an extreme makeover.
(music) I've leveled out the floor inside here.
I put up a rock wall and area for a fire on the inside here.
Then what I need to do is get a fire going in there and start to warm up the cave, very gently and slowly.
I knew once I got my fire going that I'd probably want a big one just to get some good coals first.
So I thought I'd set up my fire up in the little flat area there, get a big fire going and I can transfer some coals over here and start a small, low fire to help warm up the gave.
You gotta be really careful.
This is a deadly situation.
It wouldn't take much to thermal crack this wall and have a Cadillac size rock come crashing down on top of me.
So I'll need to heat the cave very slowly to keep the rock in tact and maybe smoke out any pack rats that might be deep inside.
You know everywhere I go to survive is pretty intense and pretty special.
This place, it's magical here.
Not sure.
It's the strangest I've ever felt, really, is in this canyon.
I'm mean I'm just corralled in by it all and to know that the Anasazi and the Paiute and Butch Cassidy and his gang--it's a lot of history here.
One of the traditions of the Paiute people were to take this rabbit brush, take this plant, and they would burn it into the cave on their first burn just to ward off evil spirits and ghosts and such.
Seems to me like a good idea.
Les Stroud: Desert Dave told me that these canyons were the most remote in the Southwest and as a result have the densest population of mountain lions.
Locals fear coming down here as I have unarmed.
One of the fire rocks just blew up on me, sent big coals right into my bed and burned my finger trying to clear it out.
It's going to feel a little strange sleeping in here.
I'm sure I'll be thinking about this rock over my head constantly.
(music) Well it was some night.
I must have slept better because both my fires went out.
The little one up in the cave was out and cold but this one But this one just has a little tiny bit of residual heat.
Maybe I can turn it back into a flame.
Remember this guy? If I just blow on the ashes, they'll all fly away and that'll be the end of it.
But when I slip this small tube from my back down through the middle and focus it into the last bit of ash, I can gently coax the surrounding charcoal back into red embers once again this way I don't use any more of my magnesium stick, saving resources wherever I can is the survivors code.
Okay, it may be right now.
There we go.
Now I'm putting these corn chips in, believe it or not.
All that effort and a couple of corn chips was worth it.
The chips keep the first flames burning well thanks to the oil they're cooked in.
I'll show you what I mean about those corn chips.
Look, see that? It holds its flame just like a little, tiny candle.
So if you don't have much tinder and you happen to have some corn chips in your pocket, like I did, then it's a great way to help get your fire going because that grass went out quick on me.
Then you can transport your flame to wherever you need it.
Or you can eat 'em.
(music) On my trail down into this canyon along the way I mentioned that I was following a cow trail so I decided to grab myself not just your ordinary cow pattie--okay, it is your ordinary cow pattie-- but it's got a special job.
Cow pattie like that, given that it's a little bit damp, may smoulder for as long as an hour to an hour and a half which is a good thing if you want to keep the coals going in your little fire pit and not burn up your wood.
It's already day four and I haven't had a decent drink of water, yet.
Well I've been searching up and down this creek and all I'm finding is damp sand.
It's wet but it's not wet enough.
Hunger is nothing compared to a quick approaching death by dehydration.
Well, finally promising.
A little touch of water here.
There is one little puddle and by the signs of the mouse poop close by, they drank out of it, too.
So, I wouldn't advise drinking out of a puddle like this with mice around but I've got to have water.
Oh my gosh.
You've gotta be really careful entering these canyons.
Even the bigger ones, too.
Not just these slot canyons if there are storm clouds in the air or if there has been a lot of warm weather like I'm getting, it might melt the snow on the mountain tops.
You could find yourself stuck in the middle with a big wall of water coming at you and no escape.
Four days of deadly silence in these canyons, that whole "It's quiet, yeah, too quiet," kind of feel.
Makes you wonder if even the raven is real.
Ah brother raven is calling me.
I think he wanted to tell me that I was close to something good here.
(imitating raven's cawing) It's nice to have his company.
I'm happy though because I found some water here.
It looks like it's a seepage of water.
I don't think I even need a drinking tube for this one.
(raven cawing) (imitating raven's cawing) I'm glad I found some water.
Makes life a little more bearable.
Quenches my thirst a lot better than little bits of snow but I've got to make a real concerted effort to try and get some food.
(music) The only realistic meal I can catch around here is rat.
The Paiute string dead fall is amazing.
A simple but deadly bit of ancient technology, it combines cord making methods with leverage and balance principles.
Pure physics really, a stone cold end to unsuspecting prey.
See that? Got that rope tied around my little notch here and tied around this guy here, too.
Yucca--just a single leaf I guess from the yucca plant.
These little fibers.
We'll use the yucca as a binding.
This is my little bit of energy bar that they so graciously allowed me to have.
But let me show you how we can turn this, well at least I'm going to hope I can turn this into a lot more substantial food.
All I need is a little, tiny piece.
Not much at all, just to mush it up.
Be careful not to eat it.
There.
Just a little, tiny bit.
See, I don't want to give these guys food to go away with.
Because I've mashed it into the end of this stick, he's going to have to work at that to get it.
Now for the hard part.
I can keep my mind off of hunger by doing something proactive like building and setting up these traps.
Problem is, this activity is all about catching food.
Now I'm even hungrier.
Okay.
See the trigger? You got your top piece, the string, little trigger stick there which puts pressure on this stick here and it goes up underneath and lodges onto the rock.
I gotta go make a few more of these.
Wish me luck.
Another five or six traps should at least better my odds at finally having a meal.
This is a nice discovery.
There's a big pool of water.
A good inch frozen on top though.
Cool.
Ah.
Alright.
The inner tube makes for a perfect canteen.
Now have a look at what I found.
It doesn't really matter where you go, everywhere on this planet somebody has been and left behind garbage.
Mm-hmm.
This looks very promising.
One man's garbage is another man's treasure.
This is Mormon tea.
It's got Ephedra in it and it can give you a nice energy boost.
I've been gone a number of hours and that cow pattie is still red hot and smouldering.
Just add dry grass and I've got fire again.
(music) That improves life, significantly.
Even have a lid.
I spent time cleaning all the rust out of this tin can with the available sand.
Eating or drinking any wild plant is extremely dangerous unless you know exactly what you're doing.
Cheers.
Mmm.
Five days without a meal can play on your mind and this while T kick to it.
The solitude, the crazy temperature swings, the long hike down the canyon-- it's all taking it's toll.
Maybe this explains all those grizzly canyon legends of lost minds and missing souls where things get unreal.
Five days without food.
Well I'm in trouble once again.
My little puddle that was so fresh and clean is down to, well, I'll drain it out just with this right now.
And unfortunately the closest source of water other than this is that one silty puddle, very deep, but it's a half an hour walk away from here.
See these two rocks here? These didn't just happen by chance.
These were placed here.
They are the perfect fit to each other for a Paiute dead fall.
They're exactly the same type of dead fall I'm using to try to catch pack rats.
Just like this one here which is one of the five that I have set right now.
But guess what, it sprung.
I haven't opened it yet.
I don't know if I've got a meal but we're going to find out.
(music) I haven't opened it yet.
I don't know if there is anything here or if I've got a meal but we're going to find out.
With every failed trap, my hunger grows.
I actually expected to find something under these traps but they're not even knocked down at all.
I'm just going to knock this one just to show you how effective they can be.
One last trap to check.
I think it's down.
Let's go find out.
No need for big fanfare this time because the first one had nothing.
Whoa! Well what do you know.
I'll show you this guy here.
I think it's a type of a ground squirrel.
I'm going to call it dinner.
Remember the spokes from the bike? This skewer will put distance between myself and the squirrel.
The plague is still a very real possibility out here.
Time to go shopping.
Mmm.
Ground squirrel.
I'm going to need to cook this guy really well so I'm going to get him on the fire now, let him cook for a good long time.
Once again I've been able to use a piece off the bike.
It's going to help me cook this little fellow.
Just used a brake cable hooking through his head there.
Now I'm just going to let him cook good and slow.
I'm going to singe all the hair off and cook him very well just in his own case like that just to make sure everything, in terms of diseases and parasites has been taken care of.
Look, I don't like to kill anything at all but this shows you that with ingenuity and determination, you can get yourself a meal if you truly are lost and need to survive.
All this camera work combined with actual survival makes hunting and gathering any food at all vital to my ability to carry on.
These juniper berries, while they do taste absolutely horrible, eating a couple of them will help to, because of the chemicals in them, will help to prepare my stomach for eating meat, make it easier to digest.
A lot of archeology is--I can just hear the squirrel sizzling over there-- a lot of archeology is based on what they find in terms of stone tools, rock tools, things that are chipped into other things.
The Paiute around here and the Anasazi were both terrific at what's called "flint knapping.
" This is a piece of rock laying around this area and this is a hammer rock, an actual artifact from this area just laying on the ground.
You can see the chipped end.
It was used for turning big pieces of rock into little pieces of rock, into knife points, arrowheads, spear tips and those kinds of things.
That's really what flint knapping is so I'll see if I can use it.
Ah-ha! Success.
See that? That little guy is very, very sharp.
This thing is so sharp it just cuts right through.
He's definitely not cooked through yet.
Flip over, use the other side of this flint because I'm going back up the top again.
And I'm sorry if this looks disgusting but it's not different than a chicken or a pig or a turkey or anything else.
I'm not satisfied that he is cooked all the way through yet.
I'll need to cook it right through to make sure any parasites are dead.
Oh! my squirrels is burning.
Dinner.
Oh! Oh! It's pretty charred on the outside, so it should be.
Well, what I'm not gonna eat is the entrails, being the intestines and such.
But you know the heart, kidney, the liver--all good stuff to eat.
There is my meal.
What I'm gonna do is save all the bones and I'm gonna cook them even more.
I'm going to have them for breakfast.
Good bout of calcium.
So inside of here, I've got the heart.
Nope, that's the liver.
There is my squirrel.
Good.
Well tonight for a little extra warmth I'm going to use hot rocks.
I've just taken these rocks, I've got four like this, and I'm putting them close to the fire.
Getting good and hot.
I'm going to tuck these in like this as I sleep and they'll keep me good and warm for quite a long time.
I've got four and I'll just rotate two.
Two heating up, two on my body.
Two heating up, two on my body.
Just leave that in there, get a little hotter.
So water is still a big problem though.
It's a long way to get it.
Survival Day 6 Utah Canyonlands Breakfast.
Mmm.
Oh if anything will get you up in the morning it's chewing on some cold squirrel bones.
(crunching) That was a cold night.
You know I'm just not sure what the toughest part is: the constant search for water or this huge fluctuation between very hot days and bitterly cold nights.
I don't think I could do another night like this though.
The food made me even thirstier but at least cleared my mind.
Maybe these canyons had beaten me.
The outlaws used to lure law men in here to starve them out and they called it box death, film or no film.
I need more water to survive.
Alright, you know what? I'm not gonna do another day.
It's going to take me all day just to hike out of this canyon, climb all the way back up.
Total distance hiked: 30 miles I'm getting out of here now.
Survival is ultimately about getting out.
In my case, I'm still strong enough to do so so I'm heading back while I still can.
Well of course I had to come back for the camera.
What did ya think? So now begins my long climb up out of the canyon.
You know what? This time I'm making the crew come back and pick up this camera.
See next time.
(music)