Mountain Men (2012) s04e05 Episode Script

Previously on "Mountain Men" Whoa! Oh, them are grizzly tracks.
Tom takes another hit Teeth marks.
that pushes his season to the edge.
Man.
This is just a bad deal.
While in the Ruby Valley, a new threat is on the rise Whoa! forcing Rich to change his game.
Oh, man.
Them wolves are back.
And Morgan emerges from his darkest hour I realize that you either keep going or you die.
to face his greatest challenge yet.
I'm not gonna be able to go much further.
In one of the most extreme environments on Earth, winter rolls in with deadly force.
The great Alaska Range, a wall of granite and limestone peaks reaching 4 miles high, slices through a vast, barren tundra.
3,000 feet up in this frozen wasteland, Morgan Beasley prepares to face the mountains head on.
The mountains are real dangerous this time of year for a lone traveler.
But to get to my land, you know, I got to cross every obstacle in my path, including this big mountain range.
Today, carrying nothing but the pack on his back, he begins an epic ascent that few men have ever dared.
I've been skirting the foothills, and now I've found my chink in the range's armor.
That creek coming out of the mountains is the path that I'm looking for.
These next few days, I'll be going up and over a pretty serious mountain pass and hiking on steeper slopes at higher elevations.
Gonna be the most physically demanding, difficult part of the trip.
The crossing will leave Morgan completely exposed above the tree line for two frigid days and nights.
To survive the brutal conditions ahead, he'll need to rely on his wits and his ingenuity.
Anything that immobilizes you in a bad place like that, it's incredibly life-threatening.
Get up there in the wide open, above the tree line, the sun will give me snow blindness.
I'm just gonna cut a strip off this foam pad here, cut a slit in it, and that way I can have some shade for my eyes if, uh, the sun gets bright and I'm in the open.
So, a simple pair of goggles keeps all that reflected light coming off the snow from shining up into your eye.
Cannibalize a little cord off these ice picks here.
All right, I'm gonna keep these handy, so if my eyes start to feel funny, and it's bright today, I'll put them on.
But with temperatures plunging as low as 50 below after sundown, the greatest danger he'll face in the mountains is the cold.
Going over the range should be about 30, 40 miles of pretty high country.
So, my main concerns are running out of fuel to melt water and getting dehydrated and getting hypothermic and frostbitten as a result.
One thing I'm gonna do to mitigate that danger is I'm bringing a bundle of sticks with me, and this is enough to melt several quarts of water.
All right, let's get moving.
In Montana's Ruby Valley, it's early in Rich's lion-hunting season, but signs that a new threat is emerging have him on the trail of a different danger.
Wolves have been thriving in the area for the last 25 years, and with an estimated 39 packs calling Montana home, the local livestock is more vulnerable than ever.
I need to get rid of these wolves.
If I don't, the ranchers get put of business.
A few days ago, I had a rancher come talk to me.
He thought he had a mountain lion problem.
And it ended up being wolves killed one of his goats.
I'm gonna head up to where they killed that goat, just look for a sign and tracks, and set some traps, and take care of his problem for him.
Holy cow.
There ain't nothing left of it.
They cleaned it up.
Rich discovered a fresh wolf kill here just two days ago.
Whoa! What the hell? But now not a trace remains, which could mean he's dealing with a large pack.
Now he's back to search for signs or tracks that could put him on their trail.
When it snows, if you blow that snow out of there, a lot of times you can see the print, so that's what I was trying to look for, if I could see claws or paws or what it was.
Whole tracks here, there.
Pretty good-size wolf.
I really can't tell what the tracks are doing, but I don't really have enough fresh sign here.
I'm gonna have to go over and ride that fence.
And find fresher signs so I can pick it up and see where I need to set my traps.
Ooh.
Tracks are old, but look like they come right through here.
It looks like they come from up here somewhere off of that ridge.
They probably come right up to that rocky point there and look around and then haul butt and come down through here.
This is the back end of his ranch.
I'm sure this is where they came from, down through this way here.
I'm gonna tie some red flags on here.
The use of cloth flags is an old rancher's trick known to deter predators.
It's gonna be moving in the air.
That's gonna alert the wolves, get their attention to shy off a little bit.
Wolves are smart.
They'll smell human scent and relate that to those red flags, and they know to stay away from human scent.
But this simple defense is not enough to keep the wolves away.
To push the pack out of the area, Rich will need to show them it's unsafe.
He'll head higher up the mountain to lay his traps.
Looks like there's a cave up there, a den maybe.
I'm gonna go check it out.
I got to keep my guard up 'cause it's gonna get dangerous.
You know, there's four or five wolves, and, I mean, it could get ugly for myself.
300 miles away from civilization, Marty Meierotto has gambled his entire season on building a permanent trapline in Alaska's remote Revelation Mountains.
And after a four-week delay, winter has finally brought the conditions he needs To run his line.
All right, I finally got the snow I needed.
Gonna go grab the machine and try and get started here.
I thought maybe the season was gonna be a bust, but now that I got snow, I can dive into trapping.
Marty's plan is to carve his trapline on the western side of the valley, using his camp as the central hub of a 30-mile network.
The cabin and tent are here, and then there's a big hill.
I'm punching a line out.
It kind of parallels the river.
And then I want to get out into this valley and come back in like this so I just have this loop.
Just a matter of going, building sets if I see signs, and cutting trail.
Well, I think I got everything I need for the day.
Go cut some line.
The loop I want to put in is gonna be roughly 30 miles.
If the country's and the ground's good, this loop will have roughly 150 sets on it.
Say, 4 or 5 sets a mile.
Marty's punching further into the wilds of the Revelations than he has ever gone.
He will have to blaze a path through terrain that has never seen a human before.
Getting the line set is a huge job, and it's -- it's a lot of work.
But once it's in, you know, you can move, you can drive, you have a trail, you know where you're going.
The sooner you get it all set, the sooner you can start catching fur.
Just through here, I think I'm gonna throw a pole set in right there.
T-the pole set is -- There's a lot of different ways to make it, but the basic thing is, the marten climbs a tree, he has to run out the pole and step on the trap to get to the bait.
[Tree snaps 1 The idea of the trap is not to smash the animal's leg or break bone or anything.
The idea is just to pinch him and hold him.
Obviously, you don't want to damage the fur.
So, the visual is the moose hide.
Then if he's off over there somewhere, he might hop by and not see it.
So I take a -- a little bit of lure, pretty potent-smelling.
And that's it.
Done.
And I'll just keep moving along and see how much more line I can put in before dark.
In Montana's Yaak Valley, with winter in full force, the pressure is mounting on Tom Oar.
It's been five weeks since a black bear raid destroyed his stock of sellable hides, and, so far, his attempts to make up for the loss have come up empty.
I went out the other day.
I set some beaver traps.
But I never, ever caught one.
And if I'm not trapping things, I ain't making any money.
I need to try to trap in a new area.
Tom's usually reliable 5-mile trapline has so far failed to produce.
So he's set his sights on an old haunt that will force him to travel deeper into the forest.
And we're here.
We're gonna go over to here.
I'm looking for a place where I can go and catch more than one beaver.
I need to get a nice bundle of them.
His target is a remote lake that sits hidden among the Cabinet Mountains more than 30 miles into the rugged backcountry.
It's a journey he hasn't made since he was a much younger man.
You know.
it is a Gamble every time I go to set traps in a new place.
But it's pretty important for me to get these beavers.
I'll go in on foot if I've got to.
It's quite a long ways from here.
Roads are snowed in.
I'm gonna try to make it as far as I can.
We're just gonna have to drive up there to find out whether we can even get to the beaver ponds, and I-I don't know for sure that we even can.
Whoa.
Wow.
Well, that sure looks narrow.
Looks like the end of the road here.
So, now the only way to get there is by walking on snowshoes.
The snow conditions aren't the best for traveling.
The terrain is really quite rough.
When you got to lift your leg all the way up to take the next step, you know, it makes it pretty hard.
Oops.
See what us beaver trappers have to put up with? You got to watch out you're not falling down when you're walking on a river.
It can be pretty dangerous, especially if I'm up here trapping by myself.
And you have to be real careful of that.
Sitting 6,000 feet above sea level, the rugged Cimarron Valley has been cattle country since the first ranchers staked their claims here at the turn of the 20th century.
Now, Kyle Bell and his son, Ben, are poised to carve their own entry in the Valley's history.
My dad's a rancher down in Texas.
Has been all of his life.
And he's getting on up in years, and he's gonna have to cut his cow numbers.
This is gonna be a great opportunity for me to help my dad out and take some cattle.
Kyle makes his living as a hunter and outfitter.
But with the price of cattle at an all-time high this could be an opportunity to build a new business and cement a legacy to hand down to Ben.
All my life it's been a dream to be independent and not have to work for anybody.
These cattle are gonna get me one step closer.
Hopefully it'll be the start of a herd that Ben can pass on to future generations.
Kyle plans to clear a 50-acre plot in the remote northwest corner of his land and convert it to grazing area.
So, today Ben and I are gonna head up to Dead Horse Canyon to see what it's gonna take to improve this piece of property before we can think about putting cattle in there.
Right now it's not good for anything except wildlife.
Come on, Sweetie.
He and Ben will work the land together through the dead of winter to make it ready for the spring birthing season.
I know I'm gonna have a lot of work ahead of me this winter.
I'm just not sure how much.
But first they have to get there.
There's some rough country between my house and Dead Horse Canyon.
Easy, Sweetie.
Easy, Sweetie.
Well, Ben where the trail goes through right there.
There's a hell of a dead fall right in the middle of the trail.
See how those trees are all leaning that way? Yes, sir.
It looks like a tunnel almost.
The snow was so heavy that it bent those trees over for so long, time after time, that those trees have just grown into a curve.
But they're bent over so low, there's no way we can ride through there.
We're gonna have to cut us a gap out through there to get that trail open again.
All right.
Let's do it.
Can you get that? Yes, sir.
Whoa! My dad's chopping up, cutting little logs so I can manage them, and I'm chunking them over to the other side to where we can ride through clearly.
That opened that trail up pretty good.
We'll be able to go right through here now.
Yeah.
Looks decent now.
It's been a tough ride already.
We still got a long ways to go.
Our work really starts now.
In a frozen canyon of Montana's Cabinet Mountains, Tom labors through the dense snowpack on a 3-mile journey to reach a remote lake he hopes will be flush with beaver.
I don't really know the location of the dams here because I haven't trapped here.
Tom searches for signs of beaver activity in order to locate the best place to lay a trap.
Down at the bottom of the dam there, there's a hole in the ice, and the beaver's come out of that hole, and he's walked along in the snow here below the dam.
When you see a beaver track in the snow, you've found something really special.
So we know there's at least one beaver in here.
Tom usually traps beavers in creeks and rivers where the current prevents the water from freezing.
But on lakes like this one, he has to hack through 6 inches of ice to make way for his trap.
This is under-ice beaver trapping.
That makes it a lot harder.
Makes it a lot more worth it.
I just need beaver bait, so I'm gonna stop and get that.
Young aspen branches serve as bait.
There's something about aspen that they really like.
We're gonna mount the aspen bait on a certain spot of that pole and then set the trap right underneath it, attach the trap to the pole.
And then we're gonna put this ladder down underneath the ice.
So, hopefully the beavers will come swimming by under the ice and they'll see that aspen, and they'll start chewing on that aspen bark, and when they do that, they'll step in the trap.
Well, that ought to catch a beaver.
We can go stick another one of these in now.
Need to go cut some more poles.
5,000 feet up in the great Alaska Range, Morgan stands toe-to-toe with a monster.
These are some of the most treacherous mountains on Earth.
But Morgan is determined to claim the prize that lays on the other side.
And the only way to get there is to climb.
Up above tree line, obviously, it's windier.
There's nothing to stop the wind.
The wind blowing on your exposed skin gives you frostbite much more rapidly than still air, and if a storm comes in, I can get really screwed.
Whew! Ohh.
Come up out of the shadow in that -- in that valley there, and got up into the sun, and I can really -- really feel it in my eyes already, so I'm definitely gonna give these -- give the snow goggles a try.
And hopefully they'll -- they'll do the trick.
It looks funny, but I've never been shy about looking funny out in the woods.
Really, it's not about looks.
It's about function.
And the snow goggles protect my eyes.
That is already much better.
And this snow is so sugary, I had to put on my snowshoes.
It is finally time to get these snowshoes here.
Been packing them for days and weeks now, and finally get to put them to use.
Snowshoes are definitely the way to go.
They're a more efficient mode of travel.
All right.
Here I go, up higher into the snowy heights.
I don't want to linger at high elevations this time of year.
It's just asking for trouble.
In New Mexico, high atop a 6,500-foot mesa, Kyle sees his future -- 50 acres that he'll one day hand down to Ben to carry on the Bell family legacy.
Well, Ben, there it is.
Whoa! Look at all that country out there.
The canyon starts right back up in there.
Okay.
And it runs all the way down into those flat, open areas.
That's where the good grass is.
That's where we're gonna want to bring our cattle in.
Ben, let's go see if we can find that old trail.
All right.
Hey, Ben, this is it.
Okay- This is where the trail starts to drop off into the canyon.
It's a treacherous 1 ,000-foot descent to the canyon floor.
This is a really dangerous trail.
There's a lot of snow and ice on it.
It's slick, it's steep.
We have to watch every step.
Hey, Ben, we're getting closer.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, the closer we get, the hairier it is.
You got to really be careful on your horse.
She can break a leg, break her neck.
Remember to lean back on the steep stuff.
The trail is tougher than I expected with the snow and the ice.
The footing is -- is really bad.
What, Ben? Dad? Um, it's getting steep, but, uh, I misread this trail.
I don't -- I don't like it.
Well, it's not very much further on down here.
Let's go a little bit farther and see -- It gets better.
Ben's having a little trouble with Sweetie.
She's tired.
Easy, girl.
Easy, Sweetie.
Sweetie.
She doesn't like the steep country.
She's not cooperating.
Sweetie, be -- There you go.
You'll be fine, okay? He's getting worried.
He's scared.
You know, he's still just a-a boy.
He doesn't have the experience horseback that I do.
Just take your time.
Lucy, slow down.
Whoa.
E-easy, easy, girl.
Easy, girl.
Dad, Dad, Dad, it's not getting better.
Just give her her head.
Let her come on off.
Turn her around.
Dad! Turn her around.
Sweetie.
Come on.
You're fine.
Come on.
I don't like it.
Come on.
Come on.
Dad, Dad! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! In New Mexico's high country I don't like it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! a steep descent down an icy mountain trail is proving too much for young Ben's horse.
Come on.
Come on.
Just slip off of her right quick.
Kick your toe out.
Sweetie, Ben's horse, she's not cooperating, and he's getting perturbed, to say the least.
I think, for safety's sake, it'll be better if Ben stays off his horse until we get to the bottom of this steep country.
You just follow along Okay.
behind Sweetie.
Sweetie, come on! Go down it.
Go.
Come on.
Go on.
Go on.
Go on.
Go on.
Come on.
Go on.
Go on.
Come on, Sweetie.
Come on, Sweetie.
Go on.
Go on.
You doing all right, Ben? Yes, sir.
Sweetie's coming right behind ya.
Okay.
Good.
She's a little bit more cooperative this time.
Whew.
It's flat from here on out.
Get on.
Let's go.
It's not much further.
Easy, girl.
Good job.
Whew! This is it.
What do you think, Ben? Got good grass, that's for sure.
We're gonna have to take a look around and see exactly what all has to be done before we can even think about bringing any cattle in here.
Kyle's priority during this scout is to assess the state of two critical elements that can sustain a healthy herd -- food and water.
Ben, pull her in over here.
We're gonna have to tie up and walk from here.
I want to get down there and get a closer look at that water hole.
Easy, girl.
This is our number-one concern.
We've got to have the water to put the cattle here.
See, Ben, this is what I was worried about.
Even though there is water here, this is not gonna be enough to take care of our cattle, especially later on in the year when it gets hot and dry.
We're gonna have to do some work here.
We're gonna have to cut some brush, clean out all the debris in the creek, and make this a place where the cattle can come down to drink.
If we don't save the water that's coming through here now, there may not be any water in the summertime.
I'm gonna be spending a lot of time up here this winter.
It's gonna take a hell of a lot of work to get it up to where I want it to be.
You ready? Yes, Sir.
But this is a long-term investment as far as I'm concerned.
It's not just for me.
It's for Ben and his kids.
It's for generations to come.
In Alaska's Revelation Mountains Marty is 5 miles into the 30-mile trail he's blazing for his new trapline.
All right, I'm at the end of my line that I've put in so far.
It looks like pretty decent marten country -- All that black spruce, a little mix of brush and stuff in there.
Hopefully it's good marten country.
So, now I'm gonna just start brushing.
The big job is putting in the trail.
Knowing where to go, you know.
Cutting is slow-going.
You don't -- You can't just drive along.
You kind of pick the path of least resistance but sometimes there's just brushy draws and thick stuff that you have to go through.
It's a lot of work hitting a wall of brush, spending half a day or all day just hacking your way through someplace.
Ahh.
Should be able to get the snow machine through here.
You know, slap in a few sets as I go through this thick patch.
All right, that one's done.
Beautiful.
The whole idea is to just keep extending, keep punching it farther and trying to get in as many miles of line as I can.
The days are real short, and I only have 3 1/2, 4 hours of good light.
Once it gets dark, there really isn't much I can do.
Marty set 24 traps in the last four hours, but with little daylight left, he must turn back to reach camp by nightfall.
I'd like to have been farther than I am just because the weather had me slowed up.
But that's trapping.
That's the way it goes.
Every day from now on, that's what it's all about, is covering the ground, getting to the end of the line, and punching it farther and farther.
I never know what I'm gonna be able to accomplish, because you have to be able to handle whatever is dished out to you.
You're not the boss out here.
Mother Nature is, and you roll with it.
In Montana's Cabinet Mountains, with sunset just minutes away, Tom makes the hard 3-mile trek back to the road.
These snowshoe tracks especially after non-packed snow back there.
Um, it's a long way to walk back to the truck.
He set three exploratory beaver traps to soak overnight.
He'll return in the morning to find out whether his gambled adventure this far into the woods will pay off.
Well, that was a hike today.
Wow.
We've set the traps, and now it's just a waiting game.
You can go out and you can set a trap out there, but -- but it don't mean that that animal is gonna put his foot in that little spot, you know.
It takes some -- some doing and some knowledge and -- and some luck, some sure-enough luck.
This will be a little test for me.
I don't know if there's 10 beavers or 2 beavers in here, you know, and -- and I won't know until I catch something.
Whoa.
You sucker.
Well, now I ain't go no legs.
I've got nothing.
This is the last thing I need.
Oh, man.
It's a long walk home, I know that.
If I can't get the truck started, I'm in a lot, a lot of trouble.
In Montana, night descends on the Cabinet Mountains and the temperature is racing towards zero.
Tom Oar is stuck in this exposed wilderness 30 miles from home with a broken-down truck.
Yeah, I can turn this one a little.
Oh! Well, that thing -- That thing is loose.
Uh-huh.
Let me get a wrench out of there, see if I can tighten that down.
I get back to my truck, and when you turn the key, there's no click.
When you turn the lights on, there's no lights.
You know, so that means the battery's got to be shot.
Oh, yeah.
Now, this section is loose.
I'll try it again.
Wait a minute.
Hey! Ha-ha! Ha! Oh, wow.
Probably was, when I turned off the main road onto that snow-covered road, and I hit the edge of the road, probably that really thumped and jumped over the ditch there.
Thank you, Blue.
It is running.
It looks like it's about time to head for the house.
It'll be dark in a half hour.
It'll be dark before we get out of here.
I guess I just lucked out.
6,000 feet up in Montana's Tobacco Root Mountains, Rich scours the rocky peaks for the best place to lay his wolf traps.
And he's just had a big break.
You can see the sign here.
Obviously they were bringing meat up here to the pups.
Definitely an old den.
Wolves' home range can stretch as far as 1,000 miles, but their dens are usually high-activity areas at the center of their territory.
There's some wolves around here somewhere.
I'm gonna find a good spot to set a few traps.
Bobcats and stuff like that are easier to trap, but wolves, they're 10 times smarter.
I just got to be careful as I can and just try to trick the wolves.
I'm gonna try to outsmart him.
I put a piece of wax paper on there.
I'm covering up my pan.
I'm gonna sift over the top of this right now, make it natural.
I think I can pull them in to sniff down in that hole with some scent and a little piece of deer gland.
They smell and they're looking down, so I already gave them a key to know that there's something there.
Rich then marks the surrounding area with a scent made from coyote urine.
I'm gonna have to blend this back in so it all looks like it was.
My last thing, I like to make it look like something's been in here so they're not gonna be quite as afraid, 'cause they look down and see those tracks.
I just got to leave it as natural and be careful as I can, and I might have a chance of getting a wolf in the trap.
It's too late for me to make it back, so I'm just gonna hunker down for the night, wait till the morning, and check my traps.
200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, as the sun dips below the peaks of the Alaska Range, Morgan must race to prepare for his first night on the mountain.
I got to find a place to bed down for the night.
I bet it'll be well below zero up here.
There's no natural shelter here, so Morgan will have to carve one from the mountain itself.
The main thing you're looking for when you're digging a snow cave, is snow that's deep enough and a place that's not gonna get buried by an avalanche in the middle of the night.
Well, that looks like a pretty likely drift right there.
Yeah, uh, hopefully it's deep enough for me to get my body into it.
All right, I got to get digging.
One rookie mistake is that you get too frantic when you're digging a snow cave.
And you get hot and overheated.
You get all sweaty, and then you get a chill, and it never really goes away all night.
So, I'm pacing myself and trying not to work up too much of a sweat here.
You really make one little screw-up with those temperatures, and you're dead meat.
All righty.
Well, I got it burrowed out big enough.
And I think I can sleep in there.
Now I just got to get my fire going, and then I'll be able to melt some water.
I'm down to the last of my water, so definitely feeling thirsty, and it's pretty important now to get rehydrated before I go to bed.
At this elevation and temperature, dehydration is especially deadly.
The lack of water causes debilitating muscle weakness in a matter of hours, leaving the cold to finish a victim off.
Got some sticks collected -- Stuff I picked up on the hike today in the bundle I brought up from the valley floor.
There we go.
Some of this snow is, uh, kind of starting to melt already.
If I were to get stuck up here without the ability to melt water, my lifetime would be limited at that point.
All right, I'm gonna bed down.
You always want to have something to dig with inside the cave with you.
Just in case you get a collapse or it drifts in, you have a chance of digging your way out.
Got my water right here.
I really hope I can make it over the pass tomorrow and out of the high country and get down to where at least there's some brush that I can burn.
If I do good, I'll be basically on the other side of the range.
I'm just gonna see what tomorrow brings.
In Montana's rugged Tobacco Root Mountains, Rich has set his wolf traps and found shelter from the bitter cold in a nearby cave.
Heading out of here in the dark would be suicide, so I'm just gonna hunker down for the night.
But he's not alone.
What is it? I got a wolf howling out here somewhere.
But Sniper's right here, and if that wolf does come in on us, he's gonna let me know.
What is it? If a wolf comes in here and tries to get me, Sniper, or my horses Good boy.
I'm gonna kill him.
Get out! Next time on "Mountain Men" Marty's moment of truth I just need to get out there and start catching fur.
This year it's really weird.
while Rich goes to war.
Oh, man.
That's fresh.
This has got my blood pumping now.
I'm right behind him.
I'm hoping I can sneak in on him and shoot him.
And Morgan fights his way up the Alaska Range.
Can't hardly see where I'm going.
But the mountains fight back.