In 1987, I had this idea that a great way to teach wilderness survival would be to head out into the woods and do exactly that.

Survive.

Now I need the skills because I'd be filming myself alone.

And you, the viewer, would be made aware of that.

And I thought, what a great way to make these skills more relatable to you.

Problem was, the technology was not available for me to film myself beyond the old grainy camcorders as we used to call them.

Well, fast forward to the year 2000, 13 years and indeed the technology became available.

the take home information.

And the skills that you would learn from this series would make you more confident in nature.

You'd stay warm, dry and safe, and therefore you'd be able to reconnect to the natural world.

What you're about to watch is raw and real, and not to be confused with reality television.

These are my journeys into the world of survival and around the planet.

These are the skills that can keep you alive and open the doors to nature.

The only reality that matters.

(ominous music) - I don't see much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I have right now.

This is gonna be a long week.

(tribal music) This time on "Survivorman", I'm headed to the top of the globe.

Baffin Island, high in the Canadian Arctic.

It's about an eight hour flight straight north into the ice and snow, and a small Inuit community at Pond Inlet.

A place where basic existence depends on your ability to survive the harsh environment.

I'm gonna have to find my way back to this community seven days from now.

For ten straight hours I'll push that snowmobile farther and farther into the barren arctic.

Where I'll be left alone to survive.

This is the Arctic at the top of our world.

It's a changing landscape of barren land, snow covered mountains and vast expanses of constantly shifting ocean ice.

In the wintertime, the Arctic is immersed in months of frigid darkness, but in the short, full of summer, it's daytime all the time.

Temperatures here, well it's the Arctic.

It's cold.

It's one of the lowest population densities in the world.

To go out on the land, you ride the knife edge of trouble.

You can get disoriented by whiteouts and get lost.

You can fall through the ice in the freezing water.

Traditionally, they use dog sleds to get around, but for the most part, this is the modern, slightly noisier way to get from one place to another.

Of course, dogs don't break down.

Oh yeah, well this guy's not going anywhere.

Camera crew took the good snow machine and left me alone for seven days out here with this broken down one.

And where's here?

The middle of the Canadian Arctic.

For seven days, I have to survive out here with very little in the way of equipment and yet somehow find my own way back to safety, back to town.

And of course, I've gotta film the whole ordeal myself.

I took ill on my way to the Arctic, but the production team had little sympathy.

I've had laryngitis for a week.

The producer said, well, you can't pick the time or place you're gonna break down.

I guess they're right.

And I'm 1100 miles from the nearest tree.

Heck, I'm 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

I'm closer to the North Pole than I am to the Arctic Circle.

So sometimes you gotta really take a look at your circumstances, do whatever you gotta do.

If the snowmobile can't help me get back, I'll take advantage of what it can offer.

Everything from sharp parts for digging, the wires, the oil.

I've gotta use what I can to survive.

Who knows?

I might take some of this grease and just put it under my eyes just to kind of gimme that football look, you know?

Maybe stop some of the glare off the snow.

Ripping some of the sponge right outta cushion, I figure it's a good idea to soak up some gasoline, which can prove valuable in a land without trees.

It's mid-May but here in the Arctic it can still get blisteringly cold and storms can move in at any time.

I have to build a shelter.

There's really only one thing to build a shelter with out here.

White.

And there's a lot of it.

Even though it's so cold, I have to be very careful not to overheat in this caribou skin clothing.

If I sweat, it'll chill me to the bone in no time.

Real simply equation.

You sweat, you die.

Let's see what I can get out of this guy now.

There.

Well, that's it.

Snowmobile cowling, some foam from the seat, and some snow.

That'll be home for the night.

Ahhh.

You know, I just turned the camera on and the little clock comes on in the beginning and I happen to notice the time.

It's, it's three o'clock in the morning.

I've been going for a long time.

Tomorrow I'll try to get my bearings and start the long walk out.

But for now, good night.

As you can see, the white did get whiter.

I can't even see the mountains in behind me now.

The wind has picked up as well, and my feet are cold and my body's starting to get chilled, even though I'm protected down in here with fur and oh, wind break, doesn't seem to matter.

I gotta get off this sea ice.

I don't see much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I have right now.

This is gonna be a long week.

The machine is too heavy to take much of it with me, but it won't stay here.

The crew will return for it at the end of my week alone.

In the Arctic, navigation is a challenge to say the least.

The sea ice here is about six feet thick, and cracks in the ice are very dangerous.

If I fall into one, it's game over.

Compasses don't work up here because we're so close to the magnetic pole.

The huge pans of ice are also constantly shifting.

You could be floating out to sea and not even know it.

Well, the snow is finally settled just enough that I can show you what supplies I have with me.

To survive in the extremes of the Arctic, you really need some minimum requirements or else you'll die.

This time, the producers gave me the break of having a few small supplies to survive this harshest of environments.

I'm supposed to catch food with this.

This is a a seal hook.

We'll see about that.

Knife made out of a caribou leg bone.

For heat.

This is big chunk of seal blubber.

See that?

This is my source of heat.

What I have to heat myself up with this with, Qulliq, soapstone Qulliq.

Three matches.

These things aren't gonna do me any good at all until I have some kind of real solid shelter built.

Of course, I always carry with me a good multi tool.

First time ever I've got a gun.

I was actually required to bring the gun.

They wouldn't let me come out here without it.

One reason, one reason only.

Polar bears.

Lots of them, big, 1500 pounds of claw, fang, and muscle.

They're on the seal hunt right now, and I'll be walking right through their territory.

Spooky to say the least.

My rules are that I can only use the gun to protect myself from polar bears, not for hunting.

This time they said I could actually have some food, which excited me.

What they didn't tell me was that it was gonna be a bag of raw seal meat, which is traditional.

Look at that, big hunk of raw seal liver.

You know what?

I haven't eaten in a long time.

There is fat attached to the seal meat, eating meat alone, I could die from what has been nicknamed rabid starvation.

After only a week of meat without fat, you will show signs of protein poisoning.

Even after eating, you still feel ravenous.

The stomach will distend.

And in eight days diarrhea begins.

A few weeks of that and you will die.

It's not bad, actually.

Well, because it's lightened up a bit better off to the side there, I think I'm gonna try and get outta here and make my way over there.

Now smelling like a seal.

I'll make my way through thick polar bear country.

Just a big piece of slow moving bear food.

Well, I pulled my qamutiik as far as I could, up this little break in the mountains, and I found this beautiful glacier making its way to the ocean.

That's not even the best part.

Let me show you what else I found.

I gotta be careful not to slip because I get down in there, I actually can't get back up.

It's about a 10 foot straight drop.

You get down to the bottom, there's no way of getting back up.

This is fantastic.

I am sitting underneath the big toe of a glacier.

It makes me kind of nervous being in caves like this anyway, you don't know in one of these big chunks is gonna fall off.

Break your neck.

Big piece right up above me actually.

Good night.

Oh, this is kind spooky.

I was so chilled, I could barely sleep.

Who would've thought that an ice cave would be cold?

I've got five more days to survive, but right now I have to get up high enough to check my direction for travel.

The total white out conditions make travel impossible.

So any markers I can spot, such as an iceberg or a hill will help me from losing track of my route to safety.

Lots of cracks and crevices.

I could literally fall into the ocean here.

I gotta be, better be careful.

Trying to go up there so I can get a look, better look at where I gotta go.

Better look at how far I gotta go.

It's very hard to tell where you're putting your feet.

It's just white, you know?

I mean, look, if you look this way, I mean that's what I'm stepping in.

Just white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white.

And you can barely see where the sky begins and the land ends.

Well, I'm at the base of this little mountain here, this little hill.

So.

I'm gonna climb up, see if I can get a better look where I gotta go.

That's where I'm headed.

Wow.

That's something.

Yeah.

See this?

I figure I've got about a 30 mile walk back to Pond Inlet.

If I can make it to the other shoreline across the five miles of jumbled rough pack ice, I can follow the shoreline to safety.

After a full day of traveling yesterday, funny thing is I can still see my snowmobile.

Well, of course, as always, I got way too much heavy camera equipment to haul around.

I can't underestimate how much of a hassle having this stuff is.

Survival wouldn't be so hard if I didn't have to try to film it at the same time.

But I'm thinking now, if I'm gonna do that walk across the sea ice maybe I can make use of some of this, these pieces from the snowmobile.

One of the problems I'm gonna have out there is the well snow blindness basically.

Even with this overcast, it's so very, very bright.

I'm always squinting.

Take a couple of these wires, that ought to work.

And some of that crappy old seat cover.

There.

Not so bad.

I can see anyway.

And it won't, it won't bother my eyes so much now.

Off we go.

Snow blind.

Just imagine a bad sunburn to the cornea of your eyes.

If that happened to me, I'd be blind and helpless out here for at least three days.

Snow blindness, hypothermia, polar bears, frost bite, exhaustion, starvation.

These are the perils, the realities of arctic survival.

Distance in these conditions is tough to judge.

Perspective in the white can play tricks with your mind.

I've heard of people who upon seeing a mountain, start to head towards it, only to find a few steps later that it was just a rock.

It's just so white out here.

I mean, it's white upon white upon white.

Everything's a shade of white.

Even the seagulls are white.

All along the way, I've been eating snow for my water intake cause the only water around here is either frozen or salty coming up through the cracks.

Now a lot of books warn don't eat the snow, it damages the membranes, it cools you down.

Well you know what?

It's very true.

And if I was like just about to go sleep or crawl into an igloo, then yeah, I wouldn't eat snow, it would cool me down.

But during the day when I'm working this hard, eating the cold snow is helping to keep me from sweating.

So personally, I don't have a big problem with it.

I'm not that close to the flow edge, but I'm close enough.

I could literally be on one big pan of ice.

I could be on a five square mile piece of ice that that cracks over by the shore.

There could be a hundred feet of water between me and the shore and I wouldn't even know it.

I could be well on my way to Greenland just drifting away.

Just a few years ago, tragedy nearly struck a group of Inuit children.

They were drifting off to Greenland without even knowing it.

And only a daring rescue by the local townspeople brought them back from sure death.

I'm gonna stop here beside this iceberg.

See if I can actually sleep for an hour before I push on through and make it to the other shore.

It's great how this caribou fur, it's incredible.

It doesn't hold the snow at all.

It just falls off of it like dust.

So here I sit, middle of the Arctic, with a big chunk of raw seal meat.

Attempting to sleep beside an iceberg.

I mean probably the thickest polar bear area around here.

And beside an ice crack, they like to hunt the ice cracks, looking for seals.

Beside an iceberg, they like to circle the icebergs looking for seals.

And I'm sitting here with a big hunk of raw seal meat.

You know, this is not the most intelligent thing I've ever done.

Day four of my seven day challenge of surviving Arctic alone.

The weather seems to be clearing and if the whiteouts do subside, I know my general direction back home.

But this morning I woke up to a surprise.

These guys are polar bear tracks, big ones.

Man, his head would've been about here and his back end way back here.

This is a big bear.

But what's important about these tracks is that they're only 30 feet from where I've been sleeping.

And you thought I was kidding about polar bears.

Yeesh.

Look at the size of these things.

Well, right here you can even see the impression of them.

Wow.

Even carrying a rifle, I'm not safe.

I'm not exactly a sure shot.

I know of one Inuit man who spotted a bear outside his cabin window, turned to see a second bear outside the other window.

They were about to corner him.

He bolted from the cabin and with the bears in pursuit, he jumped to his snow machine, pulled out the rifle and turned to shoot.

Killing both bears as they drop to the ground only feet away.

I'm keeping my rifle loaded.

Boy how everything changes when the sun comes out.

This could be glacial melt.

And if it is, that's gonna be great cause it's, it's it's, it'll be fresh water.

Ugh.

(spits) Yeah, that's salty.

At any given time, there's about 10,000 of these icebergs floating around in the eastern Arctic waters.

Most of them come from Greenland or Ellesmere Island.

(chews) Mmm.

You know what they say?

It's just the tip of the iceberg.

Apparently there's another nine-tenths of this guy right underneath me.

(crunches ice) Mmm.

Not salty, nice and fresh.

Later on in the summer, this guy's gonna float right past Newfoundland.

I mean, there's not a soul around for miles.

All right.

This is Les sleeping in the sun.

You know what they say?

It's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Inuit used icebergs to watch out for polar bears, to look for seals on the ice, to determine their route.

The Inuit have been relying on igloos for thousands of years.

It's the perfect shelter.

These Muk Luks, they're frozen solid.

Running the cameras.

They are a pain.

(...), I didn't press record.

Directly inspired by his own survival expeditions, journeys and challenges.

World renowned survival instructor Les Stroud brings you survive, essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive.

Available for 19.99.

In addition, the book will to live Dispatches from the Edge of Survival is available, featuring Les Stroud's own top ten survival stories of all time.

21.99.

To order, please go to lesstroud.ca, and click on shop