They call it America's last frontier
Half a million square miles of wilderness.
This is Alaska.
Home to some of the hardiest animals on the planet.
Alaskan seasons run fast and furious.
Opportunities are fleeting...
..for people as well as animals.
Survival means making the most of nature's gold rush.
Play it right and you'll hit the jackpot.
Get it wrong and you could lose it all.
It's not about your size.
It's about your attitude.
This land belongs to the bold.
This is Alaska.
ALASKA EARTH'S FROZEN KINGDOM
The Rising warmth of the springs sun has unlocked Alaska from the chill of winter
The land has thawed and the rivers are flowing again.
It has become a land of promise.
Now summer must deliver on that promise..
And it will have to be quick.. Alaska summer days are crazy long.
but the season flies by.
SUMMER
Alaska is so big..
It's seasons are staggered as they sweep up the State.
It's in the far southeastern corner where summer first reappears.
Down here, wedged between the Pacific ocean and the southern coast mountains,
theres's an enormous rain forest.
This is Tongass, part of the biggest temperate rainforest in the world.
In May, just as summer arrives, so does a tough little visitor.
One that has made a 4000 mile journey all the way from Mexico,
Confident that Alaska will deliver.
A Rufous hummingbird, the first sign of summer.
He only weighs 4 grams, not much more than a penny coin
Ther are no other hummingbirds in Alaska,
So it's worth the enduring flight to get here, There's less competition.
She's come here to feed on Alaska's summer flowers.
But she seems to have arrived too early.
With 60 wing flaps a second, she's burning up the calories fast.
She needs to refuel.
Acre for Acre , this forest has more organic matter in it than any other forest on earth.
There is plenty of food right here, If you're cunning enough to find it.
Every day the sun's staying in the sky an extra 10 minutes.
And as the days get longer, the opportunities get bigger.
On Katmai, along the southern coast,
Speculators have been coming down from the mountains.
Grizzly bears, they sleep hard through the 7 months of winter,
but their summers are intense.
Whilst the males work out who's boss,
this female is more interested in finding something to eat.
She's lost over a third of her body weight during winter,
and right now, there's not much around except grass.
A pumped up male could kill her cub.
But it's worth the risk to come here.
The bears of this coast, are all here because a feast is about to be delivered from the ocean.
Not that's there's any sign of it yet ...
There is something else to eat on the beach,
but it will only be available when the tide goes out.
It's under their feet.
They can smell it ...
A clam. It may not look like much but this seafood is rich.
And these 6 mile long mudflats are full of them.
It's not as easy as it looks.
All the while the clams are escaping downwards through the sand.
Sometimes they move faster than a little bear can dig.
A 130 kg grizzly mom needs to find a couple of hundred clams a day.
to make it worth the effort.
But it all helps to keep them going until the first real feast of summer arrives.
The forest takes it's cue from the strengthening sunlight,
But it's still too early for the nectar rich flowers.
The hummingbird must feed every 20 minutes, or run out of energy alltogether.
But she's been coming to this forest every summer, and she knows a few tricks.
A distinctive tapping noise signals just what she's been looking for.
A Red-breasted Sapsucker.
He's carefully chiseling holes in the tree trunk so the trees sweet syrup leaks out.
He'll be later to feed, once the sap is flowing well.
It's the chance the hummingbird has been waiting for.
She just needs to get in... unnoticed
while the Sapsucker is busy at another tree.
It's all about.... timing.
The sugary sap is starting to overflow.
It's now or never.
Her tongue curls, grasping the sap, licking it in at 9 flicks a second.
She can drink more than her body weight every day.
Over the next 3 weeks, she'll be back regularly to pilfer this store.
The Alaska summer is poised to release it's bounty.
At Katmai the grizzly bears are getting restless.
Their enterprising ways have kept them going...,
but there are only so many clams you can eat.
They really need something more substantial.
It's not just the bears that are waiting.
Just off the southwest coast at Bristol Bay, Alaska's fishermen are aslo gathering.
1,500 boats are here in anticipation of the greatest fishing event of the summer.
The return of the salmon.
300 million salmon will swim towards Alaska's shores over the summer months,
and these fishermen are right in their path.
Alaska has the greatest runs of wild salmon in the world.
And Bristol Bay is the world's most profitable salmon fishery of them all.
Everyone fights to be in the hotspot.
In this bay alone, they catch 30 million salmon in one season.
The millions that escape the fishermans nets keep onward to the coast,
and for the grizzly bears.. the wait is finally over.
These fish are in prime condition...
Well fed and muscled from 2 years at sea.
The bears couldn't ask for a more bountiful feast.
They gorge themselves on 40 kg a day.
It's a race to keep up.
Katmai has one of the densest grizzly bear populations in the world,
but there's still plenty to go around.
Moms bring their cubs to the places they remember from their own youth,
and where their own mothers first taught them to fish.
The fish are so plentiful, they often won't even bother eating the whole thing.
They just chew off the fattiest parts, the skin and the brain and ignore the rest.
However, mom's half always seems to look tastier.
Colosal runs of Coho, Sockeye, Chum, Pink and Chinook salmon battle their way through shallows,
past stairs and into the rivers beyond.
It's just the start of their journey.
Tens of millions of salmon migrate upstream.
On and on they swim deep into the heart of Alaska,
Following the scent of the river to find their way home.
Of all the salmon in the world, the ones that travel furthest are the Coho and Chinook
that migrate up the mighty Yukon river. 2,000 miles inland.
But 800 miles in, they hit another obstacle,
thats something you'd only find in Alaska.
A fish wheel.
It belongs to Lester Erhart,
a native Alaskan who has lived in the Yukon his entire life.
This is my home ... Thats my home right here... I love it.
Lester spent the winter building the wheel by hand.
Now it set it up in the river, just in time for the returning of the salmon.
Powered only by the current, the wheel turns to the rhythm of the river.
As the salmon pass, They're scooped out of the water.
3 million salmon travel up the Yukon during summer.
The wheel only works in a river that's full of salmon.
All Lester has to do is collect the fish from the box. Its brilliantly simple
This young boy, about 14 years old,
he came up and he looked in that box and he saw all that fish...
he said to me "You got the right way to fish!"
This is the easy way to do things ...
Lester can catch hundreds of fish a day.
Under the warm sun, the Alaskan sun has delivered a bonanza.
A third of Alaska sits above the Arctic circle. At the top of the world,
It's the last place to feel the warmth of summer.
But by June, this treeless land, the tundra is tipped towards the sun
bathing it in 24 hour daylight.
At Alask's most northern point, the sun rose at the beginning of May and won't set until August.
Summer in the Arctic becomes one endless day.
But you can have too much of a good thing ...
It's now in these odd conditions, that a Snowy owl is raising her family.
In the absence of any trees up here... you have to nest on the ground.
She has 3 growing chicks, and broods them 24 hours a day.
As she can't leave them, Dad will provide.
At first glance, the tundra doesn't seem to be exactly brimming with food.
But it is... if you know where to look.
Lemmings. They eat the grasses and shrubs that cover the landscape.
With the unlimited foods here they breed fast,
and within a few weeks there can be millions of them,
exactly what Dad wants to see.
He just needs to choose his victim.
But one little lemming is not going to go very far with his growing family.
These are North America's Heaviest owls.
Each chick alone can eat 3 lemmings a day.
Hunting 24 hours a day... It doesn't take him long to satisfy everyone.
But it's as if a glut of lemmings has tripped his brain.
With no darkness to tell him when to rest, he just goes on and on ...
The chicks are filled to busting,
but still the lemmings keep on piling up.
Now his offerings aren't met with quite the same enthusiasm.
By the summer solstice the suns unblinking gaze is most intense.
Temperatures can climb over 30 degrees Celsius.
That's 80 degrees warmer than it was just 3 months earlier.
On the tundra there's not a scrap of shade.
This female Caribou left her herd 8 weeks ago,
when she was due to calf.
It's easier to hide from predators when there are just 2 of you.
Her calf doubled in size in it's first 2 weeks,
and now it's strong enough to join the herd.
It will spend the rest of it's life on the move... just one of 40,000.
It's the middle of the night.
The Caribou have reached the lake.
It's drawn in others from miles around.
It's not just a place to drink.
Buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake there are mineral salts,
calcium, magnesium and sodium, vital for the Caribou's health.
They stir up the mud with their feet and drink the solution.
Just beneath the surface of the water an army is being mobilized.
The Tundra offers the perfect growing conditions for insect larvae.
Shallow pools left over from melting ice,
warm up quickly in the summer sun.
Just 8 days after hatching, they start to emerge as adults.
These are animals so well adapted,
that they haven't changed in 40 million years.
Mosquitoes, literally billions of them...
and hungry for blood.
they're so big and ferocious,
the locals jokingly call them Alaska's state bird.
It is said they can form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate a Caribou.
Each animals can lose up to half a pint of blood a day,
It's enough to drive anyone mad.
The only defense they have is to move.
There will be no rest for this calf this summer.
He just joined the longest land mammal migration in the world.
The herds are so big they etch trails across the land.
All over Alaska, Caribou are on an endless quest,
searching for fresh grazing ...
all the while being driven on by mosquitoes.
Alaska has more Caribou than people.
Over 750,000 of them
criss cross the state, covering thousands of miles in just a few months.
In the far northwest, the Caribou migration path..
skirts around one of the most unexpected landscapes on the planet.
Here, 40 miles above the Arctic circle..
There's a sun scorched dunefield.
At the height of summer, temperature's here can reach 34C.
It's about as hot as Alaska gets.
The annual rainfall here is less than the Grand Canyon.
The Kobuk dunes are a footprint of the Glaciers
that scraped across northern Alaska over hundreds of thousands of years.
As the Glaciers retreated,
Arctic winds picked up the grains of eroded sediments it left behind.
It whipped them up into dunes, some more than 30 meters high.
It is the largest active dune field in the whole United States,
but it's shrinking.
The vast banks of sand are slowly being infiltrated by trees.
Eventually these ancient dunes will vanish as the forests take them back.
These Black Spruce forests dominate interior Alaska.
They're desiccated by the heating wind of summer and full of resin.
It doesn't take much to set the whole thing alight.
Every summer around 500 major fires breakout in Alaska's heart.
Left unchecked , wild fires can rip through 300 square miles a day.
There are few roads across Alaska,
There's only one way to control a big fire in this vast wilderness,
from above.
It takes a crack team of firefighters to do the job.
They're drafted in from all across America,
and specially trained for fighting fires Alaska style
because this plane isn't going to land.
Jumpers away ... 3, 2, 1, jump...
Jump
These are Alaska's smoke jumpers.
All through the summer they are the state's first line of defense.
A wildfire burns at 800 C... and can rage for weeks.
A smoke jumpers job is to stop the fire
before it gets too big to stop.
It's hard to see a place like this as anything other than a disaster.
But Alaska's forests have been living with wildfire for hundreds of thousands of years.
They've evolved not only to cope but to benefit.
Aa long as Black Spruce corns are not totally torched, the heat will open them up,
letting the seeds drop into a bed of fertile ash.
Sunlight brings a flush of new greenery to the forest floor.
Theses plant pioneers now have full access to the endless summer sun shine.
Fireweed is the first to stake it's claim.
It flowers through the hazy days,
and Alaskans call it, summers time keeper.
The flowers unfold from the bottom of the plant.
When they reach the top... that's the end of summer.
It's a warning that despite the summer heat,
the first snows of winter are only weeks away.
High up in the Talkeetna mountains...
there's one Alaskan... who's already prepared.
The Collared pika.
He spent his entire summer hard at work.
When the winter comes.. his favorite grasses and sedges will be buried under the snow.
But he's not worried... He's been saving food for the lean months ahead.
Hidden among the rocks is his winter larder.
He's carefully positioned it to catch the sun's rays,
which dry and cure his supplies.
half a meter wide and 30 cm deep,
this haystack is his survival ration.
He's chossen the contents meticulously.
He's picked some toxic plants,
These will decompose slower and keep food for eating, fresher for longer .
Like all Alaskans, he knows that winter preperations start early.
and you have to make the most of summers bounty
The sun is getting lower.. Summer is drawing to a close
But rather than mourn it's passing,
Alaskans celebrate it's generosity.
The Alaska state fair,
attracts more than a third of the entire population through it's gates.
For 12 days from the end of August to Labor day,
it's summers final fling.
And the star attraction.... the giant vegetable competition.
With a 100 days, of near endless sunlight,
you can grow record breakers,
cabbages heavier than a large child, super sized broccoli,
monster beans.
It's this high art of growing giants...
that has kept Dale Marshal busy all summer long.
Well we took our circumference, which was 190,
So we look on our chart here... so the estimated weight is 1343 pounds.
It could go heavier, it could go lighter but even if it goes a little bit lighter I got a little buffer there you know...
so I'm hoping ... that we have a new state record here.
Dale has been harnessing the sun's power to nuture a giant.
A giant that's been growing 10 kg a day
and has tangles more than 20 meters long.
Dale has been growing a giant ...
pumpkin.
We don't really take any long vacations or go out of state at all .
In the summer time here
You try to make your travel plans.. you know, in the off pumpkin season so to speak.
Dale spent 3 hours every day all summer creating a monster.
As the plant gets bigger, you've got to keep doing it more cause there's more things to prune.
And after a while just bhaaa.. ...
But it's big.
But To find out if it's a world beater, he needs to take it to the state fair.
Just getting it there is a feat in itself.
Lifting a vegetable the weight of a small car takes more than a wheelbarrow.
We're Done it's separated!
We're ready to roll... This is the most nerve wracking time for Dale.
Yep you have to go up off the ground!.... Listen to this!
Holly cow look at this. Thats taking a strain now
This pumpkin represents hundreds of hours of work
and thousands of hours of sunshine.
Damaging it would mean disqualification.
Aw that looks beautiful!
Touch down!
At the fairground, everyone is gathering for the main event.
People put it on scale, let's see where it goes...
Allright everybody
Here we go...
Allright Come on! - Dale has come close before,
but he's never broken the state record.
That record stands at 1,287 pounds.
1,283
Is that what it is?.. That's what it is.
1,283
4 pounds off!
The sun has set on this years competitionl.
But Dale doesn't waste time.
He collects the seeds and starts planning next years pumpkin.
On Katmai the grizzly bears are still catching fish.
A bear can eat a ton and a half of salmon over a good season.
Accordinly Alaskan bears are the biggest in the world.
But the run is coming to an end.
By October, all these bears will head for the hills and get ready to sleep out the winter.
Thanks to the wealth of fish, they go into their den 90 kg heavier than they came out.
Alll across this supersized state,
Everyone has been cashing in on the abundance of summer.
Good grazing? has enabled this bull moose to grow something enormous of his own.
Something he hopes is going to get him noticed.
2 meter wide antlers.
At their peak the bone was growing at 2 cm a day.
They're the fastest growing organs in the natural world.
And during all this time they have been completely ...
useless.
Until now.
As the days get shorter and the sunlight weaker,
Moose turn their mind to just one thing.
The annual rut.
Young Male upstarts test their strength against each other with their skinny headgear.
Hormones are raging ...
for two weeks they don't even stop to eat.
Each male is doing his best to stand out from the crowd.
But this big male is going to let his antlers do the talking,
and they're already causing quit a stir.
As a male moose gets older, his antlers gets bigger and more ornate.
Now he's in his prime, they're as big and as pointy as they're ever going to get.
No male will challenge him.
And he has the full attention of the females.
While the young bucks carry on sparring,
he chooses to do one simple thing.
He digs a pit and leaves his scent.
The Pheromones released, further advertise his machismo.
The whole package makes him irresistible.
In Alaska, they say that when it comes to finding a man... the odds are good.
But the goods are often bought ...
But with a headset this big he's a keeper.
The sun's power has waned. It's autumn.
Darkness steals another 6 minutes each day.
It's been a good summer for Lester.
His fish wheel has delivered him thousands of Coho salmon.
it will feed me in the winter and everybody else, Pretty near everybody
Now he has to gut and fillet the fish.
He hangs it in the sun to dry and cure...
and then he takes into his home built smoke house.
The art of preserving fish has been in Alaska for thousands of years.
It's been passed down the generations
and it has allowed Alaskans to carry the bounty of summer into the scarcity of winter.
It's knowledge that reached Lester as a boy,
It's helped him feed his family for 60 years.
He's in no hurry to change his ways.
I tried the other life and, I like this life better ...
In a few weeks, the mighty Yukon, the river that brought the salmon to Lesters' door,
will be frozed solid. Temperatures will drop to -50.
But Lester isn't worried, there are advantages.
I like winter.
You don't have to work so hard!
All across Alaska, Summer has delivered on it's promise.
Under the gaze of the sun, there's been plenty for everyone.
Some have had to work harder than others,
but most have managed to get their peice of the pie ...
Nice time has run out.
They say you're not a true Alaskan... till you've faced the winter.
It's time for the bold to step forward ...
Of all Alaska's animals, there was one that truly gave the film crew the run around.
Caribous.
There are more than 3/4 of a million of them,
so they shouldn't be that hard to find.
Filming them from the air is fairly easy,
but keeping up with them on the ground while they're migrating is another matter.
They can travel 50 miles in a single day and this is rugged land.
Cameraman Rob Druet and producer Alex Lancester
were going to need some local knowledge if they were going to stand any chance of tracking them down
Guide Dan Lee has spent most of his life in these hills looking for gold.
He knows the wilderness pretty well.
See how round that is? Look at this. Yes!
Real obvious... Caribou. Big difference from moose.
The team know they're in the right area. They're already spotting Caribou.
Where are they? They're just right over the edge.
Just peek over. There's about 10 or 15 just sitting there.
So good to see them.
But this is Alaska, You can never be sure what's going to turn up.
I got a grizzly! Just grubbing for roots up there. - Yea, it looks like!
What? Well, We're filming Caribou which are that way and the grizzly bear's just over my sholder.
Hope someone's keeping an eye on it.
Alex?
With a grizzly bear in the area the Caribou are'nt hanging around.
They're probably going that way, but they could go back around the trail.
If they're going over the ridge, we could meet em because there's another trail that goes that way. Ah Okay.
The Caribou can go wherever they please. The team have to stick to the trails.
It starting to get challenging ...
We just had 2 to 3 hundred standing right here and we... we were over there,
and took us 10 mminutes to get here and suddenly.... they're gone.
See them all on that ridge over there - Yup!
eh,... Cat and mouse situation.
The Caribou certainly are'nt going to wait, The team need to get ahead of them.
But even an all terrain vechile has it's limitations around here.
If you go straight You are right in a mud bank.
I've gone and got it stuck in the mud right at the edge of the river... and we are proper stuck.
Where are you going, Alex?
As the team tries to free the vehicle, The caribou get further and further away.
For them, a river crossing like this would be no trouble at all.
Thank you!... For the team it takes awhile...
We finally get ITV out of the river, and we got out and there's a ...
a flat tire ...
And the spare doesn't fit. It's the wrong Pattern uh? No the Patterns fine,
the bolts are too big for it.. See... Yeah
In Alaska rotor systems come from the sky.
I can't quite believe it;s came to this!
Thank you very much Mike! You Bet. You saved us. You saved our bacon.. so thank you!
No problem, but we're going to get out of here before it changes...Yeah sure. Ok have fun
It doesn't take long to change the wheel,
but bad weather is coming in... and the crew decides to setup camp.
And all the while the distance between the team and the caribou is growing bigger and bigger.
The following day, the weather isn't any brighter ...
It rained quite a bit last night, so yeah it was disconcerting.
24 hours of summer rain have made the rivers into torrents.
With all the rain we've had the river is way to high for us to cross.
It could be 2 to 3 days until we can cross it,
and then we don't know whether the herd's going to still be there because they'll still be moving.
Another day lost and the Caribou would have put 50 miles between themselves and the team.
Caribou have no body clock telling them when to stop, so keep walking through the night.
But the team have a tip off from another guide. They drive 100 miles east,
Putting their faith in guide Claude Bondi.
He knows of an unusal lake where he thinks the Caribou will gather in big numbers.
It could be the crew's lucky break ...
But getting there means a 4 hour hike across a boggy landscape.
It would be an easy journey for a Caribou with it's great feet and long legs,
but much harder for the team.
We'll have to zig zag our way through because we got this brush in front of us ...
It doesn't make things easy.
But Claude's hunch has paid off.
He knew the Caribou would stop at this lake.
They're not just here for water,
They're here for precious minerals buried in the lake bed.
I didn't think this would happen ...
Nice to see such a big group. I mean there could be thousands of them.
Just need to get a little bit closer.
Whilst we've been sitting here, We've been completely surrounded by Caribou.
and they came about 30 meters away... which is pretty cool.
even the guide is astonished.
This is the most Caribou I've ever seen at one time... Incredible!
and they're all just kinda cruising next to Bob.. He's gotta be just goin crazy... and ...
This close to the herd, the team are not only able to film the big numbers,
but also capture behavior not seen before.
as the Caribou stir up the mineral salts in the water and drink the solution.
We've had so many problems along the way. With rain,
We've not seen Caribou, then been too far away.. and finally
finally got the shots we needed so... it's been really good,
Next time... Winter has returned ...
Those that can not take it.. must leave ...
For those that stay, the rewards can be huge...
But they must overcome -50 degrees temperatures,
and become masters of an the ice world. For many it's courage that gets them through.
But for a few Alaskans, This is the time they have been waiting for ...