- 4 hours ago
Category
đź“ş
TVTranscript
00:03It's very windy, very rainy, and we have a low ceiling.
00:08My job here is safety.
00:10That's first and foremost.
00:12So we spotted him, oh, 150 yards away.
00:15When he turned, you can see he's got a gigantic hump,
00:18signature of grizzly bears.
00:20They just want to eat you.
00:21That's a bear track.
00:23That's a bear track.
00:24Hey, bear!
00:27See those rock piles in there.
00:29Oh, right there, right!
00:31Stop, stop, stop!
00:33Stop!
00:37Just shut the fuck up and don't say go right.
00:40So we're in the spot.
00:41So we're here, this is it.
01:21The weather has gone down now.
01:24It's very windy, very rainy.
01:27And we have a low ceiling, meaning the pilot has to see the ground to fly.
01:34The pilot we have here, Paul, is an experienced military, fly-in-the-cloud pilot.
01:40But that doesn't help when you've got to go below the cloud when the cloud is actually at the ground.
01:45Because there's no time to go, oops, and that's when accidents happen.
01:50Again, because we're so far north and we're so remote of an area, weather reporting is essentially non-existent.
01:59As an experienced Bush pilot and ex-Canadian Air Force member, Paul has flown in every kind of weather.
02:06Most importantly, he knows when not to fly.
02:11The weather here was sufficient this morning that I could launch and maintain, you know, a safe distance above the
02:16ground.
02:16Which is, in my opinion, I'd like to be about 500 feet to give me some time.
02:19You know, and when the risk elevates to a level where it becomes dangerous, then that's an issue.
02:24My job here is safety, so that's first and foremost.
02:31The wildfires in Manitoba have caused an aircraft fuel shortage.
02:36Paul limits the flights and conserves fuel to ensure they will be able to leave at the end of the
02:42trip.
02:43We're 650 miles from Winnipeg.
02:47And 100 miles north of Winnipeg, you're in the middle of nowhere.
02:50So the last 400 miles, we're kind of on our own with some limited options.
02:54We have 500 to 600 kilometers to get to a hospital if we have a medical emergency.
03:00And that really depends on the gas and the plane and the weather.
03:05Because we may not be able to get out.
03:07And that's the problem.
03:08Because we may be socked in on that lake and not be able to get out for days.
03:14We're using it very sparingly and very deliberately to achieve what it is we want to do with it.
03:19Honestly, yeah, most of our trips are like this.
03:21We'll have kind of a plan A, B, C, D to Z.
03:24And realistically, like this is nothing you can really change, right?
03:27So it's kind of wake up and you might have four days worth of plans.
03:31Maybe you shuffle them around.
03:32But we've gotten pretty used to that.
03:33And we have a pretty good system of being able to make it work with whatever we have.
03:38We've got to get in the air.
03:39And if we have a blizzard roll in or snowstorm or fog, we can't go anywhere except by boat.
03:49Joe, meanwhile, has his own theories on the recent challenges.
03:54Maybe it's the curse of the Viking grave, actually.
03:58Maybe this is part of make it hard to find.
04:01Thor wants us to earn it.
04:03Thor, the god of thunder and strength, was one of the Viking's central gods.
04:09Farley Moat described a mysterious cairn in Curse of the Viking Grave.
04:15A stone marker that suggests Norse explorers buried their dead far beyond their known settlements of Lansow Meadows.
04:23Lansow Meadows in northern Newfoundland served as a seasonal base for travel farther north and west.
04:30It is suggested that Norse ships would have followed the coastline through Labrador into the Hudson Strait.
04:37A journey that would take months.
04:40If someone died, a cairn would be built as a grave for the fallen Viking.
04:47There was some chance of thunderstorms, and so we've missed that.
04:50So I think Thor now is on our side.
04:52I think just to stand out here this frickin' long and get soaked in what doing this has proven that
04:57we're Vikings at heart.
05:02Paul goes over key locations they will try to reach with David, Mackenzie and Joe.
05:07When the weather improves.
05:09I ran into a wall, turned around, came back and then decided to go over the lake because the weather
05:13looked a little bit better over the lake.
05:14Yeah.
05:15Got about ten miles south of the main lake and ran into another wall so I turned around.
05:19How was the ice on the main lake?
05:20Yeah.
05:20Fair to go.
05:21Yeah.
05:21I figured I made a waste of time that I was airborne in and the fuel so I took the
05:26opportunity to do a little bit of an aerial survey of the local area to figure out where the ice
05:31was and a couple of key positions that you pointed out to me in the last day or so.
05:35Paul is a great find for our expedition.
05:39An excellent pilot and one of the things about it is he joined our expedition.
05:43He wasn't just a guy in a plane flying us around.
05:46He became part of the team and he did the heavy lifting as well as helping out, cooking, cleaning, searching.
05:53In this general area right here, up to this island, you can get to this island, no problem, by boat
05:59and we're down over here.
06:01The Faraheim team is using eyewitness accounts, especially a letter from local trapper Windy Smith.
06:09Smith reported an unusual structure almost a century ago to the RCMP while out with his sled docks.
06:16In 1929, Windy Smith came out of this bay with his dog team in a blizzard and because the blizzard
06:25was so bad, he pulls into shore to get some shelter and he looks around and he says,
06:32Whoa! And he describes this thing that's like 16 by 16 by 6 high. No windows, no doors. Hard to
06:38find, hard to see.
06:40Finding this cairn that Windy reported is what drove the explorers to this remote location.
06:47I'm going to show you the original sort of map of this cairn that we're looking for, the original map
06:53that was drawn by Windy Smith.
06:55The team is using Windy Smith's hand-drawn map to locate the lost Viking cairn.
07:00But since the map isn't drawn to scale, things get complicated.
07:05They're forced to improvise and make educated guesses about what some of the markings actually mean.
07:11And this is way out of scale, right? So this whole thing, this whole thing is this whole thing.
07:18And it doesn't look, he's missed everything in here except those islands.
07:21Yeah, you can see the three islands.
07:22Yeah, but we've got three islands right here. One, two, three.
07:24Oh yeah, that, okay, now I see it. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, that's possible.
07:28Possible.
07:28There are many moving pieces, some missing, to this expedition that the team must always be aware of.
07:35We get Windy Smith's original map of this area hand-drawn, you know, later on.
07:41And it's not exactly to scale, but you know what, once you get into it, you kind of see where
07:45he went.
07:46Nobody talks about something like this for a hundred years if there's not something to start.
07:51So we're looking for the start.
07:53Discrepancies between Windy's hand-drawn map and the official government map are to be expected.
08:00Additionally, Windy didn't report his findings to the RCMP until a few years after seeing the can.
08:08If you asked Tom to look a couple of days ago at the wolfesker, when it was clear,
08:17if you could get access to that at that exact point where we thought the den was.
08:21One of Farley Mowat's very famous books is called Never Cry Wolf.
08:24And when he was up in this area, he watched a wolf den and wrote a book about it.
08:31And when we were in the McMaster archives, I went through his actual notes he wrote lying on this wolfesker.
08:38And an esker is just a big sand pile left by the melting glaciers a long time ago.
08:44Just like Never Cry Wolf had wolfeskers, Curse of the Viking Grave has a cairn.
08:48So we're pretty confident we're in the right area of where he may have seen this.
08:53Because Windy Smith's map is drawn out of scale, the team struggles to understand its layout.
08:58To make sense of it, they compare it with Farley Mowat's descriptions of the nearby wolfesker.
09:06If the team can find the real wolfesker, they can finally orient Windy's map.
09:12And it could mean the cairn and a possible lost Viking burial is nearby.
09:30David, a former Canadian military pilot, still uses the shorthand for latitude and longitude in order to figure out coordinates
09:39on a map.
09:40Because he can definitely just type in land long and take a look.
09:46The team turns to satellite and technology expert Tom Maguire to help fill in some of the missing pieces.
09:55Are you on, Starlink?
09:57Wish you were here, Tom.
09:59Tom is an explorer's secret weapon.
10:02Through his command of technology, he processes and presents data that could make all the difference in an expedition.
10:09There's a guy named Paul sitting across from me who has a Cessna 185 on floats and he's been our
10:15low-level strike pilot.
10:17He did some low-level flybys for us.
10:20And so between the old maps and the satellite maps and some of the pictures from Farley Mowat, we've come
10:30up with these lat longs.
10:31So we think the literal wolf den is at that lat long.
10:36Joe asks Tom for his interpretation of photos of the area that Canadian author Farley Mowat took.
10:43What we're really interested in looking at is whether the picture that Farley took, which we've been trying to compare
10:49with the maps that we have or the satellite imagery we have,
10:53whether we can actually find the exact spot that he stood.
10:57Farley interviewed Windy Smith many years ago.
11:00The team is hoping that a photograph that Farley took of Windy is near the location of the cairn.
11:07We have the best knowledge of Farley Mowat's experience around here because he was a great note-taker and wrote
11:13incredible detail about what he saw and what he did.
11:17I was showing Paul the directory that you put online.
11:21Of all the photos I've shared with you, it looks like that tree is still alive, even though that was,
11:28you know, 70 years ago.
11:30We're going to go there tomorrow and see if we can actually find this exact spot.
11:34He must be on another height of land here, you're going to take this picture, right?
11:38Maybe.
11:39Okay, you see that tree that's in the middle of the picture?
11:43Uh, it's sort of leaning, yeah.
11:44It's leaning, okay.
11:46That's significantly different than most of the things around it.
11:49All the other trees are little?
11:50It is.
11:51Okay, the wolf den is in that picture someplace.
11:54We're not certain whether it's that little dark spot that's just to the left of that tree or not.
11:59The LIDAR drone is going to be floating out over that mysterious cache area for the next two, three days.
12:06The team will look for this specific tree, as seen in Farley's photograph, when they next head out.
12:12When we correlate the maps, we're in the area and we've localised it.
12:18Now we've just got to get boots on the ground.
12:20They will do that tomorrow and work to realise their theories and research.
12:25The weather looks good for tomorrow, but they're not done with today's challenges.
12:32It doesn't matter what happens, you know, you push through, it's just a challenge.
12:35So we don't look at bad luck, good luck.
12:37You make your own luck, and the harder we work, the more luck we have.
12:44As expected, but not welcomed, the Faraheim team has a visitor to their out camp.
12:50So we spotted him, oh, 150 yards away. Couldn't tell for sure what he was. He was silhouetted.
12:58But when he turned, you can see he's got a gigantic hump signature of grizzly bears.
13:03In the North American wilderness, the grizzly bear towers as a powerful presence.
13:09300 to 600 pounds of muscle, rising up to seven feet tall and able to sprint nearly 60 kilometres per
13:17hour.
13:17So he's patrolling around. He's probably going to, we're thinking he's going to do an end run on us.
13:24Try and come in close and get a better look at us.
13:35Bear and gun grizzlies, I mean, they're pretty big customers.
13:40Black bear, we wouldn't worry so much, but grizzlies are a little bit more unpredictable.
13:45Willows are chest high now, so this is exactly the worst kind of spot for looking or avoiding a bear,
13:52because he could just be around the corner. He could be 20 yards away, wouldn't even know he was there.
13:58A barren ground grizzly bear explores the perimeter of the camp.
14:03As the second largest carnivore after a polar bear, the team need to stay aware of its presence.
14:10One of our team actually saw him swim across the river to come and visit us.
14:15He thought it was a log, actually, and we were kind of yelling at him later,
14:19it's like, logs don't float across rivers and then get out.
14:23We're staying in a cabin that's been ravaged by bears, almost certainly a grizzly bear in the past.
14:31Been here for three days.
14:33Now we've generated enough cooking smells that the local bear, proprietor of the establishment here,
14:40has come to see who's in this cabin.
14:44It came up, looked at the ridge, sat up, looked at us.
14:47You could see the huge big hump on the guy, but it didn't approach.
14:50It wandered away.
14:51We put the drone up, actually, to see if we could see it again,
14:54and it just blended in, and we never saw it again.
15:02We had a wonderful meal this morning, and he probably smelled us 10 miles away.
15:07Took half the day to get to us, and he comes in, he's looking at us
15:10and trying to decide whether he should come and collect rent for the cabin that we're in.
15:18They are relying on Joe's years of wilderness experience to keep them safe around this bear.
15:25Grizzly bears attack because they feel threatened.
15:28They're not attacking you to eat you.
15:31They're attacking you as a defensive or aggressive sort of thing.
15:35If you don't fight back, that's why playing dead only works with grizzly bears.
15:39It only works with grizzly bears.
15:41As soon as you're dead or not doing anything, they walk away.
15:45But they're watching you to see whether you move.
15:47Like, they'll move right away, right?
15:49I don't know if I could lay still while grizzly bear is mauling me,
15:52but many people have survived it, right?
15:56If the bear comes back, and we're very aware of it,
15:58we've already implemented that nobody leaves without telling somebody where they're going.
16:02Nobody walks away from the camp without a can of bear spray,
16:06and you've got to be very careful at night.
16:09The team retreats into the cabin for safety,
16:12aware that if the bear wants to get inside, it will.
16:16It's a good reminder for everyone to be vigilant and conscious of the wildlife surrounding them.
16:22You know, running, you know, when you see a bear, don't run away.
16:25Face the bear, look the bear, check the bear's behaviour, okay?
16:30If it's a bear on ground grizzly, if he's coming to investigate, he's coming to investigate.
16:35We're not going to be able to harass him enough to push him off like a black bear.
16:39He's going to be sticking around here, so we just have to be mindful of that.
16:42It is decided that when the team is on the move, one person will always have a shotgun, just in
16:49case.
16:49And I tell everybody, and we all have the same sort of understanding,
16:54if the bear's not chewing on the end of your gun or he's not chewing on a person, then he's
16:58fine.
16:59You know, scare him away, shoot the rubber bullets at him, whatever, do not kill the bear.
17:07The next day, Paul and Joe take flight to find strategic landmarks they could visit in search of the cairn.
17:15You can almost get, you can get to the backside of this island right here.
17:20One of the things that really motivated us to get up here was that there is an oral story
17:27of local people having been to this cairn in the last 40 years.
17:32We're not being guided there, and we're not getting full information, but we've been told this story.
17:37So it's a mystery.
17:39But to get over here, you could get it, you might be able to find it through channels through right
17:46here.
17:46There are still patches of ice that haven't thawed on these northern lakes.
17:51Paul and Joe identify the safe spots to land the plane, and where the team could reach the shore by
17:57boat.
17:57There's a patch of sand over there.
18:00It's out the wingtip now.
18:01A little grove of trees below it there.
18:03That's what I put it right there.
18:04The thing about Canada that people don't realize is most Canadians live within 100 kilometers of the Canadian border.
18:12And there's a lot of bush all the way to the North Pole.
18:15And Hudson Bay will be solid ice until June, July, and then start freezing up September, October.
18:21And that's the latitude we're at.
18:23Like, it just doesn't get warm enough up there yet.
18:27Right in line with that sand on the north side of it.
18:32There's a few rock piles there.
18:35The team heads to the location where Farley Mowat studied and wrote about a wolf den 75 years ago.
18:43The ground search for the care will begin from there.
18:48Ah, this is much nicer than yesterday, huh?
18:50Way nicer than yesterday.
18:52Put on my sunglasses.
18:54We have access to boats that are up there, and we've brought a couple outboard motors with us.
19:00And we've already done a trip down the lake to go search a site.
19:04Interestingly, it's really shallow there.
19:07The crew in the lead boat notice they're traveling in shallow waters, which brings a new danger.
19:14Look at that, Dave!
19:16I don't even see it!
19:17Whoa!
19:18Right there, right!
19:18Stop!
19:19Stop!
19:20Stop!
19:20Pull the motor up!
19:22Pull the motor up!
19:24There's a rock to your left!
19:25Jagged rocks sit just below the surface and could shred the propellers and the boat itself.
19:31The water's so clear, you can see the boulders that were left over from the ice age,
19:36and the glaciers melting, that we've whacked a couple props already,
19:40because you think the water's deep, and you run into a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere.
19:45Oh well, that was a good motor.
19:47Anyway, you know what?
19:48I never saw that.
19:49I didn't even see that rock behind him the whole time, right?
19:53Where's that paddle?
19:53Yep.
19:57Perfect.
19:57Sorry, best you can do.
20:02You're clear here.
20:03Okay.
20:04It's just a shawl.
20:06We're merely going along, not a care in the world, because this lake is clear and deep,
20:11and I notice, I glance over to one side and I see this rock actually sticking just out of the
20:17surface of the water.
20:19It's an outcrop that would go from the shoreline all the way across, so we'll be clear on this side
20:26hopefully.
20:27Just drift it.
20:29If you can't see rocks, you'll be okay.
20:31If you can't see them, you're okay.
20:34Are they stuck?
20:36No, no, no.
20:36They're just drifting onto the shoal, because there's not much water there, so there's no...
20:40Yeah, they're stuck is what he's saying.
20:42Right here.
20:44Shallow, shallow, shallow.
20:46I did that one, Jenny.
20:47It's a good lesson for the inexperienced crew on the camera boat to check the surroundings for rocks in the
20:53water.
20:54Shallow.
20:54Yeah, pull up.
20:57Big rock.
20:59Yeah, I'm in river drive now.
21:01Okay.
21:02Whoa.
21:03Joe?
21:04Rocks everywhere.
21:06Okay?
21:06Okay, watch me.
21:08Ready?
21:09JJ leads the boats out of shallow water.
21:12Keep it in shallow drive though.
21:14I'm in shallow drive, but it's a long shaft motor, so shallow drive is just normal drive, right?
21:21Okay.
21:24Like, you see that?
21:27That's reeds.
21:29Yeah.
21:29Okay.
21:30We'll go pick them up.
21:31Yeah, yeah.
21:31And then we'll tie up and we'll go together.
21:33He wants to tether the boats together to keep them all safe.
21:38Whoa.
21:39Big rock.
21:41Foot.
21:43They're on like a foot.
21:45They're on like a foot.
21:48John, my good sir.
21:51You got a rope for me.
21:53Come with us.
21:57Okay.
21:58So, Joe, do you have any line back there?
22:01No.
22:01No line back there.
22:03Okay.
22:03So, here's what we're going to do.
22:04Getting the boats close and tied up proves to be more difficult than expected.
22:11I'd like to pull you.
22:13I mean, at least the length that is this long.
22:16How long is the shaft on that boat?
22:17I'm going to get rid of this.
22:19Oh, no.
22:19Joe, forward.
22:20Forward.
22:20Forward.
22:22Last of them.
22:23If I get one more line though, you could tow them.
22:25Just tie them side by side.
22:27If you find us a way past, which side should I go on?
22:32I think you should go north.
22:34I'd go on that side because you're on the other side of these islands here.
22:39Well, we can go down this side.
22:42Joe and JJ figure out the best way out of the shallow, rocky water.
22:51I'd go on that side.
22:52Well, we have to go backwards though because it's right off the end of the island.
22:55See that gap straight in front of us there?
22:58We go through that and we're there.
23:00Okay.
23:00I'll give it a shot.
23:01Okay?
23:02Yeah.
23:02Can you tie it, maybe tie it further up to our bow because it's going to want to peel off,
23:06I think.
23:08Just tie it up.
23:09Dave, it's going to be a while.
23:11So we have moved out into the channel and expect to be able to have deep enough water
23:18for the motors.
23:20And the nice thing is the water's so clear.
23:21When we think it gets shallow, we can literally look down and tell if it's deep enough.
23:27The ice is just around the corner, you know?
23:29Oh really?
23:30Oh yeah, it's all frozen.
23:31JJ keeps an eye out for rocks and ice and other potential threats.
23:37If we stop, the worst thing is, is I pitch forward and I got nothing to stop me from.
23:43When we hit a rock, the water's got to be like 40 degrees.
23:47I don't know what that means.
23:48Speak Canadian.
23:49I don't know.
23:5010 Celsius?
23:51No.
23:52It's not that bad.
23:525 Celsius.
23:54I've gone to 2 before.
23:56Yeah.
23:56I paid money for that too.
24:00My forefathers sailed the Atlantic looking up, you know, look at the stars.
24:05You can make it across the Atlantic pretty easily without any navigation stuff.
24:10But they were sailing on water, finding new lands.
24:14And that's why everybody started going down the rivers, because you don't know what's beyond the river.
24:18If you go down the river, you can see what's there.
24:20We're looking for a very specific thing.
24:23And without the technology we had, without the LiDAR and the GPR and Starlink and sat phones and float planes
24:30and generators,
24:32we would have a much harder time searching for this.
24:38We'll give you $100 if you go in a polar flood.
24:41$100 Canadian or American?
24:43Canadian.
24:43No.
24:44I have $100 with me.
24:46Canadian or American?
24:47Canadian.
24:47No one.
24:48If anyone falls in the water here, it could not only endanger their life, but also end this expedition before
24:56it begins.
24:58It's all candled.
24:59It should be thin.
25:02There's ice on this side.
25:04You want to go through that?
25:06I'll just touch the edge of it.
25:08Hang on, Andrew.
25:09Ramming speed.
25:10It looks really good.
25:11Let's see it.
25:12How thick is it?
25:13Stop!
25:14Stop!
25:14Stop!
25:14Stop!
25:15Stop!
25:17Stop!
25:21Whoa-ho-ho-ho!
25:24What the hell was that?
25:28Dangerous!
25:29Dangerous!
25:31The ice is thicker than expected, and diving into it at that speed could have caused a lot of damage.
25:38There's a little sand beach right around the corner here.
25:42That's where we're going.
25:43Sweet.
25:45Okay, here's their line.
25:48There's tracks on the beach.
25:49Whoop.
25:50Oh shit, there are tracks on the beach.
25:52The crew lands on shore and immediately notice animal tracks on the beach.
25:56Oh, actually, that's a bear track.
25:59That's a bear track.
26:00Go to your happy place.
26:02Go to your happy place.
26:03Let's move on to survival.
26:04Okay, Mac, you got that map.
26:06David sends up a drone to help orientate them to the area and look for bears.
26:12So where's that?
26:13Is that the lake?
26:15Is that supposed to be the lake?
26:16Right there?
26:17That is the lake.
26:19That lake?
26:21Let's see.
26:23All right, so straight off the boat, there's a high point.
26:29It's funny you can't see it.
26:30So we go straight off over here.
26:32Well, if you look at the trees, you can see that they're going up, so.
26:35And I don't see anything moving.
26:37That's a good sign.
26:39The team hikes toward a gravel ridge to identify where Fali Mowat camped and observed a wolf pack more than
26:4675 years ago.
26:47If they can match this location to Windy Smith's map, they can get one step closer to finding the cairn.
26:56Bear!
26:58Are you here, Bear?
27:01Addis-a-da, Bear.
27:03Addis-a-da.
27:04Okay, Jay.
27:07A little evil.
27:08It's always a little nerving walking around without someone with a gun directly beside me, so just, you know, talking
27:13to the bears as you go by in hopes that they don't pop out is always a little unnerving until
27:17you kind of settle down and realize that there's not anything directly near you.
27:21I hate this kind of stuff.
27:23What stuff?
27:24Like the bears and the willows kind of shit?
27:27Yes, there's always a chance a bear could attack.
27:30Just don't put yourself in scenarios where that could happen, and we've got the right precautions.
27:36Everyone's aware of bear spray, and we've got other protection.
27:40What if we go and follow this this way just for a second?
27:44Well, we actually want to go that way.
27:45We just got to get out of these trees, and then it ends.
27:47There's a path right here.
27:49They follow trails in the bush made annually by thousands of migrating caribou.
27:56Where's the guy with the gun?
27:58It's a black bear, David.
28:00Don't worry.
28:00It's a black bear, a small one.
28:02Oh, perfect.
28:04Well, then let's just take the bear highway.
28:07Sure.
28:08You got the spray.
28:09What am I, bait?
28:10For safety, the team moves toward a clearing on higher ground.
28:15This will allow them to see any predators coming their way from any direction.
28:21See, I don't like the path you're taking.
28:24But we got to go...
28:28You have to go this way.
28:31Hey, bear!
28:33So walking away without protection is potentially a bad idea because I can't run a bear.
28:43There's a game trail right here, Dad.
28:46Say again?
28:46There's a relatively decent trail right here.
28:49Okay.
28:51And so you had to be just very cautious about where you were going to not drift into the trees
28:58because you can't see anything.
29:00Bear!
29:00Your thing's off the bear spray, right, Mac? Or no?
29:03Yeah.
29:04Okay.
29:05Or go over the hill in case there's something over the hill that wants to come and visit you and
29:11eat you.
29:13Yoo-hoo! There!
29:15Mackenzie talks loudly to let bears know they are present.
29:19Surprising a bear during feeding would be hazardous to the team's survival.
29:26The team is so preoccupied with avoiding bears, they neglect to keep track of finding the gravel ridge.
29:33No.
29:34Which way's north?
29:35Uh, that way.
29:37Are you sure?
29:39No.
29:40Are you sure?
29:41You're cheating. You're looking at your compass.
29:43That is north.
29:44What way?
29:45That way.
29:46Okay, then lead us.
29:49Well, you're the one who hit the path.
29:50You just told me you didn't like that path.
29:52Yeah.
29:52But you're, like, we're following more water and muck.
29:56Why didn't you pull your GPS from the start then?
30:00I'm just going to follow this game trail. Follow me.
30:03No.
30:04Any animals here?
30:07Mack, where are you?
30:08I'm right here. You just relax.
30:10Yeah, that's the problem because you're making me walk through all this shit and you got the bear spray.
30:16I bet you $20.
30:18JJ has beat us there in some weird roundabout way that he just discovered happenstance.
30:26That's how it always freaking works.
30:28Mackenzie and David meet up with the rest of the team.
30:32Guys, let's go to the high ground which is over there.
30:36Sounds like a good idea where I was going.
30:39Who's leading this?
30:40Before you said go right.
30:41Who's leading this?
30:42I am.
30:44Okay, fine.
30:44So just shut the fuck up and don't say go right.
30:48All right, Captain.
30:51That's to you, Madir.
30:58There'd be a wolf, Asker.
31:03This is where Farley witnessed the wolves.
31:06And that's the point of land that leads to that point of land and the mysterious cache is in there
31:11somewhere.
31:12Maybe.
31:13Yeah.
31:13Welcome to a sand, Esker.
31:15Oh, yeah. Sandy.
31:19Dad, do you see the caribou tracks?
31:22Yeah.
31:23Yeah, they're all, uh, they're all in here.
31:28David is hopeful to see wolves from the same bloodline as Farley's wolves.
31:33When we were at the archives, it was literally every day he named them.
31:37Oh.
31:38It was like, you know, there's a husband, wife, mates, a pup or two, and then an uncle.
31:44So there's a second male and they would, they just got used to him and he just watched them.
31:48Hmm.
31:49Because, you know, 75 years ago, absolutely not the same wolves, right?
31:52Yeah.
31:53But if it's a, it's a good area and they haven't all been killed off, they should be in the
31:58area.
31:58You know, and you'd think they'd, uh, if they, if there were any wolves here, they'd come out and just
32:04be sitting staring at us, wondering what we're doing.
32:06But I've never really hung out with wolves.
32:08I wouldn't say I have either.
32:09So we searched the wolf, Esker, looking for the wolf dens.
32:12Well, dang.
32:14No wolves.
32:16With migration patterns and environmental transformations over the years, it's not surprising they didn't encounter any wolves today.
32:25I imagine, though, that over time, especially, so since this, all of this is just sandbars.
32:31Yeah.
32:32It drains really, really quickly, right?
32:34If you see, like, off on the far side, you'll see on the cliffs, like, some of the, like, the
32:38erosion.
32:39I imagine that, like, after it rains, if it's an unused den, I imagine it could almost fill in.
32:44Oh, collapsed.
32:46With everything filtering through.
32:47Well, I don't even know if it would collapse, but if this starts, if it rains enough or snow and
32:51it moves, it just covers over the area and after a while just fills it.
32:56The land of Fali Mowat's wolf adventure doesn't appear to exist anymore.
33:03The hollow itself, you know, might still be there, but the entryway, that's what I'm saying, might just be, like,
33:07filled in and caved in and eroded.
33:11The next challenge is finding precisely where Fali took a picture of the wolf den.
33:17So we had this photo from Fali Mowat's archives.
33:20And so we looked, pulled up the satellite photos, and in the satellite photos, there's a dark spot and a
33:26tree that look pretty similar to the angle, and it kind of looks like the same thing, but we can't
33:34find it right now.
33:35Like, there's wolf, old wolf poop right over here, so there are wolves here.
33:40Just, there's no obvious den.
33:43And that picture, it doesn't, that tree, like, lots of angled trees, but there's only a couple angled trees, and
33:51the angle's off, kind of.
33:54That tree there is the only one that kind of stands out for, at least from this elevation, right?
33:58It's leaning the right way.
34:00You can see the water in the background, that ridge is in the, in the distance.
34:04So we're in the spot.
34:06One of the things we found in Fali Mowat's archives are his photos that he took on the wolf esker.
34:14And we managed to find the exact spot he took the picture because trees grow very slowly there.
34:21So we're here, this is it.
34:22This is where Fali Mowat was, like, in the late 40s.
34:25The team is positive they are at the exact spot that Fali was.
34:30I wouldn't be surprised if no one else has ever visited that site since then, because he never went back.
34:37And if he never went back, there's no reason for anybody to go there.
34:41And it's like a half mile, mile walk.
34:43Absolutely, we found the spot.
34:45This is the spot.
34:47Yes, this is an amazing place to be, because Fali Mowat was lying here Sunday five years ago,
34:52watching a family of wolves over the summer.
34:57It's super exciting to finally put everything together that we have in the last few months and finally make it
35:02here.
35:02So I think we're definitely on the right path of getting to our final discovery.
35:07I think we're on the right track.
35:08I think we're finding our ground here and kind of comparing what he has to us.
35:12I feel like I know the guy. I think we'd be great buds.
35:15I think he would love to have come with us if he was still alive.
35:20According to their maps and pictures, they believe they are close to where the Viking Cairns should be.
35:30So that's the point of land, the mysterious cairns over in that area there.
35:34Yeah.
35:35And the Windy Smith map that we looked at aligns coincidentally with where Fali has this mysterious cache.
35:45The mysterious cache is believed to be a lost Viking cairn, a relic over a thousand years old,
35:52possibly marking the burial of a Norse traveller who died from disease, a bear attack or causes unknown.
35:59The mystery deepens and the team prepares to investigate.
36:04He has a mysterious cairn marked on here.
36:07We are at the spot where he hung out with the wolves.
36:10So it's highly probable that what we're looking for is over there.
36:14That's where we're going next.
36:21Coming across the story of Curse of the Viking Grave and Windy Smith with the cairn and Farley with his
36:27research.
36:28And if it's there 40 years ago, there's a very high probability we can find it.
36:34That's where we're going next.
36:35From the boat, the explorers look for the spot where Windy Smith and his sled dog team might have taken
36:41shelter from a blizzard close to a century ago.
36:45The ancient cairn would have been nearby to Windy's refuge.
36:49Joe speculates what Windy was thinking to help locate the cairn.
36:55I can see him driving his dogs right off the lake onto that.
36:58Absolutely.
36:59So we'll just go around the corner and see what we see there and then we'll find a spot to
37:07launch off.
37:08JJ keeps an eye out for shallow water and jutting rocks as they travel parallel to the shore.
37:15So far nothing and we've still got a clear exit.
37:22Still good?
37:23Yeah.
37:25So anywhere in here, Davey, you see a good spot to land, we'll just pull in there and you can
37:31launch and start looking at these little low spots.
37:36This is where Windy Smith made the transition from the lake onto the land.
37:41They are careful landing the boat on shore due to the low water, rocks and lack of solid anchor point.
37:51JJ starts setting up the drone for an overhead search.
37:54It's equipped with a LiDAR sensor which sends out laser pulses to the ground and collects the data that is
38:01bounced back to create an accurate 3D model of possibly an ancient Viking cairn.
38:07It's showing that there's nothing even connected.
38:09Yeah, like there is nothing that connects the drone itself.
38:12It only can fly with joysticks.
38:16Oh, because it doesn't have a map at all.
38:19RTK positioning error.
38:21The LiDAR drone runs on maps and without updating those maps you can only go to a certain geography because
38:27it terrain follows, it doesn't want to hit hills, it needs to know where it is.
38:32And we got outside of our search area that we had maps for and realized we can't download any maps
38:38without the Starlink and the Starlink was back at camp.
38:40It's the map, it's the base map.
38:42We need to go back.
38:43Download.
38:44Download the base map.
38:45Yeah.
38:46JJ encounters a major problem with it before takeoff.
38:50The LiDAR sensor will not scan the landscape or collect any data without the original map downloaded to the control
38:58system.
38:59Because otherwise we're just flying it like a recreational drone and it's not doing its job unfortunately.
39:07So there was no reference for the drone to start its flight plan.
39:10So therefore unfortunately it wasn't able to do what it needed to do which was fly a corridor and collect
39:17the data.
39:17So to recap we need the offline maps.
39:20It won't run a grid without a grid to run against.
39:24JJ's only hope in getting the LiDAR working on the drone is to head back to camp and use the
39:30satellite phone to download the large map files.
39:34So we have to get back there and get those maps because otherwise the drone is a very expensive paperweight.
39:41Man that's Starlink's fast at downloading.
39:45There we go.
39:46We got the Starlink connected to get the maps.
39:50So the drone is ready to go.
39:53Johan is programmed in the search area.
39:55So we're back on track because that drone gets going.
40:00It searches so much area.
40:01It's so little time.
40:02But it needs those maps.
40:03The rest of the team is on standby as JJ isolates himself and keeps working on loading the map into
40:10the drone's system.
40:12That's where we are.
40:13Fantastic.
40:15So now I can, from our base map, hang over to where we were looking before.
40:23If this doesn't work, the odds of locating the cairn are severely diminished.
40:31Now I can download an off-site map.
40:37So our search area from Windy is going to be right around here.
41:04The LiDAR drone gives us eyes in the sky, but a different view of the ground.
41:10So flying by plane, it's really good for looking for a crashed airplane.
41:17It bent the trees and there's, you know, there's wreckage all over the place.
41:20But if you're looking for something that could be 500 years old, it could be underneath the trees.
41:26And you just might not see it flying on a plane.
41:28And we're not walking all over the bush.
41:30It's just too much territory.
41:32And some of the areas we couldn't get to because we couldn't land a float plane, ice.
41:36And we couldn't get there by boat.
41:37The drone let us send that thing out to look for stuff using light to map it.
41:45And it made a big difference.
41:50So we got back from our big adventure and you did some processing.
41:55I've never seen LiDAR.
41:56I know it's used a lot, but I just haven't seen it.
41:59What do you end up with?
42:03Something that looks a little bit like.
42:06So here's the first data set that we pulled.
42:09Wow.
42:10Oh, wow.
42:12So we're looking at maybe 20% of the area where it might be hidden or tucked into a ravine
42:18or next to a cliff or in a depression or something like that.
42:22Actually closer to the wolfesker.
42:24So if we do this, I think that we're just going to continue to find out where it isn't.
42:29And then eventually we'll find out where it is.
42:36That goes around.
43:00Today we go to the passer Alcantara攣ulo.
43:03You
Comments