Beached Wheel | Life Below Zero

Just got done having my morning cup of coffee, and down here I can see the river really start dropping. Last night, it dropped a couple feet. I'm going to head up river, make sure my fish wheel is not high and dry. I can't afford to just let a functional fish wheel go to waste.

The water's been high for about 2 weeks now. It just kind of like planed out in the last couple days and just dropped overnight, just like that. And that's how this river is; it's constantly changing.

Jesse Holmes relies on the resources along the Tanana River to maintain a subsistence lifestyle. Getting his fish wheel up and running is crucial to feeding himself and his team of sled dogs for the year ahead.

So, the fish wheel is made out of spruce log rafts, and it floats out in the river. What we do is we take it with big logs and we push it far out into the river into a deep channel. We drop the axle down, and the big baskets dip through the water, turning with the current. As it scoops down, the fish have no place to go, so they swim right into the scoop. It scoops them up.

Now, the purpose of a fish wheel is to put up a large amount of fish. I can put up 900 fish in a day if the fishing's going good. I need to be catching fish and feeding the dogs fish right now because it's the most cost-effective way for me to be able to keep these dogs.

This could be a real big deal to me, to not be able to use that fish wheel. My main goal is to not fall in the river; it's one of the fastest navigable waters in the U.S. The Tanana River is, and there's just tons of silt in here. The minute you're in there, the silt starts filling your pockets, filling your clothes, filling your boots. Little things can become big things quick.

This thing's definitely up on the sandbars; the river dropped a couple feet here. Yeah, it definitely looks like I got my work ahead of me. If I didn't get this thing out here on the water current soon, it's going to get a lot worse because the river's dropping fast. If I wait any longer on this, it could put me out of the season.

It's stressful. The stakes are high, and like, it's very easy to mess up with the fish wheel. There's a lot of things going on; you got the current, thousands of pounds. I mean, this is going to be one hell of a job. Every minute that goes by is a minute wasted and another couple inches of water loss, possibly.

So, it's time to get to work, bust this thing out, and get on to the next process. It's a lot of work, but it provides a lot of food for the dogs. There we go, she's moving.