Building a Bathhouse in the Arctic | Life Below Zero
When I first started bringing my kids in the woods, I wasn't sure how they'd take to it, and it seems like it's in their blood. It makes me feel real proud. Let's go check out the bath house; we got some work to do ahead of us.
Part of having these hot springs is taking care of the hot springs. There's a cold stream that flows next to the bath house. What we're gonna do is start working to get this whole place cleaned out. Take all the mud out and hopefully come away with a beautiful bathtub.
What we want to do is take these rocks out here and kind of divert the stream going in. We're just getting all this water to flow through, and then it'll take all the mud with it. Yeah, well, not all this mud, but inside we could stir it up and get that mud and stuff that's in there on the pallet washed out.
Okay, let's go inside. Put on some rubber boots. I want to teach Skyler a little bit of, like, community service. A lot of us use these hot springs; a lot of us use this bath house, and fixing this bath house is teaching him how to be a better person. When he comes to an area, he leaves it a better place.
Let's see that bucket. I could fill it up with mud; you can just carry it out. Last time this was done was probably years ago, so the mud's really built up. Okay, well, let's keep taking loads of mud out of here. What we want is a sand bottom, not a mud bottom.
Get all this mud up. Very dark black mud comes from deep within the earth, and it basically just settles inside of that bathtub. What I'm trying to do is take a good six to eight inches of mud off the bottom of this bathtub so it gets the clean, clear water inside. Life's too short for a muddy bath.
It's getting down to the sand though, Skye. You are? Yeah, we are. You're doing a lot of work. Skylar is working his butt off. He's taking these pans of mud and dumping them outside, and they're ready to be filled up again. Working together like this, we get a lot of work done.
Okay, oh, that one's happy. Okay, Skye, looks like we're about done in here. We got it down to sand; all the mud's out. Good job on carrying all that dirt out! With Skyler's help, we were able to clean that entryway out completely of mud, and it's looking beautiful now.
It looks good. You want to close that stream off out there real quick? Yeah, okay, I'm gonna dry off. Shut that cold water down; we're done with it. People at home in the city, they're using the cold knob and the hot knob on the faucet to get that perfect temperature.
That's what me and Skylar are doing today, but we're using a creek and hot springs to work out a perfect temperature in this bath house. I'm gonna really block this off right here; it should be good. My job in the hot tub is complete. [Music]