Getting Water in the Arctic | Life Below Zero

[Music] Not everything goes the way you want it to go. You don't get to choose how life unfolds; you just get to live it. [Music] Looks like I've got good moving water, but it looks like it's out there quite a ways right now here in Kavik. This is the changing of the seasons—winter's letting go and the springtime is coming.

My list of chores is long, but the most important one that opens up first is to get running water to camp. How do I get water? [Music] I have a hose; I have to run it all the way down to the river, put it in the river, pump it all the way up, filter it, treat it, and then send it around camp where I want it.

That's stagnant right there—I'm not interested in that. Why is it important to have rapidly moving water in a stagnant pond? What do you get if you're down south, maybe in the lower world? Tadpoles? Slime? You're gonna get sick, so stagnant water is a big fat no. Moving water keeps it clean, keeps it oxygenated; that's what you want.

I've got nice water action coming down this way—it's moving. I may be able to just get it right here. The melting ice doesn't have a lot of issues, so what I think I want to do is get the water line set, let it out so we can finish thawing, and then go from there. [Music]

You can see my pipe is encased in a little bit of ice, so my favorite piece of equipment is a sledge. When you run into a problem, you can just, you know, kind of sledge it out. Alaska is known for its resources—oil, gold—but the one we as residents desire the most is that liquid water. That's what we call the gold.

I've had a good 9, 10 months of no running water in camp. A nice hot shower is not a bad thing, and especially this last year with COVID, the importance of keeping everything hygienically clean can't be overstressed. He said, "Mike doesn't make right," wasn't somebody with a sledgehammer; I guarantee you that.

Not bad for a fat old chick on the tundra. That's the pipe, and it can lay out here. There are going to be frozen bits inside. Even in a cloudy state, that sun will work on that and melt it so when I need to use it, it's free of that and can flow. I'll let this be, let nature start working on it, go inside, and warm up. [Music]