‘Life Below Zero’ Is Back As Everyone Begins Their Winter Preparations


Life Below Zero is back for a new season, and there will be a few changes, especially for Chip and Agnes Hailstone and their family. Although everyone spends most of the warm summer and fall months preparing for the brutal winter ahead, they have an even bigger reason to move fast. On top of everything else they usually need to do, the Hailstone’s have acquired some new land and have to work fast to build a tent and get other essential items set up before the freezing weather hits.

Reality Blurred shared what’s ahead for the men and women of Life Below Zero this season. Besides the yearly fight against the bitter cold, unpredictable weather, and predators, there will be new challenges ahead for the cast. Sue Aiken lives alone during the winter at her camp in Kavik and after severe weather hits, she has to figure out how to repair her damaged communication system. Knowing Sue, she should be able to figure it out in no time at all. If the repair is beyond what she can do, then with her one and only lifeline to the outside world now inoperable, that could spell big trouble.

In the past on Life Below Zero, Sue has talked about being mauled by a bear, and she also took a bad fall in camp. More recently, viewers watched in horror as she suffered a serious injury to her shoulder when she was thrown from her snow machine. Fortunately, there was a Life Below Zero camera crew with her, and they were able to help her get back to camp. The next day, she was flown out to seek treatment for her injuries.

If she had another serious accident and didn’t have the ability to communicate or the Life Below Zero film crew wasn’t around, that could be disastrous for both Sue and her beloved camp. She could lose Kavik if she was forced to be away for too long a time. For fans who would like to know more about her experiences out on the tundra, she will be hosting a question-and-answer session on Facebook during the season premiere.

Even though life can be extremely hard and downright dangerous, there is no other place these hardy men and women of Life Below Zero would rather be.

“There’s this veneer of civilization that is weighing people down,” Glenn Villeneuve says in a sneak-peek clip of the new season. “And there’s something inside waiting to get out and you get out here in the woods and you can live it.”

Glenn calls a remote cabin in Chandalar, Alaska, home, and he prefers to be hands-on with everything he does. He likes to chop down trees with an axe instead of using a chainsaw and often builds new structures with materials provided by the environment around him. Glenn seems to revel in how he has chosen to live his life, and he has a deep respect and love for his surroundings, which shows in everything he does.

Last season Jessie Holmes from Nenana, Alaska, was a newcomer to Life Below Zero and shared with viewers the love and passion he has for his sled dogs. He provides them with the best of care and training, and it paid off big this year when Jessie and his team won the Yukon Quest 300. Although he was a rookie in the race, he has been running and working with dogs for 10 years. He used the race as a way to test his team and to see if he was heading in the right direction in regard to training. He has plans to enter them in the challenging 1,000-mile Yukon Quest next year.

This season on Life Below Zero, Jessie continues to improve the area where his dogs live and enlists the help of some friends. They are able to flatten and smooth out a large area for the dogs using a Bobcat. Now Jessie doesn’t have to worry about stepping in an ankle-breaking hole, and he will have all his racing dogs in one place and not strung out all over the property.

Are you a fan of Life Below Zero? Leave your comments, thoughts, and opinions below. There will be a total of 12 new episodes for this season. The Life Below Zero season premiere airs on Thursday, April 7 at 9 p.m. ET on the National Geographic Channel.

[Image via Life Below Zero/Twitter]

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