Les Stroud

Les will appear live on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson tomorrow night - Wednesday July 23rd at 12:35AM (ET/PT). Les will discuss his upcoming show “Surviving Sharks” for Shark Week on Discovery US.

Tuesday June 10, 2008 at 10 pm on Discovery Channel US.

The Alaska Experiment: Back from the Wild - Hosted by Les Stroud

Four groups of ordinary people gave up the convenience and technology of modern life to live in the Alaskan wilderness for three months. Now back from the wild, they reunite in a special reunion episode hosted by Survivorman Les Stroud.

Day 2

Well, so far this survival ordeal in the Sierra Nevada has been a little easier on me than usual. For this first shoot of the season, I’m not far outside of the town of Oakhurst, California, somewhere in the bush, a short ways after crossing Willow Creek, a popular hiking trail. Due to an overwhelming amount of viewer requests to both ‘head out there with the same gear as a backpacker, angler or hunter would have,’ and to stay on the continent and show some survival techniques in the areas most of us go to, I am, in essence, simulating a backpacker in the Sierra Nevada.
No one’s allowed to film in parks here so I couldn’t get into the beautiful Yosemite, but I’m on its doorstep in equally beautiful cedar and pine woods, about a quarter mile from Willow Creek. There’s a fantastic view of the falls here called ‘Devil’s Slide. I have a tent and sleeping bag with me this time — the lap of luxury! It’s a huge advantage in that I don’t have to worry about making a shelter at night. But I set up the scenario for this show so that I would come out prepared for just an overnight — a regular backpacker, out for a night in the wilderness. I spent day one hiking in; day two was spent ‘getting lost.’ So now, into my second night, I have only one peanut butter cup and a small chunk of cheese left in terms of food. I’m out of water, and though I’m by a stream, they say to watch for Giardia (a parasite) in the water here. I had one flameless boil-in-the-bag meal container left, so I used it to boil water and make some pine tea — lots of vitamin C and nutritional sulphur. I have no matches, but I have a flashlight. I have all my usual camera gear so I have to make a survival base camp to see what the area offers me for survival. There are mountain lions around, and two days ago someone was mauled not that far from here. In fact, I had to move some deer bones left over from an old lion kill in order to set up my tent. There are also black bears and rattlesnakes, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll see any. I’m most worried about stumbling into poison oak, there’s tons of it here.
Thanks to the tent, I’ve finally been able to get a decent night’s sleep on a survival trek. But this time I have a surprise planned. On day six, I’m going to head deeper into the bush and on day seven, the local SAR (search and rescue) is going to try to find me. If they can’t, I’ll stay in another day to give them a second chance.

Day 3 – Morning

I’ve forgotten how vivid my dreams become when my stomach is empty. I’m able to be comfortable in the tent but the lack of food makes it so that I don’t sleep very deeply. The dreams come strong and clear. There should be some wild edibles I can find today.

Day 3 – Night

What a day. I harvested a lot of wild edibles today — for breakfast I found a big patch of miner’s lettuce. I hiked across the creek and foraged for wild onions, Manzanita flowers, pine buds and acorns. I actually found some original mortise holes — six holes in the rock made by natives 500 to 1000 years ago. I even found a pestle. So I guess I’m the first human in hundreds of years to actually grind acorns into flour in those holes. The flour is soaking overnight in an effort to leech out the tannins.

Fire! I took my flashlight, actually a headlamp, took off the lens, attached the wires and turned it on, with a cotton ball from my backpacker’s first aid kit nestled on top. It got hot enough to ignite the cotton and now I have fire!! Although, now it means getting up throughout the night to keep it going. Tomorrow I’ll hope to make some acorn cake and set some traps over where I saw some squirrel activity.

Day 4 – Night

This is probably a good time to write in my journal, seeing as how I’m stuck in my tent in a thunderstorm. I sure wasn’t ready for this — what a classic mistake! All that time to put away firewood and prepare for a storm and I got lulled into forgetfulness by the good weather and the fortune of having a tent. So now I’ve scrambled to put firewood and dry tinder under my tent vestibule and I put a big punky log on the fire in the hopes that it will protect it and keep it going. Now I sit and wait and hope that no monster branches come down on the tent in the storm; some of the ones above me would be big enough to kill me.
In spite of all that, today was a good day; I got lots done. I started out by cooking some acorn flour ash-cakes. They were great! I followed that with some harvested cambium bark from a pine tree and some miner’s lettuce. The afternoon was spent setting up several Piute deadfalls to try for squirrels and gathering some pitch wood for a torch.
Late in the day I tried to use my water bladder bag to boil water. Unfortunately, I ended up burning pinholes in it. I know it can work but I must have got it too close to the heat this time. So there goes my water-carrier. I still have two of the tin foil boil-in-a-bag pouches, but they won’t close tightly anymore. I gathered a few pine nuts, made a pitch wood torch, and that’s when the storm came. It’s really coming down now.

Day 6 – Night

Well, the storm on day four didn’t do much. Four hours of light rain and wind, not even enough to soak the ground through the pine needle duff. So, day five ended up being all about setting up another Piute deadfall, but no luck catching any squirrels so far. I also took the strings off my guitar and used them to set up a squirrel pole set of snares. I then buried the body of my guitar under the forest floor duff and duct-taped my empty Pringles chip container in the hole so that mice could get in after the bait of leftover peanut butter cup, but not out. I then gathered some snow plant and attempted to boil it in the boil-in-a-bag pouch. I never got a rolling boil by suspending it over the flames but it steamed enough to make a meal out of the snow plant.
Today I started something different, a surprise for the show. I left my primary base camp and hiked farther into the mountains. Tomorrow, the SAR is sending 35 crew in to see if they can find me.
The hike up the 1200 feet to the vista I am on now was tough but invigorating. Some of it is quite steep, so I had to get down on my belly to climb through the thick bush. Unfortunately, some of that thick bush was large patches of Manzanita trees. They’re beautiful trees but very strong and even though they have no thorns their twigs cut like razors. To make matters worse, they’re a favourite hangout of lime disease-bearing ticks. In some spots I was literally reduced to crawling on the forest floor to get through the tangle. But, as always, the view from the top was worth it. And tonight there is no moon so the stars will be amazing — an entire star field, without light pollution to minimize it.
I’ve taken a twenty-hour head start on the search and rescue teams to head deeper into the thick of it and give them a good challenge. Of course, that means that all my safety nets are gone. I’ve used my Spot device so that only my safety team can track me — but it would be impossible for them to hike to me safely during the night.

Day 7

During the first few hours of the day I continued deeper into the bush. At one point I found myself with a very slippery and fast-moving creek to cross. The slick rocks here claim a life every year so this is not the time, while I’m completely alone, to take chances. I spent a good deal of time trying to find a safe place to cross. In the process, the SAR helicopter flew overhead looking for me and I was unable to signal it through the trees. They are out looking for me with dogs, on horseback, on ATVs, in Jeeps, in a chopper and on foot. It’s about three hours into their search time so far and I’ve had no sign of them. I won’t hide from them, I’ll be fair, but I won’t make it easy for them either. The Sierra Nevada is pretty rugged bush in spots.

We’ll see.

Wednesday Apr 2, 9:07 pm

Hi all,

I’m just now on a plane back from South Africa, where we were shooting Surviving Sharks, the last installment of shark encounters for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, U.S., produced by Gurney Productions. We were doing a series of experiments with the great white sharks in ‘shark alley,’ just off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa. It was pretty incredible. We had a few small twelve footers come in and one or two monsters – one of these breached the water by a few feet while going after our 50 lb frozen bait ‘chumsickle.’ I was in the cage for a closer look and at one point was experimenting with using a pole to stop them from going for the bait. It worked reasonably well with the twelve footers, but the fourteen to sixteen footers had so much more girth that it was like pushing a toothpick against a submarine. They really are massive, impressive beasts. And very beautiful.
I haven’t yet had the chance to tell you about shooting my other show for the Discovery Channel and Gurney Productions called Surviving Alaska, which will be part of a new series week they are promoting called Alaska Week. When you see these shows, remember that I’m only the host and not involved in any way on the production side of things. But the Gurneys do a great job.
For the Alaska shoot they cut a big hole in the two-foot thick ice and…well… along with the leading expert in hypothermia, Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht, I jumped in and stayed in for 13 minutes. At that point, Dr. Giesbrecht insisted we get out and then warm up carefully to make sure we didn’t succumb to/get hypothermia.  Other highlights of the shoot included being rescued from the ocean by the U.S. Coast Guard and simulating being buried by an avalanche. I think it will be quite a show! I believe it premieres on April 25th in the U.S.
I would love to bring you up to speed with even more happenings, but I’m two hours into a twelve-hour flight and I’m using the time to catch up on some work – including putting the finishing touches on the season three license deal for Survivorman.

All for now,

Les

Wednesday Dec. 26th, 2007

I’ve tried to get to the blog before now but we have been so busy with the sharks, shooting both day and night, that I just couldn’t manage it. Ok, disclaimer over with.
It was a fantastic time in Nassau. We went to the same dive shop that pretty much most, if not all, of the Shark Week shows have been shot over the last bunch of years. The reason? It’s simply fantastic shark diving there. The owner, Stuart Cove (that’s his real name, which is fortunate when you consider the fact that his place is on the ocean in a little cove and therefore dubbed Stuart’s Cove), has been interacting with these reef sharks and developing a tourism- and Hollywood-based business here for twenty years. The photos on his wall of fame will attest to this. It is actually a place that was built specifically for the filming of the T.V series Flipper. Read more »

Sunday, Dec 16th 2007, 3:45 pm

The seven-hour boat ride to Walker’s Cay was smooth and easy and lulled us all to sleep so that we arrived rested. We shuttled over to the island in a small boat and hung out on ‘bull shark beach,’ which is actually formed of jagged coral with no sand to be seen, and chummed the waters for bull sharks. Only a handful of black tipped sharks showed up so we shot a sequence of me free diving (without scuba gear) with them. They tend to be a smaller and slightly skittish shark, as well as very beautiful and graceful looking. Today we tried our luck at another island, to no avail, and we are all currently holed up on the big boat watching bad weather come in. I plan on doing some remote recording of some of my songs on board the boat, and tomorrow we head down to Nassau and the reef sharks.

Friday, Dec 14th 2007, 11:32 am

The rest of the day yesterday went off without a hitch. We spent the time scuba diving with the lemon sharks and getting the footage we needed to create the show. Last night was our last staying in the hotel. Now, we’re back on the boat and after today’s filming is done we will head over to Walker’s Cay to film the deadly and unpredictable bull sharks. We’ll be living on the ninety-foot boat Dolphin Dream for a few days while we’re there. Our underwater cameramen for this trip are Andy Casagrande, based out of Oahu, and Andy Mitchell, based out of Vermont. They come with boatloads of experience having shot numerous wildlife encounters for National Geographic. Our ‘topside’ cameramen are Ryan Powers and Dan Branam. Ryan hails from San Diego and I was fortunate enough to work with him on last year’s Feeding Frenzy show for Shark Week. He’s fresh off shooting episodes of Supernanny so he was ready for the sharks! Dan is from Miami and is a regular shooter for ESPN, he shoots a lot of their offshore material. These two guys do all the ‘topside’ footage – mostly me talking to the camera and all the shark action as seen from the boat. And at this very moment they’re being yelled at to get moving and shoot the tiger shark that just showed up. And I gotta go and be the host.

9:22 pm

Today was yet another great day of filming. We had two tiger sharks come in and rip apart the pairs of fake floating legs we were using to test the theory of whether or not it’s better to stay as a group or to spread out during a shark attack. The group survived; the solo pair of legs was destroyed. We then set about testing various coloured lights and how they affect the sharks at night. It’s after sunset now, and dark, and we’re heading by boat to Walker’s Cay. It’s about a seven hour trip.

Thursday Dec 13th 2007, 7:55am

What a difference a day makes! The last two days have been incredible. We headed out at midday by speedboat to meet up with the Dolphin Dream, our ninety-foot boat that we will use as our filming base. As we pulled up to the larger vessel we could see a mass of fins at the back of the boat. The crew had already been chumming and had a huge school of lemon sharks, along with a few tiger sharks, circling the boat. As we only had a few hours we got right into the filming and the sharks didn’t let us down. Mayhem always ensued whenever a fish carcass was thrown into the water, giving us a chance to film a lot of the ‘topside’ segments of my hosting.

Yesterday was the big day. We left the hotel and got out to the big boat early enough that the water was still clear from the high tide. Once the low tide comes in the water gets milky and is not very good for filming, so we only have a short window of opportunity to get great images.

I, along with Andy, the camera crew extraordinaire, as well as Stuart Cove, the shark expert from the Bahamas, Laura Bombier, the still photographer and Eli Martinez, the editor/publisher of Shark Diver magazine, spent the entire day in and out of the water in scuba gear. The big lemon sharks did not disappoint. We conducted a number of tests that had Stuart and I in the middle of the action, getting bumped and jostled by these big sharks. Don’t let the name fool you, they can be very aggressive and could rip a human apart at any time without much effort — especially since there were up to thirty of them coming in for the stringers of fish we took down to the bottom of the reef with us. Let’s see how today goes! They are calling me to get on the boat.

Later that day

We got an early start again, and made it out to the Dolphin Dream (the big boat that hails from West Palm Beach, Florida) for a good morning of shooting. The water was perfectly clear in the high tide and the sharks were ready. One of our tests didn’t film that well yesterday due to the milky, low-tide water so we decided to recreate it this morning. Money! The big lemon sharks came in and bumped and circled all around me while I was trying to figure out a way to get live and dead fish trapped in a milk carton. These lemon sharks are around eight to ten feet long and can rip off a human leg without much effort at all. To get them to back off a bit, I gave them a sharp hit on the nose with a stick or my fist; it did seem to scare them off fairly well. Though, when I tried punching them in the side to keep them away, it felt like hitting a big tarp. Their sides just absorbed my fist, as if they didn’t even know I was there. The nose is the key. It’s a sensitive area for them and they don’t like being hit there at all. A few times, when punching them to keep them away, I swear the look they gave me was definitely ticked off, as if to say: do that again and I’m taking a piece out of you.

Then came the test with the tiger sharks — three or four of these fourteen-foot giants moved in and stayed on the perimeter of the school of lemon sharks. We set up a manikin to float out to the tigers and put two cameramen on the bottom (about thirty feet down) to film it. Unbelievable! One huge tiger came in slowly and after a bit of a wait he figured out that the manikin was not going to hit back, not going to defend itself. While the divers used their cameras to keep the shark from attacking them, it ripped that dummy apart! It was a full on tiger shark attack in the scariest way. No mercy. No relenting.

Ok – now we have to set up for the next test and I have to get back in the water.

Tuesday Dec 11th 2007

The first day was not good for yours truly. Boats that run on diesel gasoline can be hard on the stomach at the best of times. Throw in some rough seas, really smelly chum (dead fish bait) and you have a noxious mix of smells that will challenge the hardiest of shark hunters. We stopped at two different spots during the day, about thirty miles out from the mouth of the Mississippi River, and started chumming. My producer, Scott Gurney, an experienced angler, has devised a special chumming system using a large barrel, a big hand operated fish chopper, some tubing and a water pump that works amazingly well. It spills out a ‘slick’ of fish blood, guts, oil and flesh that, after a couple of hours, is miles long and works like a dinner bell to any sharks in the area. Not on day one, though. After trying one particular spot we boated out farther to one of the four thousand oil wells that dot this area and hooked up beneath its shadow. That was it for me. Then, instead of floating freely in the swell and waves we were tethered to a large, smelly, noisy oil rig and the boat rose and fell without sympathy for its passengers. While donning my scuba gear to see what was below, I had to concentrate on what I was doing — it was difficult snapping snaps and clipping clips while sweating profusely in a wet suit in the Louisiana heat. I ended up donating my then-digesting lunch to the chum slick to aid in attracting the sharks. Our efforts, and the day, wasted and my pride a little bruised (after all, I can no longer say ‘I’ve never gotten sick at sea’) we headed back to Venice Marina for the night. Read more »

Monday Dec 10th 2007

Currently, I am flying over the Gulf of Mexico on my way to the second location shoot for Feeding Frenzy ll for the Discovery Channel. The ink is still wet on the contract I signed with Discovery to host the second installment of this special on sharks. I hosted the first one last year, as well as the entire twentieth anniversary of Shark Week itself. The past three days of this shoot have been a rough go.
We landed in Louisiana a few days ago and headed down to the mouth of the
Mississippi River. We were there to film the mako shark, one of the fastest fish in the ocean. A powerful predator, it has been clocked at speeds of up to fifty miles per hour. The weather in Louisiana was great, although this area is still on the rebound from hurricane Katrina. On any given stretch of highway you might see a truck or two way out in the middle of the swamp, half buried in the muck and water, or a couple of huge boats way up on land, a mile from the water’s edge. The hurricane hit especially hard in this area, at the mouth of the river in a marina called Venice Marina. Though signs of the cleanup are becoming evident, it will take years still, and it seems eighty per cent of the trees are standing dead. The entire region feels as though it is in the middle of a country-sized oil refinery. I guess in a way it is. After all, this is the Gulf of Mexico. A Louisiana girl named Cindy met us at the gate and welcomed us to the marina late the first night after our drive down from New Orleans.