Les Stroud

Survivorman

No food, no shelter, no fresh water, no tools ... no camera crew. One man - alone in the wild for seven days with only his wits and stamina to sustain him.

Airing on The Science Channel in the U.S., and The Outdoor Life Network in Canada, each episode finds Survivorman Les Stroud abandoned in a remote location. He carries little more than the clothes on his back - and his cameras. Les not only needs to survive for a week without supplies, but he has to film everything himself, lugging over fifty pounds of camera gear the entire time. The Costa Rican rainforest, Arctic ice floes, Georgian swamp and the high Sonora desert include a few of 9 locales where Les has overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.

Off the Grid

While renegotiating doing another season of Survivorman, Les Stroud is producing two one-hour specials for Canada's OLN (Outdoor Life Network) called Off The Grid with Les Stroud. This new and captivating show will highlight Les' family's move to their 150 acre bush lot with solar power, rain harvesting systems, and many new technologies for living an energy-conscious and self-sustaining life.

Stranded

In August of 2001, while you all were enjoying a barbeque out back or relaxing in the sun, the award winning, highly acclaimed show @Discovery Canada (now Daily Planet) sent Les out to the remote bush of the Canadian boreal forest to survive alone for seven days. Les was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest person or settlement without food, tent, matches, or equipment. With just two cameras, the items any person might have in their pockets and his wits he had to deal with the intense bugs and the hottest week on record! He had to find food, shelter, water and make a fire without matches! There was no camera crew, no million dollar prize and no one to vote off the island! Les set the record straight for an audience obsessed with Hollywood notions on how to survive in the wilderness. The result, other than Les still being alive, was a hugely popular five-part mini series which was reformatted into a one hour special. A web site based on the series quickly became one of Discovery Channel's most popular and even surpassed the Crocodile Hunter web site for popularity.

Then he did it again, at the dead of winter! At the end of January when southern Ontario had a balmy plus 15 degree C. heat wave, Les endured temperatures of minus 41 degrees C. for an entire week alone. His only comfort was a shelter under a tree and a small fire started by striking rock against steel. He had an axe and one energy bar per day for food.

Snowshoes and Solitude

In the spring of 1994, Les Stroud and Sue Jamison bade farewell to modern society and followed their hearts north into the remote reaches of the Canadian wilderness. Leaving home, family and jobs behind, they would spend the next year living closer to the land than most of us could ever imagine. And they did it without the luxury of a single modern convenience.

Traveling by canoe and in the winter by snowshoe, Les and Sue were attempting to replicate life in North America some 500 years ago, before Europeans first set foot on the continent. They created fire without matches. They built a shelter with a stone axe. They survived on what the bush provided. In doing so they realized the true meaning of living wild, and how closely life and death coexist when you're many miles from human contact.

Snowshoes and Solitude is the incredible story of Les and Sue's year in the Wabakimi wilderness. It chronicles the struggles and triumphs of their daily lives, and their burning love and respect for the natural world.

Snowshoes and Solitude is one of the great wilderness adventures of our time.

Extra ordinary

This one-hour special, brought to you by Emmy award-winning documentary filmmakers Partners in Motion, is a biographical expose that profiles regular people throughout the world who live extraordinary lives. Les Stroud was one of the most popular subjects of the series.

Mad Trapper

Albert Johnson: legend, outlaw. This documentary tells the story of one of the most famous manhunts in history. Les Stroud is called in as a survival expert to analyze Johnson's methods of evasion and survival in one of the harshest landscapes known to man, the Yukon in winter.

Robinson Crusoe

This is arguably the most famous story of survival ever told. The character Robinson Crusoe was actually based on the life of Alexander Selkirk. Les Stroud is brought in and put on location to examine the survival methods used by Selkirk himself.

Shark Week

Les Stroud donned scuba gear and even a suit of chain mail in order to get up close and personal with sharks ranging from nine-foot Caribbean reef sharks in the Bahamas to 18-foot great white sharks off the coast of Australia. Les hosted Discovery Channel's 20th Anniversary of Shark Week - the most successful and longest running series in cable television history. And during the process had his hand bitten by one very hungry nine-foot shark!

Shark Week

To inaugurate the opening of Disney World's new adventure ride: Expedition Everest, Disney Channel and Discovery Channel teamed up to produce a series of specials on mountain climbing. Les Stroud hosted the series and found himself on the top of mountains explaining just how the heroes of mountain climbing are able to survive in such extreme environments.

I Shouldn't Be Alive

Following in the footsteps of the highly acclaimed series I Shouldn't Be Alive, Darlow Smithson Productions contacted Les Stroud to re-enact one of the most famous survival stories -- that of the Stolpas. A couple that got stuck in the Nevada mountains during a blizzard, they barely made it out alive. Stroud went on location and examined their experience day by day, showing what they might have done to survive. Les also demonstrated strategies that might have helped them keep their toes, which they lost after rescue due to frostbite.

I Shouldn't Be Alive

Surviving the wilderness is one thing, but how do we survive the next flood or earthquake? This one-hour special has Les Stroud surviving in a flooding house and traveling to New Orleans to interview actual survivors of hurricane Katrina. Stroud demonstrates a host of intriguing skills that could save your life.