Episode 9 of History Channel’s Alone, Season 9, takes place over days 53-61. Three contestants remain at the start of the episode.
This is a recap and review of episode 10. At the end, I’ll provide my guess as to who will win the finale!
Spoilers to follow!
Tiemojin
We begin the episode with Tiemojin and Rungu, his wooden club. He catches a squirrel in a trap and uses the club to dispatch it. While gutting his catch, he explains his time with the Maasai tribe in Kenya, where he studied traditional medicine, and why he places so much value in it.
He also spends time insulating his house a bit and collecting cedar bows. While doing so, he pulls too hard on a branch and falls quite heavily to the ground. He’s okay, merely saying, “let’s not do that again.”
After his mishap, he takes time to consider his situation and decides he will only do one activity a day. He reminds himself not to push so hard.
When the snow hits, he talks about his training in Cold Weather Warfare in the Canadian military. For example, while boiling Reindeer moss to eat, he uses the water from it on his house. The chemicals from the moss help create a more robust insulator on the house, keeping out cold and wind.
Later in the episode, he discusses the interpersonal sacrifices he made to become a doctor and how those insolating tactics became a habit. He wants to break those habits when returning from the show.
In his last segment, he shows off his chipped front tooth, then decides to get his last bit of grouse from his bear hang. As he eats, he talks about his relationship with his mom and how he hopes this experience will make it stronger.
Karie Lee
As always, Karie Lee has a positive attitude. She begins her segment by making a snow angel.
Now that the real snow is coming, she finally starts closing up her shelter. As she works, Karie Lee talks about how she focuses on her creative side versus her logical side, as she finds it makes things go smoother. She decides to create a “cob oven” using sticks and clay. Unfortunately, when she starts a fire in it, the interior starts to fall apart. After the entire season, we finally see Karie Lee get mad, and she drops a swear.
A day or so later, Karie Lee goes looking for her traps. She shows us the fruit leather she’s subsisting on, but she also needs meat. Unfortunately, the snow has covered her traps, making them difficult to find and to move through the drifts.
When the big storm hits, she ventures into it to gather firewood but falls over trying to break a branch. The next day she has better luck, as when she heads out to get pitch from trees to start her fire, she manages to shoot a squirrel for dinner.
Juan Pablo
Juan Pablo’s unique approach – fasting – has him initially doing small things to conserve energy, like getting changed in his sleeping bag. But, unfortunately, fasting requires drinking extra water, so he has to venture to the river every day, even in the 50 mph winds.
As usual, he doesn’t boil the water before drinking it. He says he’s been “drinking sketchy water” during his everyday life, which means, he claims, he’s built up some sort of immunity.
The lack of the need to boil water means Juan Pablo doesn’t need a fire all the time. He’s the first person on Alone to not actively maintain one. He says he’s surviving using an 80-20 rule, which means to focus on only critical things. But then he makes an ice chisel, so he can walk on the ice once it hits 4-inches thickness. I’m not sure what he needs the chisel for, but I guess we’ll find out!
My Assessment
This was an interesting episode as usuall, the penultimate episode narrows it down to two people at the end. This time we have three people going into the finale! I’m still hoping Karie Lee will win, but if Tiemojin can find more food and Juan Pablo doesn’t get e-coli, I think it really is anyone’s game.
The final episode airs on Aug 4 on History Channel.
