This is a review and recap of episode 5 of Alone: Frozen. It takes place over days 35 – 30, and four contestants remain at the start of the episode.
Callie
Real winter has arrived in Labrador, as Callie wakes up to find everything covered in a blanket of snow crystals. She spends some time watching the tide come in and smash the ice against the rocks. As someone who still enjoys stepping on ice to make it crack, this would be amazing to witness in real life.
Callie spends most of her segment making a trap for fish. She weaves a net out of paracord and builds the basket out of sticks, then creates the spiked funnel and hangs “the cutest little bait bag” (of grouse guts and seal skin) inside. As she works, she talks about missing her family. She’s the big sister in her family, and she explains how she misses not being there to help her younger sisters but knows they will still be ok.
Despite the (amazing) fish dance she does for the trap, it does not net (bad pun alert!) any food for her. As such, she’s reduced to eating mussels (though she dreams of venison stew with goat cheese), which, unfortunately, makes her sick. She wakes up at 3 a.m. on day 20 almost throwing up. When the sun comes up, she stumbles to the lake and throws up there (which brings back memories of camping in your early 20s, am I right?). Afterward, she collapses on the bank but convinces herself to get up. I may seem callous to her pain, but Alone usually ends an episode on an illness to trick us into thinking the contestant is going home. We shall see!
Woniya
Woniya also comments on the beautiful crystalline frost in her segment, but she has a mission that morning: to set up a cubby snare for a fox. As she does so, she explains her take on survivalism: “engaging with the wild around me is engaging with the wild parts of myself.” Unfortunately, while she had a fox in the snare one night, it got away.
After losing the fox, she changes trajectory and focuses on battening up the hatches for the cold, renaming her shelter the “storm fortress.” She further cements the name by making her firepit larger, expanding it into a fireplace with a mantel and a hearth. She also spends a lot of time gathering flat stones to build a chimney so she can seal her shelter and keep it warm without getting carbon monoxide poisoning.
As she works, she explains she wants to win in order to put a down payment on land so she can start a skills school.
Michelle
We don’t see a lot of Michelle in this episode, but she does check her snares and finds a hare in one, which she is very grateful for. She explains how she never felt lonely when she was on Season 8, but this time around she can’t stop thinking about her husband with a mix of gratitude and guilt.
She collects seagrass and weaves a coil basket for collecting berries, affixing it with feathers from the Jay she caught in the last episode.
Amós
We first find Amós gathering clams and mussels. He then goes to check his snares and hunt for a bear, explaining that he relies on the skills he learned during the war in El Salvador when he was a child, namely when he went on a hunger strike to protest his mother being taken as a political prisoner.
He can’t put this heartiness and fortitude to work, as he can’t find a bear. He heads back to his camp, where he laments the lack of food sources. As he’s resting by the fire, a spark ignites on his shirt, causing him to relive memories of Season 7.
On day 19 (31 days remaining), he makes another trek out to check his snares and talks about how he misses his daughter. He sees a squirrel but misses the shot, then goes back to his shelter and makes a large spoon for his mother out of wood. As he sits, he contemplates his situation. He says he wants to be strong enough to hug his daughter, but he’s not sure how long his body will be able to do that if he stays in Labrador with little to no food. So, he taps out!
As he leaves, he explains that he is constantly striving toward being good and making the right decisions; he didn’t want to push his body to a point where he would go home completely depleted. While I wanted to see him nab a bear, good on him for knowing his limitations.
Predictions
This season is definitely not “ladies first,” as we only have women contestants remaining on the show! I hope all of them succeed at making it 50 days, but something is telling me if only one person is left, it will be Woniya!
The next episode airs on Sept 15 on History Channel and StackTV.
