Episode 2 of History Channel’s Alone, Season 10, takes place over Days 1-9. Ten contestants remain at the start of the episode.
This season of Alone is set in Northern Saskatchewan in an area called Reindeer Lake, which is like an ocean (two million acres!) of small islands. The contestants have to survive heading into winter. The second episode focuses on Melanie, Taz, Ann, Wyatt, and Mickey, with a bit of Jodi.
This is a recap and review of Alone Season 10 episode 2. Spoilers to follow!
Ann
We meet Ann Rosenquist (56) on day 1. She is overwhelmed upon arrival but soon moves to set up her shelter. An off-grid organic farmer from Northern Wisconsin, she leaves behind her partner and daughter.
She goes hunting and finds berries and mushrooms. Her survival strategy is to become part of the landscape and hunt big game.
We see her next on day 6, as the migrating Canada geese fly overhead. They remind her that winter is soon to arrive, so she extracts boulders to build her shelter in the ground. Ann explains how she was an exemplary student and got accepted into university but decided to work the land instead in the mountains.
Canada geese may look beautiful flocking south, but if you’re ever visiting Canada, avoid them at all costs. They’re basically cobras in bird form.
Wyatt
We meet James “Wyatt” Black (50), a business owner from Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada as he wades naked into the lake to bathe. He grew up hunting and fishing with his father and grandfather. His first move upon arrival is to set himself up for fishing, creating a gillnet and a fishing rod with a wheel.
On Day 4, he admits he hadn’t successfully caught anything yet. The wind picks up considerably, and he’s forced to hunker in his shelter. At 7 p.m. he wakes up unable to sleep in the 31-mph winds.
On Day 5, Wyatt has survived the wind. He checks his net and finds a 35-inch pike. This gives him the motivation to continue with the competition.
Melanie
On day 3, we find New Yorker Melanie Sawyer (54) leaving her temporary shelter. She moves to build a permanent one to suit her height. Melanie was a former model who became interested in wilderness survival after her kids grew older, and she ended up throwing herself into it 100%. She is now co-owner of a living history school. She’s on Alone to find inner peace and be herself without the labels she’s lived under her whole life.
She uses her skills as a historian to build a cabin that people back in the 1800s would have used, hoping this will give her a leg up once the winter hits.
Mickey
We meet Mikey Helton (31), a carpenter from Rome, Georgia, on day 4 as he wakes up in his sleeping bag in a bad mood. He’s only had six handfuls of berries since he arrived, so he’s going hunting. He explains that he’s never been in a similar situation to Alone and had never heard of Saskatchewan before now (as a Canadian, this made me laugh). He’s a jack of all trades with skills in hunting, tracking, and fishing. He grew up foraging and living with no running water. He wants the $500,000 to help his autistic son with his therapy.
On his hunt, he realizes he forgot his paracord to mark a trail. As such, he ends up getting lost (participants are prohibited from bringing compasses).
He walks for hours and becomes disoriented. He finally finds the shoreline, which leads him back to his shelter. Not a very productive day for Mickey.
On Day 8, his luck turns as he lands a grouse.
The next day, he laments not being able to get any fish. He begins to work on his shelter, reinforcing it with pine boughs and moss. He’s having stomach cramps from not eating enough. Later that evening, he’s nauseous and clearly in a great deal of pain, saying, “I can’t do this.”
Taz
Day 7 finds Tarcisio “Taz” Ramos Dos Santos (35) successfully hunting a tiny squirrel. He’s a musician and homesteader from Becket, Massachusetts. He decides to build a canoe. His strategy is to spend a maximum of two days on any project to avoid wasting time.
On day 8, he talks about his creative process while building his canoe out of spruce, moss, and tarp. He gets in and, because his boat is of sound design, he makes a gillnet.
Later, Taz catches a huge trout and smokes it on a homemade smoker. He leaves it burning all night. He wakes up on day 9 and resets his smoker, only to have it catch on fire.
His fish are ruined.
Jodi
We also get a few moments with Jodi (whom we met in episode 1). She shows her beat-up hands from sawing and cutting. She puts tree resin on her wounds as it has antibacterial properties. She’s still building her cabin. She explains that at home she and her family can build one of these quite quickly, but it’s going slower than she expected by herself. She talks about her injury and how her family helped her when she was recovering. She manages to get the first three-quarters of the cabin completed.
Predictions
My love of contestants who build cabins will always bias me toward those contestants, so I’m hoping for Jodi or Melanie at this point. Objectively, Wyatt and Lee are strong contenders, given their proven ability to procure fish.
In terms of who will be the first to leave, I’d say it’s between Mickey and Cade, both of whom made silly mistakes. Taz also burned up his fish, but that seemed more like bad luck. While Alone does like to show people sick at the end of episodes and then have them recover, it is possible Mickey will be going home at the start of episode 3.
The next episode airs on June 22 on History Channel and Stack TV.
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