I'm the publisher of Vice Magazine.

We had heard about this guy named Heimo Korth.

He lives in an area called the Alaska National Wildlife

Refuge, ANWR for short.

Heimo's one of the most impressive

people I've ever met.

He is almost totally self-sufficient, and he's one

of those guys that could survive no matter what.

Now here it is.

Vice presents Heimo's Arctic Refuge.

[MUSIC PLAYS ON RADIO]

VOICE ON RADIO: Four.

Visibility one, zero.

Patchy fog.

Few clouds.

at 5,000.

6,000, scattered.

Temperature minus 2.

Dew point minus 2.

Anaktuvuk.

Pass, wind zero, one, zero.

At five, visibility one and one-quarter.

Ceiling 400 overcast.

Temperature zero.

HEIMO KORTH: Me and Edna are the last ones left to actually

live out here.

The rest live in Fairbanks, and they just commute from

Fairbanks out here, spend a month or two, and

then they go back.

And this is the only National Wildlife Refuge that has polar

bears and moose and caribou.

It's got a lot of media attention because they want to

drill for oil here.

The vast majority of America's against it.

Eventually, they just want to get people

out of the land here.

That's why this permit for us to be here is only good up

until the death of our last child.

And then after that, that's it.

THOMAS MORTON: Hey, it's Thomas.

We are in the Brooks Mountains.

It's in Alaska, a few hundred miles north of Fairbanks and

basically the rest of civilization.

We're going to the cabin of Heimo Korth and his wife Edna.

He's been a trapper up here for 30 years,

carved out his own life.

Lives completely by his wits with a little assistance from

the occasional bush plane.

Heimo Korth moved to Alaska when he was 19 to get as far

away as possible from human civilization.

He met his wife Edna while living in an Eskimo whaling

village on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.

Eventually he convinced her to move with him to the harsh

Alaskan interior, more than 150 miles above the Arctic

Circle and even farther from the nearest roads,

supermarket, or schools.

Two of last people allowed to live in an area the size of

South Carolina.

Their nearest neighbor is about 100 miles away, and the

only chance of emergency medical care is by calling the

Army for a helicopter ride.

They've managed to raise a family out here while dealing

with the fearsome climate, isolation, predators, and the

drowning death of their firstborn daughter.

The Korths migrate annually between three separate cabins.

Rotating cabins keeps them from depleting the resources

in any one spot and ensures that there should always be

enough fur and meat available for them to make

it through a winter.

We're going to spend a week with them and see what it's

like to live on America's last frontier.

KEN MICHAELS: Just look for a straight gravel bar,

straight's the key thing.

Hopefully into the wind.

Oh, there's his cabin.

THOMAS MORTON: Oh, yeah.

KEN MICHAELS: Oh, there's his tent.

Landing should be still all right at this time.

HEIMO KORTH: My name's Heimo Korth and this is where we

live in the northeastern part of Alaska.

It's beautiful.

Three degrees this morning.

EDNA KORTH: My name is Edna Korth and I'm glad

you guys are here.

THOMAS MORTON: Already breaking in the gear.

This is our lifeline.

It's about to head back to Fairbanks.

HEIMO KORTH: Me, and there are six others in the refuge that

were here prior to it being a refuge.

It's very commonly known as ANWR, you know, it's like

abbreviated for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So once it became a refuge, I guess we were

grandfathered in.

[DOG BARKING]

THOMAS MORTON: God, bear alarm.

Oh, look at all that meat.

HEIMO KORTH: People come out and they want to do this, and

they don't realize how it is.

They think, oh, I can do it.

I can do it.

And then they come out, and pretty soon they realize,

damn, it ain't like this.

And they build a nice place and they spend two or three

years, just to tough it out, just to prove to themselves.

I mean, for someone to trap this far out like this?

It took me years and years and years to get

what we have here.

Now we come over here.

The reason we set up this tent is because if the cabin ever

burns down, the tent is here.

It has a wood stove, it has wood in there, it has cots in

there, it has extra clothes, extra sleeping bag--

that would actually save your life.

It's very important.

To be out this far without something extra to get into,

you're running a high risk.

Put the branches in like that.

Here's the stock market, which really affects you out here.

OK. do you think you can get it going?

THOMAS MORTON: I think so.

HEIMO KORTH: OK.

You'll learn really quick.

OK, close it up.

Our youngest daughter and her husband were sleeping in here

when they came up here last month.

Our other daughter, her child, we had the grandkid up here.

THOMAS MORTON: That's great.

EDNA KORTH: When we built the house when the girls were

small, we put moss and logs.

THOMAS MORTON: Is there anything else between them?

EDNA KORTH: No.

Just moss.

THOMAS MORTON: Just moss and log?

Wow.

EDNA KORTH: Rhonda, she's 24 and she's working at the

emergency room.

Krin, she's married and she's 20.

And she works at Sportsman's Warehouse.

She wants to go back to college.

A week before you guys were here, they were

both here for 10 days.

It was nice to have them out here, but kind of crowded.

THOMAS MORTON: Yeah.

HEIMO KORTH: These are some of the caribou that we shoot.

These are the heads from the caribou.

And we eat the heads.

When we're going to eat them, we just saw off the horns and

skin the head, and then we take the eyeballs out and then

we roast the rest of it.

We eat the tongue, the cheeks, the lip, brain, everything.

THOMAS MORTON: It's good eating.

HEIMO KORTH: It is.

It's very good eating.

THOMAS MORTON: What's in the bag?

HEIMO KORTH: Oh, a bear skin.

THOMAS MORTON: Oh.

HEIMO KORTH: A bear skin.

This bear came into the yard to get the meat.

THOMAS MORTON: How long ago?

HEIMO KORTH: A week ago.

A week ago.

I was just--

I just walked over here, and all of a sudden, I look up and

there's a bear standing in front of me.

Edna, I need my shotgun.

And so with this much meat around, he'll just keep coming

back, coming back.

It's not good.

So you gotta do something about it.

This is caribou meat, the hind leg.

A good healthy sign that--

if you kill an animal and it's fat, the animal's healthy.

If it's skin and bones, there's

something wrong with it.

And this here's part of a moose neck here.

Here's a side of ribs.

THOMAS MORTON: God, it's huge.

HEIMO KORTH: Yeah.

THOMAS MORTON: These fish are all king salmon.

And these are the ones in the summertime I catch, and then

we save these and use these for trapping bait.

These are used primarily for martin, mink, lynx, wolf,

wolverine, fox, weasel.

[DOG BARKS]

HEIMO KORTH: Kenai, huh?

She's half husky and half Akita.

To alert us when there's bear and stuff.

So the dog stays outside, because I don't believe in a

dog coming in the house.

I'm really against that.

These drums are used for storing food.

Craisins, pancake mix.

And this way, a bear can't get into it.

We have an extra satellite phone, and it goes in there.

And that is in case the cabin burns down.

THOMAS MORTON: How long have you had this cabin?

HEIMO KORTH: Oh, we built this one in 1984.

And this pole here, this is a tree that

was here and it died.

But I attached the satellite phone antenna to it.

And then this other antenna, right straight up, that's for

the aircraft radio so I can talk to airplanes.

THOMAS MORTON: And the salad dressing and the guns?

HEIMO KORTH: You know, the shotgun in

case there's a bear.

There's a rifle here for the caribou, and

this .22 for grouse.

And the salad dressing and all, keep it cool out there.

Damn, let me get my coat.

I'm freezing.

You guys ain't cold?

THOMAS MORTON: I'm getting there.

HEIMO KORTH: I'm getting there now.

I gotta get my coat.

Hello, Edna.

Oh, this is the antenna for the radio, right here.

In the middle of winter, jeez, we pick up Europe easy.

London comes in real easy.

Tokyo, all that.

[MIMICS ASIAN LANGUAGE]

You know, China somewhere, I don't know.

They all come in.

THOMAS MORTON: Are these all your traps?

HEIMO KORTH: All?

There's maybe 1/100th of them right here.

THOMAS MORTON: Where are the rest?

HEIMO KORTH: All over.

THOMAS MORTON: Oh, oh, they're already out and set.

HEIMO KORTH: Yeah, a lot of them.

This is for marten and mink and muskrat.

And this is a beaver snare here.

We put this under the ice for beaver.

And then here's more snares right here.

THOMAS MORTON: John and John, they're getting a shotgun.

But I'm gonna say, if the dogs go nuts, more likely or not

it's a moose or a caribou, but it could be a bear.

How you guys doing?

JOHN MCSHANE: Doing all right.

THOMAS MORTON: Basically, they're like our bear alarm.

[SAWING]

THOMAS MORTON: I'm still wondering, when did you decide

to go to Alaska?

HEIMO KORTH: I was just looking through those Outdoor

Life magazines.

You know what them are?

Them hunting magazines?

This is 1974, though, mind you.

You know what I mean?

You know, I'll write to hunting guides and see if they

could use somebody.

And he wrote back, and he said, yeah, he uses

packers to pack meat.

I was young, 19 then, and I said, yeah, I'll go for it.

So I did.

THOMAS MORTON: How did you get interested

in the Arctic, though?

Do you remember?

HEIMO KORTH: Oh, just wanted to go someplace where there