Winter in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not an easy place to be — with things getting so cold that it can take FOUR HOURS to defrost a plane’s engine.
Watch a clip from this week’s Last Alaskans on Discovery below as star Charlie Jagow tries to thaw out his airplane’s motor.
To do it he uses a makeshift contraption to funnel heat to the engine from a gas camping stove, combined with a blanket he has had since he was a child.
He says: “It’s about -35°F now, so it maybe takes like four hours to get the motor thawed out. You know at these temperatures, the motor’s pretty much a chunk of ice right now.
“I’m just taking the heat from the stove and trying to put it inside the cowling, which is the cover on the motor.
“This is my blanket from when I was probably like eight years old, so I bet when I was eight if I saw this I’d have been pretty excited. I really was into airplanes when I was little.”
Meanwhile, for many of the Alaskans the winter’s low snowfall is a big setback, as it’s go time but they aren’t able to use their snow machines or dogsleds.
The Last Alaskans airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Discovery.