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How long would you last living alone in northern Saskatchewan in the winter with very limited survival gear, no food, and having to build a shelter that could stand the test of Arctic winds and snow coming at you?
Most of us would only last a little while.
Out of 40,000 applicants, former Cook County resident Ann Rosenquist was selected to compete in the 10th anniversary of the popular History Channel survival series Alone. There were ten contestants; the last one standing won $500,000 cash.
Will Ann be the one to collect the allocates and the cash?
Ann, 56, was one of three women selected to compete.
Because the series hasn’t run yet, Ann could not divulge how she did.
Contestants were taken to a lodge on Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. They were given two weeks of training. Two weeks of fattening up before they had to find food for themselves. Some training was how to operate GoPro cameras and other cameras they needed to film themselves. They were also taught first aid, trapping techniques, and even taught how to shoot a gun “even though we didn’t have any firearms with us,” Ann said.
Contestants were placed many miles apart from each other in the woods. Ann said when they arrived, it was late fall, unseasonably warm, but no bugs. There was a lot of black spruce, reindeer moss, and some scraggly birch. And blueberries she said.
The area is also known for lots of black bears, wolves, and moose.
So, what was it like to be alone in the woods, far from home? Ann was asked.
“Actually, I liked being alone. There were no phones to answer. No people to deal with it. I enjoyed my time alone.”
Ann moved with her family at age five from Minneapolis to Cook County, where they ran a small resort. Ann was always an outdoor kid, playing in the forests building forts, enjoying fishing and hiking, and she was a talented cross-country skier on the high school team.
After high school, Ann worked many jobs, including hospitality, bus driving, factory work, and personal training, and grew shiitake mushrooms.
Ann and her partner Tom operate an off-grid, organic farm in Bayfield, Wisconsin today. They grow small fruits, tree fruits, herbs, and vegetables they sell to the market on their farm. Ann taps maple and birch, harvests wild rice, forages for mushrooms, and picks up roadkill.
During the winter, Ann is out cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. She makes jams and jellies and tan hides and makes buckskin clothing. She and Tom teach primitive classes at Wintercount, a primitive skill gathering in Arizona, every year.
On Alone, Ann brought all of her accumulative knowledge to bear as she fought to beat the elements, find food, stay warm, and combat loneliness.
Each contestant was allowed to bring ten things with them on their quest. Ann selected a sleeping bag, saw, snare wire, paracord, multitool, axe, cooking pot, fishing line, hooks, bow and arrows, and ferro rod. “We were also given clothes,” Ann said.
Reindeer Lake
The cast and crew spent two weeks at a small lodge on Reindeer Lake, located on the border of Saskatchewan and NorthWestern Manitoba. The lake is 142.9 miles long, covers almost 2,000,000 acres, and encompasses 5,700 miles of shoreline; it has an average depth of 100 feet and contains more than 5,500 islands. It is North America’s ninth-biggest lake and Earth’s twenty-second biggest lake. Reindeer Lake is a trophy lake for lake trout, northern walleyes, and Arctic Graylings.
It is also known as a place where the winds never stop blowing. “It did seem like the winds always blew,” said Ann of her time in the wilderness.
So, did you run into any wildlife?” Ann was asked. Olivia, publicity manager for The History Channel at A+E Networks, who was in on the call cautioned Ann about her answer and all I got was a “Yes”. Hmmm…
The Alone series can be seen on the History Channel on Thursdays at 8 p.m. Central Time or 9 p.m. Eastern Time. The series runs through mid-August.
Ann is only on the first episode briefly but is featured more on the second episode. And how did she do? Well, Olivia wouldn’t let Ann answer that question so we all have to watch and find out for ourselves how she did.
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