Plot

This adaptation of To Build a Fire (1969) by Jack London, is a modern look at the tragic tale of Tom Vincent who decides to travel alone through the unrelenting and unforgiving environment of sub-freezing temperatures.

At 9:00 a.m. on an extremely cold winter's day (-25 °F or -31 °C), TOM VINCENT leaves the visitors stop, in Calumet Creek, expecting to reach his associates (referred to as Buddies) by six o'clock at a claim 'between Paul Creek and Cherry Creek.' Tom Vincent is warned by a local named BRIAN, who says, "last fall we lost two hunters who took the same trail you're about to take," and that he should travel with a partner. But this warning of the cold does not deter Tom, a relative newcomer to the Yukon. He proceeds along a trail, taking care to avoid hidden springs. The weather is so cold that his food is frozen, and he has to build a fire to thaw it out sufficiently in order to eat lunch. Shortly thereafter, he breaks through an 'ice skin' and soaks his left foot and leg 'halfway to the knee.'

More angry than frightened by the accident, the man builds a fire to dry his clothes. With great difficulty (for he is aware of sensation rapidly ebbing from his freezing foot) he starts a fire underneath a tree, but disaster strikes when snow from its loaded boughs extinguishes the fire. For the first time the man is frightened: 'It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death.' He tries to start a new fire, but cannot light a match with his frozen, numbed fingers. He tries to hold a match with his teeth, but is choked by the fumes from the flame. With his freezing limb losing coordination, he tries to nourish a flame but he disrupts the nucleus of the little fire and it goes out with every attempt.

In a last attempt to keep himself warm, he runs toward his destination, hoping that his exertion can warm his body enough to keep him alive long enough to reach his group. But he can no longer feel his foot, and when he stumbles and falls, he finds he needs to rest before he can get up. Feeling panic rise within him at the thought 'that the frozen portion of his body must be extending,' he is able to get up and run on, but he slips, runs again, then falls. A 'last panic' enables him to get up one more time and move off the trail where he can lean against a hill. Calmer now, he addresses himself to the task of meeting death with dignity, "I don't think I'm gunna make it." Before he dies from hypothermia, he has a vision of himself being saved by Brian, the man who warned him. He was out of himself, standing looking on at himself being saved. He falls into a deep sleep, one in which, he will never wake. This fits what some account as a near-death experience.