Everything Roland Welker Carried to Win Alone Season 7

Spoiler note: this covers who won season 7.

Season 7 changed the format entirely. Instead of the usual last-person-standing structure, contestants were competing against a fixed target: survive 100 days on the east arm of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, and win. Our records confirm this season really did carry a $1,000,000 prize, not the usual $500,000, tied to that fixed threshold rather than to outlasting rivals. Roland Welker, a 47-year-old Alaska hunting guide, was the only one of ten contestants to reach it. He was dropped off on September 18, 2019 and extracted on December 26, 2019, exactly 100 elapsed days, and walked away with the full $1,000,000, earning the nickname "The 100 Day King."

The ten items

Item	What he brought	Verified
Axe	Identified by one source as a vintage Craftsman felling axe	Yes
Bow and arrows	Longbow with a custom quiver	Yes
Ferro rod	Identified by one source as a Bayite 1/2" x 6"	Yes
Gill net	No brand specified in the record	Yes
Knife	Identified by one source as a Böker Arbolito hunter knife with a stag handle	Yes
Multitool	Identified by one source as a Leatherman Wave	Yes
Pot	2-quart, with handle and bail	Yes
Saw	Modified/shortened two-man crosscut saw with a custom sheath	Yes
Sleeping bag	Synthetic, rectangular, -30°F rated	Yes
Snare wire	2 spools	Yes

Several of the brand identifications above are flagged in the record as coming from a single source rather than multiple corroborating ones, which is why the phrasing above keeps the hedge rather than stating them as flatly confirmed. The overall list is still marked complete in our data, and you can see it laid out the same way on Welker's contestant page.

Built for a fixed 100 days, not an open-ended run

A fixed-length season changes how a contestant should think about gear. Welker didn't need to out-suffer anyone else, he needed a system that could run for exactly 100 days without breaking down, and his list reflects that. The shortened two-man crosscut saw with a custom sheath was heavy-duty enough to build the semi-permanent log shelter he used through the Arctic winter, a bigger structural investment than most one-season builds because he knew from day one how long he had to make it last.

The food side of the kit doubled down on redundancy: a longbow for big game, a gill net that worked without daily attention, and two spools of snare wire for land-based trapping. Three separate food-acquisition methods running in parallel is the kind of margin that makes sense when the goal is a specific number of days rather than simply outlasting whoever's left.

What the runner-up's fate says about the format

Every other contestant that season tapped out or was evacuated for starvation, injury, or homesickness well short of 100 days. Runner-up Callie Russell was medically evacuated with frostbite on day 89. Third-place Kielyn Marrone tapped out from starvation on day 80. Both got closer to Welker's finish than most winners' closest competitors typically do on a standard season, which says something about how brutal a fixed 100-day target on Great Slave Lake actually was, not just about Welker's own performance.

For how this season's prize structure compares to every other one, alone-rules breaks down the format differences, and the rest of the field's kits, including the best axe and best saw picks across every winner, are rounded up on the winners page.