Everything Zachary Fowler Carried to Win Alone Season 3

Spoiler note: this covers who won season 3.

Zachary Fowler, a 36-year-old from Appleton, Maine, won season 3 by outlasting nine other contestants for 87 days, still the longest solo run this site has on record at the time of his win. The location was the reason his list looks the way it does. Season 3 dropped its cast in the Andean foothills of Argentine Patagonia, near Lago Escondido, and unlike the coastal Vancouver Island seasons before it, there was no reliable ocean food source to fall back on. Fowler survived almost entirely on freshwater trout, supplemented by two birds, grubs, and foraged plants, and by the time he was declared winner he had lost roughly 70 pounds, about a third of his starting body weight.

The ten items

Item	What he brought	Verified
Multitool	Victorinox Swiss Army SwissTool Spirit X	Yes
Axe	Felling axe	Yes
Saw	Crosscut saw	Yes
Shovel	Cold Steel Special Forces Spetsnaz shovel	Yes
Sleeping bag	-20°F rated	Yes
Pot	2-quart with frying-pan lid	Yes
Ferro rod	No brand specified in the record	Yes
Fishing kit	20 lb and 50 lb test line, 25 hooks	Yes
Slingshot	Custom-made, 2 elastic bands	Yes
Paracord	40 meters, 550 type	Yes

The full list carries a "gear complete" flag in our records, meaning it was sourced and confirmed rather than pieced together from partial footage. You can see it laid out the same way on Fowler's contestant page.

Why the fishing kit did more work than the bow he didn't bring

Fowler's list has no bow and arrows, which sets him apart from most of the winners on this site. In a landlocked mountain environment with heavy trout runs, the fishing kit carried more weight than a bow would have, and the slingshot filled the gap for small game and birds instead. That's a real trade-off, not a shortcut: a slingshot needs practiced accuracy and close range, while a bow reaches farther with less skill required per shot. Fowler's background clearly made the slingshot the better bet for him specifically.

The rest of the kit reads as classic long-haul Alone gear. The Cold Steel shovel is an unusual pick for the show, most winners carry a second cutting tool instead of a digging tool, but paired with the crosscut saw it points toward serious shelter-building rather than a quick lean-to. The -20°F sleeping bag and 2-quart pot with a frying-pan lid round out a setup built for a long, cold Patagonian fall and winter.

The margin at the top

Fowler's closest competitor, Carleigh Fairchild, was medically evacuated on day 86 after her BMI fell to 16.8, just below the show's mandatory pull threshold of 17, which is what actually left Fowler alone in the field rather than any late push on his part. Third place, Megan Hanacek, tapped out on day 78 after breaking her teeth biting into a rosehip seed, a small injury with an outsized effect on someone already running a calorie deficit.

Season 3 sits at the far end of the show's food-scarcity spectrum. If you want to see how a coastal, protein-rich setting produces a completely different gear list, David McIntyre's season 2 kit leaned on a gill net and fish traps instead of a slingshot and shovel, despite both contestants winning the same $500,000 prize under the same 10-item limit.

For the full rules on item limits and prize structure, see alone-rules, and every other winning list is collected on the winners page.