Where Is William Larkham Jr. Now? Life After Winning Alone Season 11

Spoiler note: this post covers who won Alone season 11 and how his run ended.

William Larkham Jr. is the commercial fisherman from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador who won season 11 by lasting 84 days in the Mackenzie River Delta, roughly 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle near Inuvik. It's one of the more grounded winner stories in the franchise, and the record on what he's doing now is unusually solid for a recent season.

What actually won William Larkham Jr. the season

Where most contestants lean on a bow, Larkham's whole strategy was built around his background as a commercial fisherman. Instead of prioritizing archery, he used a homemade gill net alongside a standard fishing kit to lock down a steady food source in a delta environment that was genuinely fish-rich. It's a good example of a contestant playing to a real occupational skill rather than the generic bushcraft toolkit, and the choice shows in his loadout. Here is the full ten-item kit, as documented on his contestant page:

Item	Detail
Axe	Helko Werk felling axe, 28 inch handle, 2.5 lb head
Saw	Silky Katanaboy 500 folding saw
Knife	Killingerblades Big Woody with leather sheath
Gill net	Homemade
Fishing kit	300 yards of line, 25 hooks
Snare wire	1 lb of 20 gauge plus 1 lb of 21 gauge stainless
Pot	Titanium, 1900 ml, with bail handle
Ferro rod	Bigfoot Bushcraft
Sleeping bag	Pajak Radical 16H down bag, rated to -100°F
Paracord	Standard allotment

Two things stand out. The Pajak bag's -100°F rating is one of the most extreme cold ratings documented anywhere in the gear database, a rational choice for a site above the Arctic Circle in autumn. And the doubled-up food gear (a gill net, a full fishing kit, and two pounds of snare wire) meant three separate passive food systems could run at once. The full item-by-item story is in everything William Larkham Jr. carried to win season 11.

How the season 11 field fell away

He outlasted runner-up Timber Cleghorn, who made it 83 days before voluntarily withdrawing after saying he'd made peace with not winning, and third-place finisher Dub Paetz, who left at 80 days citing the cumulative effects of starvation, isolation, and missing his family. That top three (84, 83, and 80 days) is one of the deepest finishes the show has produced, three people all past the point where most seasons have already ended.

The rest of the field went much earlier. Sarah Poynter tapped out at day 42 with kidney pain, Isaiah Tuck left at day 23 after severe chest pains, and Jake Messinger was medically evacuated at day 21 with a bowel obstruction. Michela Carriere (day 18), Dusty Blake (day 10), Peter Albano (day 8), and Cubby Hoover (day 4, after a deep arrow wound to his leg) rounded out the exits. Larkham didn't tap out at all; he was declared the winner as the last remaining participant in the field. The full placement table is on the season 11 page, and the Mackenzie Delta site itself is covered in our season 11 filming location breakdown.

Life since the win

This is one of the better-documented "after the show" cases in the franchise, mostly because Larkham has stayed publicly visible on his own terms rather than fading out. He's continued working as a commercial fisherman, hunter, and trapper based in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the same community he was from before filming. He's married to his wife Jill, and the couple have two children.

He also runs a YouTube channel called Big Land Trapper, where he posts updates from his outdoor life, effectively turning the same skill set that won him the season into ongoing content. In interviews since the show, he's talked about coming away from the experience valuing time with family more, and making more of a deliberate effort to stay present and connected with the people around him rather than letting work pull him away.

How William Larkham Jr's 84 days compares

Those 84 days are the third-longest winning run in the flagship show's history. Only Roland Welker (100 days, under season 7's fixed-goal format) and Zachary Fowler (87 days in Patagonia) lasted longer to win, which puts Larkham Jr ahead of every other last-person-standing champion except Fowler. His one-day margin over Timber Cleghorn also matches the tightest finishes the show has run; seasons 1, 3, and 8 all came down to a single day as well.

The win paid the standard $500,000 prize, and it came in the franchise's most extreme setting to that point: season 11 was the first US season staged above the Arctic Circle, which is why nearly every kit in the field skewed toward heavy insulation and passive food gathering rather than active hunting.

The gill net choice is rarer than you might assume. Of the 16 franchise winners with recorded gear lists, only 6 carried a gill net, and Larkham is the only one of those who built his own. The others (David McIntyre, Jim and Ted Baird, Roland Welker, and Alan Kay) all ran manufactured nets. The comparison across all champions is in our winners hub and the records of Alone.

A quick note on the numbers

You'll sometimes see his age listed slightly differently across outlets (low-to-mid 50s in some places versus his official cast age of 49), which is a common enough quirk when a season is filmed a year or more before it airs. I'm going with the age documented at time of filming here, but it's worth knowing that discrepancy exists if you're cross-referencing sources yourself. The same goes for the spelling: outlets write both "William Larkham Jr." and "William Larkham Jr" without the period, and they're the same person.

Why his run matters beyond the win

Larkham's season is a useful data point for anyone trying to figure out what actually separates winners from everyone else on this show. It wasn't raw toughness alone, plenty of contestants who tap out early are plenty tough. It was matching a real, practiced skill (commercial fishing) to the specific environment he landed in. A river delta thick with fish rewards net and line work in a way it doesn't reward someone whose best skill is tracking big game on dry land.

If you want to see how his 84 days stacks up against the rest of the franchise's longest stays, check our full records breakdown, and the season 11 guide has the complete placement table for everyone who was out there with him.