Where Was Alone Season 9 Filmed? The Location, Explained

Alone season 9 was filmed along Big River in the Nunatsiavut region of northern Labrador, roughly 35 kilometers south of the coastal town of Makkovik. The show marketed it on some platforms as "Alone: Polar Bear Island," a name that gives a fair sense of how far north and how exposed the setting is.

Terrain and climate

Nunatsiavut is the autonomous Inuit region that runs along Labrador's northern coast, and the stretch around Makkovik sits squarely in subarctic terrain: boreal and subarctic forest of black spruce, balsam fir, and scattered hardwoods further south, giving way to open, more tundra-like ground the farther north the coast runs. Makkovik's own weather station puts the coldest month, February, at an average of around -15°C, with the brief warm-up in August only reaching about 13°C on average. It is a wet cold rather than a dry one, boreal and coastal rather than the dry continental cold of the show's inland Canadian sites, and that dampness is what contestants and past coverage of the location describe as the harder problem: staying dry matters as much as staying warm when everything is soaked half the year.

The "Polar Bear Island" marketing name leaned on coastal Labrador's reputation as polar bear range, but that risk was overstated for the actual shoot. Polar bears reach this stretch of coast when pack ice sits offshore, and reporting on the season notes the ice was not present during filming, meaning the bigger real dangers were the standard Alone threats: cold, wet, starvation, and injury, not an apex predator wandering into camp.

How the field fared

Juan Pablo Quiñonez, a wilderness first responder, won at 78 days by building his strategy around fishing, 20-lb monofilament plus a fly line and hooks, backed by a takedown recurve bow and a -30°F rated sleeping bag to handle the wet cold overnight. His full kit is covered in everything he carried to win. His win made him the first Latino champion in the show's history. Runner-up Karie Lee Knoke, the oldest woman to finish that high in the standings, lasted 75 days before tapping out from starvation and exhaustion, just three days short.

Finish	Contestant	Days lasted	Outcome
1st	Juan Pablo Quiñonez	78	Winner
2nd	Karie Lee Knoke	75	Starvation and exhaustion
3rd	Teimojin Tan	63	Missed his family
4th	Adam Riley	52	Starvation
5th	Jessie Krebs	46	Medical evacuation, stomach inflammation

The field averaged 46 days, one of the stronger showings in the franchise and consistent with a coastal river system that gives a well-prepared camper enough fish and small game to hold on through a long, wet winter rather than starve out early. That is a sharper contrast than it first sounds: the wet subarctic coast is punishing enough to have produced a "Polar Bear Island" marketing tag, yet it rewarded skilled fishing and trapping with two runs past 75 days, numbers closer to the show's richer sub-Arctic lake seasons than to its true desert or rainforest sites.

For how Big River compares to every other site the show has used, see the locations hub. The season 9 page has the full cast and gear notes, and the winners page ranks Quiñonez's 78 days against all thirteen US champions.