- Well, I have our book here.

And this is all articles on the trip that was in the papers and stuff.

This is stuff I saved.

You know, it's many years already, so... And here's one of the jackets we wore.

We didn't wear this too much out on the ice.

When it was good and cold, we wore something different.

But this is the jackets we wore.

Well, that's our logo and some other details.

And these are articles on magazines that were wrote on the trip.

And there's quite a few good articles in 'em.

We don't want that on Bill Cooper, do you?

- [Mike] Well... (Dick and Mike chuckle) - Well, this is all stories on Bill Cooper.

But these are all articles.

In fact, all these are on Bill Cooper.

All the things he was supposed to have done.

And there's so many articles in here.

Well, here's a good one here.

Well, it's all here.

Because like I said, he was my brother-in-law and I haven't seen him, so... He just appeared real fast, like... (poignant music) (slow rock music) (psychedelic music) (birds chirping) - I don't remember what year he bought the Squirrel Cage bar, but I knew him.

We were good friends.

I wouldn't say he was my best friend, but we were good friends.

Yeah.

No, most of those old-timers that knew Bill, you know, they're mostly gone now.

(engine rumbling) (chain rattling) Last year, we were out in the mountains in Arizona, on our ATVs, and I met a guy that knew Bill Cooper.

And I didn't say a word.

No, I wanted to get all I could outta this guy before I admitted that I knew Bill Cooper.

So I started asking him questions about Bill.

Then he told me, he said, "I've seen Bill couple years ago."

I've had other people say they've seen Bill.

I asked 'em, "Did you talk to him?"

"No," he said, "I didn't talk to him."

Well, then you know right off the bat that, yeah, you've seen somebody that looked like Bill, but you didn't see Bill.

Probably it's a good thing you don't know what happened to him.

(bird chirps) - Bill did absolutely everything he could to be a good father.

He did that at the same time being exactly who he was, because you can't change your personality.

I think that some of that wanderlust kind of wore off on me, if you will.

And I've always been a dreamer.

I've always had high goals and believed that my life could also be extraordinary.

And I think that's probably something I got from Bill.

I think he had fantastic dreams about his future, although he never told 'em out loud.

He lived his life in a way that, "I've got these phenomenal things that are gonna happen.

I don't know what they are, but if I keep going, I'm gonna make them happen."

(film clicking) (psychedelic electronic music) So it seemed kinda like natural for this man, who always thought bigger than life, that, "Oh, we could take snowmobiles, we could actually go to the Arctic," and, "Could we go across the Arctic and end up in Europe someplace?"

I mean, it was a totally fantastic dream that became, you know, a reality.

- You know, I really didn't know what to think of him.

Had his big black beard, and he looked at me and said, "You know, do you wanna go to the North Pole?"

And I said, "Tell me more."

- Well, I don't know.

We're just sittin' over at Willow River there, and Bill Cooper's my brother-in-law, and he started talkin' about it.

So we thought, "Well, let's try it."

So we did.

- The story I got that Bill was sitting in a tavern somewhere and Plaisted was bragging about having gone to the North Pole by snowmobile.

- Ralph Plaisted said the Air Force actually picked him up there.

I think about 1968, I believe.

And he was really the first person to ever reach the North Pole on the snowmobile.

- And Bill's response was, "Well, if I was going to do that, I'd start in Minnesota."

- See when Plaisted went to the Pole, this is where they worked out of (indistinct).

- Right.

- And they just made that little hop up there.

Grandma coulda done that.

- Yeah.

- Nah, it was not a- - [Mike] No big deal.

- No.

- They'd taken all their gear up to Ellesmere Island and jumped off there and went 300 miles to the Pole.

And Bill said, "I can make a long trip out of this.

I'll start in Minnesota.

In fact, I'll go around the world."

- Well, that was the goal, to go from Forest Lake, Minnesota to Russia.

- [Mike] And why?

- To make a movie.

Do whatever, you know?

- Well, we were going to start in Minnesota, travel up through Canada between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, and then we would go down through Norway, Sweden, Finland, and into Russia to Moscow.

Now, provided we were successful with that part of it, we would then go cross Siberia and come back by way of Alaska.

- There was a lot of debate about, "Could we actually make it all the way on snowmobiles?"

The idea was let's get there and see what it looks like.

That's the way Bill kind of operated anyway, you know, building things as they happen.

If it's open water, we gotta call a plane and we'll do it that way.

But otherwise, we were gonna go on snowmobiles all the way.

- [Mike] Dick, what are you looking at here?

What is this thing?

(Dick chuckles) - It's another expedition that Bill Cooper went on.

- He told me about the preliminary trip, the trial trip that they took to Alaska.

- We rode up to Alaska in 14 days.

- He had all the clippings.

He was real.

I mean, this had happened.

- This is Bill Cooper, this is Frank Larson.

This is me.

And this guy here, he was just standing around, so he's had his picture taken.

- And I thought, "Well, seems legit."

- But he could talk anybody into almost anything.

- Yeah, he was a talker.

- He didn't have to convince me very hard, unfortunately.

- He had asked me if I wanted to go, and of course I shouldn't have went, but I did anyway.

- Well, first, they did the trip to Anchorage.

They didn't even get through with that, and Bill started talkin' about going around the world on snowmobiles.

And I just laughed it off.

I thought, "Well, he talks."

You know, just told him that I thought it was a dumb idea.

You know, that he should get somebody else to do it.

Then he'd just laugh and say, "Oh, you'll make it.

You're tough, Norwegian."

(chuckles) Oh.

- [Dick] There was a lot of work putting this stuff together.

And, of course, you need a lot of cash.

- [Speaker 1] He had to talk somebody into getting this money to go on this trip.

You know, where'd he get it?

I don't know.

- 'Cause it was pretty far out, you know?

We're gonna take a bunch of snowmobiles and we're gonna go around the world with 'em, and you wanna be part of it.

- I'm sure we gave him snowmobile suits, we gave him boots, and goggles, lots of goggles.

It was kinda like giving a kid a credit card in a Kmart store.

I mean, he just kinda walked up and down the aisles and said, "Geez, I could use some of these.

I could use some of that.

Can I have some of this?

Can I have some of that?"

- You have the record, right?

The '45?

- It's in here someplace.

Here it is.

"Wild Bill and His Ski," I'll say- - [Mike] How did he convince someone to write a song about him?

- He could convince anybody.

- He could convince anybody of anything.

(crew and Dick laugh) - You ever been a fan Karen Narlis?

(Dick laughing) ("Wild Bill And His Ski Mobile") (lively folk music) ♪ They left Willow River on a cold winter mornin' ♪ ♪ A new breed of heroes was about to be born ♪ ♪ This seven-man team on their ski mobiles ♪ ♪ Led by a lot of grit and a man called Wild Bill ♪ - They had kind of a circus atmosphere about it, taking off from Willow River, with all the people and all the stuff going on.

I mean, it's a small town.

- They had an attraction.

Somebody went inside of a little wooden makeshift coffin and blew himself up.

And that was the kinda things Cooper would do just to attract attention.

And I never could understand what was the connection between that and a snowmobile trip.

But apparently it brought people there.

In the back of his mind, they would buy beer and, "Watch us leave."

♪ We're going to Moscow on a tour of goodwill ♪ ♪ We're going around the world on our ski mobile ♪ (engine purring) - You know, I remember it as it was like you were never gonna see him again.

You know, you watched him leave and they're headin' out.

Yeah, you know, they took off and all you could see was the backs of the sleds.

And it was really snowin' hard.

It was a rough, cold, snowy day.

(engine continues purring) So yeah, it was... (sentimental music) (film clicking) - [Snow Crew Member] Ready?

- [Sledder] Yeah.

(engine revving) (lively folk music) ♪ It takes a lot more than just plain skills ♪ ♪ To make a trans-world trip on a ski mobile ♪ ♪ It takes a lot of guts, sweat, and steam ♪ ♪ To leave a good job and follow a dream ♪ (psychedelic electronic music) - [Dick] That's Canadian customs.

That was outta Warroad, wasn't it?

I don't know how he talked his way across there with all that stuff, but he did.

We never went in.

He's the one that did all the talkin' and- - [Frank] We had everything pretty well prepared.

We had all the serial numbers written down on all the machines and guns.

So you're not allowed a handgun in Canada.

- [Mike] But did you guys bring one?

- Yeah.

- [Mike] What happened?

(Marian chuckles) - Got it taken away from us.

Oh, but our RCMP.

- [Mike] Did he try to talk his way outta that?

- I don't know for sure, but I know we ended up, he didn't have it, 'cause that's absolutely against the law of handgun.

The Mounties, they didn't like us.

- [Rob] But again, you know, we did this, and it was fine as we went through Minnesota, you know, hit Winnipeg, and it was all fun and all the crowds are greeting you.

And it was great going across Manitoba and stopping at all those little cities and little towns and stuff.

And, you know, we were kinda like folk heroes, if you will, going across there.

And we were welcomed at every single one of them.

We had a fabulous time.

But, you know, once we hit Thompson, and there's no more roads, so we're following the railroad track.

And it's incredibly cold.

I mean, it's bitter.

In that cold environment, you know, it becomes about survival.

It took about one day to learn that.

- [Juntunen] It was so darn cold.

Nothing worked.

Everything was broken.

Every mile something happened.

- [Rob] The sleds we had all manufactured in Minnesota just fell apart between Thompson and Churchill.

- Running on railroad tracks was goofy, you know?

And we couldn't get off the tracks because out there it was just bog, you know, the snow was deep and soft, and we'd just been stuck up to our necks.

So we had to stay on the grade.

After I was on it a few weeks, I realized maybe this isn't totally organized like it should be, but make the best of it.

I doubt anything is perfect when you're really into it.

(chuckles) (mid-tempo electronic music) - [Rob] The night we came in to Churchill, it was about 70, 75 below the straight temperature.

And the wind up there never stops, so I have no idea what the wind chill was, but it was just like unbelievable.

There was a small military base in Churchill, and Major Patterson was the individual in charge at the time.

He was very anxious to help us and give us basic tips.

- Some of 'em were just BS.

How to dress, you know, for cold weather.

Or you're supposed to dress light so you don't sweat and all this crap.

That didn't work.

- Here's a trained professional, you know, in Arctic survival, and he's got these naive Americans.

"Gonna go off into the Arctic?"

I mean, he thought we were crazy.

But he was delighted at the fact that we were doing it, you know?

And he taught us a lot of things about that.

He also introduced us to tutu.

- [Juntunen] They showed us how to make qamutiiks, which are the native sled.

And they were flexible so they could go over the bumps and the drifts without cracking.

And they lasted the entire trip.

- [Rob] That really saved our life.

You know, spending time with him and building the new equipment and stuff like that.

It really saved us.

We never would've made it with the equipment that we had.

(music) - [Dick] And then we went from Churchill to Eskimo Point.

- [Rob] The first time we actually camped on the Hudson Bay ice, outta Churchill, and we opened our sleeping bags and realized that these sleeping bags were not the ones we ordered.

(film clicks) You know, we ordered Arctic bags, (film clicks) but somebody sold our Arctic bags and substituted, you know, these three-pound bags, down bags.

They were totally inadequate for the temperatures we were under.

- Well, we started with one man in a bag.

You know, everybody was very reserved the first night.

That lasted one night.

- Yeah, who was it that said they'd never sleep with another guy?

Who was that?

Bill Juntunen?

- Bill Juntunen.

- Yeah.

- [Juntunen] And then we agreed that, since we froze the previous night, that we needed to get these bags zipped together.

- And he was happy to.

(laughing) - "Hey, I changed my mind."

- "Hey, guys, can I crawl in with you?"

- Yeah.

- But Cooper was also pretty practical.

I remember telling him, "Oh, Jesus, I wish I wasn't here.

Why am I here?

I should've never done this."

He looked at me and said, "Everybody has to be somewhere," and walked away.

"Here you are, dude.

(laughs) Live with it."

It was a good life lesson too.

Quit your bitchin', move on.

- But then we went from there to Rankin Inlet.

We stayed there a few days.

And that was a pretty nice town.

- [Rob] When we hit Rankin Inlet, we were warned that going north was impossible.

Because north of there was open water.

And it wasn't just open water, it was almost like a whirlpool, but somehow this water was very turgid.

And so the ice around it was all breaking up, and you never knew when it was safe or when it wasn't.

And so their advice was to head across land to Baker Lake.

And I told Bill, I said, "Listen, you know, we have the sextant, okay, and I can shoot a sunshot," 'cause we're on Hudson Bay, it's a coastline, you can always tell where you are, east and west.

I said, "If we leave the ice, then the navigation is out the window.

It's gonna be very suspect and very hard to locate our position on any map.

You can't recognize any topographical features."

You have a map, but everything is snow and ice.

They debated back and forth both ways, and they decided to go to Baker Lake, across land.

From then on the journey became, oh, 10 to 100 times more difficult.

More arduous and more dangerous in that we most often had no idea where we were.

- I didn't have a clue where in the hell we were.

I didn't have a clue.

- [Rob] Many times during the day, we would just stop, and Bill would just go out and stand up on his machine and look.

And we'd watch him.

And he would just stand there and he would just look for, like, an hour.

- [Juntunen] Sometimes he'd jump on his snowmobile and say, "I don't know where the hell we are, but let's go this way," (chuckles) for a while.

- You know, you could ask him why if you wanted to, but he would just say the same answer because that's where we're going.

I don't know if he had any idea where he was going.

- We were always lost.

We were always lost.

- We trusted him as we had no one else to trust.

Bill Cooper grew up in Northern Canada, was on his own since he was 13.

And outdoors in his entire life.

He could navigate just by sense.

(mysterious music) - [Frank] Bill had a kind of an animal instinct in navigation.

- He would tell this story: "When I was young, my mother would pack my lunch in a roadmap.

And it took me till I was 13 years old to figure out what that map was for, and that's when I left home."

(film clicks) - [Frank] Well, he had a rough upbringin', right from childhood.

- [Juntunen] He'd ran away at 13 and lived on his own ever since then.

- See, Bill wasn't a very big man.

He was a little taller than I am.

Probably a little huskier, but tougher than a bugger.

I mean, he was one tough guy.

Me, I wouldn't wanna fight him.

I'll tell you what.

If we would've gotten in a fight, we'd have both known we weren't gonna fight.

- During the course of the expedition, I discovered things that were bothersome.

At that time, we bought a dog.

And the dog wouldn't get on the sled, Cooper put it on the sled, took off, jumped off.

He'd put it on the sled, he did this three times.

Then he took off and dragged it by the neck for a half a mile.

And the dog is bouncing in the snow.

And then he stopped.

And the next time we took off, that dog was on the sled and never got off.

That's how Cooper was.

He could be a very hard man when it came right down to it.

- There were some things that gave us guys doubts about getting there.

One of the things that kept happening is we kept running out of fuel.

- [Frank] Gas was a major problem.

- [Dick] Had a whole lotta gas to get there.

- [Rob] It was just never enough.

Churchill to Eskimo Point, we ran outta gas.

Going to Baker Lake was very, very difficult.

And we ran outta gas.

So Bill and Dick took all the gasoline and put it in one machine, and they took off to find gas.

And they ran out of gas themselves.

- [Dick] We were gone, what, six days?

We slept right on top of the ground, just a little blanket over the top of us.

- Now, mind you, we're in the middle of nowhere.

And the next morning, they are awakened by a dog barking.

- Happened to look out on the ice and see people comin', and we thought we were seeing things.

You know, mirages, 'cause you do see 'em out there.

And they couldn't speak English, so we draw on the snow and stuff.

You know, we wanted to go back to where this little church school or whatever it was on the river there.

We wanted to get there, that's where the snowmobile was.

- [Rob] And they loaded up with lots of gasoline.

And they went back and filled up their machine, they brought gas back to us.

He literally saved our life, that guy did.

And we took off again.

- [Frank] I've often thought how lucky we were.

We never had a serious injury.

- [Dick] We're tough.

- We're lucky.

(Dick chuckling) - [Dick] It helped.

- [Rob] At a certain point, it was very clear we weren't gonna make it all the way.

I think by the time we hit Gjoa Haven, we all knew we weren't gonna make it, you know?

But we had to keep going.

If you look at the map, there's a nice track between Arctic Ocean Islands that goes right up to Resolute Bay from Gjoa Haven, but it's also prime polar bear country.

So we had to go right through it.

- I was terrified because I had never seen a polar bear.

And of course, you know, all these stories circulate in your head.

And then, lo and behold, there's some polar bear right in front of you.

- [Rob] We didn't have enough gas to go from Gjoa Haven to Resolute Bay.

So we had a gas drop.

And all of the barrels had been knocked over.

And, I swear, half of our oil cans had been bitten into by the bear.

But also, right there was a seal blowhole.

- [Dick] What the bear does, when the seal comes up, he's waiting there.

Bang, he's got 'em.

- And there was fresh blood.

So that meant there was a bear, was a fresh kill right there.

I mean, really fresh blood.

That was a tense night as you sleep in.

Everybody had their rifles ready and stuff like that.

And the dog was there.

- Well, the dog, you know, would sleep.

So you're wondering if the polar bears are outside.

And you could just hear this dog snoring.

- [Rob] We never had an incident that night, thank God.

We did see, I think either the next day we saw two bear, two or three bear in that area.

- [Dick] They just run as fast as you were going.

So they just run off and get off to the side and they're gone.

(unsettling music) - We made our last day or so run from Resolute to Devon Island.

And I'm not sure why he wanted to leave Resolute because it was a settlement.

There was a school there, there was, you know, big transport planes, these heavy transport planes moving, I thought a logical place to store your equipment.

But Cooper wanted to get outta there.

So we went across sea ice to Devon Island.

- Now the islands are further apart, and you got big expanses of ocean ice, and you got major fissures and cracks in the ice opening up.

And we were all ready to go home about then, you know?

We knew it was over.

We weren't gonna make it.

And so why are we pushing on?

Well, we were still following Bill Cooper, and it wasn't time to quit.

- We've done Devon Island there.

It was starting to melt, so we couldn't go any further if we wanted to.

So we just parked the machines up on a hill, left 'em there.

- [Juntunen] We took, I think, one or two home for display purposes, but everything else was packaged up, covered with tarps on Devon Island.

(film clicking) - It was probably a beautiful photograph, but I don't know.

At that particular time, it wasn't a happy occasion.

- [Juntunen] We called the aviation company in Resolute, and they sent an Otter to pick us up.

- [Rob] It was kind of a dull feeling, if you will.

You know, we were abandoning our project, if you will.

Going home.

(unsettling music) - And, boy, that was a takeoff I'll never forget.

- I didn't think that plane ever got off the ground.

I mean, bouncing on the ice out there, it's just pulling away and stuff like that.

- And finally it lurched into the air and off we went.

- [Rob] But we made it back.

You know, we made it back into Resolute Bay and caught a commercial jet.

- Anyway, when we left Resolute, the bear hunters had just come in and they had, I remember it was two or three polar bear carcasses.

- And Bill really wanted some kind of souvenir of a polar bear.

- [Frank] And Bill wanted them heads.

(film clicks) - He had talked one of them, or probably bought it or something, you know, he bartered something.

He bought a polar bear head, okay?

And he had it in a plastic honey sack, you know, a plastic bag.

- So we got to Montreal.

We had about a 8 or 10-hour layover.

- We were going to the airport, and Bill says, "Well, let's put all our stuff in the lockers here," you know?

- Well, I said, "We don't have anything.

What are we gonna put in a locker," you know?

He said, "Well, I have some stuff."

So he put some stuff in one of those lockers you put a quarter in and get your key, right?

And we'd go to bed that night 'cause our flight's out the next morning.

So the next morning, we go to the airport, right, and Bill walks towards these lockers.

And we all look over there and there's a big pool of blood on the ground, on the floor, and a trickle of blood coming outta this locker.

The polar bear head was frozen, and it had unfrozen.

- I imagined some airport worker gotta clean it up, and open it up and see what- - [Dick] I'm sure they'd have to.

They'd see that blood runnin' out there, they'd be right there.

- [Frank] I wonder what they expected to find in that locker when somebody opened it up.

- Don't even mention it.

- So, needless to say, nobody went near that locker, including Bill, and we got in the plane and left.

- [Marian] And then they came in to the cities and they looked just horrible.

You could hardly recognize them.

- [Rob] It was just really bizarre.

After spending so much time with the Indigenous people, and all of a sudden we were back in commercial America, and it was like a real shock.

(announcer speaks indistinctly) - I was wearing quilted underwear for pants, carrying a rifle.

(Dick chuckles) How did those people allow that?

- [Dick] You wouldn't get too far today, would you, Frank?

- Walkin' through the airport in Minneapolis, carrying a rifle and looking like a wild man from Borneo.

(Frank and Dick chuckle) (film clicking) Oh, man.

- Well, we had assumed, I had assumed that he was gonna stick with it until they got to Moscow.

- We figured we could make it that same year, you know?

But we couldn't do it.

- I think he told people in Resolute Bay, "Well, we parked and we're gonna come back next year."

But I think every time he said that, we looked at each other like, "We'll see about that."

You know, who knows what can happen a year later and everything else that's going on.

Who could tell?

But it was amazing.

They put it together again for a year or two, you know, and took off.

So God bless 'em.

- Bill finally came up with some cash or whatever and went back.

- The expedition was very complicated, personally, because I wasn't just a guy on the expedition, and I'm also related to Bill.

So I said no to the second year.

And my main interest then became, well, let Wild Bill be Wild Bill, but I need to be Rob Goodman.

- When I discovered how parts of the expedition had evolved behind the scenes, I just couldn't be there on the next trip.

- Yeah, all along the way, you know, before we hit the Arctic, you know, there was a lot of strict Canadian rules.

And how many had we broken being out there in the tundra for all that time?

I don't know.

- [Juntunen] There were fuel caches in the Arctic that were placed there by the Canadian Air Force.

- [Frank] It was terrible-smelling stuff, but could burn it in the snowmobiles.

- And if you are in trouble, there's no problem taking fuel as long as you notify who it is that owns the cache and replace it.

- Bill said he'd paid him for it, but I don't know if he did or not.

- But there I was pumping it right into my snowmobile so I could get outta there (chuckles) and trusting that the expedition would replace it.

Consequently, I didn't go on the second leg, the second year.

I just didn't feel comfortable.

- I heard about it through a mutual friend of Bill's.

You know, Bill was just looking for somebody, so they needed another still guy.

And I happened to be there.

And I was a friend of a friend, and I'm sure that always has something to do with it.

And when you need somebody, you need somebody.

It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Chance to go up north where a lot of people have never been.

I gave it some thought.

Yeah, I did.

I think I'm going, geez, you know?

But we seem to have all our bases covered.

Nothing is ever what it seems, I guess.

How we started.

We took a bus with all of our gear and people up to Edmonton, I believe it was, and flew outta there direct to Resolute.

And from Resolute, it was just hop, skip, and a jump over to Devon Island where we had the machines entombed from the year before.

- [Frank] Them dang bears, they had tipped them snowmobiles upside down, tore the seats off, broke the windshields, tore that pile of parts and supplies apart.

- [Dick] So there was a little bit of damage, but we got 'em all runnin', took off from there.

- When we left Ellesmere Island, it was only 35 miles across Greenland the ice had blown out and it was freezing.

- So we went out there and the ice was about that thick, it was black as the ace of spades.

So we took a vote on it.

Who's gonna go?

We're gonna go or aren't we?

Otherwise, we'd have to come back home.

And they said, "Let's go."

So the next day, we gassed all the machines up, hooked a couple of 'em together and away we went.

We never stopped until we got to the other side.

- I'm sure if we'd have stopped, we would've sink, you could see how every machine in front of you, you could see the weight.

It's kinda rubbery, goin' just like you do in a boat.

- And I don't think Bill had contacted the authorities there for permission.

So we just kinda arrived off the ice and they said, "What's this?"

So they kinda put us in jail.

- [Dick] When we pulled into Qaanaaq, Ollie Sandberg, he said, "Well, these guys are all arrested."

We didn't have no passports or nothin' to get in there, you know, so... - We had to post like $30,000 explorers bond in case we got in trouble, or else get outta Greenland.

- We're not gonna do that.

- [Dick] So Bill Cooper stayed there.

He sent me back with the crew, - "Okay, you guys, you're free to go.

Go back the way you came."

But we didn't immediately go back to Canada 'cause that would've been a step backwards.

We headed north.

- [Dick] I think we were 7 days going 10 miles, or 10 days going 10 miles.

- [George] We totally ran out of snow.

We're carrying the machines, carrying our loads.

- [Dick] We had to carry all the gear.

We'd go carry about a mile and then go back and get another load, and then we'd bring the sleds up because it was all solid rock.

- And we were halfway shoveling snow to make a trail to run on and halfway carrying the machines.

And it went on and on, and on and on.

It's an extremely bad weather, and we were all pretty sure that Bill wasn't gonna make it.

Well, Bill finally did show up.

- Well, I don't know really what the deal was.

He never did tell us, but I found out afterwards, he wrote him out a check for Ollie Sandberg there in the village, showed him out a check.

- As it turned out, he didn't have any financing back in the States.

- The check was no good.

So I don't know if he just conned him.

There's your con deal.

You know, he must've conned him out of that money.

- So it's a good thing we did leave.

(chuckles) - We should've had our head examined, but we didn't.

- There were a lot of things I didn't know about until they got home.

- We'd totally run out of food.

Well, that's kinda like, "Well, now what do we do, fellas?"

Well, we have to go hunting, whatever there is to hunt.

It's not a good feeling.

You'll eat rabbits.

And you'll eat time and again, whatever you can.

But it's not a preferred diet.

And there was a whole thing about Thule Air Force Base, and being off limits, and- - [Frank] The American Air Force base had Thule, we had parts shipped in there.

- [George] We were thinking we could be welcome there and resupply and that sort of thing, and- - Some jerk colonel there.

No, we weren't allowed on the base.

- Not only aren't you that welcome in Greenland, you're not welcome at all at your country's air base.

- They thought we were terrorists before terrorists were known.

- An expedition like that in the middle of nowhere going really nowhere.

The radio didn't even work.

He couldn't have contacted anybody if he wanted to.

(Juntunen laughs) - [Frank] They thought that a bunch of snowmobilers were gonna destroy their missile systems, or I don't know.

- [Dick] We left Thule, Greenland.

It was all about 1,500 miles open water.

Unless you went further north up to Spitsbergen Island and cut across, you know, we crossed, whipped by Canada again.

This is in May now, I think it was.

And cracks, the cracks is what was scaring me.

Because when you went across with them sleds and all of a sudden they fall down, you know, the snow falls down, you know, everything's getting soft.

So you had to get out.

- It was getting to that magical time when the sea ice was disappearing and a lot of open water was happening.

- [Dick] It was the last machine, you know?

And all of a sudden it opens up, you know, they go across, and it's just a hole is what it was.

You know, how big it was, I don't know.

Mine, it went right down.

I just bailed right off.

It just went right through.

And the next thing you know there's nothin' there.

(psychedelic electronic music) - And Bill finally faced up to the fact somehow that he had to call a halt to it.

We weren't gonna get to where we wanted to get to.

And, I don't know, financial problems.

So he decided, "Well, it was time to make camp out on the ice, call in the airplane and go back to the States, which we did.

- In fact, when the plane come in to pick us up, he wasn't even leery.

He says, "Get in here and get out," 'cause he wanted to get outta there right away.

So we just loaded up two machines and there a little bit of gear and come back to Resolute Bay.

That was it.

That was the end of it.

- I've seen a country that'll never see again, you know?

And how many people can say they snowmobiled from Minneapolis to Qaanaaq and Thule, Greenland, and up to Alert.

You know, nobody can ever say that.

Well, yeah, we did a lot more than Plaisted did.

He just went to Ellesmere Island to the North Pole.

I mean, that's just a couple hundred miles, you know?

We went over 5,000 miles from Minneapolis, practically, to the Pole.

- [Mike] Does it make you mad?

- Pardon?

- [Mike] Does it make you mad?

- No, no.

(chuckles) - There were a lot of things that got accomplished, but it's still a failed mission 'cause we didn't get to do what we set out to do.

For sure, it's a failed mission.

- [Mike] Mm-hmm.

(film clicks) - It would've been a really wonderful thing to get there.

(film clicks) You grew up in the Cold War and, you know, the Soviet Union is the big bad bear and all that kinda stuff.

But, you know, to go there, I mean, we knew they were just ordinary people, if you get the politicians out of the way, you know?

They go to the bar and have a drink, and they talk, and, you know, they have children and go to school.

You know, people.

What it could've accomplished in terms of international bonding, it certainly would've been an incident.

It would've been a positive incident.

It would've been something else to talk about besides, you know, Cold War and Berlin and nuclear weapons, and all of that stuff.

- It would've been fun to get over to Norway.

Those doggone Norwegian girls they're the prettiest women in the world.

(psychedelic electronic music) (film clicking) - [George] The plan after that was to fly into (indistinct) Norway and take off and go from there.

- [Mike] Did it seem like you were gonna go back for a while?

- Well, it seemed like it, but that was early in the game.

And it didn't seem like it for very often, or very long.

- [Mike] Mm-hmm.

- He got in trouble very quickly.

- Well, that's when Bill Cooper started his rampage.

Whatever he was doin', that's when everything took place then.

- Well, you mean the drug end of it?

- It was really an open secret that he was hauling marijuana.

All his friends knew.

In order to cover some of his debts, he began to haul marijuana out of Mexico to Minnesota.

- [Marian] The Marijuana Air Force.

- [Frank] Oh, yeah.

- [Marian] Isn't that what they called it?

- Well, they said he had 17 planes at one time.

I don't know.

See, in them days, it wasn't as sophisticated like it is now.

That was pretty much a bunch of rogues doing it, you know?

- Yeah, and that was the '70s, you know?

It was everywhere.

- One guy could sneak in a load of marijuana, he'd made a pile of money.

I don't know.

I don't know the drug business, but... - I think maybe he needed a chunk of money or something.

And he got started in this and he couldn't stop.

I think the money was just too good.

- Well, two things.

He had an expedition going on that he needed big cash for, and his wife had some significant health problems.

Bill didn't have any insurance, so he had to have the money.

He did what he had to do.

Yeah, he was gonna take care of himself, take care of his wife, and try to get us to Moscow.

- Whatever he was doin', I don't know.

It was a mystery.

So I don't know.

Everything went to heck after that.

So that's the last I've seen him.

One day, and that was it.

And the next thing I know, he's down in Arizona and the FBI is lookin' for him.

Everybody's after him, so I don't have the slightest idea.

(psychedelic electronic music) - I know we constantly had wanted posters on him, you know?

There's certain criteria where either the heinousness of the crime or the dangerousness of the criminal or the number of states and jurisdictions that he crosses, all that criteria goes together to elevate them to a category of 1 of the 10 most wanted.

That one by the US Marshal is a pretty good poster there.

Yeah, we had many of these on the bulletin board.

- Well, you start adding it up when you're around with Bill.

And here's a guy, doesn't have a pilot's license but flies an airplane, and self-taught.

And you know he could go anywhere and do anything that he wanted to do.

So you kinda gotta admire that.

- Personally, I liked him, I admired him.

You know, I thought he was quite an individual.

I mean, for a law enforcement officer to say that, you had to admire him for his courage.

- I think he was good at what he did.

He's obviously pretty good.

He's never been caught.

(Terry chuckles) - He's turned into this sorta legend.

He was good at manufacturing that sort of thing.

He loved that idea.

He loved the fact that he could be an explorer.

And I'm sure he worked hard on his image.

He was a cowboy.

- Oh, sure.

He's a folk hero.

- [Terry] And that's not uncommon where someone who might be outside the law from time to time is looked at pretty well by the residents of the community.

The old Robin Hood Syndrome, you know, where you take care of the poor.

And you might have to cut some corners with government to do that, but you take care of the poor.

And the people respond to that, you know, so... - He owned the Squirrel Cage bar.

(lively country music) I think he'd done a lot of good for Willow River and that's why they liked him so well.

- You know, when you live in small towns, the bar and the restaurant, those are the local gathering places for social activity.

- He was an interesting person.

If Bill was in tending bar, the place was full.

He was a storyteller.

- [Rob] His whole life was theater.

I mean, he was a big player on a big stage.

Or he wanted to be a big player on a big stage.

- He'd bend over backwards to help you out.

And he was good for the local people.

What he did outside in the real world was his own deal.

- [John] They say he was in all of their parades.

(chuckles) He'd come in disguise, of course.

- No, it's kinda fun, though, that all those stories kinda creep up, isn't it?

- Bill came to me one day, and he said, "They're after me because they think I am D.B.

Cooper, that I jumped out of this plane."

(film clicks) And he said, "I didn't do it.

But, so far, I haven't been able to come up with an alibi."

- D.B.

Cooper jumped out of the plane with a million dollars.

Was it a million?

- [Mike] It was 200,000.

- 200,000.

It seemed like a million back then.

- We even discussed that amongst ourselves and with Bill.

- [Mike] Really?

- Oh, sure.

People are saying you're D.B.

Cooper, you know?

Are you really?

You can tell us, you know?

- There's one there, the Piper kidnapping and stuff.

You know, he was supposed to have been involved in that.

Whether he was or not, I don't know.

Of course he was supposed to rob the Sturgeon Lake Bank too, and I don't know if he did or not neither.

You know, there's a picture of him there.

- [Mike] Mm.

- One time he was supposed to have been in jail in Phoenix, and he talked his way out and he disappeared.

- Somewhere along the line, Bill was supposed to make a court appearance, which he had a prearranged plea deal.

- The way I understood it, he had a judge that was gonna be pretty lenient on him, and then they switched judges that was gonna hang him.

- His attorney called him the night before and told him that it fell through, and Bill disappeared.

We've never seen him since.

- And he called Marian and said we wouldn't be seeing him for a while.

- He disappeared.

He literally disappeared from our entire family.

No contact.

- It's sad when someone just disappears like that and you never know for sure.

- I'm not sure where Bill is, or how he died, or if he's alive.

I'd sure like to see him again.

- Well, I'm curious, you know, whatever happened to him.

Of course the FBI told me that time, or US Marshals when they were here, says he's either in Mexico laying in the ground or he's in Canada runnin' around.

That's what they told me, so I don't know.

- I think he got killed in a drug deal that went wrong.

That's my honest... - I'm sure I'll never see him again, whether he's alive or isn't.

- Well, my best guess he'd head for Canada.

That'd be my best guess.

'Cause he knew a lot of people up there and he was a survivor.

Like I said, he could probably go out in the woods and live forever, you know?

But he's up there in age now too if he is alive.

- After he disappeared, there were some newspaper guy or some radio somebody that would say, "Oh, they heard that Bill Cooper was here, or there, or a sighting," or something like that, or somebody would start a rumor about something.

I personally didn't think any of them held any water at all.

I thought if Bill's around, he'd call me.

- Because there's always been rumors about Bill, and I don't believe in rumors.

- [Mike] Yeah.

- I just don't believe it.

I think he's gone.

- Oh, I'm afraid that, no, if he was alive, he'd have made contact some way in 30 years, you know?

- [Mike] Uh-huh.

- Some way.

- [Dick] I bet you haven't seen this baby growin' up.

- [Crew Member 1] There you go.

One, two, three.

Okay.

- Well, what we're doin' here today is gettin' this machine to run.

It hasn't been run for over 30 years.

It's the only survivor of the whole bunch.

Yeah, we brought it home, and it's been sittin' ever since in the garage.

So if these boys wanna use it for a show here in Willow River.

- You're supposed to smile.

- Oh.

(chuckling) Well, let's take her for a ride.

(engine revving) Oh, it's great.

Great just to ride it, the first time I rode it in 30 some years.

These boys did a good job gettin' it runnin' like they did.

After sittin' that many years, it's really amazing it worked out real good.

Well, Bill would be proud of that machine now.

- [Speaker 2] Yeah.

- You wanna call him up?

Yeah, we'll find Bill.

We'll let him ride her.

(Dick chuckles) - So do you know where Bill Cooper is?

- No.

- No - Answer that question.

- Yeah.

(crew members chuckling) Nobody does.

- You're not hiding him anywhere?

- No.

- No.

- Even his kids don't know where he's at, so... - [Crew Member 2] Huh.

What would Wild Bill think if he was standin' here?

- [Dick] He'd shake his head.

(Dick and crew members laugh) - [Crew Member 2] What are you doin' that for?

- [Dick] Yeah.

- [Crew Member 3] Right.

- I mean, the fact that that expedition is still legend in Willow River, it shows what an impact it had on that town.

You know, that Bill Cooper's legacy lives on for a long, long time.

You know, Wild Bill.

(engine purring) - I mean, we've been gettin' together and racing like this since the mid '90s.

We named it the Wild Bill 20 because of Wild Bill Cooper, hometown, what do you call it, legend.

They wouldn't call him a hero, I guess.

It's an outlaw race is what it was, and that was the thing about it, you know?

Another thing, Wild Bill being an outlaw.

(engine revs) - You made her.

- You betcha.

- How the hell are ya?

- Good.

So how many sleds are you gonna get out here?

- Ah, you know, I'm not sure.

I'm not racin'.

I'm just flagging it and helping Todd keep it goin'.

And this is my oldest boy, Darren.

This is Dick.

- Well, pleased to meet you.

- He was the one who rode that sled to Russia.

- No, not to Russia.

- Well- - Greenland.

- Greenland.

- [Darren] Greenland.

It's still a ways.

- Yeah, pretty close.

- About 5,500 miles is all.

(Brian and Dick chuckle) Short trip.

- [Darren] Short trip.

- Yeah.

(engine revving) - Well, they've got a regular Wild Bill racing association over here now.

You know, what'd be neat is to get some of them stickers remade.

- [Dick] Yeah.

- I had one of 'em on my bed, stuck to my headboard.

(Dick laughs) And I can't find the damn headboard.

- Oh, but I still got my old stuff.

I brought my jacket.

(people chattering) It feels good.

We're gonna run that machine after a while and we'll see how it does.

Just to take a few pictures and stuff, so... We're not gonna run it in the race, I don't think, unless somebody else wants to run it.

- Has anybody contacted the Snowmobile Hall of Fame, Minnesota Snowmobile Hall of Fame of Grand Rapids?

'Cause these guys really need to be inducted in that for what they did with these sleds.

I was actually thinkin' of doing it myself because they didn't get any recognition for this.

And you've got guys that have been successful getting to the North Pole and load their stuff in Resolute Bay.

It's only 300 miles.

These guys went 6,000 miles, man.

You know?

(Brian chuckles) - I would hope that Bill might be smiling, either if he's here secretly smilin' or in his grave goin', "Yep, thanks, guys."

Living in mortality.

(engines revving) - You know, I think back on that and I wonder, "What the heck did I ever, how did I ever get up the nerve to do this?

Why would you do this?"

And I think I did it because I wanted to.

And I think everyone else on the expedition did it because they wanted to.

They had some reason to be there of their own choice.

Nobody was forced into it.

And once you're there, once you're there, you just have to do it.

- When I tell people about the snowmobile trip, you know, I can just see it in them that somehow they romanticize it.

- People wanna listen or hear about it, and that's okay.

But I don't know, it's not that spectacular.

We went a long ways.

We had some fun, we had some hard times, but it was such a long time ago.

- [Mike] Mm-hmm.

- It does, it gets outta your mind after a while, you know?

- [Mike] Mm-hmm.

- In a way it's like when you produce a wonderful piece of theater, you wanna keep it forever, but you can't, it's not designed that way.

Theater's designed, you experience it and then it just goes away.

It's not like a movie.

You have an extraordinary experience for a limited amount of time.

But that's not your life, you know?

Right now, you know, I'm in the theater, I run a theater for the past 22 years.

- For quite some time, I did weddings in limited industrial photography.

- We just got registered cattle.

We just sell breeding stock.

- I was a foreman supervisor for Crestline tools, and I was put in about 18 years there.

So we built snowmobiles too.

- Early in my career, I was able to lever that experience into jobs.

And, you know, it really kinda set the tone for what I like to do in the future.

I did a lot of documentary work after that.

Yeah, it was a big boost in the career.

And I know I understood that going in, that's why I wanted to do it.

And it turned out fine.

- We had land here.

And we needed a place to hunt, so I built a deer hunting shack.

And everybody loved it so much they wanted to come up here and live.

This is home.

- I tell you, though, I'm gonna be 75 now in September, so it's gonna be comin' to an end.

Yeah, my knees are gettin' bad and (breathes deeply) time to quit maybe.

- [Mike] Then what are you gonna do?

- I don't know.

Maybe do somethin' stupid, huh?

- [Mike] What's it like seeing this stuff again?

- Well, it makes me feel good.

It looks like I'd like to do it again.

(bright music) - There aren't a lot of adventures available in the world.

And if you're an ordinary human being, you don't get extraordinary chances very often.

And Bill had this crazy ability to take ordinary, average people, this ordinary people, and give them this idea that they, too, could be extraordinary, you know?

How else do you convince six guys, who are ordinary people, to leave their families for four months and decide to go on a snowmobile trip around the world?

I mean, it's absurd when you think about it, you know?

- [Dick] How you doin', George?

- There you go, buddy.

How are you?

- Good.

How you doin', Frank?

(Marian chuckling) - [Frank] Hey, George.

- [George] Mr.

Larson.

Hi, sweetie.

- George.

(Marian chuckles) - Well, it's good old times.

At least we got somethin' to talk about, fellas.

(bright music) ("Wild Bill And His Ski Mobile") ♪ 65 below, bitter cold on the way ♪ ♪ North through Manitoba up through Hudson Bay ♪ ♪ In the white hill of the Arctic, Greenland seem so far ♪ ♪ 5,000 miles from a drink at the Squirrel Cage bar ♪ ♪ It takes a lot more than just plain skill ♪ ♪ To make the trans-world trip on a ski mobile ♪ ♪ It takes a lot of guts, sweat, and steam ♪ ♪ To leave a good job and follow a dream ♪ ♪ Go around the world on a ski machine ♪