But before the men could lose another one of their sled dogs, Riki unexpectedly gathers his courage and attacks Kuma, defeating the black dog in a quick fight and gaining back his pride of leadership. With the team finally able to pull the sled under Riki's regained leadership, the dogs were able to help their handlers rescue three members of the expedition team who were stranded in the middle of the blizzard after their snowcat shut down. "Farewell, Our Beloved Friend"  The Showa Station was finally completed and the "Sōya" set sail for Japan, leaving behind a team of eleven Japanese scientists and nineteen Sakhalin huskies to winter in Antarctica for a year. Though the team members were excited about wintering in for a year and were more than willing to accept any challenges before them, they were forced to confront several major problems of their own. On the first day of their stay at the base, the men discovered that some of the ice near the base had broken apart and carried off half of their fuel and food supplies for the year. To fix this situation, the men started ice-fishing and began catching a good number of gobies to replenish their shrunken food supply. They also decided to rely most of their transportation work on the dogs to save their remaining fuel. Things went from bad to worse when Bekku, one of the sled dogs suffered from a kidney disease and died a few days later. A few weeks afterwards, Inuzuka accidentally set the radio contact building on fire and was unable to put it out with the fire extinguisher because he had turned it on to test it. At first, the crew scolded and belittled Inuzuka for his carelessness, but after a day or so, the men encouraged him to try to make up for his mishaps and forgave him for what had happened. To make up for his mistakes, Inuzuka decided to accompany Kuramochi and Himuro on their most difficult challenge yet; to journey across the Antarctic wilderness and climb to the top of Botnnuten. "Death of a Comrade"  Kuramochi, joined by Himuro and Inuzuka, began his journey to fulfill the team's mission of climbing to the top of Mt. Botnnuten. Back home in Japan, Shirasaki Suguru was busy preparing for the second Antarctica expedition to replace the 11 members from the first expedition that were left to do preliminary studies. Despite of the heavy blizzard and going off track from their plan route, Kuramochi and his companions were very glad and surprised that they managed to reach their destination.