Outdoor Boys’ Luke Nichols fills in for fellow YouTuber during family health crisis

Outdoor Boys creator Luke Nichols has appeared on the MyLifeOutdoors YouTube channel to help cover content while its host, Steven, steps away to care for his wife during her cancer diagnosis.

The collaboration comes months after Nichols announced his own indefinite hiatus from his Outdoor Boys channel, citing burnout and concerns about how his rapid growth was impacting his personal life.

Nichols has been one of YouTube’s fastest growing creators, gaining more than 12 million subscribers in 18 months and approaching 15 million before stepping back in May 2025. At the time, he said the attention brought on by his sudden rise was starting to affect his family, explaining that constant public encounters and contact attempts had become “overwhelming.”

He told viewers he wanted to pause before things grew “out of hand” and disrupted his ability to live a normal life.

Despite his hiatus, Nichols returned to film a full-length video for Steven, whose family is facing a significant health challenge.

In the new upload, titled Camping in Snowstorm With No Tent, No Sleeping Bag, he explains in the opening minutes that Steven is focused on caring for his wife and their four children. Nichols tells viewers he wanted to help him “worry about one thing at a time” by taking over a video on the channel.

Nichols films an Arctic survival trip for MyLifeOutdoors

The video follows Nichols into Alaska’s interior as he attempts an overnight trip in a snowstorm without a tent or sleeping bag. Racing a two-hour window before sunset, he finds a fallen birch tree with an exposed root ball and uses it as the foundation of a fire-heated shelter.

He gathers enough firewood for what he says will be a 17-hour night, reviews gear in Steven’s style, and cooks moose stew over the flames.

Along the way he highlights hazards in the area, including thin creek ice with water flowing beneath it. Throughout the trip he references MyLifeOutdoors’ usual format and jokes that he is “getting a late start” as he rushes to finish before dark.

Nichols ends the video by asking viewers to support Steven during the family’s ongoing situation. He encourages fans to subscribe and watch previous MyLifeOutdoors videos, saying it would “mean a lot to them” while Steven focuses on home life. The final minutes show him digging his car out of deeper-than-expected snowfall and navigating an unplowed lot before heading home.