Nominalization of Verbs (Sentence help)

[Jakarta]

こんにちはみなさん。　

I have a question about nominalization. My pocket grammar book says you add の or こと to your verb or verb phrase to make it into a noun, with　こと　just being more formal. The example sentences they give uses several different verbs, but my particle dictionary says that it is more common for the verbs to be one of the 5 senses. I asked my brother to randomly come up with a sentence for me, and I would try and translate it. He was playing Fallout 3, and this is the sentence he gave me:

Surviving the wasteland is tough.

I translated it like this:

あれちでいきぬいているのはむずかしいだよ。

Is the grammatically correct? Is this even a good way to say that or is there a better way?

ありがとうございます。

[keatonatron]

Your grasp of noun-making is perfect.

However, you don't use だ after an i-adjective

(e.g. ・・・のはむずかしいよ）

[Jakarta]

Ah, I completely forgot about that. It's good to know the noun-making part correct. I need to work more on the plain forms though.

ありがとう。