I'm Bear Grylls.
I've served with The British Special Forces,
I've climbed to the summit of Everest
and crossed the frozen oceans of the Arctic.
Now, my challenge is to go alone
into one of America's deadliest places,
I don't like this at all.
The Rocky Mountains.
Millions of people visit every year.
Quick, quick, quick.
Two thousand don't return alive.
I've just got to get it right away.
I'm going into one of the most remote areas of the Rockies,
with only the clothes I'm wearing,
to show you how to be an ultimate survivor.
I'm flying at 10,000 feet over the Rockies,
somewhere near the Canadian border.
Since most people who end up in trouble here are caught by surprise,
my team has arranged one for me.
At any moment the pilot will tell me to jump.
Where I don't know.
I don't have a map, spare clothing, water or food,
not even a cell phone.
Go Bear. Good luck.
My mission is simple.
Use all my skills to get out alive in under five days.
A camera crew will follow me on the ground
but the rules are very clear,
no interaction with me is allowed,
they can intervene only in a matter of life or death.
(BEAR GROANS)
It really hurts.
This is always a danger when jumping into the unknown.
This is only the second time I've had a problem with my landing.
The first time I broke my back.
(HEAVY BREATHING)
I've got to somehow try and work out a way of getting out of here.
I'm at least 60 feet up,
if I jump I'll break my legs,
there's only one way out of this
and it's something I've never done before.
I'm gonna have to use my emergency parachute to get me down.
And now what I've got to try and do, is climb down the canopy of this
but when I drop,
keep hold of one side of it so I bring it down with me,
because I'm gonna need these rigging lines
for getting myself out of this place I've got myself into.
And the final thing I've got to remember is when I land
from this height, this is gonna be about 20 foot drop off
the bottom of this.
I've got to roll, land with my legs feet together and avoid landing,
like a sack of potatoes.
So here goes.
(BREATHING HEAVY AND COUGHING)
I'm down, in a bit of a mess but out of that tree.
The one light thing that I manged to salvage from my parachute
was some of these rigging lines
and I'm going to be doing these, like,
crossing ravines, rivers, climbing cliffs,
and to have something that can hold my weight.
I can lash logs together with and also catch fish.
It's gonna be a real, real benefit to me out here.
Getting lost in the mountains can be terrifying.
And it's much easier than you might think.
In June 2005 an 11 year old boy scout, Brennan Hawkins
was out hiking with his group.
When he just simply vanished, after four days
of intensive searching he was found severely dehydrated
only five miles from his camp.
His rescuers believe
that if it hadn't been the month of June
he would have died of hypothermia.
If you do get lost like Brennan,
try to keep calm and come up with a plan.
And my plan is simple, to get my bearings and look for a river.
There's an old rule that's a good one
when you're lost in the wild.
Find a stream or a river,
then hunt for a track because that will lead you to a road and safety.
But that's easier said than done.
The Rockies are over 750 thousand square miles of wilderness
covering seven US states and two Canadian.
I could be looking for a very long time.
Although it's September the weather here can be really deceptive.
During the day like now,
it's around 65 degrees Fahrenheit
but later at night it can drop to below zero.
They say there are just two seasons in the Rockies, June and winter.
It's about 5pm now and it's almost dusk
and there's probably only about an hour of light left
and the priority really for me now is to find shelter
and something to eat.
Okay, the key to building a shelter is you want something
that's gonna keep you warm, that's gonna keep you dry
but above all that's not going to expend a huge amount
of energy to build.
And what I'm gonna do is make what they call a debris shelter
and it's really simple to do.
All I do is I'm going to pick this thing up.
Drag it along and I've got my base of it here.
And then really just try and clear all these under branches.
And...
Get all of this moss and pine needles.
And I do this now,
on both sides
and then I need just to find loads of moss.
Moss like this for the roof is gonna protect me from the wind and rain.
This is gonna be beautiful.
And it's gonna keep me really snug.
With temperatures approaching near freezing at night,
the inside of the shelter could be as much as 10 degrees warmer.
And one of the most important things
I've done here is really put masses and masses of pine needles
as a kind of ground bedding here and the reason this is
so important is that you lose the majority of your heat
through your body and through the ground.
But with enough of this,
this is gonna hold the heat and insulate me above and below.
While I'm building the shelter and turning over loads of logs
often when you, you go under these thing,
go under these things, you'll find, here you go, little like millipedes.
Surviving in the wild is all
about finding food using the least amount of energy.
But I've got to check these have got four legs per body segment.
Centipedes are very similar but have only two
and can give you a nasty bite.
Disgusting as it looks but it's good protein.
One of the things, I haven't got what would be so useful
for me out here is a knife
and one of the easiest way of improvising a knife
is to make what they call a disc knife
and the way you do this is just,
just to grab what we call a hammer stone
and a normal bit of stone and give it a good
And here we go and look that's a really good bit sharp,
bit of flint that I'll be able to gut fish with.
And use for a feather stick for making tinder,
loads of different things.
As night falls it's getting much colder
and I need to get a fire going.
Okay, try and get some firewood here there's a bit more here.
Look, look, look. It's... Come here, come here quick, quick, quick.
It's a snake. It's a snake.
A rattlesnake, one of the Rockies' most deadliest creatures.
Is he dead?
Got to let it go. I'm just gonna give him a nudging.
My heart's really thumping.
That's why you've got to be so careful getting,
looking under these sort of logs but I really actually hate snakes
and it's definitely made me a little less comfortable
about my shelter but...
That is gonna make a good bit of dinner.
Before it gets dark I really need to get a fire going.
And the best way out here in the Rockies
with all this dry pine and spruce is the hand drill method.
Use your rock to make a notch in a log and by rotating the drill,
ignite a spark with very dry kindling.
It's not easy.
Be prepared, it can take a long time.
(INAUDIBLE)
Just show you how sharp actually these stones can be.
My disc knife is already proving useful.
The first thing to do is to get rid of the venomous head.
Okay, that's the head off.
I've peeled this little bit back.
Here she comes, here she comes,
here she comes and that's all the guts then coming out.
Get rid of the last bit of the guts.
And, that's the skin and all its back end.
That is going to be beautiful meat.
One of the things that's, really important is to make sure
I never leave any of the guts of any of the animals that
I'm eating lying around, this sort of stuff,
any guts is really gonna attract, wolves or bears
and I don't want any of them anywhere near where I am,
so what I'm gonna do, put that on the fire to burn,
along with...
That head that's full of all the venom and again,
I want that to be burnt well and truly.
So there we go.
And then I'm going to cook this baby.
And if I jam the top bit of the meat into this stick.
Wrap this round.
That is ready for the barbe.
This area is full of grizzlies,
and they can smell food up to 20 miles away.
So I have to be extra vigilant.
I recently heard a story about a husband and wife team
who were stalked by a grizzly in their campsite while they slept.
The grizzly dragged the man away, ripping his scalp off.
Luckily the grizzly lost interest
and the couple both ran 10 miles before feeling safe again.
I reckon this is cooked now and a good way of trying to tell
is if you can peel the fibres off of this meat,
it's generally a sign it's pretty well cooked and...
They also normally taste quite like chicken.
And, it's beautiful, that is really, really good.
It's time to turn in. I wonder how much sleep I'll get.
And If I'm really alone.
I don't like this at all, I don't like this...
Just turning this camera on.
I don't know if you can hear this but...
There's definitely something,
something's scurrying around outside and it's probably,
it's probably just a deer but...
There you go, you can hear it again, can you hear?
There's definitely something out here.
I just heard a really heavy footstep out there and I don't know,
I'm gonna try and try and see if I can see anything
with the camera but.
Something that moved past, the past the shadow of the fire.
And it's so hard to tell what it is, but it sounded just.
I don't like this at all, I don't like this, come on then.
Okay, okay.
There is definitely something moving,
I just can't make out what it is.
I haven't heard from it now for,
for a few minutes and it might well have just moved away but...
Sure as hell it knows I'm here.
And it knows I've eaten food here,
and I don't know a huge amount about bears
but what I do know is that it's,
if they come into your camp and they see you there,
you need to clear that camp and fast,
it's just it's the middle of the bloody night.
It's just the middle of the night and I don't know,
I just don't want to go charging off anywhere.
But I don't, I just don't know what I'm gonna do.
I lay very still and silent for some time,
I couldn't hear any movement outside
but if whatever it was out there came back.
I might not be so lucky.
It was time to go.
I've just got to get right away, from this area now.
Now, moving at night is never ideal
but I've got, I've got just no choice.
At the moment, the camera light helping me move much faster.
One of the real dangers of moving at night time
is just running off and then getting lost
and the easiest way of navigating
when you haven't got a compass is just to use the heavens,
use the stars and on a beautiful clear night like this
you can easily pick out the North Star just by seeing
the Big Dipper over there,
taking the last two stars of the Big Dipper and then going,
one, two, three, four and that will point directly at the North Star,
it's the star on its own,
it's not the brightest star but it's clear
and it's on its own and it's about the only star that won't move.
You can't navigate by following other stars
for more than about 50 minutes, they'll start to shift
but the North Star is a constant. It's that way.
We want to be heading South away from these mountains.
People are often scared about moving at night time
but certainly I just remember my time in Special Forces,
we'd always only move at night time
and it's just a question of getting comfortable with it,
slowing down and tuning in your senses and you can hear,
hear there's a stream obviously near by
and it's just learning to take it slow and feel your way
and move and move branch aside,
feel with your feet and actually after about,
about 40 minutes you get very, very good night vision
and under a clear sky like this where there's a strong moon,
it can become almost easy as daylight and once you get
into that rhythm.
I've been moving now for...
For almost, almost 24 hours and...
I'm tired and I'm cold.
And if I'm honest I'm just a little bit,
a little bit scared of this grizzly still in this area
and I just want to, I really just want to get
right away from here now.
I'm walking over here,
I've just noticed, a lot of the grass has been flattened,
it's probably where deer and elk have just been hanging out.
You can see this is probably where badgers have been
burrowing around looking for bugs and scrubs
and I bet if I have a good dig around, in here,
I'll find something that I can eat, as well.
The rattlesnake was my last meal, some 12 hours ago.
I'm using up a lot of energy.
Being on the move like this burns around 6,000 calories a day.
And to stay alert I'm going to need more food.
And there you go look that's what these guys
were probably eating last night.
Worms.
Believe it or not, worms and insects are 80 percent protein.
Beef's only around 20.
So it's easy energy, even if not the most tasty.
I will keep those...
For later.
It's going to rain soon and there are loads of signs
in nature that forecast the weather and if you look up
at the sky at the moment,
you've got this cloud formation in what's called banded cirrus
and that's basically these fingers of cloud that go across the sky
and often that moves in front of a low pressure.
Also when it's going to rain,
sounds tend to carry much further
and that's basically just the moisture laden atmosphere acting
a little bit like an amplifier and with that you'll often get
a very distinct smell of the forest as basically
nature's just beginning to open up ready to receive the rain.
Then several hours later the nightmare of last night
becomes real once more.
Quick, quick, quick!
Now, that is definitely a grizzly track
and just look at the size of that paw, man.
And actually you can tell from just the compression of the earth here
and the displacement of the soil from the claws,
this is probably only an hour or two old and by the size of that,
that could well be a 600 pound bear.
And I don't know if it's me,
just imagining it but it seems like this bear is just playing with me,
but we want to get out of here.
Come on then, let's go.
The last four, five hours
I've been moving through an area that's just been completely,
you know, devastated by a forest fire
and it's cleared a lot of this ground of the trees,
the bush and the scrub
but it is though working now in my favour
and I can move much faster through this terrain
and all of this is good and soft under foot as well.
I'm lost in the Rockies for the second day
and I've just come across my first major obstacle.
If you are ever in a situation like this and need to escape quickly,
there is only one option.
Yeah, this is, this is a big jump.
This must be, this must be 70 foot and it is, yeah this is dangerous.
At 70 feet if I hit wrong it'll be like hitting concrete.
It is manageable as long as you enter the water correctly.
But I can't stress enough just how careful you've got to be jumping off
anything really more than, more than about 20 feet.
And the big danger of jumping into these sort of rivers,
is first of all shallow water but secondly, rocks,
both of which could break your legs which in an environment like this,
on your own, can be fatal.
But the technique really for doing this is to make sure
that you jump feet first, keep absolutely vertical,
keep your legs together and clench your backside
and you can guess the reason for that one.
Okay.
Here goes.
There's no way the grizzly's gonna jump that.
And that is definitely going to have broken my scent trail.
Now, I've found a big river,
I'm more hopeful about finding a track and ultimately a road.
This river can also keep me alive with water and food.
The riverbank can also provide the odd piece of garbage
which can be a lifesaver.
It's an old,
old camp that's been used and...
This probably would have been used by a hunter or a tracker,
anything up to you know five or 10 years ago
but when you get the chance to scavenge
you've got to use these sort of things and...
This sort of tin will be really useful for,
for collecting water in
and you see there's....
Even an old plastic bag under here,
it's probably a bit holey but take it.
Also keep your eyes open for natural elements that can help you,
like these cattails.
These things are absolutely brilliant,
and you can use them for so many different tasks.
Now, If you take the top of a cattail and twist it,
this stuff is so light it makes just brilliant tinder for a fire
and also you can use lots of this to insulate a jacket and keep you warm.
If you move down the cattails,
the actual shaft of it here is great for making arrows.
Really good and strong.
And then if you go all the way down
to the bottom and get one of these,
if we go and rinse it off you'll see they're actually nature's spaghetti.
And that's really good carbohydrate.
Now, for some protein and this river is full of my favourite
North American Trout.
Although I don't have anything like a hook to catch them with,
there is another way.
Okay, what I've been doing here is trying to work my way up
through a lot of these pools,
looking for fish to try and do some,
some hand fishing and what happens often is the fishes swim up
into these pools, but then can't get out
and in this one there are a couple of fish that are in here,
so the idea of getting these is to try
and come around behind them very slowly
and try not to disturb them.
And what I want to do here,
I don't know if you can see this one,
is actually to come above,
drive it down into the silt where I can get some grip,
squeeze it tight and pull it out.
But it's not that easy.
Okay.
And this one is a beauty, good size, it's gonna be for dinner.
You can actually... These things,
slippery as hell but if you get your...
Fingers in its gills,
you'll stop it and actually just rinse this off a bit,
get the silt off. Don't go away you little brute.
You can actually in a real emergency situation,
eat these raw.
There go the guts.
And head.
And I've got good meat there.
It's the best sushi you'll ever have
and another few of these beauties
and I'm gonna have the best dinner I've ever had.
I've got this bark
and I'm gonna line this bark with a load of mud
and I'm gonna make like a little oven effectively,
for these fish.
So I line it with that...
And then I use...
these goose foot leaves,
to keep the mud away from the fish.
Again I lay more of these goose foot leaves on the top.
Pack more mud all the way over that.
And then that's ready to get baking.
To make sure the top of it cooks, get some of that nice kindling,
but it should need about,
just about 20 minutes.
So that's that and while that's cooking,
what I want to do is hang up
my tin for any fish that I'm not using.
There we go, we'll put those guts as well in there,
any fish that I don't eat this evening,
I don't want to be leaving it around this camp while I'm sleeping.
I am going to, just with a bit of my rigging lines,
tie it round this rock.
And then we go down.
Down to the river where there's a nice big tree,
throw this over a branch and any surplus food
can hang well out of harm's way.
Grizzlies travel vast distances in search of food eating
around 35,000 calories a day.
The last thing I want is another hungry bear near my shelter.
I'm putting this food at least a hundred yards away from my camp.
And that is definitely beginner's luck.
Then what I'll do is just...
Pull this up
and that's any surplus food well out of harm's way,
so that's ready for after dinner.
Okay, this should be nicely,
nicely baked now.
I should be able to roll that nice fish.
And there you go, you can see the,
the white of the fish eye haven't popped out
which means it's cooked if we peel back the skin of this,
you can see really nice white meat there
and that is gonna be...
Amazing.
It's the end of my second day
and so far it's been a roller coaster.
Finding the river has been a real blessing.
The bad news.
Rivers are the grizzly's favourite hunting ground.
I've been lost in the Rockies for over two day now,
the camera crew is with me
but they're not allowed to interact with me in anyway.
Unless my life's in complete danger.
As I headed into day three
I'm getting tired and I'm feeling the strain.
The only solution, keep moving and stay positive.
No matter how tough it gets living rough,
it's always important to freshen up in nature's rest room.
Really nice to have a good wash in the morning
and also I can use what are called horse tails
to do my teeth.
And what you do,
you just break them off at the stem and these bits actually
clean your teeth really nice.
My dentist would be proud of me.
And then when you've cleaned them,
you can then just use the middle bit,
that's a bit more abrasive just to get all the plaque off.
When I was 21 I had a,
a free fall parachuting accident
when my canopy ripped and I broke my back in three places
and had to spend 18 months in and out of hospital
and just at that time the thought of ever being able
to do all these things, that I'd, I'd always been able to do well,
like, you know, to climb and...
Parachute were just,
just out of my reach and for me,
it's a real buzz to be back
and doing all of these things that I love so much.
Obviously, I'm sweating a lot out here
and it's really important to try and keep hydrated
but what I can't do is drink straight from the streams,
even though the water looks crystal clear
often it can carry these waterborne parasites such as salmonella,
Hepatitis A or Giardia.
And it's giardia that's particularly prevalent in the Rockies
and if you get it you'll end up out of action
for up to two or three weeks with diarrhoea,
vomiting and that for me would be,
would be really bad news in the wild.
So what I'm gonna do is actually boil up this water in the tin.
Get that through there, put it on the fire,
let that boil and then flavour it with some of these rosehips
that I found and all I do is pick a load of these berries,
crush them up really nicely.
Sit back, enjoy the view and in 15 minutes I should have,
as the English like to say a good cup of tea.
Okay, let's see what this tastes like.
It's kind of like,
it's kind of like strawberries that aren't quite ripe
but it's certainly definitely better than giardia.
This journey's beginning to seem endless.
I've been out here in the Rockies for 72 hours
and I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever make it out
by my five day deadline.
One of the things that I'm finding hard at the moment is,
is just missing company I think, you know,
as a climber I'm always so used to,
to having a buddy right there with me
and I think it always gives you strength just the fact
that you're together and I'm just,
at the moment if I'm honest struggling,
being so much on my own
and I just really miss, just that encouragement I think.
It's strange how you pass the time when you're lost in the wilderness.
You don't really take in the beauty and the grandeur of the Rockies,
for all the reasons most people come here in the first place.
The snow caps keep a frosting of snow all the year round
and if I can make myself stop and look, it's simply breathtaking.
But right now I only want one thing,
to keep moving as fast as I can so I can reach a road and safety.
As evening closes in my journey along the river comes
to an abrupt end.
I'm not at all sure how to get out of this one.
I have now reached the point
where I cannot go any further in the direction I want to travel.
There's this huge river beneath me
and these sheer cliffs at the side.
What I can do though is that I can use this river to take me
in the direction that I want to travel a hell of a lot faster
than I'm going to be able to walk through this sort of terrain.
Now, rivers like this can be seriously dangerous
and on the whole you do not want to be getting
into this sort of river on your own unless it's a real emergency.
But there is every chance that this river can take me
all the way back down to civilisation
and what I'm actually gonna do is use my rucksack here
and a plastic bag I found to act as a floatation device.
This should hopefully keep me nicely afloat.
And effectively I'm gonna white water raft down
these rapids with this as my raft.
Man it's cold as well.
In the Rockies all the water comes from snow melt,
so this river is glacial fed.
Averaging around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hypothermia is a very real danger and the biggest killer
in the Rockies.
Only this year two bodies were pulled out
of the same river in this area.
Both had been alone and both had got hypothermia and drowned.
But the bottom line is the speed this river's eventually
gonna pick up to I'm going to have literally split seconds to react
but it's definitely better feet first than head first.
Man...
This is tiring.
I'm really feeling my heart pumping now.
If you get onto a rock like this you've really just gotta...
Use this, to rest a bit.
But one of the keys with these sort of rapids is aiming
for what they call the tongue of it
and when you're in the water and you're going down,
you can see this tongue build in front of you
where all the main flow of the water is going
and the idea is to get into that, go with the flow
and try not to panic.
Okay, this is quite a shallow part of the river here
and this is a classic time just to use my feet to fend off
lots of little rocks that I can see in front of me all the way here.
And this is exactly why you go feet first. There's another one.
Man, just got pulled under up there,
normally you just pop straight up but I was running out of puff then.
I floated down stream in near freezing water
for what seemed like an age,
I'm not quite sure but I think
I must have travelled at least 20 miles
before I knew I just couldn't take the cold anymore.
I'm not feeling great at the moment and I want to get out before,
before it gets any worse and just try and get warm.
Just feel how exhausted I am for...
Been almost like four days now of moving and...
Yeah, just need a,
need to stop and get warm.
And the quickest way to do that is to boost the heart rate
with physical exercise.
Just that I couldn't feel less like doing 50 press-ups at the moment.
Okay, I've basically just got to,
I've got to get out of these wet clothes and I've got to get warm.
And I've got to be able to try and get, a fire going.
Okay, what I'm going to try and do here
is just to build a fire down the whole length of this
and into this corner here and when it's going nicely
I'm just going to pile a load of these stones onto it,
get them really hot and then all of this bit I'm going to cover
with more sand and that's gonna make a,
a really nice warm like bed to sleep on.
You see these sort of stones,
they're gonna be ideal to put in this fire bed
and get these stones really nice and hot.
This has died down enough now,
this fire and these stones are gonna be really hot
and...
What I'll do is just cover them really well.
And these stones will stay hot for hours and hours and hours.
My body feels battered and bruised
but those hot stones helped to ease the pain.
As night falls. There's just one thought in my mind.
Am I really getting any closer to home.
It's day four and I'm beginning to feel pretty rough.
One of the things they say about when you're,
when you're in a survival situation is so important
is to keep making decisions,
not get stagnant and not just procrastinate
and they say it's better to make a wrong decision almost
than just do nothing and it's a process
of moving, moving, moving that's eventually gonna get you
out of trouble and this is what I'm hoping, hoping for.
I'm thirsty, hungry.
I just want to find my way out.
People...
People often talk about the survival instinct
and it's something all of us have
but not necessarily everybody finds
and I think sometimes your life can be a little bit fluffy
and we don't necessarily have that need to stay alive
but it is something that is within us all,
something needs to drive you
and for me at the moment it's just wanting to,
just wanting to see my family and see my wife Shara
and my little boy Jesse who was two a few days ago.
And...
I just really wish, you know,
wish it was him clinging round my neck at the moment rather
than this rucksack that I'm carrying everywhere.
But it's...
It's definitely, definitely that that's keeping me,
keep me moving.
I'd just forgotten how,
how physically demanding it is,
moving through the mountains and...
I'm just not as fit as when I was climbing every day
and you just forget how hard,
how hard it is and the romance of this has definitely,
has definitely gone...
And I'm just plain, plain exhausted.
I'd been following the river for two days
and I'd just about given up hope.
I was convinced I'd missed my five day deadline
when just like that, I found my salvation.
Oh, man, a road!
It's been a long,
it's been a long four days but there's an old saying
that says if you're ever lost all you've got to do is head downhill
until you find a stream, follow the stream until you hit a track,
then follow the track until you hit a road
and it's that road that's gonna lead you back to civilisation
and this is our road and it's our ticket home.
It may be dangerous
but the only way to the road is straight down.
There's only one thing stopping me from reaching that road
and that's this cliff here and then the river
and I'm kind of hoping this is the last time
I'm gonna have to use these parachute rigging lines
to get me out of trouble,
but this is probably about 60 foot
and I'm kind of praying also my rigging lines
are gonna reach the bottom but then it's home and dry.
I don't know what the breaking strains on these parachute lines are
but they held me under my parachute.
In my book this comes into the category of dodgy
and the trick is not to do this too blooming often.
With the end in sight I can't remember
when I've last experienced such a range of emotions.
A mixture of exhaustion, hunger and thirst,
loneliness and real terror.
But most of all I feel a sense of achievement,
I survived the Rockies, a journey I will never forget.
Survival is really about getting the job done,
whatever the means,
even if it's hitchhiking and when you come across a road
there's only one thing to do, try and tidy yourself up a bit
and thumb a lift.
Hey, buddy. Any chance of a lift?
Thanks my friend. Saved my life.
Subtitle Caption by ZestCorp