I'm Bear Grylls. Whoo-hoo!
I'm gonna show you what it takes to get out alive
from some of the most dangerous places on earth.
I've got to make it through a week of challenges
in the sort of places you wouldn't last a day
without the right survival skills.
Now I'm in Alaska...
..tackling treacherous glaciers...
Whoa!
And if that goes on us, it's basically the weight of a car.
..fighting my way across wild waterfalls...
Squeeze my spuds! This is cold.
..and taking to the high seas
with some of the largest creatures on the planet.
And that's coming fast.
Alaska is the largest state in the US,
over half a million square miles of wilderness.
It's more remote and less populated than anywhere in the States.
For adventurers like me, it's truly the last frontier.
I'm being dropped deep into the wilderness
by the Alaska Air National Guard,
and these guys are part of
one of the busiest search-and-rescue operations in the US.
Last year alone, they flew 68 missions and saved over 50 lives.
With 30,000 square miles of permanent ice, winter snows of up to 40 foot
and one of the largest populations of black and grizzly bears in the world,
Alaska is the ultimate survival challenge.
You don't want to get lost out here.
But if you do, these are the guys that'll be looking to get you out.
But today's flight is no rescue mission.
Its purpose - to deploy me into harsh glacier terrain
high up in the Chugach Mountains.
I plan to rappel as a combat chopper, this Pave Hawk,
is the ideal platform for a rapid insertion.
I'm 80 foot up and the only way is down.
I'm safely on the deck, and the helicopter is out of here.
Quite high up in the mountains. Look.
And that is a proper Alaskan mountain view.
God! The first thing you notice is just how cold it is up here.
You know, we left the base at sea level,
but up here, we're about 4,000 or 5,000 feet.
It's a different ball game.
Every thousand foot you drop,
temperatures rise by up to five degrees.
So it could be 25 degrees warmer at sea level.
Even better, most Alaskans live near the coast,
so if you get stuck out here, your best plan is to head for the sea.
But in this harsh place, getting there is never gonna be easy.
My best route off this mountain is to head for the vast glacier below.
But that means crossing a dangerous scree slope.
The frost-shattered rock is hard, sharp and treacherous underfoot.
Getting onto the glacier will be no walk in the park.
Don't like the look of this stuff at all.
There, you see, it's just all free-floating broken ice.
Kind of like lots of mini little icebergs here.
But they are gonna be super-unstable.
It's only about 100 metres, look, across the main glacier.
Might have to be a case of being a bit light-footed on it.
OK. Here we go, Twinkle Toes.
Because it's less dense than water, ice floats.
These small bergs should support my weight.
But there's no way of telling how stable they're gonna be.
Whoo!
Just... OK, come on, then. I'll give you a hand.
One, two, three.
Good, good, and again.
Nice.
Sometimes, you've just got to commit to these things.
OK, the next little bit. I mean, you see how undercut all this stuff is.
You don't know whether what you're standing on's
just gonna drop you straight in the drink or it's gonna be solid.
You do not want to end up freezing cold in this water up here.
This water will refreeze at night,
and by day, it will be only just above zero.
It's like I've crossed a minefield and now I'm onto solid ice.
Alaska is home to more than half of the world's glaciers,
over 100,000 of them.
In early summer, when they're melting and moving,
then they're at their most dangerous.
It's no place to hang around.
It's getting quite tricky, this bit...
..especially without...
..proper crampons or ice axes.
When moving ice slows at the edge of glaciers,
it tears and ruptures, forming crevasses
with steep sides and deadly deep hollows.
Fall in here and you're not coming out.
Oh, man, this ice is just treacherous.
Let's get safe here and assess what we're gonna do.
You see, this crevasse here narrows as it goes down into a choke point.
I reckon if I can rappel down to that and then just edge my way along...
Look, you can see where it leads -
all the way round the bottom to that, like, funnel.
I need to anchor my rope, and the answer is an ice bollard.
But I need to work fast.
The sun is high, and all the ice around here is melting.
It's summertime, and a lot of all of this surface ice, you see,
really loose and crumbly - it's basically just melting.
You need to get through that to more solid stuff,
especially if your life is depending on it.
I've hung onto my rappelling rope for just this kind of situation.
The good thing about doing it like this
is that it means the rope is retrievable.
The bollard looks solid,
but you always have that doubt - will the ice hold?
Actually, what worries me more at the moment is this big block here.
And if that goes on us, it's basically the weight of a car.
So we need to get moving through here and not really stop.
Sharp, hurried movements could dislodge the bollard.
Seems to be holding at the moment.
But the longer it's forced to take my weight,
the greater the chance it will collapse.
You see these blocks I'm standing on?
They're acting as, like, a little walkway.
But if these go, we're just gonna get jammed down the sea.
If you get trapped down here,
your chances of getting out are almost zero.
OK, let's keep moving down this.
The movement of melt-water has formed a labyrinth of tunnels.
These could be my way out.
Not a good place to be if you're a little bit claustrophobic.
Now, all of this, really, is just a snow bridge
over a crevasse that's filled in.
It should be strong enough.
The frozen bodies of climbers have been disgorged from glaciers
decades after they were caught in ice vices like this.
So I'm looking for the quickest route out of here.
Well, there's definitely daylight here.
See if we can punch through some of this.
The world beyond my glacier dungeon is tantalisingly close,
but there's an ice wall to get through.
It's too thick to punch, so I'm gonna use my feet.
The ice has given way just enough,
but this is gonna be a really tight squeeze.
But I'm through, and now I can see my route off the glacier.
Whoo!
Looks like the end of the glacier
and the green of the Alaskan forest down in the distance.
That's where I want to be heading.
And I can't wait to get off the ice.
For my next challenge, I've got a river to cross...
Probably actually use this one to get across.
But this could be a bridge too far.
I'm in Alaska, wading through the most northern forests in the US,
5,000 square miles of subpolar rainforest,
a narrow strip between the icy alpine zone I've just left behind
and the ocean - that's where I'm heading.
It's a large area of wilderness, but it seems I'm not alone.
Look, there's bear poo.
Alaskan forests are just teeming with black bears.
You know, these guys can grow up to seven foot tall and 900 pounds.
Even though that's smaller than grizzlies,
in many ways, they're less predictable,
which makes them also more dangerous.
Black bears have also been known to track humans,
so if you get a river like this and you can get across,
crisscrossing's gonna help to break your scent trail.
OK, let's get down there.
Black bears kill more people in the US than grizzlies.
So I want to make sure I'm not easy prey, and these fallen trees are key.
(WATER ROARS)
Probably actually use this one to get across.
You can see we're definitely getting further downstream.
There's a huge amount more water flowing down this. Look.
I want to test my makeshift bridge before committing.
The log seems solid.
But then disaster.
God, I hate it when that happens. That was very, very close.
You know, you think something's solid and then it's just rotten.
You can't take anything for granted out here.
Whoo!
Go into that, with that much water coming down,
you're in a lot of trouble.
Gonna need to find a different way to get across this.
By continually crossing the river, I'll break my scent trail.
Just downstream, there's a perfect opportunity.
Can definitely use this one to get across.
The thing is, it is quite a thin one and very slippy in this wet.
Actually, look. We'll make this much simpler here.
Improvisation is key in any survival situation.
I reckon I can make my rucksack into a harness
and use the super-slippery tree as a form of zip line.
OK, let's give this a go.
Whoo! Well, that worked. Come across.
Now to get the crew across.
That's it. I got it. OK.
When we used to plan things in the special forces,
people often used to talk about the letters KISS,
which stood for "Keep it simple, stupid."
And that was simple, but it worked perfectly. OK, let's get going.
In thick woodland, you must never drop your guard.
Black bears are active at this time of year,
feeding on green forest shoots exposed by the snow melt.
But they're opportunistic hunters
and always on the lookout for tastier fare.
So I'm gonna keep crossing this river as I head downstream.
Gonna need some of this deadfall to get across here.
These large deadfall logs have been brought down by winter snows
and melt season floodwaters.
There's quite a lot of pressure and water down there.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
In this narrow channel, the current is very strong.
With greasy rock underfoot, it would be easy to lose your footing
and be swept off downstream.
But by using this deadfall as a climbing rope, I make it across.
Now to cover some ground.
In my next challenge,
I'm making a bed where the bears can't get to me.
Moment of truth. Whoa!
Whoa! Whoo!
I'm in the forests of Alaska.
I've made my way off a glacier, down some treacherous white waterfalls
and now I'm on the lookout for food.
I was kind of half-hoping this river
would be full of salmon heading upstream to spawn.
Because when they're running,
this whole river would just be teeming.
Racing up through the white water, the bears just pluck 'em out.
But not today.
It means I need another way of finding something to eat.
And there might be other food sources nearby.
The terrain is flattening out here, which means I'm nearing the coast.
Now, this is the point where all our glacier water
runs down the river and then hits the coast.
This is good news.
And, look, you can see, it's tidal here.
Look across it, you see the actual seaweed
on the high-tide mark over there.
And what I want to do is now follow this coastline
and see where I can get to.
Come on, then.
Alaska has more shoreline than all the other US states combined -
around 40,000 miles of it.
So this could be a long walk.
But there should be plenty of opportunities to find some seafood.
There are loads of these limpets here.
You see, these guys... little shells stuck to the rock.
You can actually eat these raw. All you got to do is knock 'em off.
And what they do, they stick to the rock at low tide,
and when the tide's in, they move around
and they graze off all the algae.
Limpets clamp down onto the rock using a muscular foot,
which is the main edible part of this gastropod.
And you're left with just that.
And that's fine to eat raw.
It tastes a bit like... very salty, chewy rubber.
It's a good snack, and every little helps,
but ahead there's something that could help me catch much bigger game.
There's a fishing net.
No surprise in Alaska, though.
Whoa!
One of the biggest fishing communities in the world.
And you're gonna get this sort of thing blown up in storm surges.
By the look of it, yeah, this is nylon as well.
Gonna be good. It means it doesn't perish.
So it's gonna be strong, definitely worth taking.
Nylon fishing nets don't degrade in salt water.
It makes them an environmental hazard.
But for me, that durability is an advantage.
It's a good find, that.
But now is not the time for fishing.
Towards the end of day, bears come to the shoreline to feed.
OK, let's keep moving.
Better to go hungry than end up as a bear snack.
I'm heading for higher ground
and a place to make camp before it gets too late.
One of the challenges of having 22 hours of daylight every day
is just your body clock gets completely thrown out.
It's hard to know when to stop and take a break.
One of the golden rules of survival
is you've got to give yourself time to rest and to recover.
And really then it just becomes a discipline to make yourself stop.
It's time for me to take a break.
And this looks like a good place to rest up.
Actually, this might work.
You know, my number one priority is protection from bears.
And, look, when you get a good overhanging face like this,
few trees leaning against it, and you've also got a fishing net,
I can make myself some way of sleeping off the ground.
I've also still got my rope, which will play a crucial part in my plan.
And, there, you see this?
And that...probably about the weight of one man.
If I can get this rope around it, put it on up over one of those trees
and down over there,
could act as a counterweight to lift me off the ground to sleep.
Standard tree platform is not a good option here.
Black bears are excellent climbers, but using this design,
there'll be no way for them to climb up.
One rope to suspend my fish-net hammock
and a trigger line to my rock counterweight.
OK, that's all primed this end,
and then all I've got to do is make a hammock
out of all of this fishing net.
Nets like this are used to catch tons of fish,
so this should easily take my weight.
And seat myself...in here...
Now I'm actually just gonna pull this bit between my legs as well
so I can't fall out of this at the critical moment.
Right, moment of truth. One, two, three.
Whoa!
Well, I'm off the ground, but the rock's got caught on that ledge.
Let me see if I can dislodge it again. Hang on.
Come on you, you...
There we go. Whoa! Whoo!
Cool! What do you know?
Well, I'm off the ground and safe from the bears.
Now to see if I can get some sleep.
Just 'cause it's light at night-time in Alaska does not mean it's warm.
You know, it's actually freezing cold at the moment.
And it's also cold just 'cause I can't move in this net.
And I'm normally quite a wriggler in the night-time.
But there's no wriggling going on at the moment.
Feel like a bit of meat hung up at the butcher's shop.
For my next challenge, I'm in a deadly race against the tides.
Tide's cut us off that way as well.
It's a grey morning on the Alaskan coast,
where it can rain for over 200 days a year.
I'm wet, cold and I'm trying to find some food.
Good place just to try and dig for clams.
Just the sort of mud and gunk they love and they'll live in.
Clams are marine molluscs - shellfish from the same family as oysters.
Just rake your fingers through all the mud.
You'll then quite often just feel it.
That's one. Get a few more of those and that'll be good to eat.
You need to cook these. You know, they're filter feeders.
Filter the food through the water.
So you get a build-up of toxins,
which means you don't want to eat them raw.
But cook them up and they're fine.
Clams are an excellent source of iron and the energy-boosting vitamin B12.
Keep doing this and get a few more of them and then go and cook 'em up.
OK. Let's get out of here.
The weather has taken a turn for the worse.
The worst sort of cold, this. It's wet and windy.
I want to collect some driftwood, make a fire and get cooking quickly.
But I'm gonna need some shelter.
Bit of a cave in here. I want to get out of the weather a bit.
Let's tuck in under this a bit.
Phew!
Time to get this fire going.
I'm using my fire steel and some dry kindling
to get this damp driftwood lit.
In these conditions, it's easy to get despondent,
but a fire always lifts the spirits,
especially when there's a promise of food.
And as they get hot, these should open up.
As long as they open, they're good to eat.
If they stay closed, it means they're dead,
and you really just want to chuck those.
But it's very nice to...
..just warm my hands a bit, yeah.
When the cooked clam dies, its muscles relax and the shell opens up.
These are pretty well done.
Try and take the actual shell off
and you're left with just that.
Mmm.
Above all, it's warming.
They're actually good, yeah.
Not a huge meal, but I'm feeling warmer and ready to move on,
and not a minute too soon.
That tide's coming in quite fast, actually, as well.
Yeah, do you know what? It's coming in quite fast. We need to get going.
Let's get moving and try and work our way round.
The tides here move fast, and with a range of up to 30 foot,
there's a real danger of getting cut off.
Let's take it steady round here.
We can't get around that.
The tide cut us off that way as well.
It's not actually a very clever position to find ourselves in here.
I'm gonna have to climb out.
And that's all overhanging. So is this stuff.
This tide is coming up fast, guys. Fast.
Just back up and see what that fissure's like.
Actually, this might be possible, this bit.
And most cliff faces will have some sort of line of weakness
if you look hard enough.
This is probably our best way up out of this cove.
And I want to move fast up this exposed rock face.
The good thing about this is that the wind and the waves have smashed off
all of the loose rock,
so everywhere is basically pretty good as a hold.
I'm using a climbing technique called foot and back
that relies on opposing forces to keep you on the cliff face.
OK, quite nicely wedged now in this chimney
with my back against this wall, my hands and legs here.
But there's no time to rest.
Do you know what?
This is the sort of thing you do in your head
when it's a nice summer's day somewhere.
But when your hands are so cold, you can hardly feel 'em,
the wind's blowing, the rain's coming in,
everything becomes harder.
And the higher I get, the more difficult the climb becomes.
The nightmare up here is that we're above the wave mark
and therefore, there's much more loose rock, all of this moss as well.
But the sea doesn't allow it to grow lower down.
This is really the crux of the climb now, this bit.
My limbs are cold and getting tired, but there's an end in sight.
Phew!
See, I'm not a million miles now from an exit point up by that fallen tree.
That's what I want to reach.
It's quite a long way down there.
Last little push.
Oh, God. Grab this tree root.
And then I'm out of here.
Full concentration for the final few feet.
This is the last place to make a mistake.
But I've made it.
And these clifftops provide a great vantage point.
And I can get a good idea of the coastline from here.
You can see, there's lots of little inlets and islands.
And, really, I want to get myself to a position
where it's gonna be easier to be spotted.
OK, let's keep going this way.
In my next challenge, I'm all at sea with some true monsters of the deep.
Let's hope he doesn't try and surface under this.
I'm in Alaska.
I've made it off a glacier and battled down raging rivers.
Now I'm following the undulating coast.
And the going here is hard.
There are plenty of tricky climbs and descents
on difficult terrain back down to sea level.
There's some rusty... rusty buildings down there.
In there through the trees. See it?
Let's get down there, have a look.
Looks like an old factory of some sort.
Probably the storage tank for something, maybe fuel.
Whatever it was, it was a big operation here.
Let's see what else I can find.
Man, look. Masses of these old nets.
It means probably something to do with fish,
maybe an old canning station.
But what a wild, remote place to work.
Whoo!
Fish canneries like this were often located in remote areas
near large fishing grounds.
Here the catch was gutted, cooked and tinned
before being shipped for sale.
But not anymore.
Just been completely trashed. Look at it.
You know, the harsh winters here, up to 40 foot of snow
is gonna cause a lot of damage.
Also, in the '60s, they had one of the biggest earthquakes of all times
off the coast of Alaska.
Caused a massive tsunami,
ripped through all of these sands and inlets,
destroyed masses of local communities
and more than likely would have caused a lot of the damage here.
The 1964 Good Friday earthquake measured 9.2 on the Richter scale
and took over 130 lives.
The death toll would have been much higher
but for the extreme remoteness of the location.
And you can see all the terrain along the coastline there.
It's tough going.
But I reckon with all of these sort of resources around here,
better off making some sort of raft
and then getting out onto the water itself.
OK.
You should be able to cover more distance
and have a better chance of being spotted on the sea.
But out there, you'll need a sturdy raft.
Loads of old beds.
Actually, that'd be quite good to lie on for a raft.
Also, these old barrels, look.
And these are so buoyant, these things.
You want to check they've got both the bungs in
and also that they've not got any holes.
Otherwise, look. Like that fellow.
An airtight oil drum will easily support my weight,
and with a few, I have the beginnings of a substantial raft.
It's always worth making sure you build a raft close enough
to where you're gonna launch it.
The last thing you want to do is build a thing,
especially when it's out of metal,
and then not be able to drag it down there.
I can see the tide's coming in here, so this is probably about right.
I want to get this raft built quickly
so I'm ready to launch when the tide turns.
What I want to do is use the barrels to give me all the buoyancy
to then keep this up out of the water.
Couple of bits of wood across here and then lash that all down.
And to tie off, I'm using a sledge knot.
And you won't find how to tie a sledge knot in any book or manual,
but it's used by dog sledders as a really efficient self-tightening knot
that will never come undone.
You take a bite around the rope, then you go around itself
once, twice, three times.
Just go through the last two loops...
..over the first and back down the hole, and then tighten it up.
The tide's coming in fast, but there's still work to do.
Need to get a wiggle on with this.
We'll just use these, one each side,
to act as the longitudinal strength to this.
And that will stop it wobbling.
And finally, this length of corrugated iron.
Put this across the back, something to sit on.
We used to have a sergeant in the army
who used to say, "No prizes for being uncomfortable."
If you've got it, might as well use it.
You just break this end off, attach it and make a bit of a paddle.
And people often think that survival's about
knowing the right knots or reading the right books.
But, actually, in my view, good survival is about
a determination never to give up
and then an ability to improvise, to think outside the box
about how you're gonna get out of somewhere in one piece.
Time and tide wait for no man. I need to move fast.
The tide's almost completely lifting this off now,
so it's a good time to be finishing.
But it's pretty well ready.
Quick final check of these knots.
And I've got a very simple principle when it comes to rafts.
However much lashing you think you need, double it.
'Cause it might be nice and calm in here,
but if I've learnt anything,
it's that the sea state can change very fast.
OK, let's get this thing out.
(STRAINS)
Oh, squeeze my spuds! This is cold.
OK, that's pretty stable. Let's get you on.
Good.
OK.
Come on.
Time to get going.
And I've launched at the height of the tide,
and what I'm hoping is that as the tide turns, it will take me out...
..out towards the shipping lanes more.
With difficult inland terrain, much of Alaska traffic moves by water,
so there's a chance of finding a boat.
But I spotted something else.
Just behind the island there, a whale.
See if he'll come round this side. There you go. See him?
Absolutely amazing!
It's a humpback.
And just extraordinary to see this close.
These guys can grow up to 50 foot long, 35 tonnes in weight.
Just effortlessly moving through the waters.
Humpbacks cruise just below the water surface, coming up every few minutes.
But they often breach, launching their bodies out of the water
before splashing down on their backs.
Let's hope he doesn't try and surface under this.
I've left the coast behind, and now I'm heading out into open water.
But staying on course is becoming a major challenge.
What's difficult with just one paddle and this raft
is actually controlling your direction and where you go.
Kind of pretty at the mercy of the wind and the waves and the tide.
I'm drifting into colder waters.
To make matters worse, there's a problem with the raft.
That barrel's looking quite low in the water.
Now...she's steadily been getting lower and lower.
There wasn't a hole in it. I'm pretty sure.
But all too soon, I'm forced to abandon ship.
OK, you ready to jump for this?
I'm on a raft off the coast of Alaska
keeping watch for a boat to pick me up.
It's noticeably colder here,
and the current is taking me towards a lot of this ice,
these sort of things,
which isn't ideal, you know.
I don't want to get messed up in that.
But, you know, it's not sea ice.
It's summertime, and that's come from a maritime glacier.
It's not where I want to be heading.
I want to stick out in the open...open sea.
Other vessels are unlikely to brave these waters,
where they risk being hulled by an iceberg.
There's a better chance of being spotted out in open water.
But I'm fighting a losing battle.
There's more and more ice in the water now.
I must be getting close to its source.
Ahead of the field... See that glacier?
This time of year, big chunks of ice are just carving off that.
I don't like being funnelled backwards towards all of that.
Maritime glaciers are dangerous,
with carving icebergs that can cause huge waves.
You don't want to hang around here.
The best option, to get out to the shipping lanes and find a vessel.
There's a boat. There's a boat, through the ice to the right.
See the top of the mast.
Hey!
Through the ice to the right.
Hey!
There's a fishing trawler about a mile away.
Hey!
Too far too see us.
We need to make our way to that icefloe, bigger one,
try and make a bit of a signal fire there, and get spotted like that.
Let's go for this.
My plan - to get to the iceberg quickly and signal from there.
That's about the biggest one around here.
Are you ready to jump for this?
I'm gonna jump onto the berg and hope that the ice doesn't give way.
But as I leap off, the raft is unbalanced
and my crew plunge into the icy waters.
I got you, I got you.
Come on.
That's it.
Now, we need to work fast, and he's gonna spot us.
In situations like this, the boat could be out of range in minutes.
So any signal fire needs to be a quick build.
Build this baby up.
My emergency fire-making materials are quick to ignite,
but there's not nearly enough smoke for my signal fire.
It's giving off some smoke, but it's only white smoke.
It's never gonna show against all this ice.
What we need to do is use just some rubber off the bottom of my boot.
Burning rubber produces thick, black smoke
which'll show up clearly against the white of the ice.
See if they can see this.
Hey!
With black smoke and my bright red jacket,
I've given myself the best chance of being seen.
Hold your arms up in a big 'Y' shape.
It's the international distress sign for, "Yes, I need help!"
Hey! Help!
The trawler has slowed and is altering course.
And there can be no better sight in the world for the survivor
than seeing their rescue ship turn towards 'em.
The boat is coming to get me.
Help!
You won't want to hang around in these icy waters,
so this is gonna be a one-shot deal.
Man, that's coming fast and straight towards us.
We need to move to make this.
The boat is gonna come alongside the iceberg
and I'm gonna make a leap for it.
Now, I've got to be 100% confident of making this jump.
I do not want to end up crushed between this and the ice.
But she's coming in too hard and too close.
And at the last moment, it crashes into the ice.
A close shave, but I've made it.
Whoo!
Just!
And I'm heading home.