I'm Bear Grylls. Wow!
I'm gonna show you what it takes to get out alive
from some of the most dangerous places on earth.
Whoo!
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.
Whoa!
Now I'm on the Russian frontier,
high in the mountains of Georgia, eastern Europe.
OK, let's go.
This is a small country but with big terrain.
I'm halfway across.
To survive here, I'm going to have to think like a scavenger.
(GAGS AND COUGHS) That actually makes me gag, that.
Eke out what I can find wherever I can find it.
This is a part-developed chick foetus.
I'll be pitting my wits against nature...
We're doing this. We're so close now.
..to show you how to survive some of the toughest terrain on earth.
Heading for the frontier border between Russia and Georgia
and it's a hell of a volatile part of the world.
But it's just dominated by these huge mountains.
It was only yesterday there was a fatal avalanche here.
You take on Georgia at your own peril.
The Greater Caucasus Range stretches almost 1,000 miles
from the Black to the Caspian Sea.
600 miles of this mountain range is in Georgia.
It's been 20 years since it broke away from the former Soviet Union
but tensions between the two countries remain high.
The pilot's pretty nervous to land because of the snow conditions
so he's gonna get me as far as he can and then it's down to me.
The high mountains in spring can be lethal.
As the pack melts and then refreezes,
the constant change makes the threat of avalanche a real danger.
Bear, 10 seconds.
OK, time to go.
The pilot can't hover over the LZ for long.
The plan is for me to exit the back of the heli on a snowmobile.
It's risky, but I can use it to get me over the mountain quickly
before the weather turns.
It's down to split-second timing.
I'm depending on the pilot's skills.
We're just above the snow. Go!
Good to go.
The heli has dropped me close to the summit.
I need to get over the ridge and into the valleys beyond.
If a snowstorm catches you out here, you're in big trouble.
We need to get into the mountains now.
There's a lot of cloud cover coming in.
In these conditions, I'm having to push the snowmobile to its limits,
but it's keeping me ahead of the weather.
I've almost made it to the ridge,
but up here the snow is much deeper
and the snowmobile is sinking under its own weight.
(REVS MOTOR)
It's wedged right down in the deep snow, that.
(GRUNTS)
The thing is all the snow at the moment is just like porridge.
Yeah, I'm not gonna shift this.
It's onto foot from here.
OK.
It's three degrees below freezing up here
and it's only gonna get colder as the clouds move in.
If you can get to the high ground,
you can look for a route down into the valleys beyond.
I'll try and reach that col up there.
OK, steep miracle.
Look, see the sun?
It's like a halo effect around it
and that's formed by the stratus clouds.
Stratus is often a sign of changing conditions
and an oncoming bad weather front.
And look, sure enough, if you look down
you see the build-up of all that cumulus cloud.
That's the bad stuff.
But often the time lag between the stratus and the cumulus
can be as little as four hours, you know?
I know this range runs from east to west.
But where I wanna head, south-west, down, out of the mountains
towards the Black Sea.
It's gonna be the best chance of finding people.
So we wanna get moving. Come on.
OK, we're down that bit.
But, look, actually, down here you see all of this avalanche debris
where an avalanche has come down here,
so it's a bad place to hang around.
Get moving.
The weather has finally caught up with me.
The cloud cover has blotted out the horizon and it's a total white-out.
It's very hard to gauge your direction, you know?
Can't tell whether that's mountain ahead or cloud.
That's the danger of being caught in the mountains in a white-out,
just losing all sense of your bearings.
And I heard of one soldier skiing up in the Arctic
and he actually thought he was stationary,
he wasn't aware he was actually moving forward,
and he dropped straight off the edge of a cornice.
Survived it, but he was lucky.
But that's how disorienting it can be in a white-out.
Just be really careful here.
'Cause I can't actually see... see what this goes over.
In the mountains, you want to err on the side of cautiousness.
What we can do is just make a snow bollard here, a big shape.
You want to keep a nice semi-circle like that, about a foot deep.
I'm gonna put my rope into this as a belay
so I can then rappel off.
In soft snow, your bollard needs to be at least 10 feet across.
But it will hold many times your weight.
They're incredibly strong and have been used by the military for years.
OK. Here we go.
I need to kick in steps into this slope...
..and use the friction of the rope as I descend.
OK. Get down the last bit of this without any rope.
You know what? It's quite precarious, this bit.
Good, positive steps.
Control your own descent.
Don't let the mountain control it for you.
Never rush in the mountains.
It doesn't get you down any quicker, at least not in a good way.
OK, then across to under here.
OK, this is good. Come down to me.
A rocky outcrop like this is like an island of safety.
You can use it to catch your breath and assess your situation.
OK. Come on, reach, reach.
OK, yeah, let's go. Let's go.
OK, let's just take a quick two minutes here.
You know, one of the big dangers, actually, of high altitude
is just getting really dehydrated.
You burn up so much fluids here.
You're breathing hard, you're working hard,
you've got to keep drinking.
It's always tempting just to eat snow
but, actually, that can give you blisters in your mouth.
It's just gonna lower your core temperature.
You're better off trying to melt some snow.
What I can use for fire is just a bit of this hemp natural-fibre rope.
And what they do when they make this stuff,
the actually impregnate it with kerosene -
it keeps all the bugs away from biting through it.
So it should take a spark.
Here we go.
Got to be a little bit careful
melting snow directly into a metal cup.
What will happen, it'll tend to just burn the bottom of the cup
and not actually melt the actual snow - create a little gap.
So it's good idea to put a little drop of water in there
and that will just help getting the snow started.
You might not feel it, but your body is getting dehydrated
just as you would in hot and humid conditions.
Any fluids you can get into your body is a good thing.
There you go, this is melted now.
Actually, it's surprising how little water you get
from the whole mug full of snow.
The reason is snow's got so much air around it.
That's why it's a good insulator.
Bad thing to melt if you wanna get a lot of water,
but this is better than nothing.
It's just another example of how hard
it is to survive in the mountains
if you don't have a lot of kit with you.
You've just got to keep being resourceful
and thinking of a way to be able to keep hydrated.
Well, that's nice.
Finding water up here is a challenge.
Finding food, even harder.
But as you descend, your chances of finding both improve dramatically.
That actually makes me gag, that. Oy!
I'm near the Russian border
in the Caucasus Mountains of northern Georgia.
I'm on the search for food and shelter,
and that means getting onto the lower slopes.
This is the snow line.
It's the first time I've got solid ground under me.
And that's a good sign.
It means we're coming out of the mountains.
The snow line is the point above which snow and ice cover the ground
throughout the year.
Get below that and your chances of scavenging food and resources
increases massively.
And, actually, a lot of all of this is birch.
You alright? Almost lost you then.
They're often the first trees you come across
when you come out of the mountains.
And there are all of these little shavings
you can just pull off in your hand.
It's this stuff that really takes a spark easily.
Birch bark is packed with flammable oils.
Pocket this stuff whenever you see it.
When coming off the high mountains, these are good friends to find.
Right.
I'm below the tree line now.
But ahead, the whole mountainside has fallen away.
What will happen, you get avalanche moving through,
it just takes the edge of all of the earth away.
If you get caught in that, it's just gonna run away with you.
I wanna try and just get down here. Quite sharp, actually.
OK.
Quite nice and soft, this mud.
Get my heels well dug into this.
Please don't let me bring down a load of...a load of rocks.
Really, I'm better off trying to zigzag across.
If I don't get caught in the path of it.
Well, that's the technique anyway.
The thing is if you start it going and you can't control it...
..all the techniques in the world is no good.
It's then down to instinct.
If in doubt, get down on your backside.
OK.
OK, down.
Muddy but down.
Nature is always gonna throw obstacles in your path.
How you get through them is down to you.
But remember, you don't win prizes for style.
Nice and steady here. Stay in tight to the face.
There you go. Look, there's the river.
Down in the valley.
And that's where we want to get to, down there.
This is looking pretty sheer down this bit.
But I reckon we'll use the rope and get down to that ledge halfway.
This cliff is too high for my rope to reach all the way
but I can use a climbing technique called multi-rappelling.
I need to make sure my rope is retrievable
and that I've got good anchor points on the way down.
Really, I wanna thread this up high.
It's gonna just make it easier to retrieve.
Gonna be a direct line of sight to it rather than going over a lip.
The Caucasus Mountains were formed
when the Arabian and European tectonic plates collided
millions of years ago.
Nice and steady, Bear.
The region is subjected to powerful earthquakes
and this means the rock faces can be highly unstable.
Whoa. Drop.
The whole mountain literally just crumbling apart.
There's a bird's nest.
There's an egg in it as well.
If you wanna survive out here, you must think like a scavenger
and never pass up any potential food source.
Man... Just smell.
That egg is rotten.
That's a vulture egg.
This is just truly putrid.
Have a look at the colour inside here.
In fact there's not a bird in here. Suspicious.
Vultures, you know, they wouldn't leave their eggs like that.
If they had, this is gonna be sitting around.
That's why it's rotten.
Normally, any bird egg is edible
unless it stinks like that.
(COUGHS)
That actually makes me gag, that.
And I don't often say that.
Got to get back in.
It was worth a try.
You just never know when you might get lucky.
Let's re-thread it one more time
and then that's gonna take me to the bottom.
OK. Pull this other one through.
At least we're down to the valley floor.
Surviving in the wild is all about never giving up.
OK, let's go.
And resourcefulness and courage are crucial
if you want to make it out alive.
I'm in Georgia, heading into dense forest,
home to wolves, bears
and some of the toughest terrain
this former Soviet Union republic has to offer.
I'm now firmly in the wooded belt here.
But, yeah, look at these mountains, they are still huge.
Thing is, you know, I look at this sort of place
and what I see is just life.
You know, this is where the animals are gonna be,
you got water,
you got protection amongst the trees from the weather.
I look at it and I know that I can survive here.
This is a rich hunting ground.
Good news for me,
but bad news is that I'm not the only predator here.
Look...
..it's definitely carnivore poo, this.
And there's only two carnivores in this forest
and that's bear and wolves.
This is definitely not bear -
look, you can see the tapered ends to this.
You can actually see what he's been feeding off.
All of the hair. Probably sheep.
Maybe goat hair.
You know what it tells me, there's definitely wolves in this area.
They're gonna be smarter than I am.
You know, they're gonna be watching me long before I'm gonna spot them.
OK, let's keep going.
Even though we're in the woods now, the terrain hasn't got any easier.
These forests are defined by endless deep gorges
with treacherous steep-sided valleys.
It's getting much steeper here.
On top of that, the forest is cut in half
by a fast snow-melt river in full torrent.
If you wanna maintain your bearing,
that's a river you've got to get across.
Take your time on this.
Make sure you're certain of each hold and footing before you move.
We follow this branch down, OK?
A lot of water pounding over that waterfall.
Pretty sheer drop-off there is a problem.
And also, it's just slick rock going down to that.
I don't wanna end up in that white water.
It's also gonna be freezing cold.
I need to find another way to try and get across here.
Only last year, an experienced climber
was crossing a fast mountain river like this in Georgia.
He lost his footing
and the power of the water pinned him down against a rock.
He didn't make it.
These rivers look crossable,
but they pack a punch and you've always got to respect them.
Something hanging over there.
Get over here!
When you're in the wild, you get used to seeing only natural forms,
so any man-made object will stand out like a sore thumb.
Pretty old...old-looking pulley system and a bucket.
You know, mountain people often used this sort of thing
to ferry supplies across.
Actually, these wires are quite good.
In quite good nick.
Should be able to make some sort of zip wire across here.
This old cable pulley has quite a lot of give in it,
which means that it sags, but I can use that to my advantage.
Get rid of that.
A sag should arrest my slide.
What I don't know is how far I'll get.
And actually, you know, with a bit of rope like this,
you can improvise a harness very easily
and just do a triple bowline in it
and that'll act as two leg loops and a chest loop.
A bowline harness like this is often used by mountain rescue
'cause it's fast and simple to make.
Made a loop,
the rabbit comes out of the hole -
that's how I always remember it -
around the tree
and then back down the hole.
Then you can literally just step into that.
This bit comes over your top.
And then for this bit, we just thread that through.
OK.
The rest of this
just bunch up and put it in the rucksack.
The last thing you want to be doing in this sort of terrain
is cutting up your rope too much.
Only cut it in a last resort, when you've got no other choice.
This is gonna give me a foot stirrup.
And then we're good to go.
OK, let's go.
The free ride is over.
There's too much slack in the line
and I'm fighting now against my own body weight.
Well, I'm halfway across.
The thing is I'm not as far as I'd hoped.
Gonna have to haul myself along this wire, the last bit.
OK. Made it across.
Just.
These hills, they're just relentless.
With the river negotiated,
what I need to do now is make camp.
But I just know that I won't be the only one in the forest tonight.
(HOWLS)
(HOWLING)
You can hear that?
I'm going head to head
with everything the Georgian wilderness could throw at me.
This is just truly putrid.
I'm making my way through dense woodland,
looking for a safe place to make a shelter for the night.
But finding level ground in this mountainous forest
is easier said than done.
There's a bit of a ledge up here. Look.
Actually, do you know what,
this wouldn't be a good place to camp.
Look.
Huge dead tree.
Powerful wind in the night and that goes, you're not gonna see daylight.
And because it's a beech tree, they don't give you any warning.
You don't get that... (IMITATES TREE CRACKING)
They've got very short grains, so when they drop it's just...
Boom.
We need to keep heading higher, find somewhere else.
Look, there's another hollow bit up here.
That's probably where a whole tree's been just uprooted.
Now, you actually wouldn't want to shelter in this bit.
It's gonna be a bit of a water catchment area.
But up on this bit, it's quite level.
It's about the only bit of level ground around here.
Also, there ain't nothing above me either.
OK. Base camp.
Let's get building.
First, you need to build the main frame of the shelter.
And for that, you'll need
the strongest, straightest branches you can find.
Then using that for forks and crooks,
arrange them to form a basic tent shape.
OK, and against that you can lay loads of these.
You then need to build a latticework of smaller lengths,
gradually adding smaller and smaller branches.
You can just pile on this thinner stuff.
That is kind of almost ready for the leaves, really.
You wanna just gather big bundles of these.
Start at the base.
Just begin to build it up.
I really want it to be about a foot...
..maybe two-foot thick.
That's gonna keep the rain off and help insulate me as well.
I need to make a fire for tonight
and there's no shortage of dead wood in this forest.
Get some of this birch bark out
and then just really rough it up.
And then it will take the spark.
The great thing about birch bark
is that it'll light even when it's damp
and that's all the oils inside it.
Build up a big bird's nest with all this kindling
and it'll dry out as well.
It's always worth nurturing your fire when it's little...
..and it'll look after you when it gets big.
My fire will keep me warm and safe.
Whenever you're camping out, you're gonna be vulnerable.
The thing is I know there are wolves and bears in this area.
There's a lot of mythology around wolves
and packs of wolves attacking humans.
But the reality is
if you see a wolf in the wild, you're incredibly lucky.
But, you know, I'm not gonna take any chances tonight.
I'm gonna make a really simple torch,
so if I do hear anything or anything comes near this camp,
I've got a weapon which is fire
and that is always gonna deter predators.
Just get a branch like this.
And into these gaps,
I'm just gonna push a lot of these birch bark shavings.
But I'm not gonna light this unless I really need to.
At least with this,
I know I can instantly have a flaming torch in my hand.
Just heard a noise out there.
Do you know what, I'm not gonna take any chance with this.
I'm just gonna get this torch flaming.
(DISTANT HOWL)
There you go. You hear that?
(HOWLING CONTINUES)
I was once shown by a woodsman
how to howl to get a response from wolves.
You know, if I can at least hear a response...
..then at least I know what I'm dealing with.
(HOWLS)
- (DISTANT HOWL) - Can you hear that?
That...that sounds a very long way away, though.
(HOWL)
There you go, hear that?
Gonna try and get some sleep.
Try and slow the heart rate back down again.
The morning light signals the end to
what has been a long, restless night.
The shelter worked well. That fire.
To be honest, though, the weak link last night was in my mind.
You know, I really found it hard
just to get back to sleep after hearing those noises.
The fire gave me a sense of security.
And I've spotted something that means
I can start another one at a moment's notice...
Tinder fungus!
Now, there's this soft, spongy bit in the middle.
What's great about this is put a spark to it,
it will burn as an ember and it will keep burning,
so it means you can travel and always have fire near at hand.
The last thing I'm gonna do before breaking camp
is just use a bit of this tinder fungus.
And all I need is that...
..and then just put a bit of fire to it.
That will then stay lit for absolutely ages.
And when primitive man discovered
that they could effectively store fire
by taking an ember in this tinder fungus,
it completely changed the way that they hunted
because it meant they could now travel further afield to hunt
safe in the knowledge that they could
always have fire when they needed it.
And that's just gonna slowly smoulder away.
All I need do is wrap it loosely in some moss
and then I can travel with that.
OK.
Let's get on the move.
With a portable fire stored safely in my pack,
I can be on my way.
But you won't get far on an empty stomach.
If you're gonna survive here,
your number one priority now is to find food.
Oh, hang on. That's a part-developed chick foetus.
I've made it through the mountain forest of Georgia, eastern Europe.
But from here, your best chance of finding rescue
is to head for the Black Sea coast.
The steep uplands have given way to flatter, marshier ground.
It's boggy as hell.
The wetlands have a greater diversity
of plant life and places to shelter.
You should always be on the lookout for anything you can use.
All of this is honeysuckle.
The leaves just thrive off this wet, boggy area.
But this makes, also, good tinder.
And, you know, even in a place as wet as this,
if you know what you're looking for
you can find things that'll help you.
Pheasant.
There's no way I'm gonna catch him.
Pheasants are ground-dwelling birds.
It's nesting season
and this thick vegetation is a perfect place to look.
Look, here's a nest.
And some eggs as well.
You can tell they're pheasant eggs -
they're small, kind of greenish.
But, you know, that's gonna be good to eat.
You know, I still got that tinder fungus ember in my pack.
I'm quite tempted actually just to boil these up.
It'll be nicer than raw.
I love a boiled egg.
Need to find a bit of high ground.
Well, it's not exactly Mount Everest.
It's a little bit higher ground.
At least it's out of that water.
OK.
And this tinder fungus is still...
..burning.
Just every hour or so, I've taken it out, given it a little blow.
Put that in the middle of all of this honeysuckle...
..and hopefully this will go.
God, they say there's no smoke without fire.
(SPUTTERS)
It's not always true.
There we go.
Let's fill this up with some water.
You wouldn't drink water this dirty,
but it's fine for boiling the eggs in.
OK, I'm a 3.5-minute man when it comes to boiled eggs.
This is gonna be just way nicer than having raw eggs.
Oh, hang on.
Oh, no. Look.
That's a part-developed chick foetus.
Oh, it wasn't quite the nice boiled egg I was hoping for.
But, you know, in the Philippines this sort of thing's a delicacy.
If you haven't eaten for days, you can't afford to be squeamish.
Protein keeps you alive.
Oh, that was a leg.
But...scavengers can't be choosers.
At least there's a few minutes just to stop, warm up, get some energy...
..then we're back on our way.
To reach the coast, you must leave this rich ecosystem behind
and head out deeper into the marshes.
The mountains seem a long way away.
Alluvial plains like this are made over thousands of years
as minerals and sediments are swept down by highland rivers
and become trapped in these vast open plains at the coast.
Way boggier and wetter now.
The water is getting deeper
and walking in these reeds is now almost impossible.
(SPLASH!) (GRUNTS)
Ahh.
Getting beyond funny, these holes now.
Oh, hang on, I lost my boot.
OK, hang on. I need my boot.
We're not going anywhere without that.
Got it.
That's why - the lace broke.
Progress through this swamp has slowed to a snail's pace.
It might be a haven for frogs, but if I'm honest, they can keep it.
(SPUTTERS)
Hang on, this is crazy, crazy, crazy.
The river's just here.
It's just there is no bank to it.
Though what there is a lot of are these reeds.
Let's just see if they're...
Look, these ones aren't hollow. You can't blow through these.
These are little compartments that are air tight
and that means these reeds are gonna be really buoyant.
I'm just wondering whether it might be actually more efficient
to try and build a raft out of loads and loads of these...
..and try and float down the river.
To be honest, anything's got to be better than this.
OK. Come on, let's commit to this. Let's gather a load of reeds.
(GRUNTS)
Reeds flourish in freshwater marshes like this all around the world.
For years, they've been used to make boats,
some capable of travelling huge distances across oceans.
You know, civilisations have used reeds like this
for literally thousands of years.
OK, what I wanna do is split them, turn it around...
..and look what you end up with.
The thin, tapered end here.
It's fatter in the middle where the reeds are thickest.
And then it tapers off here as well.
You know, and like everything in survival,
if you can use natural forms of things,
it's gonna help you so much.
A short section of my rope cut into strips
will hold the raft together nicely.
Then what you've got is this basic shape like this.
I reckon two...two or three of these
is gonna give me easily enough stability and buoyancy
to float me down this river.
Reed rafts are incredibly durable and practical.
And once you know how, you can build one in an hour or so.
One, two. Then we just finish off this third one.
I'm just trying to accentuate this taper at the end.
Pull it up and this is gonna be the bow.
Pull those together.
And then we'll bind them up here.
This is gonna work great.
All I need now is a paddle.
You see, look.
We're gonna use this.
OK, we're set to go. Come on.
It's incredibly heavy but I'm confident it won't sink.
OK.
We're floating.
We're on our way.
Shows how buoyant these reeds are.
It's actually quite deep, this water.
Tell you what, it's a hell of a lot easier
than doing battle with all of those reeds.
OK. We're on our way.
The water channels should lead straight to the coast,
but getting a 500-pound raft into open water
is gonna be quite a challenge.
Come on, we can do this. We're so close now.
I'm in the middle of a vast wetland swamp
near the Black Sea coast of Georgia, eastern Europe.
A canoe made of reeds allows you to navigate
these otherwise impenetrable swamps.
But as the land rises near the coast, passage becomes much tougher.
(GRUNTS)
I think it's over here. The sea's just over that sandbar.
Just go and have a look. Come on.
Look, tankers out there.
Need to get their attention.
See what we find at the beach. Come on.
The beach is full of debris.
But one man's trash is another man's treasure.
You could build a signal fire,
but those tankers are far out and your fire could easily be missed.
The Black Sea is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
And where there's tankers, you'll often find a port.
If you can get out there,
your chances of rescue improve dramatically.
We need to use something to haul this raft over.
Probably make a three-in-one hoist with this. Come on.
The water-logged raft is far too heavy for me to carry.
But by building a hoist, I should be able to drag it across the beach.
All I need is a good anchor point.
What I can do is just fill my rucksack full of sand
and then bury it,
and that will be my dead weight that I can haul against.
Just pull off a length of rope.
Two bits of plastic, like, hosing, just from the trash on the beach.
Fit those together and that will act like a roller.
Now, look, two of those.
Run a rope around that
and that's gonna help just reduce friction.
OK.
That's a strong point and this runs up to the dead anchor.
Each time you loop the rope, the load you have to pull is reduced.
It's called mechanical advantage.
And then you just thread it through this roller
and that will almost give me the pulling power
of three men instead of just me.
OK, come on, then. We can do this.
Come on, we can do this.
We're so close now.
(GRUNTS)
Come on, we can do this.
(GRUNTS) OK.
It's at the limit and we're gonna need to set this again.
Another 10, 15 yards that way.
Just do it in little stages.
Heavy objects can be moved in this way.
A three-in-one haul line like this
has been deployed in countless rescue situations.
A couple of years ago, a hiker fell
into a 75-foot ravine with no other access.
Rescuers lowered an emergency stretcher
and were able to safely haul him out using this system.
The speed with which they were able to get him out and into hospital
saved his life.
OK, we've reached the sea.
Now it's just a question of trying to get out there.
The ship I spotted earlier has moved on now.
But if you hug the coastline, you may
come across more signs of shipping.
A kayak is one of those things you just wanna find your rhythm,
get in the zone...
..and then you can keep going, and the time passes quickly then.
We used to do so much of this sort of canoeing in the military.
You know, just long-distance paddling.
To be honest I can't forget just how hard work it is.
It's just a grind.
Getting a little bit choppy here.
It's actually surprisingly stable, this canoe.
That's a port over there.
We're only about a mile away as well.
If I can reach there, then it's job done.
This tiny country
punches way above its weight.
It's a formidable landscape
and should not be underestimated.
And one thing's for sure,
I won't be able to look
at a boiled egg for quite a while,
but, finally,
I can head home to my family,
and that's a welcome thought.
Made it.
To share my favourite moments from the show,