Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
NARRATOR: In a remote river valley.
DALLAS: What the heck is that?
NARRATOR: Eight explorers battling exhaustion.
WILLI: We still got a lot of miles to put in.
NARRATOR: And glaciers pouring. YELLING.
NARRATOR: And for one crew...
it's a struggle to survive.
BRENT: We got no flashlights, no food. We're lost.
NARRATOR: What does it take to conquer Alaska?
AUSTIN: We gotta move, gotta move, here we go.
NARRATOR: Eight expert explorers are putting their lives
on the line.
MARTY: No, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa!
NARRATOR: In a relentless test of survival.
YELLING
NARRATOR: They're on a ten-leg journey covering
3,000 miles of Alaska's wildest terrain.
Like the original National Geographic Explorers ...
they'll live off the land, and use only what gear
they can carry to survive.
MALE: Nice!
TYLER: There's a bear right there, look
NARRATOR: The rules are simple.
One, two...
On each leg they'll have just 72 hours to reach
their extraction point.
BRENT: We gotta move. TYLER: We gotta go, man.
NARRATOR: Or risk getting left behind.
Why would any man accept the challenge?
WILLI: Why do you go out and test yourself?
Because you can.
Why do you climb mountains?
Because it's there.
If you have to ask that question...
...you will never understand the answer in the first place.
BRENT: Marty!
MALE: Don't go this way.
NARRATOR: It's day 32 of this grueling expedition.
YELLING LAUGHTER
NARRATOR: The eight expert explorers are still in high
spirits, but exhausted and hungry as they are dropped
in the Nizina River Valley. WILLI: Here we are.
NARRATOR: From here they have just 72 hours to make
the LZ, 35 miles away.
MARTY: Parts of it look like this vast,
wide expanse of flat gravel bar, where tremendous volumes
of water are rushing out of the mountains.
It's just amazing, wild country. I mean, this place is wild.
NARRATOR: Besides rushing waters and frigid temperatures,
the spawning salmon in these waters has Marty concerned.
MARTY: The increase in bears because of all the salmon.
So it would be a miracle if we don't have some bear encounters.
WILLI: Now we're back in brown bear territory here. Yeah.
This is true wilderness.
That is where man is not necessarily the top of the food
chain, and we need to conduct ourselves accordingly.
DALLAS: Looks like we got a lot of river in front of us.
NARRATOR: From here, the men will travel 35 miles down
the valley across the massive Nizina River,
and up steep foothills to the old mining town of McCarthy,
where they'll make their way to the extraction landing zone.
If they do not make the plane in time, they'll be left behind,
MARTY: Don't get lost this time, please.
Let's not get separated.
MATT: Willi's got a map who's closest to us that we haven't
gone with in a while, Willi. You're on our team.
You wanna? WILLI: I'm cool with that.
DALLAS: I like your style. We'll take Austin.
Go right on down the line.
MARTY: We haven't seen Willi since the raft on the Yukon, man
TYLER: Since me and Brent are the only free agents left.
BRENT: Yeah, right. Well, Tyler.
TYLER: All right, let's do it man.
DALLAS: All right, let's get moving.
NARRATOR: Wasting no time MALE: I'm ready to do some work.
NARRATOR: Iditarod champion Dallas Seavy,
his brother Tyrell, and Austin Manelick are moving fast.
DALLAS: We got a long ways to go.
NARRATOR: Dallas's crew plans to head for the low hills above
the river and make their crossing as far upstream
as possible, where they hope the river's calmer.
Once across, it will be a straight shot to the LZ.
Immediately, the group finds a sign that they're not alone,
bear scat.
DALLAS: Hey, is that some sort of crazy ice cream cone,
or what the heck is that?
AUSTIN: I know exactly what that is.
I encountered this in the very first leg of our trip.
MARTY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
Oh, you're touching bear poop. God, I'm gonna puke.
AUSTIN: It's a little bit tart. Oh, man.
NARRATOR: This time, Austin has a different plan for the berries
AUSTIN: Instead of eating them, I'm going to use some
of these berries to catch something better to eat.
DALLAS: That's pretty. Let's go catch some real food.
TYRELL: Moving on.
NARRATOR: Even though Dallas and crew are focused on speed,
they're also hungry.
DALLAS: I think this is our best shot at catching something
is in this thing.
NARRATOR: They've spent 32 days in the wild with little food,
and this is a prime fishing spot they can't pass up.
DALLAS: Man, I'd love to get some silvers in our belly here.
TYRELL: Sounds like dinner.
NARRATOR: Without hesitation, Austin gets to work using some
Alaskan ingenuity.
AUSTIN: When you get some of these berries that I found
in the pile of bear dung, and put this on here,
and that right there looks like a salmon egg.
NARRATOR: As Austin drops his line,
Dallas has a trick of his own.
DALLAS: Cut the little beads on my coat,
and they look a hell of a lot like a salmon egg,
so see if I can't use this bead and the zipper pull as
a salmon egg lookalike.
NARRATOR: As Dallas prepares his lookalike,
Tyrell has McGyvered a lure from materials he found in his pack.
TYRELL: We didn't bring any real lures with us for these
type of fish, so I decided to whip one up out of a 357 casing,
some pink yarn and a hook.
NARRATOR: Now the race is on to see who's strategy will land
a fish first.
DALLAS: Got one! That's the salmon we needed right there.
NARRATOR: Using just a bead from his jacket,
Dallas has landed a 12-pound silver salmon.
AUSTIN: Whoa, whoa, whoa! SPLASHING
I'm trying to play this salmon very - whoa! SPLASHING
He's on light tackle.
Oh, no, no, no! Come no, come on!
He'll come on when he's ready.
Oh, my goodness. Look at this!
Who'd have thought that you could catch salmon off
a cranberry found in a pile of bear scat?
That's a - that's a first for me. I can't believe that.
TYRELL: I've never quite found any uses myself for bear scat,
but Austin apparently is full of them.
He just ended up nailing a big silver,
so we've actually got two fish now,
which is a lot of eating for the three of us.
So tonight is going to be a good night around the campfire.
Come on fish. He's type of pet now.
NARRATOR: Now, they'll have a protein-packed supper,
but first, they've got to make up some ground.
Two miles ahead, Mountain Man Marty Raney, his son Matt,
and expert climber Willi Prittie are navigating the most direct
route to the landing zone.
WILLI: We've still got a lot of miles to put in.
NARRATOR: To get there, Marty's crew is traveling along
the flat, barren gravel bar of the valley,
looking for the ideal spot to cross the Nizina as they head
for McCarthy and the LZ.
As the men make their way along the game trail,
Marty makes a discovery.
MARTY: Check it out. Bear tracks.
WILLI: That's a pretty good-sized one, huh?
MARTY: It's not bad. That's a grizzly.
MATT: That is really cool. MARTY: Grizzly's front foot.
WILLI: Pretty fresh scat here too.
NARRATOR: These tracks are only minutes old,
and its' not just bears.
MARTY: What else is going on here?
Holy moly. Look at the size of these tracks?
That is unreal. WILLI: Yeah.
MARTY: From there to there. WILLI: That's a big wolf.
MARTY: The Nizina is teeming with predators,
brown bear tracks, and I saw wolf tracks, big ones.
So many bear tracks.
MATT SPEAKING MARTY: I bet you a million we hear wolves
on this trip.
MARTY: I stop, and I'm going bear. That's a bear.
And I'm thinking, no, It could be a wolf.
We're all trying to figure out what it is because it's far away
WILLI: Are those horses?
MATT: Oh, yeah, people on horses.
WILLI: Who'd have thunk it?
Let's go check this scene out, huh?
MARTY: Wow. Hello!
What in the wide world are you guys doing out here?
My name is Marty Raney.
MALE: Kelly Remp.
MARTY: As big and vast as Alaska is,
it's actually in a way a small town.
Everybody knows everybody.
MALE: These guys have gotta go out.
MARTY: You're talking about going back to McCarthy.
KELLY: Yes. MARTY: Really?
Well, that's kinda where we're headed.
When he started saying that we're taking these horses
to McCarthy, same place we're going,
the gears started turning.
I can help you guys out a little bit.
I guess why it popped in my head is we're going the exact
direction that you're going, and you're - you've got work here
and we could save you a couple days.
KELLY: It would save me a trip.
MARTY: That's - that's about 40, almost 50 miles round trip
for you.
NARRATOR: It's an offer neither party can refuse, and in Alaska,
a handshake is all that's required to seal the deal.
MARTY: A person might hear about this encounter and go, whoa!
That's one in a million! It's not.
This happens all, all the time in Alaska.
WILLI: Nice to meet you.
KELLY: You're looking for Jenny in McCarthy.
She knows the horses are coming.
I guess who delivers them is kinda immaterial.
MARTY: Pretty amazing change of plans for us,
but we'll - don't worry, we'll - we'll get 'em there.
KELLY: All righty.
MARTY: It will take us a few days though. We'll see you.
NARRATOR: Marty, Matt and Willi saddle up.
Across the valley, veteran outdoorsmen Brent Sass
and Tyler Johnson have headed straight for the Nizina River.
TYLER: Now, I'm looking forward to covering some distance
on this leg, man. Me and you hooked up together.
BRENT: I think we can move fast, dude.
NARRATOR: Though this river looks treacherous,
Tyler's adventurous nature is calling.
TYLER: Some guys are too cautious,
and it takes the fun out of it.
You know, reading maps all the time, and, you know,
coming up with contingency plans.
It's like dude, just screw it, man. Let's go. Let's go.
NARRATOR: Brent and Tyler will cross the Nizina River now,
taking a more direct route through the valley toward
McCarthy and the LZ.
BRENT: Let's got check out this river crossing.
TYLER: Yeah, it's the Nizina, man. It could be a rager.
Glacier river crossing in Alaska.
The water is moving fast.
It's murky, you can't see the bottom.
So you have no real way to determine how deep that thing
is until you go out there.
It's really cold, and it's fast moving. And it's big.
BRENT: All right, man.
TYLER: All right, Brent, let'*** it, buddy.
BRENT: I mean, the water is definitely moving through here,
especially where these two come together,but it's..
TYLER: It's not optimal, but we gotta do it, man
NARRATOR: They'll test the depth of the water here to see
if they should risk crossing.
TYLER: I'll coil a little bit with me, and I'll carry it,
and then, you know, you belay me across.
BRENT: All right. Here we go. Moving deep quick.
That water is cold. TYLER: It's all rocky bottom.
It's fast moving. Whoa! YELLING
It's fast moving. Whoa! YELLING
TYLER: Here you go. Got you.
It was pretty deep and fast-moving.
You know, all these rains, you know, we've been hitting, um,
it's just that river pumping right now.
It didn't look like it was that deep, dude.
BRENT: Hell, no!
NARRATOR: Cold, wet, and hungry, the men need a plan B.
TYLER: Let's get warm.
Yeah, let's move it.
NARRATOR: They'll warm up, move downstream and try again.
BRENT: That is some glacier-cold water.
NARRATOR: Further ahead, 30 miles from the LZ.
AUSTIN: This is a unique little trail right here.
NARRATOR: Iditarod champion Dallas Seavy,
his brother Tyrell, and Austin Manelick are navigating the low
hills that run along the south side of the Nizina River.
DALLAS: This terrain is awesome.
NARRATOR: After spending valuable time fishing,
the men are quickly putting miles behind them.
DALLAS: It's not a race. We're not trying to beat them.
It's just, shoot, how do you make it more fun and exciting?
By challenging yourself.
With this sort of terrain we're gonna make some good time
on this. That's gonna be great.
AUSTIN: What is that?
DALLAS: That's some sort of trumpet or bugle or something.
That's weird.
AUSTIN: It's like a horn or something.
DALLAS: When you hear something like that in the middle
of nowhere, it's something you definitely have to investigate.
AUSTIN: Hello! Are friendly visitors welcome?
DALLAS: Sometimes people live way out in the middle of nowhere
here because they want to be left alone.
So if you're gonna go walking up to their doorstep,
you have to proceed with some caution.
AUSTIN: Really it was like the twilight zone almost coming up
to this cabin because it was like what is happening here?
How many dead bodies are stored here?
Is there grave tombstones? No, of course not.
They're under the cabin.
Friendly visitors welcome?
We're staying friendly. I'm Austin...
Austin?
DALLAS: I'm Dallas Seavy. Nice to meet you.
CLIFF: I'm Cliff. DALLAS: Cliff?
Nice to meet you, Cliff.
We heard some friendly bugle calls.
CLIFF: Well, I found this old trumpet I hadn't played
in 10 years.
AUSTIN: I like your moose, uh, your moose antlers here as well,
classic.
Every cabin in Alaska is different,
and you don't really know what to expect.
CLIFF: Come on in, into the cabin.
Would you guys like some coffee or tea?
MALE: I love coffee and tea.
AUSTIN: You could see the history in the place just
by the age of it.
There was a lot of stuff, a lot of accouchements hanging
everywhere.
DALLAS: You've been out here for quite some time then, huh?
CLIFF: 46 years.
DALLAS: That's a little while.
CLIFF: I first came up to Alaska in '65,
and started this cabin in the fall of '66.
DALLAS: Wow.
CLIFF: We got a temporary roof on the winter,
and started the stove up the first time in April of '70.
AUSTIN: That's a beast.
CLIFF: Would you like to stay at the cabin tonight?
I've got room.
DALLAS: Would be the first time that we're staying under a roof,
man. Cliff offered to let us stay the night.
That's gonna be one heck of a nice evening,
finally getting to stay inside a building.
NARRATOR: It's been 32 days since the men have spent
the night in a warm, dry shelter.
And they're grateful.
DALLAS: We'd definitely be glad to help you out in any way
we can while we're here.
And looking forward to some good stories, I would guess.
AUSTIN: So I donated my salmon for dinner.
I had to bring something to the table.
Does this taste good? You bet your sweet buttons.
We're all full, getting kinda sleepy,
and Cliff brought out a little mellowing agent,
as he called it.
AUSTIN: Gonna do a little dancing? Some drinking? LAUGHTER
It's gonna be a hootenanny in a minute.
You got any instruments in here?
CLIFF: I've been trying to learn this thing,
but let's see what I can get.
DALLAS: The more Cliff comfortable around us,
the more he cut loose and the crazier the stories got.
DALLAS:We're all gonna have some great stories after this one.
CLIFF: Good night. ALL Thanks, we appreciate everything.
Being inside, man.
CLIFF: Don't let the bedbugs bite.
Hope we don't have any here. LAUGHTER
NARRATOR: As the men take refuge with Cliff the night
blankets the sky for more than 12 hours.
And as morning dawns on day 2.
Marty, Matt and Willi are preparing to get back in the
saddle, heading toward the LZ, and the horses' drop-off near
the town of McCarthy.
MARTY: Good morning guys.
When you're traveling with horses,
your camp sites have to take in the consideration of the animal,
so we've got water not very far away.
WILLI: There you go.
MARTY: We've got this thatch of I believe it's called some kind
of high-protein natural sage brush.
You gotta kinda think about trees that you can stake 'em
out, so we got the horses staked out in a big field over there.
NARRATOR: Marty finds three of the horses where they left them,
but the fourth, their pack horse, Meteor, is gone.
MARTY: What the hell? Meteor!
WHISTLE This is really embarrassing and really scary.
This is not good. These animals are predators.
And anything that moves out there, anything, is dinner.
Matt, Willi!
This is really bad, because this whole thing was my idea.
I talked this guy into this and assured him that nothing would
go wrong.
I got some bad news. The pack horse is gone.
What? WILLI: Oh,
MARTY: There is a set of grizzly tracks running back
over there by the horses.
Those are $6,000 pack horses. WILLI: This is serious, dude.
We've got brown bears coming up here trying to put on as much
weight as possible before the winter.
MARTY: This place is full of wolves and brown bear.
A horse has no chance out here. Meteor!
WHISTLE Meteor!
MATT: I haven't seen anything.
I've been searching for quite a while.
There are a lot of bear tracks, a lot of wolf tracks.
We gotta find this thing.
MARTY: Meteor! WHISTLE Meteor!
What's that?
Well, well, well, yeehaw! There you are! Yeehaw!
NARRATOR: Responsible for the safe delivery of the horses,
Marty's thankful he found Meteor.
MARTY: I felt so relieved.
I felt like a ton of bricks was lifted off me,
two tons of bricks were lifted off of me.
Oh, let's go to McCarthy. Come on, guys.
NARRATOR: As Marty and crew continue their push to the LZ.
Eight miles back, solo adventurer Tyler Johnson
and dog musher Brent Sass are behind schedule.
They have less than 48 hours to reach the LZ.
TYLER: We've gotta cross it at some point to get to the LZ.
That's the bottom line.
NARRATOR: After trying unsuccessfully to cross the
Nizina River yesterday, the men are searching for a much
safer passage.
As they make their way up the gravel bar, they spot something.
BRENT: Dude, what's that man? TYLER: What the hell is that?
BRENT: Somebody dropped a hat? Totally full of sand.
They've been washing down the river for a while.
TYLER: Looks like this thing has been here for a while.
BRENT: Well, is there any food in there?
We're just walking down the sandbar here and we came across
a backpack that had obviously been lost I don't know
how long ago.
TYLER: I wonder what happened to the person that had
this pack?
BRENT: Somebody could have been floating and capsized the boat,
who the hell knows where, and it just washed up here.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything in here.
There's no form of ID.
TYLER: No, I didn't see anything else.
Look at all the shwag. Oh, man. Canon.
Binoculars. BRENT: Binoculars.
Try those boots, man! TYLER: I know.
That is almost like I bought it from the store.
BRENT: And they fit.
TYLER: This is gonna make my day.
BRENT: Whoa, dude. This is like a brand new 44.
TYLER: Look at that. It's loaded too. Watch out.
BRENT: The biggest find is the 44 Magnum,
which is completely crazy. GUNFIRE That baby still works.
NARRATOR: Out here, surrounded by bears and wolves,
having a gun could be a lifesaver.
TYLER: High five, man. BRENT: Yeah, dude.
That is the find of the century. It's pretty exciting.
We're going to take this stuff, obviously.
We're not leaving anything.
And I hope whoever's it was is all right,
but it definitely helped us out here for sure.
NARRATOR: This was a great find for the men.
BRENT: Wow, dude. TYLER: That's a score.
NARRATOR: They need to keep moving if they hope to make
their LZ more than 30 miles away.
TYLER: I was just *** about my shoes, how bad they suck.
Man.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile
after a solid night's sleep with a roof over their heads,
Dallas, Tyrell and Austin are prepping to head out.
DALLAS: When the time came for us to leave,
Cliff wasn't quite ready to let go of us just yet,
but the truth of it is, you know, we're behind schedule now.
CLIFF: Okay. So you just want to keep going this way.
AUSTIN: Apparently, Cliff's got a shortcut for us that's gonna
get us in the right direction.
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
DALLAS: Hopefully we'll get to see you some time in
the not-so-distant future.
NARRATOR: Though the men have benefited from Cliff's
hospitality, their stay has cost them.
AUSTIN: Have a great winter, my brother.
NARRATOR: With less than 47 hours and 27 miles to the LZ,
the men head out looking for Cliff's shortcut.
DALLAS: We'll keep Sourdough Peak on our right.
NARRATOR: Down in the wild flats of the valley, Marty,
Matt and Willi have made good time on horseback.
They're already over halfway to the LZ.
But there's no more avoiding this lake's biggest obstacle.
MARTY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
NARRATOR: They have to cross the Nizina River.
MARTY: Check this river crossing is out.
These rivers are big and they're intimidating and they're scary.
You're trying to get an animal across there.
He's not stupid. He's saying, hey, guess what?
That's a glacier river. I don't know how deep it is.
What do you think, Willi?
WILLI: I think if we learned anything at all from crossing
that river delta out there in Katmai,
it's like you can't tell what it looks like until you're in it.
MATT: This river could be ankle deep, it could be, you know,
overhead.
MARTY: I'm gonna go for it. Careful in here.
Let's try this spot right here.
MATT: Looks like I'm going second, Willi.
MATT: Careful, guys.
MARTY: Good job Altuna! Whoa!
WILLI: That was a little easier than I thought.
MARTY: He had John Wayne's horse,
thing had a built-in GPS and it knew where to cross a river.
It was amazing.
Wyatt Earp would have rode up and tipped his hat that day.
Yee-haw!
NARRATOR: Ten miles back, Brent and Tyler are growing
desperately hungry.
They've already set up camp for the night.
Now they're trying to forage for some much-needed calories.
BRENT: We're eight weeks into this and we're run down.
Our energy level is low, and it's going to be really
important for us to get some food in our stomachs.
NARRATOR: Now that they have a gun,
they can risk trudging through these predator-filled woods.
BRENT: How does it look up there, man?
BRENT: Okay. Let's keep her moving.
NARRATOR: But the pickings are slim, and as winter closes in,
the days are short and getting shorter.
TYLER: Brent, man. It's getting dark. We can't see anything.
NARRATOR: Hungry and tired, it's time to head back to camp.
TYLER: Let's go.
NARRATOR: There's just one problem.
BRENT: Where the hell are we is the question?
TYLER: You know what?
I think we're a little bit off where we came in.
BRENT: This light is going down quickly.
BRENT: We've got no flashlights, we've got no food.
We got no water, we got nothing. We're lost.
NARRATOR: No water, no food, and no shelter.
They have no choice but to hunker down and survive
the bitter cold night as best they can.
TYLER: We kind of hung ourselves out there, you know?
We walked away from camp with limited gear,
and first thing we were looking for was some sort of a maybe
like a tree shelter or stump or something like that.
BRENT: Check out this little hovel we got here.
TYLER: Oh, yeah. But we have no tarp, no sleeping bags.
BRENT: There's probably some dry wood up underneath.
TYLER: We can build a fire right here,
it will reflect the heat off, keep us warm.
We've got a natural moss roof on that thing.
BRENT: Let's do it, man.
We're gonna sleep underneath this little - this little
hovel here.
Right now Tyler is doing some some construction work here
to get it so we can get underneath there.
This was not planned but, um, you know,
it's another adventure.
TYLER: You gotta do what you gotta do in Alaska, man.
I mean, it's just...
BRENT: I've been in this position before.
TYLER: We'll just hunker down until daylight.
NARRATOR: Stranded in the middle of bear and wolf country,
the men start a fire hoping to keep predators away.
BRENT: It's not gonna be a monster fire,
but it will help keep us warm underneath this thing.
I think it's going to be a long night.
Son of a ***.
NARRATOR: This late in the fall, it stays dark for more than
12 hours each night.
And as the sun dawns on day three
BRENT: Let's get out of here.
NARRATOR: Brent and Tyler are cramped, hungry and cold,
but alive.
With less than 24 hours and more than 20 miles to the LZ.
The men need to find their way in the growing light.
BRENT: Looks like that sky's clearing a little bit.
Hopefully we can get our mountain back in our sight here.
TYLER: Oh dude, there it is right there.
BRENT: I see that sandbar, that's it.
That's our spot.
TYLER: Let's go, man. Nice work, whoo!
BRENT: It was a celebration for about two minutes and then
we realized that we are under the gun and we had put ourselves
in some real situation of being really far behind on our way
to our LZ.
And that we had to - were really going to have to beat feet
to get to - to get to the LZ on time.
Let's get outta here.
NARRATOR: As Brent and Tyler rush to make up lost ground,
13 miles across the valley in the foothills outside McCarthy,
Marty, his son Matt, and Willi are drawing close to the LZ.
But first they have to deliver their horses to a homesteader
living somewhere in these woods.
I'm thinking I'm lost, then I see a little orange ribbon thing
on a branch.
I'm like this - you know, it has to be the place.
And sure enough, came around the corner, there it was.
The typical homesteader's cabin.
The garden, a pig.
I'm gonna hope to high heaven your name is Jenny.
JENNY: My name is Jenny. MARTY: My name is Marty Raney.
JENNY: Marty Raney?
MARTY: That's Matt Raney, and that's the famous Willi Pritti
back there. JENNY: Willi Prittie.
MARTY: Are we at the right place?
JENNY: Yes, I - these look like the right horses.
So can I offer you guys some dinner and a place to dry
your feet off before you head into McCarthy?
MARTY: Don't want to be imposing.
JENNY: I actually have a big pot of bear chili on,
and just baked some bread. WILLI: Bear chili?
JENNY: Bear chili, for real. WILLI: I could not refuse that.
I think most of us that live in Alaska,
we've eaten bear in one way, shape or form.
Thank you so much. This is really, really good chili.
MARTY: Thank you so much, kid.
WILLI: But I don't think I've ever had better stew in my life
anyplace, and I don't think it was just because I had been
so long in the wilderness.
It was really tasty. LAUGHTER
You really don't understand how much this means to us. Seriously
JENNY: You're welcome.
I'm glad I could provide you a warm place to fill your bellies.
NARRATOR: Back down in the valley,
with less than 21 hours and seven miles to the LZ.
TYRELL: We gotta cover a lot of ground today.
NARRATOR: Dallas, Tyrell, and Austin are following
Cliff's shortcut route to McCarthy.
AUSTIN: Well, like Cliff was saying...
Follow the Braided River down here to the next LZ.
DALLAS: It's definitely a lot easier crossing than doing
it all at once.
When we left Cliff's place he gave us some good direction
on the map, gave us a course to go right down the river,
and he said that it would take us across all the braided
sections and not the main channel.
NARRATOR: But now they find themselves at a dead end.
AUSTIN: Whoa, check that out. Is this a shortcut.
DALLAS: I don't think there's any more rivers after that.
NARRATOR: Trapped between a wide stretch of fast-moving river
and a sheer rock face.
AUSTIN: Well, gents, it looks like this this is definitely
the last of the river.
NARRATOR: Faced with two options,
the men decide to take the dryer route.
DALLAS: Let's bust it out.
We're just gonna go up through here like a little goat trail.
Whoa! This looks fun. Easy buddy. Watch that foot.
AUSTIN: This is dangerous. You could lose a toe right there.
TYRELL: That still really moving when you step on it.
DALLAS: Yeah. And I don't know how deep it is here.
AUSTIN: So much for a shortcut.
DALLAS: It might be a bad idea, this thing is definitely loose.
AUSTIN: Oh! Whoa, whoa, whoa!
DALLAS: Tyrell!
You all right? TYRELL: I'm fine.
AUSTIN: Oh, man. This is dangerous.
Tyrell is lucky he didn't get crushed by one of the rocks
that was falling off the cliff, because that would have been
instant death.
DALLAS: Do you need to get dried out here?
Let's get around the corner.
TYRELL: Certainly a life and death situation when you have
big slabs of rock sliding down a cliff with you.
That stuff could have come down on top of me,
or I could have landed on a sharp rock or something
like that.
So a little splash in the creek is nothing compared to what
could have happened. Whoa!
Waiting for more of that chunk to come down on my head.
Yeah, I think I'm ready to get off the wall.
NARRATOR: They made it around the worst of it.
But Tyrell has been soaked to the bone in 35-degree water.
DALLAS: At this point my biggest concern is hypothermia.
It's about getting a fire built and getting Tyrell dried out
and warm again. Start up a fire here.
NARRATOR: As Tyrell tries to warm up...
AUSTIN: You guys made quick work of this fire, that's for sure.
NARRATOR: Night falls over the Nizina River Valley.
And as dawn breaks on the final day,
the eight explorers have less than two hours to rendezvous
in McCarthy, or be left behind. MARTY: Let's go!
NARRATOR: Dallas's crew is three miles south of town,
while Marty's crew is less than a mile away.
But Brent and Tyler are still on the wrong side of the river.
BRENT: Looks like we're in for another - another challenge.
NARRATOR: Their night lost in the woods was a huge set back.
Now, they've fallen more than seven miles behind.
BRENT: Oh, boy. TYLER: Whoa, dude.
We're a little bit stressed.
I mean, this is the furthest behind we've been this entire
expedition. So we've got a lot of ground to cover.
I don't know if we're gonna make it.
BRENT: Oh, BLEEP It's a long ways down there, man.
TYLER: 300-400-500 foot, it's hard to tell, man.
BRENT: It does look like we could run down it.
It's not quite vertical.
TYLER: Mother nature's got us in her grasp, man,
and she's not letting us go easy on this one, dude.
BRENT: Once again
TYLER: We're fighting tooth and nail the whole way, dude.
BRENT: Damn.
TYLER: And the best route between two points is a straight
line, man. Let'*** it. BRENT: A to B.
It's sketchy, but I'm gonna take the plunge dude.
TYLER: All right. I'm gonna go this way.
BRENT: Ooh, all right! Whoa! TYLER: You okay? Whoo!
We're in some pretty harsh conditions.
We've got a lot of ground to cover.
You put one foot in front of the other,
put your head down and motor. BRENT: We can just beeline it.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, in the mountains above the Nizina River
Valley, Marty, Matt and Willi have already reached the mining
town of McCarthy.
MARTY: There she is, boys.
NARRATOR: The plan is to rendezvous here
with the other crews, and then take jeeps the rest of the way
to the LZ at McCarthy air strip.
WILLI: McCarthy. Just like I pictured it.
Wonder where the rest of our boys are.
MARTY: What time is it? WILLI: It's late.
I guess we can't do anything other than hang out and watch
for our bros.
WHISTLE MARTY: Hello! There they are.
WILLI: Welcome to the marvelous metropolis of McCarthy.
MATT: I don't want to turn this into a competition, but we win.
DALLAS: You bringing up the rear or what?
I was a little bit surprised that the old guys beat us.
LAUGHTER You know, you can't win them all.
WILLI: We're still waiting for Brent and, uh, Tyler.
DALLAS: Yeah, I thought they'd be here.
MARTY: You never saw tracks or anything?
TYRELL: No, we thought we were bringing up the rear.
MATT: Wherever they are, they're not here.
NARRATOR: While Marty and the others wait,
BRENT: Hurry up man, this is real sketchy.
NARRATOR: Brent and Tyler know they're running out of time.
TYLER: Oh, it's a slippery rock right there, man.
NARRATOR: But they have no idea how far off McCarthy is.
TYLER: Well, we can't really do any reconnorting because
we can't see any of the mountains around us.
So somewhere along the way we got mixed up.
Hopefully we're going the right direction. Whoo!
BRENT: These areas in here we can definitely move faster.
TYLER: Whoa dude. We're at Kennecott, man.
So, we pop over the ridgeline, and we're expecting to see,
you know, McCarthy.
Instead we're looking at the mines of Kennecott.
We were way off course.
BRENT: Dude, check it out. McCarthy. That's our destination
TYLER: What do you think man? How many miles?
BRENT: Five, six, seven miles, something like that.
TYLER: We're under the gun.
BRENT: Let's get outta here. TYLER: All right, man, let's go.
NARRATOR: The men have seven miles to cover in less
than an hour.
TYLER: Oh, man! This is crazy.
We've got a lot of running to do, man!
NARRATOR: As they make a mad dash, in McCarthy,
the rest of the explorers weigh their options.
DALLAS: How are we doing on, on time?
WILLI: It's getting late.
It's not mid-afternoon yet. MARTY: Right now we're worried.
These are two of the most competent,
toughest guys that we have. Something's not right here.
Hey, hold it, stop. That's a plane.
MATT: What are we gonna do?
MARTY: Well, we can't - he can't land and not see us.
WILLI: Well, I think we gotta - we gotta hold the airplane.
AUSTIN: Well, we better get these packs in the jeeps
and get ready to roll. WHISTLE
MARTY: This is 11th hour, and they need to show up.
We all know the deal.
You don't make it to the LZ, you're left behind.
NARRATOR: The men head for the LZ,
an airstrip just outside McCarthy.
Brent and Tyler are just a few miles away.
After one failed river crossing, the two still have a big,
cold obstacle to overcome. TYLER: We gotta cross this.
BRENT: Our LZ was pretty far away still and we didn't have a
whole lot of time to get there.
So we decided to take a chance and cross the river.
BLEEP NARRATOR: With no time to waste, it's now or never.
YELLING
TYLER: Are you touching? Oh! BLEEP
BRENT: Almost there.
We just defeated it this time, Tyler. CHEERING
Hurry up, man, this is real sketchy.
NARRATOR: Over at the air strip, the rest of the men are worried
about the missing crew.
DALLAS: Any time you arrive at your destination and part of
your group doesn't show up, it brings up a lot of questions
about where they are, what may have happened to 'em,
why aren't they here?
And then a lot more concerns and questions about
what do we do now?
WILLI: We're still missing two people here.
PILOT: There's a big front coming through and I want
to get out in about 20 minutes max to sit here on the ground,
or we're not gonna make it.
I'll give 'em 15-20 minutes max. WILLI: What do you guys think?
DALLAS: We're gonna wait as long as we can,
and then we - then we go.
MARTY: But we've never left anybody behind before.
TYLER: Oh, check this out, slow down.
BRENT: For the love of McCarthy.
We hadn't missed any extractions in the past,
and we wanted really badly to not miss this. Move your ***!
NARRATOR: Brent and Tyler have arrived at the rendezvous point
of McCarthy. No sign of their fellow explorers.
BRENT: I don't see those guys, man.
TYLER: I see horses and dogs, no people.
BRENT: This place is deserted.
TYLER: These guys are already at the airport.
It could be the end of our expedition, we don't know yet.
BRENT: We gotta keep moving, let's go.
PILOT We've got a long flight ahead of us, so we gotta go.
That's my cutoff time.
WILLI: Our pilot's getting very antsy.
It's decision point.
It's like what are we gonna do, how are we gonna handle this?
DALLAS: We're going. I'm going as well. I'm going.
MARTY: You going, Matt? MATT: Yeah.
DALLAS: It's time. Considering the situation, I think,
you know, they probably would have done the same thing
and moved on and finished the expedition we set out to do.
Looking out the window, scanning the ground,
it was so strange leaving without two of our people,
that you're still hanging on to any hope of catching
sight of them.
MARTY: We're out of here, those guys are left behind.
NARRATOR: As the plane heads towards Admiralty Island...
BRENT: Hey, dude, check this out, man. Wind sock.
TYLER: That's gotta be the airport.
BRENT: Dude, I do not see an otter.
TYLER: I don't see an otter either.
BRENT: Oh, man, I wonder if we made it!
TYLER: It's like a ghost town. Like McCarthy was.
We missed it. The plane's gone.
Our crew's gone, everybody's gone.
They didn't wait for us.
BRENT: We - we missed them. TYLER: This sucks, man.
We're in McCarthy without a plane ride.
BRENT: Admiralty Island is a long way from here, man.
I don't even see 'em flying.
We knew at that point that we had to be resourceful.
We knew Alaskans are helpful and we had to try and find somebody
to help us out, because it was out of our hands at this point.
We needed help.
TYLER: We gotta keep a good attitude.
BRENT: Yeah, whatever, whatever.
TYLER: Dude, with a couple planes, who knows? man...
I see somebody there. BRENT: Oh, we got a pilot.
TYLER: Excuse me, sir?
Hey, you wouldn't have happened to have seen an otter take off
with a group of guys here recently in the last hour?
PILOT: About 20 minutes ago, yep BRENT: Oh, 20 minutes.
TYLER: We missed them, man, can you believe that.
BRENT: That was our group.
We've been traveling all over Alaska with these guys.
We got delayed a little bit and we just missed 'em.
PILOT Where were you supposed to go?
BRENT: Well, Admiralty Island is our - where are you headed?
It was totally grasping at straws.
For someone to go out of their way and drop us off or even take
us as - as cargo was a huge long shot.
PILOT: Well, I'm actually going to Yakatat but that's nowhere
TYLER: Whoa, that's southeast at least.
BRENT: It's definitely - it's a long ways from McCarthy as well.
PILOT: Do you think you can get two guys and two packs
with no cash?
It's up to you guys, but I gotta leave here within 20 minutes
or so. We're ready to go right now.
We can go right now.
Seriously, man....Yakatat?
TYLER: Right on, man. BRENT: This is a miracle.
NARRATOR: If Brent and Tyler make the Admiralty Island
insertion point on their own, they can continue their journey.
BRENT: Lonny here has agreed to give us a ride to the Yakatat.
It's not Juneau, it's not Admiralty island,
but, you know what? It's one step closer.
It's out of McCarthy, and the way this is going,
we're overcoming challenges by the seconds.
So I think once we get to Yakatat,
there will be a way to get to Juneau for sure,
and then we'll catch up with the guys here soon.
Yakatat here we come. TYLER: Whoo!
BRENT: Our low point had only lasted a few minutes,
and even though the pilot wasn't going all the way to Admiralty
Island , he was willing to take us down the trail closer.
If we can get one step closer, maybe we can find someone else
that would help us to get us all the way and reunite
with the rest of the group. We're living the dream, buddy!
NARRATOR: Eight legs of the expedition are done,
but if Brent and Tyler can't hitch their way
to Admiralty Island, the ninth may be two explorers short.
It will be a formidable challenge;
the dense forests of Admiralty Island are home to one
of Alaska's largest concentrations of brown bears.