There is an excellent tv show that I enjoy watching called Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. It stars a Brit named Bear (yes that's his real name) Grylls who was in the British special forces, climbed Mt. Everest and was part of the first group of people to circumnavigate Great Britain on jet skis. There are loads of other 'firsts' that he's completed, but basically he's the ultimate outdoorsman. Each episode of the show features him getting dropped in different survival situations with a minimum amount of survival gear. He then shows you how to survive and get yourself to safety. The best thing about the show is that he actually shows you how to deal with situations like getting out of quicksand, falling in a crevasse etc.
Recently he went to the Scottish Highlands, specifically Cairngorm National Park to show how a lost hiker might survive. The Highlands are a rugged area of northwestern Scotland. They are north of the Highland Boundary fault line. A small fraction of Scotland's overall population lives here but it's beautiful natural scenery is a huge draw to hikers and tourists. Cairngorm National Park is classified as an Arctic landscape and 30 people die there every year.
Some notable things on this episode include when he shows how to get out of a bog and when he uses moss to purify some water. This probably wasn't the most dangerous episode I've seen him in, but it was neat to see him in an area of the world that I think people might realistically find themselves in. And it's also an area that people don't typically think of as being very dangerous. Bear keeps a blog and the Man vs. Wild website is worth checking out too.
If you're a reality tv fan this show is definitely worth watching. Bear is very charismatic and he does some pretty extreme things, so it's definitely not for the faint of heart.
Enjoy, and pipe on!
No comments:
Post a Comment