Ballsy Bear

I'm hooked on the new Discovery Channel documentary, Everest: Beyond The Limit (Tuesday's at 9CST). What it takes to scale that mountain is incomprehensible to me. I'm fascinated. This one isn't as good as the series I watched last year, but it's astounding reality TV. Watching these mountaineers cross the Khumbu Icefall, using the same little aluminum ladder I can buy at Ace, is hair raising. To call this feat treacherous, is putting it mildly. 15 people have died on Everest this year. Climbers pass 41 frozen bodies on the North Face of the mountain. I actually have a Nepali brother-in-law who has a few Sherpa friends. I think he's trekked to base camp even. I'll have to ask him.


I enjoy this show so much, I started watching the repeat airing on Friday night. Part of Discovery's "Survival Fridays". That's where I was introduced to Edward Michael Bear Grylls and his show Man Vs. Wild. The show's intro sets things up nicely. Bear Grylls: adventurer, martial arts expert, former British special forces, and most importantly, survival expert. Bear is also the youngest Brit to ever summit Everest. He was 23. For what this guy does, you couldn't have any less impressive a resume. For Bear drops himself in the middle of the most inaccessible and menacing places on the planet with nothing but the clothes on his back, a flint, a knife and a bottle of water. Then he coaches us on how to make it out...ALIVE! Now, I know it's TV. I'm sure there are plenty of safety precautions and locations are scouted and stunts must be field tested before hand, but the show is compelling none the less. I like it for its Survivor Vs. Fear Factor factor. This dude does, and eats, some crazy nasty stuff. But you gotta do what you gotta do when you're lost in the mountains of Alaska or rain forests of Costa Rica. When I saw Bear, stranded in the Moab desert, remove his shirt, urinate all over it and then wrapped it around his head to stay cool; I thought: "Well that's something I never would have done. Thanks Bear! You are truly an educator." I saw the promo for the next episode and it's looking like Bear has some heady tips for us this week. He's stranded in the Kenyan Savannah. If I saw right, he shows us how to squeeze drinking water out of a huge pile of elephant poop. (I just gagged in my mouth a little.) Then he salvages what fresh meat he can find off a dead zebra carcass. Not exactly the stuff you'll see on the Real World, that's for sure.