Original subtitles

♪ ♪

[wind whistling]

♪ ♪

[creaking]

[Aldo] 3, 2, 1. Heave.

Again.

♪ ♪

Uhh.

Quite warm, isn't it?

[crash]

[Heïdi] Ice!

Hide your hands!

[Mikey] Dagger. Look at that thing.

[Aldo] This is treacherous.

[crash]

[Heïdi] Oh, rock. Head, head, head!

[Aldo] Ice!

-[crash] -[Alex] Oww, [bleep].

[Aldo] Did it hit you?

[Alex] Right on the bridge of my nose.

Mike, is that blood?

[Hazel] Yeah, you're bleeding.

[Aldo] Whoa.

[Heïdi] Coming!

[ice clattering]

[Hazel] It actually sliced you. It's like a little knife wound.

[Alex] It's definitely way better to get hit by ice than rock.

If that had been a rock that size that hit me,

it for sure would have broken my nose at least.

If not put a hole straight through my face.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Did I get most of the blood off?

[Aldo] Yeah. Does it hurt?

[Alex] I'm definitely like a little sore, but.

I think the thing with the ice falls is really scary,

but there's nothing you can do about it.

You either give up on the climb entirely or you play through it.

Combat medic Aldo frickin' taking care of me.

[Hazel] Okay, I've got ya. Go for it.

[Aldo] Nice one, mate.

[Alex] Classic, we're like, "Oh, better conditions today,"

like, nope, different set of bad conditions.

It's always something in Greenland.

♪ ♪

We're 70 miles from a 4,000-foot sea cliff

called Ingmikortilaq.

It's one of the highest unclimbed rock faces

on the planet.

♪ ♪

To get there, we want to be the first people

ever to cross the Renland Ice Cap.

But to reach the ice cap,

we'll all have to complete a two-day climb

up what we're calling the Pool Wall.

♪ ♪

A 1,500-foot unclimbed Arctic cliff.

[Mikey] Given the complications of our team,

we've got a couple rookie big wall climbers with us.

Today's like probably one of the more complicated big wall days

of the whole trip, honestly.

[Heïdi] Whoa, this feels so scary!

Wuh!

[Adam] I don't focus on the height at all.

I'm just focused on those bits of ice.

You know, I felt a couple of pieces hit me,

and I can feel the force of it,

and when they hit me, I say some Greenlandic words

that I'm not allowed to say for my mom.

[laughs]

[ice falls]

♪ ♪

I was the last one climbing up.

That's the point where I was the most scared.

It just struck me, okay,

this rope is the only thing holding me.

A rock could hit the rope and just cut it.

♪ ♪

This was serious business.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] Whoa, okay.

[exhales]

[breathing heavily]

♪ ♪

I'm now about 1,000 feet up.

I've made a decision not to look down.

If I do, I'm worried I'll be paralyzed by fear.

[Hazel] Yeah!

[Alex] Yeah!

[Hazel laughs]

[Aldo] All good, Heïdi?

-[Heïdi] Horizontal ground! -[laughs]

-[Alex] Nice climb. -[Aldo] Yeah.

[Adam] This is crazy, huh?

[Heïdi laughs]

Yoooo!

[Heïdi] And the view is pretty nice, huh?

[Adam] It's, it's beautiful.

I got a bit scared actually!

[Heïdi] It's hard to imagine, but you're gonna spend the night

attached to a thin tent made of fabric

that is only secured by one bolt stuck into the rock.

♪ ♪

[Mikey] It's a bit lonely over here on this side of the camp.

Definitely the cool kids are over there.

[Hazel] I love portaledges.

[Alex] Oh, it's so much cozier than being outside.

[Hazel] And it's nice to get out of the wind.

[Alex] Yeah, it's so much warmer.

[Hazel] Are we taking helmets off?

[Alex] Well, I am.

[Heïdi] When I look out the window,

I'm like, whoa! [laughs] Where is the floor?

[laughs]

♪ ♪

I'm glad that tomorrow is the second and last day.

[chuckles] Yeah.

[Alex] Yeah, nothing like 9 o'clock bedtime.

[Heïdi laughs]

[Adam] I think I'm ready to sleep.

[Alex] Yeah, how do you feel? How was the day?

[Adam] Good, I was actually a bit scared down here,

I was kind of left alone like the last man.

And you guys?

[Alex] We, we're good, we're pretty beat. Our hands, like...

[Adam] Must have been cold.

[Alex] Yeah, the climbing today kind of took

a little bit out of us, actually.

[Aldo] Here we are, me and Mikey.

[Mikey] Hey there!

[Aldo] But look at this for a view.

[unzips]

There we go. Sorry, Hazel.

[laughs]

[Aldo] I think I was filming when Hazel was having a wee.

[laughs]

[Alex] What was the drama of the day?

[Hazel] The drama of the day was Alex got hit on the noggin

with a piece of ice.

And at one point it looked really extreme,

because there was blood dripping all down his face.

[Alex] There was blood dripping into my mouth,

I was like, that's unusual when you get hit on the face

hard enough that it bleeds into your mouth.

[Adam] Sleep well.

[Alex] Bonne nuit!

♪ ♪

[Hazel] The first day was kind of scary,

because there was a lot of falling ice.

But today when I woke up,

I didn't even think I'd be able to get my climbing shoes on,

I was so cold.

Ahhh.

[Hazel] Yeah.

[Alex] I was so impressed that

she just put on her things and went.

I was like, that is, like, that's a hard woman.

Today's the day the whole team has to get to the top.

♪ ♪

We're about 900 feet up.

To summit, we have to get through

the steep top section of the wall.

We only have thin cracks to follow.

Plus the rock is constantly crumbling.

It's really difficult to get good gear.

♪ ♪

[Hazel] Some people might think that climbers

are just cut from a different cloth

and that they're just comfortable in these places,

but it really comes through practice,

and I think that the biggest growth for me

has actually been learning how to manage that fear.

♪ ♪

Ah! Rock!

[Alex] You alright?

[Hazel] It's actually just making hand-fingerlocks big enough.

♪ ♪

Ah, okay.

Ah, [bleep]. It's just so [bleep].

Ugh.

♪ ♪

The crack is really narrow.

My hands are freezing, and the rock is so crumbly.

I can see one handhold above.

♪ ♪

Ahh!

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Pbbbt.

Ahhh.

Well, that's kind of the last hard pitch for sure.

Okay, safe, Alex!

Growing up it was challenging to feel like I fit in,

you know, as a climber,

and as a girl who was into more of a boys' sport.

I'm just so thankful and grateful to my younger self

that I stuck with it.

Because climbing's given me everything.

My whole life has this meaning that I just wouldn't have

if I didn't stick with climbing.

♪ ♪

[Alex] Ugh!

[Hazel] Nice. Yeah.

[Alex] Nice lead. That was very impressive.

My fingers hurt, they're numb, they're bleeding.

That was very impressive.

[Hazel] We're losing the sun a little bit, actually.

[Alex] Yeah, at least we only have 300 feet to the summit,

and they're much easier.

♪ ♪

-[Adam] Aldo. -[Aldo] Yeah.

[Adam] This thing, do I get...

[Aldo] Just keep coming up.

[Adam] Before I started climbing, we saw two ravens.

In my culture that's a sign

that something is happening over there, something good.

[Alex] Yeah, Adam!

Almost there.

[Adam] It gave me a boost,

it gave me a "you can do this" feeling.

[Aldo] Are you enjoying it?

[Adam] Not really.

[chuckling]

[Hazel] Wow, that was direct.

-[Adam] No, for real, not really. -[laughs]

It was nice to get up to the other guys and laugh a little.

[Aldo] Hugs for Adam, yeah.

[Adam] It was comforting.

[Alex] Adam, we're thinking we're gonna name the route

Two Ravens.

-[Mikey] Good name, huh? -[Adam] Perfect, huh?

-[Alex] You saw the ravens. -[Adam] Yeah, seriously.

[Alex] For you and Heïdi. Two ravens flying up the wall.

-[Adam] Yeah. -[Alex] Pretty exciting, huh?

[Adam] Oh, yeah. That's a good name, huh?

[chuckling]

At that moment when they said

they wanted to name it Two Ravens, I felt honored,

because I couldn't have done it at all without them.

[Hazel] Final pitch!

Let's get to the summit.

[Alex] Okay, Hazel. Send it!

♪ ♪

Great success.

[Hazel] High five. Nice one.

[Alex] We're on top. Yay!

[Hazel] Yay!

[Alex] That's something. We're on top.

[Hazel] Nice, Aldo.

[Aldo] What a mission.

[Alex] Yeah.

[Aldo] Woo-hoo. Not bad for a practice wall.

[Mikey] Practice run? This is like my retirement run.

[Aldo] How you feeling?

[Adam] Worked.

[Hazel] Nice one.

You did so well, hey?

[Adam] Crazy experience.

Right now, never again. Never.

[Hazel] Yeah.

[Aldo] Heïdi!

[Heïdi] Hey, guys!

[Aldo] Welcome!

[Adam] Yeee!

[Alex] Yeah.

-[Heïdi] We made it, huh? -[Adam] We made it.

-[Heïdi] The two newbies. -[Aldo] Well done.

[Heïdi] Thank you, team. It's all thanks to you guys.

-[Adam] Thank you, guys. -[Heïdi] Ahhh.

Oh, this is incredible.

[Alex] Two Ravens.

♪ ♪

[muffled conversation]

Okay, we got everything?

[Aldo] That was a haul and a half.

[Alex] Oh, my gosh, that was insane.

♪ ♪

I'm starting to think that Ingmikortilaq,

which is three times higher than the Pool Wall,

might be a bit of an undertaking.

So next up we'll have to try to find somewhere flat to camp.

We still have a long ways to go before we sleep tonight.

Finally we've made it onto the Renland Ice Cap,

a 42-mile-wide reservoir of ice,

some of which has been here for tens of thousands of years.

It will be the highest and coldest part of the expedition.

♪ ♪

This will be the first time

anyone's tried to cross this ice cap on foot.

Our plan is to ski northwest 40 miles,

taking measurements for Heïdi's research as we go.

Then, we'll then descend a glacier to the fjord below.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

-[Adam] Aldo. -[Aldo] Yeah. Huh?

[Adam] Where we putting up the tents? Somewhere over here?

[Aldo] Yeah, where do you think?

Here's good.

Up here we're so exposed,

temperatures are well below freezing.

It's quite a bit of a change from being on the wall

and being slightly protected

to being out in the elements and needing to get things done fast.

What's your thoughts with bears up here?

[Adam] We'll put up a bear fence,

make sure...we have a good night's sleep,

because we need that, all of us.

[Alex] It's been a long day.

Our skin is killing us,

my fingers, the skin on my fingers really hurts.

Hard to believe that Ingmikortilaq is supposed to be

at least two, maybe three times bigger.

I just don't know if we can do three times more.

Hopefully we'll recover a bit before then.

[wind blowing]

[Alex] This is my first expedition as a father.

And I do miss my daughter.

It's a pretty long trip to be away from family.

And it's certainly gonna be hard on my wife,

to have to be a single parent for six weeks.

I really hope that June will grow up on a healthy planet.

We're in the midst of a crisis,

and we need to actually help change the world

as quickly as possible.

The first year that I started earning

more income than I needed,

I started donating a third of my income

to help fund solar projects around the world.

♪ ♪

I think expeditions should be about more than just climbing.

Yeah, it's cool to make first ascents,

but it's great that we're also collecting data

from the front line of climate change.

♪ ♪

[wind whistling]

[Aldo] Morning. You guys sleep well?

[Mikey] Good thing we got skis, huh?

[Alex] Today we head out across the ice cap.

It should take around four days,

but we don't really know, since no one's ever done it.

To lighten the load,

we're gonna leave a lot of our climbing gear behind.

Our support team will pick it up later.

It's time to shift into science mode.

Heïdi's going to be gathering important data

as we cross the ice.

[Heïdi] So we have here two different radars.

This will help us to measure ice thickness,

and the way it works is that the transmitter here

will send pulses of radio waves into the ground

and it will give us information on how thick the ice is.

It works almost like a sonar.

It enables us to see what's underneath our feet.

-[Alex] Okay, we're all ready? -[Heïdi] Yeah.

[Alex] Okay, walking.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] Measuring the thickness of the ice will help us

calculate how much water the Renland Ice Cap holds.

We want to understand how sea levels might rise

if temperatures keep going up and all of this melts.

♪ ♪

[Alex] It's not as if I've ever wanted to be a polar explorer,

you know, I'm a rock climber for a reason,

but in this case, to spend, you know,

between four days and a week

going somewhere that no one's ever been

to help Heïdi for science,

I mean, it's rare to have that kind of opportunity in life.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] Stay a bit more on your right if you can.

[Adam] How's this speed?

[Heïdi] Yeah, that's good, yeah.

[Adam] Okay?

♪ ♪

[Aldo] So difficult to get any bearings in this light.

♪ ♪

[Mikey] Want to stop, Alex?

[Alex] Yeah, can we stop for a sec?

[Mikey] Sure.

[Heïdi] You have collected loads of files. That's good, Adam.

[Adam] Yeah, that's what I do normally when I cross ice caps.

[Alex] Are we taking a look at your numbers?

[Heïdi] I mean these files are gigantic, actually.

So when we left camp, I mean, have a guess,

how thick was the ice when we left camp this morning?

[Aldo] 900 feet.

[Mikey] No, I'd say 300 feet.

[Heïdi] So it was about 200 meters, so.

[Alex] 600, yeah, 700 feet.

[Heïdi] And now we are walking or skiing on ice

that is 120,000 years old.

This ice has seen the last ice age

and even the period before that.

[Alex] The deepest ice here is over 2,000 feet down.

I mean, it's crazy.

This ice cap holds more than 350 billion tons of fresh water,

enough to submerge the entire island of Manhattan

under almost four miles of water.

♪ ♪

[wind whistling]

[Aldo] So we're just skiing in on, on the bearing now

because it's kind of whiteout,

but you can see the relief of that crevasse there.

♪ ♪

Crevasses are the biggest hazard on the ice cap.

They're deep cracks in the ice, some going hundreds of feet.

In this flat light, they're tough to spot

until you're actually on top of them.

And if you fall in one whilst you're pulling a sled,

then you're in deep trouble.

[Aldo] So, crevasse is that way,

so we'll basically head that direction.

[Alex] Yeah, looks like it.

[Mikey] Yeah, I was like, I think we really want

to get out of here, huh?

-[Aldo] Yeah. -[Alex] Yeah.

♪ ♪

[Aldo] You go out in front, Mikey, I'll keep you on track.

[Mikey] Yeah, I'll be the crevasse poodle,

I'm the lightest.

♪ ♪

[Aldo] Alright, you're bang on course there, Mikey.

Navigating in whiteout is never fun.

♪ ♪

[Mikey] A landmark would be great.

[Aldo] So difficult when there's absolutely nothing to focus on.

[Mikey] I just close my eyes.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Mikey] I feel it, Aldo, I just feel it.

[Aldo] 10 degrees right.

[Mikey] Oh, that's not working, is it?

♪ ♪

[Hazel] What's the plan?

[Alex] I mean, my goal for the day

is to get all the way across the ice cap.

[Mikey] Okay, I think we should stop.

[Alex] Are you kidding?

[Aldo] Basically we need to make a decision

about whether we push on or not.

[Alex] We've only been skiing for an hour and a half.

I don't like stopping if I don't have to;

I'd much rather keep moving.

[Aldo] The fact from my point of view

is that Mikey and I looked at a map

and we're heading straight into

the center of that crevasse field.

I know that it's probably pretty dangerous.

Is it safe to push on?

Or is it better to stop and put up camp,

and maybe we get better vis later on.

We do have 24-hour daylight,

when the vis is good, we crack on again.

[Alex] We could also rope up and just keep going through.

[Adam] I don't think, roping up doesn't make it much safer,

because we can't see.

[Alex] But you're less likely to die.

[Adam] The hazard is already there.

I'm, I'm in on camping here.

[Heïdi] Absolutely, same for me,

I think it's totally unsafe to continue.

[Mikey] With Alex, it's, you know, it's a little different,

because he has so much self confidence

and so much ability.

It's a little harder for me to blindly sort of trust

what he says to do.

[Alex] What's the group vote?

[Mikey] I don't think we should move right now.

[Heïdi] Yeah.

[Aldo] We'll go and probe an area for camp

and then we'll whack up some tents

and then we'll just ride it out for a bit.

[Mikey] Where's your tent, Heïdi?

[Heïdi] Just here.

♪ ♪

[Alex] Uh. Whoa!

Kind of like, has this been probed?

'Cause I just punched through like to my, like, past my thigh.

Like I punched through that corner,

and then I punched through the other corner, I was like, man.

My whole tent is like a minefield over here.

[Aldo] The dry glacier underneath feels fairly solid at 115, 120.

The story of this trip is

basically don't fight the weather,

get the tents up, get dinner on, and wait it out.

[Heïdi] How are your feet?

[Hazel] Should probably check my blisters.

[Heïdi] Ah, this looks good.

[Hazel] Yeah. This is coming away a little bit there, but.

[Heïdi] And you have the same on the other side?

[Hazel] Yeah, exactly the same place, yeah,

this one's slightly worse, but.

[Heïdi] It doesn't look infected at all, so that's great.

[Hazel] No.

-[Aldo] Come on in. -[Alex] Oh, it's so cozy in here.

[Aldo] It's nice, eh?

[Alex] Sanni said that June's been waking up

four times a night again.

-[Aldo] Yeah. -[Alex] Oh, jeez.

I think I'm missing the worst part right now, honestly.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Alex] How disrupted has your sleep been?

[Aldo] It's kind of funny going from being a new dad

and no sleep, to then coming on expedition

where you get in theory full sleeps.

I've been craving those for months. [chuckles]

[Alex] It is quite the change.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] Being on the Renland Ice Cap

is such a rare opportunity for a scientist

that I felt a lot of pressure to collect as much data as I could.

[Alex] I've never met anybody who likes the snow or ice

as much as Heïdi.

This is like, this is insane.

Here, I brought you dinner, too. [Heïdi] It's getting so deep.

Oh, you have! Oh, that's so nice.

[Alex] Though now it's probably a little bit cold, but.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] My biggest passion is ice.

When I was a kid, someone told me

that actually there are some people,

these glaciologists who spend all of their time exploring

remote areas of the world,

and I thought, hey, that sounds like

the coolest job in the world.

[Alex] Are you proud of your hole?

[Heïdi] Yeah, but I really want to dig another one here, uh.

[Alex] I could start, but.

[Heïdi] Yeah, if you're keen.

[Alex] Here, actually, let me start while you eat.

[Heïdi] Are you sure?

[Alex] Yeah, yeah, just so you can relax for a minute.

[Heïdi] I can't even get out now. [chuckles]

[Alex] Do you need a hand?

Is that why you didn't come out for dinner

because you didn't know how to get out of the hole?

[Heïdi] [laughs] I was just stuck, yeah.

♪ ♪

I want to see what the snowpack is like up here.

[Alex] I don't think this will take me that long, actually,

you see I'm making pretty good progress.

[Heïdi] This far north, and this high up,

I'm expecting the snow to be more or less pristine.

This is like the ultimate snow pit.

And in between the two holes is a very fine wall of snow,

that will kind of reveal itself

when the light is shining through it.

[Alex] Okay, cover me in!

[Hazel] That could be your bed tonight!

[Alex] This could be my bed!

Oh, it's pretty cool, actually.

You can just really see the layers.

[Heïdi] Nice.

[Alex] It's like very clear lines.

♪ ♪

-[Heïdi] Thanks, Adam. -[Adam] Okay?

[Heïdi] Alright, let's do it, Ahh. Oh, this is great.

I mean, what I'm seeing here

is a very clear picture of the snowpack.

The depth of this snow pit spans a period of about 12 months.

And every time we have one of these layers,

it means that the Renland Ice Cap was melting.

I was hoping just to find beautiful snow without any melt,

but actually melt is happening all the time

throughout the year up here.

The entire snowpack is crippled by these ice lenses.

This is really concerning.

I think there's a good chance that the Renland Ice Cap

is melting faster and making more of a contribution

to sea level rise.

And that contribution is only going to increase in the future.

♪ ♪

[Aldo] Morning.

[Alex] It's been two days, but the weather's finally clear.

Now we can get a good look at where we are.

[drone buzzing]

[Heïdi] I'm actually just going straight up from camp.

♪ ♪

[Hazel] Kind of scary that there's one right there.

[Heïdi] Yeah, I'm glad we stopped eventually.

♪ ♪

[Alex] Big holes, big holes, little bit of death.

[Heïdi] We are literally surrounded by crevasses.

I mean, these are insane.

♪ ♪

[Aldo] Yeah, I think based on that, Mikey, you and I should be

roped up at least.

[Mikey] Yeah, seems reasonable.

[Aldo] We're slowly dropping altitude.

[Mikey] Yeah.

No, I think it's all downhill now.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Alex] Now that we've gotten our bearings,

it's easier to scout the route and avoid crevasses.

♪ ♪

[Hazel] My load feels pretty light today,

so I'm pretty psyched.

Yeah.

[Aldo] We've got weather on our side, the wind has died down,

we're heading in the right direction,

and we can see the fjord.

[Alex] That'll be the end of our ice cap crossing,

and where we hope that our support boats

are waiting for us.

We knew that we were still something like 15 miles away

from the ocean, even though it looked super close.

I mean, the distances and the scale in Greenland

is just beyond anything that you experience

in most other parts of the world.

The snow's gotten so much softer.

Like really punching in.

[Aldo] Yeah, it's quite annoying.

♪ ♪

[Hazel] Ah. It's so horrible.

[Aldo] This is not fun. Wait!

Whoa!

Does that look like a bridge down there we could cross

straight in your front?

[Mikey] Yeah, I think we'll go through these flats

and then, like, arc around.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Alex] It's wild to think that we've almost completed

the first crossing of the Renland Ice Cap.

♪ ♪

Heïdi has a ton of important data.

Now we just need to get off the ice.

♪ ♪

Basically the glacier just gets more and more broken

and difficult to navigate as you descend down to the fjord.

[Hazel] Ah!

Danger.

That was sketchy.

[Aldo] If you go in there, you're in a bad way.

[Adam] Keep moving, that's the main thing.

♪ ♪

[Mikey] I'm going around.

[Hazel] Someone's gonna get dragged into a crevasse,

because they've got a heavy pulka.

[Alex] No, I know, I think this is kind of crazy.

♪ ♪

Uh, here, watch out, watch out.

[Heïdi] Wait a sec, wait, wait, wait.

[Alex] Somebody pull.

[Aldo] Whoa.

That was close.

[Alex] You alright?

[Heïdi] That's it, one, two, three.

-[Alex] Awesome. -[Aldo] You still good, yeah?

[Heïdi] Yeah, I'm good.

Wait, wait, wait, slowly.

[Alex] Whoa, whoa, don't push it.

Here, if you go up and over.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Alex] Yeah, and now, like, walk to your left.

[Heïdi] But take it very slow.

[Alex] And then hard right and just go fast.

♪ ♪

[Aldo] Woo hoo hoo.

[Mikey] He said go fast.

[Aldo] Yeah.

[Alex] I know, but I didn't mean right up our skis.

[Mikey] Oh, god, yeah.

Finally, Alex was like, "Oh, that was a little too much."

[Alex] Well, it just started to look a little quick

at the bottom there.

[creaking]

The difficulty in getting off a glacier

is that there's never gonna be an easy way.

There's always going to be a river

along the side of the glacier,

or just, you know, calving face of the glacier at the end

falling into the ocean.

There's never like an off-ramp.

[Hazel] It's just so complex, this terrain.

You think it's going to go, and then you get down there,

and there can just be this big, gaping crevasse.

[Alex] So far, so good, give me another minute.

[Hazel] It's a bit like a maze finding your way through.

Is it good, Alex?

[Alex] It's good, we're good, guys.

[Mikey] Did you guys come this way?

[Alex] Yeah, this is the way.

♪ ♪

I think we did a good job of finding a decent way

off the glacier.

And as we were descending

you can hear big chunks falling off and things moving,

and it's all pretty dramatic, very living area.

But it definitely just reminds you how alive the glaciers are,

like things are constantly moving.

[Mikey] Hey, Alex, don't you think we should get going?

[Alex] Yeah, let's go.

Okay, we're going.

It's such a relief to see our support team.

[Adam speaking Greenlandic]

♪ ♪

We made it! [Hazel] Yeah.

[Aldo] Oh, there's a dog in here.

[Hazel] Yeah.

[Aldo] There's a dog.

Hello, mate.

[Alex] You're right. This is cool.

So nice to be moving not under our own power.

[Hazel] Oh, my god, yes!

[Alex] This. This is pure joy.

Ingmikortilaq is still almost 30 miles from here.

And the only way to get there is up a long, deep fjord.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Alex] This landscape is one of the more beautiful things

I've ever seen, it's pretty incredible.

[Mikey] Wow.

This fjord is like just absolutely magical.

[Heïdi] Yeah, honestly, I can't believe the amount of ice

there is here.

Makes me sick when I see this, yeah.

[Alex] We're all looking at this landscape

and thinking it's amazing.

But where we see beauty,

Heïdi sees something completely different.

[Heïdi] This is all ice that is of course being lost

by the glaciers.

And it's not a good sign

when you see so many icebergs floating around.

Yeah, no, it's quite scary, actually, yeah.

I mean, when I see what's around me today, my heart shrinks.

The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough ice

to increase sea levels globally

by about 24 feet.

♪ ♪

This is our future and it's also our demise.

If we save the Arctic, we will save ourselves.

♪ ♪

These are the GPS coordinates for the launch.

So is it okay if we give it to the captain?

[Adam] Yeah, go in there and give it to the captain.

[Heïdi] Okay.

[Alex] When it comes to science, I've never met anyone

as committed to the mission as Heïdi.

She just never quits.

Before Ingmikortilaq,

she's got something special to do on behalf of her friends

at one of the coolest agencies on Earth.

[Heïdi] Hi, is it NASA?

Hi, Beth! [laughs]

[Alex] Heïdi is launching a probe for NASA

that will help monitor how the ocean is melting

Greenland's glaciers from below.

[Heïdi] Ah, fantastic news. Okay.

Beth has just received the package from the float,

and everything looks well.

We have barely any information about the interaction

between the ice and the fjords.

And NASA very quickly understood that this is a key factor

in global sea level rise.

[Alex] Known as the Oceans Melting Greenland project,

or OMG, more than 1,600 probes have been launched

around Greenland.

[Heïdi] It's a robot, and what it does is measures salinity,

temperature and depth of the fjord here.

And it will keep going up and down the fjord,

from the surface to the bottom for more than a year.

[Alex] Our probe, number 9317,

will send daily readings via satellite,

and record thousands of measurements over its lifetime.

♪ ♪

[Heïdi] So we have the green light, we can launch the probe.

Really happy, yeah, all systems go.

[Man] Alright, let's go.

[Heïdi] Let's do this.

Okay, ready, everyone?

[All] Yeah.

[Heïdi] Okay, it's going in.

Woo.

Do you see it?

[Hazel] Fly away, little robot.

[Alex] There it goes. Goodbye.

♪ ♪

We've spent a whole month getting to this big wall.

♪ ♪

You could see Ingmikortilaq in the distance

as this big spire, tooth sticking out

that just steadily got bigger and bigger.

[Aldo] There's a lot of ice in there!

[Alex] There are icebergs everywhere.

It's not that easy to get in with the boat.

Like, everything about it seemed more intimidating

and more difficult than we hoped for.

[Mikey] It became very evident very quickly,

I mean, the thing is absolutely massive.

♪ ♪

[Hazel] This is like the craziest wall.

[Alex] I know, it looks, it looks evil.

[Hazel] Ingmikortilaq is growing in front of us,

but it's also I think growing in our minds.

[Heïdi] They are the best climbers in the world,

and I feel that they are totally unstoppable.

But actually when they were on the boat

looking at the face for the first time,

they felt human.

♪ ♪

[Alex] That's so big.

[Hazel] Oh, my god, guys!

[Mikey] Sweet. What did we sign up for?

♪ ♪

[Alex] Ultimately what's at stake with climbing

is always your life.

You could die in a lot of different ways on a wall.

The fact that Ingmikortilaq is so remote and big

makes it more intimidating for sure.

It looks insane.

It looks impossible.

♪ ♪

Captioned by Side Door Media Services