Original subtitles

My name is Bear Grylls.

I serve with the British Special Forces. I've climbed to the summit of Everest

and crossed the frozen oceans of the Arctic.

Now, I'm going to be stranded in the French Alps.

120 million people visit these mountains every year.

And each year, hundreds of skiers, climbers and hikers get lost or injured.

And dozens are killed.

If you're in trouble, I'm going to show you the skills you need to survive.

i'm flying over the french alps it's one of the biggest tourist destinations

anywhere for hikers climbers and skiers it may look beautiful

but it's a place where even the most experienced mountain goer can get into

serious trouble the alps can be a dangerously hostile world this year

alone over 80 tourists have lost their lives in avalanches and every season

dozens of climbers are killed

I'm going to be dropped into these mountains, and like any tourist, I won't

have much with me.

Just a knife, a water bottle, and a flint to make fire.

And I'm going to show you how to survive here.

A camera crew will follow me every step of the way.

This is the ultimate survival challenge!

That was the fastest, most radical landing I have ever had and the wind is

just so much stronger than they've told me.

I tell you, I could have really hurt myself coming off this

crevasse and I just need to find a way out of here and quickly get this

parachute under proper control.

I want to get off this mountain as quickly as possible.

I've got to find my way down to a village or settlement.

I'll keep my parachute.

The rigging lines could be crucial.

Trouble is, I'm on a glacier, and it's dotted with crevasses.

Huge cracks in the ice hidden by snow, which here can be 200 foot deep.

A French hiker fell into a crevasse near here three years ago.

He was roped to his two companions, so he dragged them to their deaths as well.

I'm going to show you how to avoid that.

What I've got here are my parachute rigging lines, and obviously nobody

likes to be, you know, trashing equipment that you've got, but I've got

no choice, and what I've done is actually cut these rigging lines off the

chute. and I'm trying to weave a rope here.

Every couple of feet, I'm going to get a big bunch of it, turn it over, and

make a knot like this.

And the idea of doing this is, this is a technique that alpine guides have been

using recently, a way of self-arresting you if you take a fall.

But the idea with this, if I've got a long line, of knotted rope. As I walk

along it can bobble along behind me but if I go down a crevasse that force will

rip down into the snow and hopefully these knots will bite.

The method is simple.

If you have a backpack fill it with snow and drag it behind you.

If you fall the weight should make the knot bite into the snow and break your

fall.

But there's only one way I can show you how it works, and that's to jump into

the crevasse and test it for real.

And those knots have just bitten into the ice and

I can see the first knot jamming it. That is one big relief of these holes,

but it feels really dodgy.

The falling in bit is easy.

Getting out is tough.

I'm going to use a special loop of rope called a prusik.

I've just got to somehow get back over this, but there's no way I'm going to be

able to pull myself up this string.

But what I can do is try and use what's known as a prusik loop, and I've got

some spare cords that I've stashed earlier. But

if I made what's called a prusik loop, I should be able to wrap this round higher

up.

And if I wrap it round five or six times, get the loop, and I can put my

foot into this, and this should bite now.

Okay.

And this brassic's just given me enough height to let me...

That's allowed me now to reach this knot.

and I should be able to pull myself up the last bit here we go

and

these

knots

have really helped me well but that is one of the hardest things physically

you can do

I don't want to cross another glacier, so I'm heading to the ridge above me.

Up there, I'll be able to see the best way down.

It's late afternoon.

The sun has softened the snow, which makes it hard to walk.

I'm not acclimatised to the altitude and I'm showing signs of altitude sickness,

breathlessness and a pounding headache.

The last few hours I've just been

slogging up this valley trying to get this ridge just thinking over here would

be...

Just maybe something different, you know, maybe a little village and some

hot chocolate.

And I kept thinking I'd been hearing dogs or something like that, which is

always a sign of the alpine village, but it's just the wind's picking up and it's

colder up here and I've got up and looked down and this is what I've seen.

And it's just a huge, empty, deep snow-filled valley.

Even though it's beautiful, it's the worst sight I've seen today.

It will be night soon and the temperature will plunge. I need to get

off this mountain fast.

I parachuted into the French Alps, part of the highest mountain range in Europe.

I'm putting myself in the position of one of the hundreds of hikers, climbers

or skiers that get lost here every year.

I'm trying to find my way down.

But getting anywhere in this snow is difficult.

And this year's record-breaking snowfall over 20 feet is making things much

harder. It's like wading through sugar.

physically demanding.

These mountains aren't, especially at this altitude.

I'm just not as, you know, I'm not as fit as when I was climbing so much.

I'd really murder a cup of tea.

But the lack of a cup of tea is far from my biggest problem.

I don't know if you can see over there but it looks like there's some bad

weather coming in and one of the best bits of advice I was ever given by a

weather expert was that clouds often behave like they look in other words if

they look menacing they often are menacing and if they look quite benign

it's often you know that's what it's going to be but that looks pretty pretty

nasty it's covering a lot of those upper upper summits and it's heading this way

The weather is closing in now, and it looks like there's a snowstorm on its

way.

I must find shelter, and soon.

Okay, what I'm going to try and do here is make a snow cave into this slope, and

this is a pretty good place to try and do this. It's on a leaf-facing slope,

which means it's out of the wind. It should be a little bit more sheltered.

but also it's much easier digging into a slope than trying to dig into the flat.

My big challenge is, though I obviously haven't got a shovel, which would make

digging this much easier, but what I can do is try and pull out from inside the

parachute, the back protector, a little strip of plastic.

Here we go.

It's not great, but it's certainly better than nothing, and this should

be much easier to dig in than using my hands.

When the sun drops, there's a real risk of hypothermia, and the worst thing you

can do is to keep walking and sweat.

When that sweat evaporates, your body will cool to a dangerously low

temperature.

Right now, I've dug.

Actually, into this bank a bit, I'm now going to try and create like a bit of a

platform here.

Get rid of this snow, and this is going to be like a bed platform.

And the idea of this is that the cold air will then sink into what I'm sitting

in, which is called like a cold well, and I'll be able to create under here a

nice sleeping platform, insulate some warm air, and wrapped up my canopy. That

should keep me nice and snug, and that's the theory of it.

but they always say try and make a snow cave about three times the size of your

body. Not too big, otherwise you're gonna be wasting any heat you can

generate, any smaller, and what happens as the snow compacts, it actually

shrinks, so you'll end up then in a much worse situation, buried alive.

So you want it about three times your own body size.

And the last thing I'm gonna do is just try and smooth off the roof.

And what happens if you don't do this, as your body creates heat, The little

pinnacles will start to drip on you. And the last thing you want when you're just

getting warm is to have a leaking roof.

Four snowboarders were trapped on the mountain not far from here in a

snowstorm three years ago.

They built a makeshift shelter like this and survived for four days before being

rescued.

I'm going to use my parachute to lie on. You lose 75% of your body heat through

the ground.

Use anything you have for this. A backpack.

or any spare clothing you might have.

The other vital thing is water.

I'm going to dehydrate faster here because the air is so dry.

I have to try and drink at least two litres a day.

If you can, you should always boil it, but I haven't got a fire, so I'm going

to scoop some snow into my water bottle, then I can put it against my skin so it

melts while I sleep.

I think it's about 2am and I managed to doze off at about 9

but woke up an hour later absolutely freezing freezing cold and

part of this roof is beginning to sag now and I haven't quite got this right

and I'm just desperately trying to keep my fingers and toes moving

and this is going to be one of those

Really long nights.

I hope this shelter protects me from the bitter alpine night because tomorrow I'm

going to need all the energy I have.

I'm stranded in the French Alps, looking for a way out.

I've made an overnight shelter in the snow to see out an alpine storm.

In the morning, there's almost an extra foot of snow.

That's the worst night sleep I've ever had.

In fact, it wasn't even sleep.

That's just the worst night I've ever had.

There is just no sign of anybody or anything for miles and miles around.

And there's also no sign of anything to eat, no breakfast, and I'm pretty hungry

already. And I tell you, this must be one of the worst and hardest places in

the world to find food. There's just, you know, there are no animals that are,

you know, running around up here. It really is just a barren, barren

environment.

My only answer is to keep moving.

The new snowfall means I have lost my bearings, and the best way to find out

where I am is to climb this ridge.

The tree line is down there, and in the forest there are berries and animals to

eat, but to get there I'll have to cross a frozen lake.

People die on lakes like this every year.

I'm going to show you how to survive such a life-threatening fall.

First, to make sure I can survive this myself, I've lit a fire. Then, it's out

onto the ice.

Whenever I'm out walking on a frozen lake like this, I'm always going through

the scenario of what would happen if the ice gave way underneath me.

And if you did go through the ice for a frozen lake, that is seriously a life

-threatening hazard out here.

And only recently, a 28-year-old Boston guy was swept by an avalanche into

freezing water. He was swept by the avalanche through an 8-inch thick layer

of ice.

a lake just like this and the only real way to show you the technique for doing

this is to do it myself for real and if you look behind me here we've got an

area of clear ice and I suspect this is going to be much weaker and if I try and

stand on it there's every chance I'll go straight through that but this is always

a really horrible bit getting into a frozen lake consciously and I know

that As soon as I get in that water, your whole world just gets turned

upside down.

So here goes.

Okay,

first thing I've got to do is try and get some semblance of...

control back again and fight this sense of shock. And the way I do this is to

try and control my breathing and keep calm. But that's easier said than done.

But the three real main dangers in this water are first of all what they call

the gasp reflex, which is when you initially go in, you just gasp because

of the shock. You breathe in water into your lungs and you drown.

The second danger.

is cardiac arrest just from the shock of the water.

And the third main danger is the most dangerous is what kills most people and

it's just a numbing sensation, the cold. It slows your movement, saps all your

strength, your coordination and you just don't have the strength to crawl out

again. And I can feel already my body temperature getting really low and my

legs are going pretty numb and it's time to be getting out of here.

The final thing I've got to remember is to go out this way the way I went in

because sure as hell the only place I know the ice is strong enough is the way

I've come from.

Here goes.

All I can see will keep a low sense of gravity not to break the ice.

And when I'm so fished this is the way.

Get up and I've got to get these wet clothes off now.

I'm going to be losing heat almost 25 times faster than when I'm dry.

And this is now my big danger. I've got to get to safety and get dry.

I've made it back to the edge of the lake. But I'm getting really, really

cold now. And I've had a fire that I started here before that with some wood

that I've scavenged, but it's gone out, which is just not ideal.

And I've just got to get out of these clothes.

What's just so hard is my fingers are just completely, completely numb on

these laces.

Okay, now I've just got to get dry. Can't believe this thing's gone out.

Okay, now this fire's going.

I've just got to get this clothes dry and Then get back

on the move again, but I definitely feeling a bit more human once more

For

every thousand feet I descend the temperature rises by three and a half

degrees Fahrenheit

Then I've made it I've reached my first most important milestone.

I'm at the tree line I hope to find food and shelter here and to find my way out,

but it's gonna test my survival skills to the limit

I've put myself in the position of a stranded tourist in the French Alps to

show you how to survive and to get out.

I've descended as far as the tree line.

Okay, look, there's this ant nest that I found here.

And whilst you can't actually eat these ants when they're alive because of the

amount of formic acid in them, if you can get to the larvae that soften

inside, those eggs are really nutritious and are great for bait.

It's just I think it might be a bit early on in the season to actually get

at the eggs. But there's a really good little trick for separating the ants

from the larvae. And what you do is get like a tarpaulin. I haven't got that,

but I can use my jacket.

Create a bit of a bowl, make a bit of shadow on it.

And when I break open, break this open and have a look inside, I can see if

there's some eggs.

God, that particular ant has no eggs, just a billion, billion formic acid

-filled ants, but no eggs. But what I could have done is just throw them all

into here, and then the ants try and protect the larvae, and they pick up the

eggs, throw them into the shade, and you can literally then scoop out the larvae,

separate it from the ants, and eat them.

But not this time, and that is the essence of survival, is that you win

some, God, it stinks, you lose some, but you just gotta keep, keep trying.

You must take every opportunity to eat.

These tender pine roots don't look much, but they have a texture like celery and

contain vital calories.

I've also found some spring buds on another pine tree.

There's not much energy in these either. A handful will give me fewer calories

than just a corner of chocolate.

But if nothing else, they'll give me something to nibble on as I walk.

But then I hit one major problem.

An enormous gorge with a hundred foot drop.

To find a way around could take me hours, but there is a way across.

An old rope bridge.

Probably once part of a training site for a local mountain rescue team.

I've been following this gorge now for some time trying to work out how to get

across it so I can get out of the valley.

And I've just come round the corner and seen these two lines and they really

stood out just because in nature you so rarely get any straight lines.

I'm going to have to decide whether it's worth the risk. One slip up here could

be fatal.

They look a bit old and tatty but these things probably...

probably pretty strong and with some of my paracord looped over this and

then using just using some parachute stuff to you know take the friction on

my hands there's no reason why I shouldn't try and shimmy my way across

this and it should hold me

I'm going to use what climbers call a Tyrolean traverse, where you pull

yourself along staying on top of the ropes.

But it's not that easy.

At last my feet are back on solid ground.

But now I need to get moving again.

The only problem I have is that time is now against me.

I've not gone far when I come across a scene of total devastation. I was moving

through the forest and suddenly...

I'm out into daylight and this is the reason why this whole area of forest has

just been smashed by an avalanche. And this has to be one of the most awesome

things I've ever seen. Just the power of nature hitting and just stripping all of

this bark off the trees and just splintering it all.

And the power of this avalanche would just kill everything in its path.

this avalanche probably hit the forest just a couple of weeks ago it would have

moved up to 150 miles an hour a hundred thousand tons of snow breaking tree

trunks as if they were twigs people skiing and snowboarding off peace have

set off record number of avalanches in the alps this year and you can see what

i'm actually walking on here this is all the pine and the earth is actually on

top of the snow and this stuff hitting would just be like concrete

splintering all these trees look at this just ripping them apart and you know

basically this is all that's left of an entire pine forest amazing

but the avalanche has given me the chance of finding something to eat and

you don't need to be an expert animal tracker to know that something something

has died around here just a stench alone there's definitely a dead animal around

Yeah, hang on if I move this, you can see what this looks like.

Let's get this out of the way.

This looks like a dead, I think this is a chamois, yeah.

And this has obviously just been caught in the eye of the avalanche.

And along with a load of other animals that just have their burrows in the

trees, this is just another animal that would have been killed. And you can just

see all the guts of this here.

This is all rotting away, but yeah, there you go. Look, under this stuff,

there's some maggots feeding off this.

And even though I don't want to be going near the flesh of this, these maggots

are living, and these are good protein and really good energy, massive

calories. And the way to eat these is you bite off the head, because that's a

really disgusting bit.

In fact, the whole maggot's pretty disgusting.

But then you just eat the body.

But I want to be taking a bit of these now, a few for bait and a few for food.

Now I'm going to use my maggots as bait to find something more substantial to

eat. The only question is what to do with them.

I'm marooned in the French Alps, looking to find a way out.

I've found some maggots, which I can use as bait for food.

Now what I'm looking for is a frozen lake, for where there's a lake, there

are also fish.

But I have a new problem, the weather.

The weather's taken a definite turn for the worse now, and it's much windier,

and it's started to snow.

and it makes moving and visibility much more difficult but this is a really good

chance to try and find something to eat and the first few days it was fine not

eating very much but now I've just got to keep eating every day if I can I am

definitely on a frozen lake and you can just tell just the way it's really

slushy and you can see just a few digs down and I'm just into into water here

and this is probably ice is only probably three or four inches thick and

I've got to be really careful on this stuff.

But with a little bit of effort, I should be able to dig a decent enough

hole here, get through to the slush, and then through a few inches of ice.

And the idea, what I want to do is put out a night line with some hooks and

with a bit of my paracord and try and catch a couple of fish.

That's the plan.

Alright, I've got a nice size hole here all the way through the water and that

should do. And what I'm gonna do now is that I've got a little bit of a weight

from just a rock and then I've made a little bit of thread out of the paracord

as a line and then just put some makeshift hooks along here which I've

made just from a bit of the wire from my parachute harness.

And I'm putting these maggots on these hooks and

I'm hoping that these trout in here are gonna be pretty inquisitive at the end

of a long winter.

And the idea also of putting hooks all the way along this line is to try and

get to the fish at all different levels of the lake. But like all things, it's a

bit makeshift, but the essence of survival is just keep trying, keep

trying anything you can think of that's gonna help you and give you food.

And the last thing I need to do now is use some of these spruce branches and

stuff these right down into the hole. And the idea of this is that this

hopefully stops the hole freezing over. This is where most people get this

wrong, is that they get all the effort to make their lines, their hooks, get

through the ice. They might even catch some fish, but when they come to get it,

their hole's frozen over.

I can't wait around to see if the fish bite in survival situations.

don't rely on just one source of food.

My luck seems to be in.

I've just been watching a pair of golden eagles circling above me, and it's such

a beautiful, beautiful sight.

But I tell you what, they're not just circling for fun.

They're looking for food, and I'm pretty certain what they're after is the owner

of these prints.

I've just come across these, and these are probably, I think, fox prints.

And you can see the whole paw and actually the claw marks in there.

And they think it's dinner.

But they're not as hungry as me. I want to beat them to it, and I reckon if I

follow this, I might catch up with this fox.

I follow the fox's tracks.

Then I see him.

I'm hoping that he's hunting rabbits.

If he gets one, my plan is to chase him off the kill and take the meat myself.

He's heard me.

There'll be no rabbit for dinner tonight.

Time to head back to the lake and check my fishing line.

Come on, let's have a look.

Pull all this out.

I think, I think I've got something.

Oh,

this is brilliant, look, just one of the bottom ones.

I got it.

Yeah, it's all wriggly, it's a bit obviously pretty starved of oxygen

pulling out there but there's no way I can make a fire on this and cook it but

these these trout are just fine to eat raw and if I get my finger on its gills

here and bite into this and as soon as I bite into it it's gonna break its spinal

cord and we'll kill it but this is just the energy that I'm gonna need for today

At last, food.

With a meal inside me, I don't want to leave it too

late to find shelter.

I'm heading for that mountain.

With luck, I might be able to find somewhere there for the night.

It's been just a really long day and I'm pretty wiped out.

But it's just been so hard to find any sort of shelter in this valley. It's

really just been so barren and this has been...

About the best I can do.

This little cave, and it looks pretty bleak.

But at least it keeps me out of the wind and out of the bad weather. Yeah, if I'm

honest, there are an awful lot of places I'd rather be right now.

The place I'd like to be is off this mountain.

But tomorrow, I'm going to be facing a whole new challenge.

I'm in the French Alps trying to find a way out.

I've descended several thousand feet.

I'm amongst the trees on the lower slopes and in the forest it's hard to

see the best way forward.

First view.

Across the valley for a while. It's just been buried in this dense dense wood

I'm just praying it's gonna stop raining because it's

making it bloody horrible

There's only one thing

to do get above the trees

There's nothing around.

I need to keep moving down, trying to find a route to a village or a

settlement. But the further I descend, the warmer it gets and the snow becomes

softer. Walking soon becomes almost impossible.

There is a survival trick that makes travelling a lot easier.

I'm going to try and make myself a pair of snowshoes. All right, I've got these

young saplings here.

that I've cut and if I take one of these I should be able to

hopefully bend this all the way around try and do it without it snapping

and that will

effectively be the shoot I take these ones off

And that's my frame now here. And what I need to do is put a couple of cross

beams in and then just interweave it with my parachute rigging lines and then

attach my boot to it.

And that will be ready to go. It's going to make a huge difference.

It's not the prettiest job.

It's covered in blood.

But it's going to do.

These snowshoes will spread the weight of my body across a larger area of snow,

giving me a much better chance of staying on top of the crust and not

sinking in.

Right, this snowshoe is almost finished now, and I've finished the cross

bracing. I've reinforced it with another bit of sapling all the way around the

outside. And what I need now is just to measure up where my feet are going to

go.

One there, and that one back here.

Mark that one.

These are threaded on.

Tie my boot in.

And then rob us your father's brother.

Or Bob's your uncle.

And this is gonna make snow travel a load easier for me.

Now to try them out.

I've been moving with these with these snowshoes for about four or five hours

and even though it's still tiring it isn't definitely less tiring than the

thigh deep snow I was trying to deal with before and it just means I stay on

the surface of the snow and I know as soon as I've taken it off because I've

tried a couple of times I just sink straight back down again so these have

been a real godsend.

I walk for just a few minutes more and then my luck turns quick quick quick

bring the camera look look if you look over there can you see across the valley

try and pick those out there's some those are cross-country skiers slowly

working their way up that face and this is a breakthrough uh we've been waiting

for i haven't seen anyone for for literally days now and and this is a

breakthrough and i bet the bottom dollar where they're going is going to be

civilized tonight and if we can just cross this last valley follow those

tracks i bet their leaders home and safe and

they did it's been a grueling journey cold often wet and at times lonely

but if i've learnt one thing then it's this these mountains may look beautiful

and be the perfect place for a holiday but they can be treacherous and they

demand the utmost respect.