Series from 2008
Find out what it takes to survive and thrive in a land shaped by severe weather, rugged terrain, and vast remoteness. Host Geo Beach traverses his hom…
The lonely and deadly Haul Road is the only road connecting the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope to the rest of the state; Geo Beach rides shotgun with a legendary trucker during the dangerous winter season.
Thousands of oceangoing vessels brave the perilous Alaskan waters each year. Host Geo Beach will join Alaska's premiere salvager, Dan Magone, as he attempts to salvage a wrecked 197-foot barge in the deadly Shelikof Strait in the middle of a severe winter storm. Geo will also explore Alaska's dramatic history of shipwrecks and ride along with elite Coast Guard helicopters on a trip to service and maintain remote navigational aid stations out at sea.
Take a look at how different aspects of travel in Alaska are affected by climate and terrain. Join host Geo Beach as he travels to the open tundra of western Alaska to see how life moves along the Kuskokwim River, a 724-mile lifeline for many Native Alaskan communities. Then Geo plays mailman on a giant hovercraft for a day, plows out an emergency ice road so that a needy village can get heating oil before it runs out, and goes on a search and rescue mission for any stragglers on the icy, fierce frozen river.
Alaska's southeast panhandle is cut off from the rest of the world by steep coastal mountains on one side and the stormy North Pacific Ocean on the other. Hundreds of remote communities exist on the area's numerous islands. Join host Geo Beach as he explores the region to see how people get by with almost no roads. Juneau, Alaska's capital can be reached only by air or water, and there are no telephone or power lines connecting it to the outside world--or even, the rest of the state. Geo helps blast an underground rock tunnel for a hydroelectric powerhouse that will tap a glacial lake to power Juneau, and works with flying telephone workers to install and maintain microwave repeaters on top of snowy and stormy mountains.
Getting rid of waste is a problem in Alaska. In cities such as Fairbanks, only 20% of residents are connected to a main sewage system and native villages have long relied on the "honey bucket" to dispose of sewage. Join host Geo Beach as he goes to Ketchikan, the black bear capital of the world, where he races to collect trash before the bears can get to it. Then, he teams up with a remote maintenance worker who is the sole plumber, electrician and carpenter to nearly a dozen villages in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta, an area the size of Washington State. Finally he'll head to Fairbanks and make house calls to help thaw frozen septic pipes and tanks so that it can be a free-flowing city once again.
Historically, keeping the peace in Alaska has been a unique challenge. After all, how do Alaska State Troopers keep the peace in a state two and half times the size of Texas? Geo will find out when he joins a team of recruits for an intense survival course at Alaska's Trooper Academy in Sitka, investigates caribou "crime" scenes with Wildlife Troopers in the Brooks Mountain Range, and helps the sergeant at the northernmost Trooper post in America to hunt for alcohol smugglers and arrest criminals in the remote arctic bush villages outside Kotzebue.