Aerial.America.S05E09.Alaska's.Fire.and.Ice
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00:00It's a land born of fiery explosions and violent collisions in the earth below.
00:08A land ruled over by icy giants whose shifting crevasses can swallow people whole.
00:18This is Alaska, a land of fire and ice.
00:25It's here where climbers attempt the summit of the highest, coldest peak on the continent.
00:31And where the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century turned a lush valley into this eerie moonscape.
00:42Everything here is bigger, tougher, and more extreme.
00:48For centuries, Alaska has beckoned to fortune hunters and thrill seekers alike.
00:53From Russian invaders on the hunt for the fur of our ocean's smallest mammals,
00:57to prospectors hoping to strike it rich in hard rock mines full of copper and gold.
01:03Here, thousands come every year to battle exhaustion and haul in the riches of the sea.
01:10While others come to scramble up one high, rocky peak to test their mettle against mountain,
01:16sometimes just for the sheer fun of it.
01:21Royal Alaska soars over remote corners of this stunning Arctic land.
01:26From its highest ice fields, to the salmon-filled streams of an island where the world's largest brown bears come to feast.
01:35But in the end, its wildest places may be its city streets.
01:40All this in America's last frontier, Alaska.
01:51Music
02:16Music
02:19From a tiny airstrip in the town of Talkeetna, a bush plane lifts off into Alaska's wide open sky.
02:28On board is a team of mountaineers preparing to tackle one of the most difficult climbs in America.
02:37In one of the coldest mountain ranges on the continent.
02:43At the controls of this single-engine beaver is veteran pilot David Lee.
02:50He belongs to a family of legendary bush pilots who began flying in the Alaska wilderness back in 1932.
02:59Today, his 60-mile flight will carry the climbers up into the snowy peaks of Denali National Park.
03:11Alaska is full of forbidding landscapes that have been forged with fire and are ruled by ice.
03:21Landscapes that have challenged even the most skilled bush pilots, like David, for nearly a century.
03:29But today, the rough terrain below isn't the only danger.
03:36A thick cloud layer is dropping quickly.
03:39And David's plane is starting to get knocked around by high winds.
03:44The trick is to fly under the clouds, but not get pushed too far down so he becomes trapped in valleys between the mountains
03:51and not have enough room to turn or a place to land.
03:56Music
04:02Inside, the climbing team is eager to get a glimpse of their quarry, the king of Alaska peaks, Mount McKinley.
04:12When Russians established the first European settlement in Alaska at the end of the 18th century,
04:17they called this peak Bolshaya Gora, or the Great Mountain.
04:23But in 1896, a prospector named it Mount McKinley.
04:36Today, most know it simply as Denali, which means the Great One in the Koyukan language of Alaska's native Athabascan people.
04:46This indigenous tribe lived within sight of the mountain for thousands of years
04:50and were the first to be awed by its looming presence.
04:55And there's a very good reason why they were.
04:58Denali is the tallest mountain in North America.
05:04Its summit is so high it remains hidden under clouds most of the year.
05:10But when those clouds clear, locals announce the mountain is out.
05:21Denali is located in the south-central part of the state, between the cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks.
05:28It lies on the massive Alaska Range that curves for 600 miles like a giant backbone.
05:35Among the highest peaks of this range are Mount Hunter at 14,573 feet and Mount Foraker at 17,400.
05:47Towering over them all is Denali, rising 20,322 feet, the king of the range.
05:57The mountains of the Alaska Range are so tall and cold they make their own harsh weather year-round.
06:06When moist air flows north from the Gulf of Alaska, it gets trapped high in these peaks.
06:12With nowhere to go, the clouds that fill these valleys freeze, dumping snow on everything below.
06:22Over hundreds of thousands of years, the snow turns into giant rivers of ice
06:27that then make their way down and out of the mountains in the form of glaciers.
06:33Today, more than 400 glaciers drape Denali National Park alone.
06:40Together, they cover one-sixth of the entire park.
06:44And the longest of them all is this one, the Cahiltna.
06:50It starts its long descent at just over 10,000 feet and then snakes south for 44 miles.
07:00From high above, this glacier looks like a solid mass.
07:05But skim its surface, and you quickly see that it's made up of deep crevasses, icy chasms,
07:13many of which could easily swallow a plane whole.
07:18Above, the clouds are forcing David Lee to drop down closer to the ice.
07:23Here, mountains can appear suddenly from nowhere, out of the mist.
07:27That's why David is following the Cahiltna. It offers a wide and safer route up to base camp.
07:35And while this plane may be speeding up the glacier at 130 miles an hour,
07:40the Cahiltna itself is moving the other direction, at a snail's pace, roughly 800 feet a year.
07:50But its destructive power is awesome.
07:55It's hard to grasp a sense of the sheer force of Denali's glaciers until you soar across its snowy peaks
08:04and come here, to a place known as the Great Gorge.
08:16This is one of the deepest canyons on Earth, created by the action of the Ruth Glacier,
08:22grinding away at solid rock for millions of years.
08:26This glacier has proven so powerful, it's already chewed its way through these mile-high walls of granite.
08:36But evidence of the real power of the Ruth lies hidden under the ice.
08:41This glacier is 3,800 feet thick. That's more than two-thirds of a mile.
08:47If it all melted away, you'd be looking into an abyss deeper than the Grand Canyon.
08:57One reason there's so much ice in the Ruth is because it's actually the product of multiple glaciers
09:02merging in this gorge and combining their forces.
09:07Fly down the center and you discover a black band that looks like a dead ringer for the solid no-passing line on a highway.
09:16This striking feature is created when two glaciers merge,
09:20and the rocks and soil that each churned up at their edges meet in the middle.
09:28Finally, David Lee and his climbers are approaching the Denali base camp at 7,000 feet.
09:38The towering peaks dwarf the tiny tents and ant-like people below.
09:46This is one of the most unique landing strips in the world, a blanket of snow on top of shifting crevasses.
09:54The only way to land here is to do it on special retractable skis that flip out underneath the tires.
10:03But even with this special gear, glacier landings can be treacherous.
10:09In this all-white landscape, even experienced pilots can lose a sense of how high they are off the snow.
10:17But David's landed here hundreds of times and touches down smoothly with his passengers safe and sound.
10:29Now comes the most dangerous part of their journey, getting to the top of Mount McKinley.
10:38From base camp, the summit is another 13,000 vertical feet, or two and a half miles, higher.
10:46Each climber has to carry two to three weeks of supplies.
10:50They tackle the mountain in small groups, all tied together for safety.
10:54If one falls into a crevasse, the others can help pull him or her out.
11:00But one day before this footage was shot in 2012,
11:04a team of five Japanese climbers was swept away in a large avalanche here on the West Buttress Route.
11:11Only one of them survived, managing to pull himself more than 60 feet out of a crevasse, alone, badly frostbitten.
11:19Even after a thorough search, the bodies of his four friends were never found.
11:25For most climbers, the greatest threat isn't avalanches, but frigid weather.
11:32Denali is one of the coldest mountains on Earth, since it lies so close to the Arctic Circle.
11:39Temperatures can plunge to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, and minus 40 in summer.
11:45Fast-moving storms can hit at any time, packing a lethal mix of snow, ice, and winds, exceeding 100 miles per hour.
11:54Climbing parties are often pinned down for days in their tents.
11:59As a result, only half of those who attempt Denali ever make it to the summit, about 500 climbers each year.
12:07But for those few that succeed, the thrill of reaching this cold, snow-capped mountain,
12:13the thrill of reaching this cold, snowy spot, the very top of the North American continent, is immense.
12:24And even today, Denali is still growing higher, by half a millimeter every year.
12:31That's because the Alaska Range has been created by what's called uplift,
12:36a process that happens when two of the Earth's giant tectonic plates collide.
12:41Here in Alaska, as the Pacific plate dove onto the North American plate, it pushed it upward,
12:47lifting Denali and other peaks in the range onto their lofty thrones,
12:51a process that's taken some 60 million years, so far.
12:58Denali deserves its reputation as an ice king,
13:01but many of Alaska's most dramatic peaks are known not for their ice, but for their fiery cores instead.
13:11There are 50 active volcanoes in Alaska, and two of them blow their top every year.
13:22This puts many Alaskans on a constant vigil for the next eruption,
13:26including those who live here in the coastal town of Sitka, on the state's southeastern panhandle.
13:33Just across the bay stands Mount Edgecombe, a now dormant volcano.
13:38On April 1st, 1974, when residents of Sitka saw black smoke pouring from the volcano,
13:44they panicked, assuming Edgecombe was rumbling to life.
13:48Little did they know, it was an April Fool's joke done by a local prankster.
13:53He'd hauled 70 tires into the crater and set them on fire.
13:59Funny for some, but not for others.
14:03Especially those who lived through the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century,
14:09which happened right here, in Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
14:20A group of hikers is finishing a 12-mile trek.
14:24They've come for a chance to experience one of the most amazing landscapes in Alaska, if not the world.
14:30These primitive cabins where they'll stay were first built by the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute as a research station,
14:37to study the aftermath of the biggest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
14:45It happened here, in the early summer of 1912.
14:49In late May, a series of earthquakes started to rattle this once lush valley.
14:55The native Alaskan people who had lived here for hundreds of years sensed something was terribly wrong.
15:02Gathering their belongings, they fled, just in time.
15:09On June 6th, a volcano named Nova Rupta suddenly exploded with cataclysmic force,
15:17a force ten times greater than that of the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980.
15:24Great geysers of magma shot into the sky.
15:28Rivers of superheated lava flowed into the valley.
15:31The sheer volume of what was ejected from Nova Rupta is still mind-boggling.
15:36Fifteen cubic kilometers of magma alone.
15:40Rivers of superheated gas and ash raced into this valley 12 miles away,
15:46flattening lush forests and vaporizing trees,
15:50transforming it into the wide, desolate plain it is today.
15:57A native village called Savonoski was abandoned forever.
16:02The National Park Service later reported that residents on nearby Kodiak Island
16:07couldn't even see their own lanterns when held at arm's length.
16:11Days of complete darkness followed.
16:14In the end, what came out of Nova Rupta blanketed 40 square miles,
16:17with deposits 700 feet thick in some places.
16:24When it was over, all that was left of the source of the eruption was this black dome of lava,
16:30which was responsible for bringing the devastation to an end.
16:34As the eruption slowed, lava bubbled and pooled,
16:38plugging its own vent, quieting the volcano.
16:42Four years passed before researchers finally reached the site.
16:45When they did, in 1916, they found a landscape of steaming vents,
16:50leading them to call it the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
16:57Today, it's a place full of bizarrely beautiful sights,
17:01like this hidden river that's carved its way deep into the valley floor.
17:07To preserve the site of Nova Rupta and the remarkable landscape created by its searing pyroclastic flows,
17:14Congress voted in 1918 to protect the area.
17:19The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is now part of the much larger Katmai National Park,
17:25which covers more than 7,000 square miles of Alaska wilderness.
17:32Today, high-tech devices throughout the valley listen for strange vibrations
17:37that might signal that Nova Rupta is rumbling back to life.
17:41No one knows when, but one day in the future, this valley will explode in smoke and flame again.
17:58Volcanoes may have blown the tops off many Alaskan peaks,
18:02but most are just weathered by time and the seasons.
18:06And while winter may lock many mountain peaks in a casing of snow and ice,
18:11it doesn't stop Alaskans from getting out into the wild,
18:15even into some of the state's most remote places.
18:19It's a picture-perfect day here in the Talkeetna Mountains.
18:23The slopes are covered in deep powder, the kind of condition skiers dream of.
18:27The only hitch is there's no chairlift, gondola, or even a road for many miles around.
18:34But that didn't stop these self-reliant Alaskans from stepping out for a breath of fresh air,
18:396,000 feet up a wilderness peak.
18:43In Alaska, even just going for a ski can require a hefty mountain trek.
18:57So much of the state's rugged terrain is remote and impassable that very few roads are built here.
19:04There are just 5,000 miles of paved roads in the entire state,
19:08about 1,000 miles less than there are in New York City alone.
19:12Many Alaska towns and villages are so remote, there's no road into them at all.
19:18Take the fishing town of Cordova.
19:21There are only two ways to get here, and car is not one of them.
19:24You can either get here by sea or by plane.
19:32These aircraft are made for residents of towns like Cordova,
19:35where a nearby lake provides a convenient landing strip.
19:40Being able to pull off landings like this one comes in handy
19:44in a land with thousands of miles of ocean coastline and over 3 million lakes and ponds.
19:49For thousands of years, Alaska natives plied these coastal waters in skin kayaks,
19:54dugouts, and bark-covered canoes.
19:57With these human-powered watercraft, they traveled long distances across open ocean
20:02and down rivers on hunting trips,
20:05or hopped from island to island to visit and trade with neighboring villages.
20:09Today, many of those same journeys are done in minutes with airplanes,
20:13and it's one reason that Alaska has more registered pilots than ever before.
20:17When these pilots come into the big city of Anchorage to land,
20:21chances are they'll be touching down on water, here,
20:25at the Lakehood Seaplane Base, the busiest seaplane airport in the world.
20:31Lakehood has three water runways and its own control tower,
20:35which handles about 200 takeoffs and landings a day.
20:40As for parking, there's plenty of space.
20:42As for parking, that's what these five artificial channels are for.
20:46They're called the Five Fingers.
20:49Pilots secure their planes in these cozy, miniature harbors.
20:53When they take off, chances are they're heading out to one of the state's remote communities
20:58to haul in everything from people to medicine to food staples,
21:02including fresh vegetables and fruit.
21:05That's because Alaska has to import more than 95 percent of its food.
21:09And there's a very good explanation for why they do.
21:13Almost 80 percent of Alaska is covered by permafrost.
21:18When summer arrives, valleys may be green on the surface,
21:22but dig just a few feet down, and you'll hit hard, frozen soil.
21:30This permafrost makes farming risky,
21:33which is why there are just a few hundred farmers in the entire state.
21:37And if there's anywhere that could be called Alaska's breadbasket,
21:41it's here, the Mat-Su Valley.
21:44Named after the Matanuska and Susitna rivers that flow across the valley floor,
21:49the Mat-Su became farmland thanks to a bold social experiment
21:53conducted after the Great Depression.
21:56In 1935, more than 200 poor farm families from the upper Midwest
22:00were relocated to this valley by the U.S. government.
22:03They were given up to 80 acres apiece,
22:06and the chance to start over on the Alaska frontier.
22:09The settlers worked hard, building barns and plowing their fields,
22:13hoping the harsh conditions wouldn't destroy their crops.
22:16But in the end, Alaska's long, cold winters and short growing seasons
22:21were too much to take.
22:23Within five years, the Alaskan farmers were forced to leave the valley
22:26Half had given up and headed back south.
22:29But a few stayed on and made a go of it.
22:32Today, dozens of farms dot the Mat-Su,
22:35evidence of how some hardy Alaskans managed to battle the odds,
22:39and ice, to survive.
22:42In fact, the Mat-Su Valley has produced some of the largest vegetables on earth,
22:47including one 18-pound carrot and a 49-pound celery.
22:52But vegetables aren't the only things that grow to monster proportions this far north.
22:57Alaska is also home to the largest and longest glacier in all of North America.
23:22Each spring, winter-weary Alaskans eagerly await this sight,
23:27the ice breaking up on the state's frozen rivers.
23:31In one town, there's even a big cash lottery to guess the exact time of spring ice-out.
23:38While rivers like this one enjoy a brief thaw each summer,
23:42huge swaths of Alaska are under permanent icy lockdown,
23:46no matter what the season.
23:48Alaska boasts more than 100,000 glaciers.
23:52They cover 5% of the state, nearly 30,000 square miles,
23:57an area larger than West Virginia.
24:05Alaska's glaciers come in many varieties.
24:08Most are inland glaciers, like those on Denali,
24:12but there are many near the coast that flow right into the sea.
24:17Twenty of these tidewater glaciers reside here in Prince William Sound,
24:22the highest concentration of them in the world.
24:29The granddaddy of all tidewater glaciers is the Bering,
24:33the largest and longest glacier in North America.
24:39Looking up at it from its end, the Bering is so wide, it barely fits in the frame.
24:47From one side to the other, it's a mind-boggling 10 miles wide.
25:00The source of this mighty glacier lies here,
25:03high in the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains,
25:06the tallest coastal mountains in the world.
25:10Here in what's called the Bagley Ice Field,
25:13heavy winter snows have accumulated over eons,
25:15filling up the high plateau like a giant bathtub.
25:20More than half a mile thick in places,
25:22the vast ice sheet is 120 miles long and 6 miles wide.
25:28On the surface, splashes of brilliant color break up the endless white.
25:34Spots of melting snow have created ponds and channels
25:38that refreeze into stunning veins of blue ice.
25:41The Bagley Ice Field feeds ice into the top of the Bering Glacier,
25:45where it begins to wind downhill towards the coast.
25:50But the Bering isn't the only glacier to feed off this ice field.
25:54The Bagley is so massive that it also nourishes dozens of smaller glaciers
26:00that flow out of the Wrange and into the valleys below.
26:03Global warming is taking a big bite out of Alaska's glaciers.
26:08With temperatures here rising twice as fast as those in the lower 48,
26:12many of the state's glaciers are beating a hasty retreat.
26:18Scientists estimate that the Bering alone has lost about 7.5 miles of ice since 1900.
26:26All that extra melting produces large amounts of ice,
26:29all that extra melting produces lots of water.
26:33The Bering releases 6.5 trillion gallons of water into the Gulf of Alaska each year.
26:39That's twice the volume of water in the entire Colorado River.
26:44Scientists are concerned that the increasing meltwater could change ocean currents out in the Gulf.
26:51But glacial meltwater also creates some of Alaska's most fantastical landscapes, like this one.
26:58The Copper River Delta.
27:00Here, the combined flow from six glacial rivers slows to a trickle as it fans out across the coastal plain.
27:09Through this crazy quilt of mudflats and marsh, streams created by melted ice snake their way to the sea.
27:17The meltwater deposits thousands of tons of nutrient-rich silt into the delta each year,
27:23building mudflats 600 feet deep.
27:27The delta is also home to the largest continuous stretch of wetlands on the Pacific coast.
27:32This amazing ecosystem supports millions of birds and fish,
27:37including spawning grounds for the prized Copper River salmon.
27:46At the mouth of the river is the wild shoreline that greeted the earliest Russian explorers,
27:51led by Captain Vitas Bering when they first stepped ashore nearby in 1741.
27:59Not long afterwards, Bering's ship wrecked, and most of his crew perished.
28:04But the few who made it back home reported, excitedly,
28:07that Alaska was teeming with a creature that still calls these frigid waters home.
28:12Sea otters.
28:14They are the smallest mammals in the ocean,
28:17and can survive in freezing waters thanks to their layers of thick fur.
28:22Sea otters have up to one million hairs per square inch of skin,
28:26which means their skin itself never gets wet.
28:30But their amazing fur almost led to their extinction,
28:34since the sea otter's remarkable pelts were highly valued in Europe in the 18th century.
28:41Soon, Russian fur traders began showing up on the rocky shores of a place known today as Kodiak Island.
28:48At the time, Kodiak was already home to a native Alaskan people called the Aleutic,
28:54who made their living from the sea and from edible plants and berries found on the island's emerald slopes.
29:00As more and more Russian traders landed and tried to take the island's natural riches,
29:05Aleutic warriors fought back, and so, finally, in 1784,
29:10the Russians decided to take Kodiak, once and for all, by force.
29:15Legend has it that the Aleutic took shelter on a tiny island just off the coast called Refuge Rock,
29:21a natural fortress protected by cliffs ten stories high.
29:25It was a hard spot to attack from the sea, and initially, the tribe succeeded in repelling the invaders.
29:33But the Russians weren't willing to give up.
29:36They sailed into this cove behind Refuge Rock,
29:39and landed on Kodiak without detection, armed with guns and cannon.
29:44They then waited for low tide when a land bridge emerged,
29:48which they used to storm Refuge Rock from behind, surprisingly Aleutic.
29:56But the real tragedy was what happened next.
30:00Many, including women and children, threw themselves off these cliffs, preferring death to capture.
30:10The Russian successful defeat of the Aleutic here
30:13has been considered a major turning point that allowed Russia to colonize Alaska.
30:21Refuge Rock is a sacred place for the Aleutic people,
30:25many of whom still live on Kodiak Island, here in the fishing village of Old Harbor.
30:32Mending fishing nets is part of daily life here,
30:36just as it has been to Native Alaskan fishermen for centuries.
30:40Most Aleutic today are Russian Orthodox.
30:44The distinctive onion domes of the faith's churches still rise above many communities across coastal Alaska.
30:54And today, Kodiak Island is best known not for sea otters,
30:58but for another much bigger creature, the Kodiak brown bear.
31:03They have been separated from their mainland cousins for more than 10,000 years,
31:07and have grown to become the largest subspecies of brown bear on Earth.
31:13This male, known as a boar, could weigh upwards of 1,500 pounds, three-quarters of a ton.
31:21After a long winter in their dens, these bears make for their local watering hole,
31:26like this one on Dog Salmon Creek, for a summertime feast.
31:29The specialty here is fresh wild salmon.
31:33In summer, this creek, like hundreds of others in Alaska,
31:37teems with large fish swimming upstream from the ocean to spawn.
31:41It's the only time that these normally solitary brown bears gather in large numbers to share a feast.
31:50Their densely packed fur coat enables them to stand in freezing cold milk water for an hour or more,
31:56as they wait for the right moment to strike.
31:58But most of the time, their patience is rewarded with nothing more than near misses.
32:04On a good day, though, a bear can consume 100 pounds of tasty, calorie-packed salmon.
32:10When they catch one, they go right for the fatty stomach, brain, and eggs,
32:14and often leave the rest untouched.
32:19But come June, bears aren't the only ones trying to spot salmon in Alaska.
32:25Here on the Naknek River, an employee of the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game
32:30is carefully counting how many salmon are swimming upstream.
32:34It's the job of Alaska Fish and Game to ensure enough salmon can reproduce each year
32:39to keep the population a healthy size.
32:42With data streaming in from many different counting stations,
32:45the agency can see when and where the fish are returning.
32:49When there are adequate numbers in any one place,
32:51the agency opens that area to fishing.
32:55That's when the fishing boats roar to life.
32:58Alaska's sockeye salmon season is short, just a couple of weeks.
33:03Every June, thousands of fishermen descend on the tiny port town of Naknek.
33:08They come to fish on Bristol Bay, home to the world's largest salmon run.
33:14In 2013, 20 million sockeye salmon passed through this one Alaskan bay
33:19on their way to breed and spawn in the rivers where they were hatched.
33:25This year, like every year, the competition is fierce.
33:29There are more than 2,000 fishing boats from all over Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
33:34Crews spool out the gill nets, hoping to hit a sweet spot where lots of fish will pass.
33:40From above, it's a slow-motion ballet of steel hulls and nylon nets.
33:49The reason for all this competition is that there's big money at stake here for the fishermen.
33:54$165 million in 2012 alone.
33:59A crew member could earn $10,000 for a few weeks' work,
34:03while the boat owner might haul in five times that amount.
34:07On the water, it's a go-for-broke fishing frenzy.
34:10The captain's jockey for position, fighting the fast tides and other boats that try to cut them off.
34:15As the heavy nets are hauled in, the crew picks fish out as fast as they can.
34:20On a single day, this one boat could bring in a whopping six tons of fish.
34:25When the fishing period is declared over, the boats must pull in their nets or risk a big fine.
34:31Then, they sidle up to these big tenders, where the crews offload the catch and calculate their payday.
34:38This short salmon season is one intense fishing marathon.
34:45But it's not Alaska's only extreme sport.
35:04Looking down on Alaska from above, it's easy to see why this is the land of fire and ice.
35:10Thousands of mountains blanket the state, including 16 of America's 20 tallest peaks.
35:23Here on Resurrection Day, the 2,600 residents of Seward live in the cold shadow of Mount Marathon,
35:30which rises 4,400 feet straight up out of the sea.
35:33Gluttons for punishment, the locals have made testing themselves against the mountain into a tortuous sporting event,
35:40the Mount Marathon Race, which has been held here since 1915.
35:50Each 4th of July, in separate races for women and men,
35:54runners compete to get to the summit and back down again, a three-mile round trip.
35:58This year, 305 women have come from across Alaska to compete.
36:03Leaving town, their first half-mile is nice and flat.
36:09But after that, it's straight uphill,
36:15which means the climbers have to jockey for position on Mount Marathon's muddy, slippery slopes.
36:20Above treeline, a runner named Holly Brooks from Anchorage breaks from the pack and takes the lead.
36:26It's so steep, she can hardly move faster than a walk.
36:30There's no one path up this mountain,
36:33so Holly has to pick her way across a field of loose rock as she tries to maintain her lead.
36:38A hundred yards from the top of Mount Marathon,
36:41she has to climb a steep, steep slope,
36:43Holly has to pick her way across a field of loose rock as she tries to maintain her lead.
36:48A hundred yards below, her competitors try to close the gap.
36:54A long line of pursuers follows.
36:57Some even use their hands to pull themselves up the mountain's steep flank.
37:02According to local folklore, this spectacle of suffering began as a bar wager back in 1907,
37:08when a local prospector bet another he could scale the mountain and return in under an hour.
37:14He lost and had to buy drinks for the crowd.
37:21Every year, Mount Marathon becomes a mountain of misery for an unlucky few
37:26who break bones and bloody limbs and falls, or worse.
37:30Later this same afternoon, a 65-year-old male runner disappeared on the mountain after summiting.
37:36Despite an extensive search, his body was never found.
37:44Reaching the summit, Holly Brooks is still in the lead
37:48and doesn't pause for a breath or the breathtaking view.
37:52She's halfway home and heads downhill for the final push.
37:57This race is all about getting up and down the mountain as fast as possible,
38:02and it doesn't matter how you do it.
38:06If she avoids falling on the loose rocks, the mile-long descent will take Holly just a few minutes.
38:12And then, there's a final sprint to the finish back in town.
38:17The top contenders finish in well under an hour.
38:22A dashing feat of woman against mountain.
38:33Today, extreme athletes risk their lives scaling Alaska's highest mountain,
38:38extreme athletes risk their lives scaling Alaska's high peaks just for the fun of it.
38:44But in earlier times, thousands came to clamber up Alaska's mountains in a search for buried treasure.
38:53Many of those hopeful prospectors arrived here, at the port town of Valdez,
38:59nestled between Prince William Sound and the Chugach Mountains.
39:03Valdez started as a landing site and camp for miners arriving by ship during the Alaska Gold Rush in 1897.
39:12Steamship companies promoted this spot as the start of the Valdez Glacier Trail,
39:17a direct route to what they promised were rich, untapped gold fields in the Alaska interior.
39:23Four thousand green prospectors set out up this glacier, hauling 200-pound sleds by hand.
39:31The route was a nightmare.
39:34Men disappeared into crevasses, went snow blind,
39:38and struggled up slopes that were twice as steep as promised.
39:42Eventually, the prospectors realized that they had been conned.
39:46The Valdez Glacier Trail was a hoax.
39:48Perpetrated to sell tickets to Alaska.
39:51Most made it out alive a year later.
39:54But many a man found an icy grave in the Valdez Glacier.
40:02Soaring high across the Alaskan wilderness, it's easy to see why this land is called the Last Frontier.
40:09But every winter, one of the wildest places in the state happens to be right in the middle of it.
40:14Every winter, one of the wildest places in the state happens to be right here in Anchorage, on one of its city streets.
40:31A hundred and eighty miles up frigid Cook Inlet from the Gulf of Alaska,
40:35slabs of sea ice are piling up at the edge of Anchorage, the largest city in the land of fire and ice.
40:44Like the giant vegetables of the fertile Matsu Valley, located just 40 miles north, Anchorage is a real fast grower.
40:53In just a hundred years, Anchorage has been transformed from a few canvas tents into this bustling city of 300,000.
41:01That's almost half the population of the entire state, corralled into a single broad valley at the foot of the rugged Chugach Mountains.
41:15While the deep, dark freeze of an Alaska winter is enough to send grizzlies running for cover and a long sleep,
41:21the business end of Anchorage stays awake and moving 24-7.
41:27Here in the city's deep water port, giant steel pods stuffed with tons of consumer goods are being offloaded from this 400-foot long container ship just in from Seattle.
41:38With peaks like this in the backyard, it's easy to rise above it all in Anchorage.
41:42City dwellers and visitors flock to these trails up nearby Flat Top Mountain.
41:493,500 feet high, Flat Top is often called the most climbed mountain in Alaska, and it's easy to see why.
41:57The walk up to the summit is only a mile and a half long.
42:05But on knife-edge ridges like this, little Flat Top can feel like the high Alps.
42:13From the summit, the sights are panoramic.
42:17All of Anchorage stretches out far below, along with what seems like much of the rest of Alaska, too.
42:24A major city of hundreds of thousands, and an epic wilderness of millions of acres, all in the same sweeping view.
42:34But Alaskans aren't just fair-weather outdoor friends.
42:38Come winter, when daylight throttles back to just five and a half hours a day, the streets of Anchorage are transformed into a winter sports playground.
42:46The first step is turning the ice from faux to fun.
42:52Running 13 blocks along the edge of downtown Anchorage, Delaney Park is a favorite spot for getting out without ever getting wet.
42:59Called Park Strip by the locals, it was built into the original city plans back in 1917.
43:06Used originally as a firebreak to protect the town in wildfire season, the park also did double duty as the city's first airstrip.
43:16Today, the only things flying here are the pucks and the busy outdoor hockey rink.
43:21In winter, temperatures in Anchorage can drop to 30 below zero.
43:26On bitter cold days, there are apt to be as many dogs doing laps in the park as there are joggers.
43:33In Alaska, the weak winter sun never gets far above the horizon, but the low-angle light can throw some dramatic shadows.
43:41Turning these well-mannered sled dogs into what looks like a pack of wild wolves.
43:50The bright spot of every Anchorage winter is a festival known as the Fur Rende, short for the Fur Rendezvous.
43:59For ten days, beginning in late September, the Fur Rendezvous is a festival of wild animals.
44:05For ten days, beginning in late February, thousands of Alaskans converge on the snowy streets of Anchorage to get out, let loose, and thumb their noses at winter.
44:16The Fur Rende began in 1935 to celebrate the return of trappers and miners to town after a winter of lonely work out in the bush.
44:23The strangest event has to be a spectacle called the Running of the Reindeer.
44:28In this frosty version of the bulls of Pamplona, Spain, 15 impressively antlered reindeer, also known as caribou, have been recruited for action.
44:38Here on 4th Avenue, the running service and the bulls of Pamplona, Spain, have been trained to hunt.
44:44Here on 4th Avenue, the running service and the bulls of Pamplona, Spain, 15 impressively antlered reindeer, also known as caribou, have been recruited for action.
44:51Here on 4th Avenue, the running service has been prepped with tons of snow.
44:56And hundreds of enthusiastic participants have prepared by dressing in elaborate costumes, or practically nothing at all.
45:04The goal is to survive the mad dash without being gored or frostbitten, all in front of a crowd of 10,000 spectators.
45:14While certainly zany, the Running of the Reindeer does reflect something true about the spirit of winter here in Anchorage.
45:22The way the wild things start on one side and the people on another.
45:27And how they come to run together in the land of fire and ice.
45:44For more information, visit www.fema.gov