Original subtitles

More than a state,

Alaska is almost a continent all its own.

You know you're looking out the window

at the scenery, it's astounding.

They say there are over three million lakes

in Alaska, but who in the world could ever count them?

They literally look like diamonds,

just exploding off this green valley.

Just the beauty, the immensity of the earth,

as far as you can see is open country,

and it's just beautiful.

And for all its breathtaking natural beauty,

it carries with it an element of danger

in the hazardous terrain, the treacherous weather,

and the predatory animals.

From the dangerous flying conditions,

to extreme weather, and avalanches.

There's no roads in Alaska.

There's just no way to get to these locations.

This is a land where man

is not at the top of the food chain.

This can be a very dangerous place.

There's a lot of different ways you can die out here.

It's not just from the animals.

Hypothermia can set in very easily here.

Alaska's just basically brutal and raw.

The minute you don't give the land here its respect,

it's probably gonna eat you, just like a bear would.

Pound for pound, they're probably the toughest,

strongest animal on this planet.

You can't even imagine how strong they are.

There ain't nothing bigger that eats meat out there.

And we're meat.

Alaska is a breathtaking place.

Beautiful scenery and abundant wildlife

can be found throughout the state.

Nicknamed The Last Frontier, but Alaska also holds dangers

that are not to be taken lightly.

There are more accidental deaths per person here

than any other state in America.

This is due to several factors,

including the high rate of flights in small aircraft,

arctic weather patterns,

and deadly encounters with wildlife.

While most to travel into the back country of Alaska

are keenly aware of the presence of gigantic brown bear

and other dangerous predators,

harsh and unpredictable weather can be just as deadly.

Over 30 people die of hypothermia in Alaska every year.

At a rate of 6.4 deaths per 100 thousand people,

the most in the U.S.

When you get wet and cold in Alaska this time of year,

it's that perfect time of year to get hypothermia.

There are many ways that Alaska can kill.

(dramatic music)

The black bear, the brown bear, and the grizzly bear

of Alaska are powerful creatures

that demand caution and respect.

Wild bears are curious animals

that usually come and go without incident.

But under certain conditions,

a bear encounter can quickly turn into a deadly attack.

You're always ready for a bear

to be just around the corner, or just behind the bush.

These are powerful animals; they can kill you quick.

You have to be prepared at all times,

because you don't know what these animals are gonna do.

They are wild, and you just have

to take them very seriously.

Good Lord, look at that!

It's kinda surreal,

and it's definitely a dangerous place to be,

and you always have to be aware of where you're at.

The further you travel

into the wilderness of Alaska,

the more likely you are to come across

a dangerous encounter with wildlife.

While floating down a remote river in western Alaska,

humans quickly find themselves outnumbered by bears.

Sit still, sit still.

It's a young female.

It's amazing.

These animals are just gorgeous.

Yeah, unless of course they're trying to get you.

Of course, the more remote you get,

the more you clearly realize

that things can happen out here.

You have no control over it all.

You have to remember, we're in their home.

We're in their territory,

and they are gonna protect what's theirs.

They are wild, and you just have

to take them very seriously.

And you always gotta be aware, you know.

You gotta be aware of your surroundings,

'cause you never know where there's gonna be a bear.

Three bears.

Three bears right there.

(laughs)

Big old blond bears.

I think we came to the right place.

Getting this close to the largest

land-based carnivore on earth,

is an adrenaline inducing experience.

These massive beasts can reach

speeds of 50 kilometers per hour,

and can quickly run down wild prey,

including the two-legged variety,

but if you can maintain a safe distance,

seeing one of Alaska's awesome bears

up close is an unforgettable moment.

Two bears.

The sow is behind him, up in the bushes.

Just to see a grizz,

I mean, it's a whole different world.

When you get in the grizzly realm, everything changes.

(peaceful music)

As the summer days become shorter and shorter,

it signals the approach of the frigid Alaskan winter,

but before the annual freeze moves in,

Alaska will experience another annual cycle,

as each fall, hundreds of millions of salmon swim upriver

to spawn and die, which acts as a dinner bell

for the massive bears that gorge themselves in advance

of their upcoming winter hibernation.

So Flip, we have a good sign, we found salmon.

We've been looking for salmon,

and we kinda hit the end of the salmon run

a little bit late, but they're still here.

This one is washed up, he's ready to die,

and the bears are gonna come out looking for him.

But that's good, bears like those

stinky-- That's right.

They'll scavenge on these for another, what, week maybe.

Yeah.

Every year, the bears move

to the rivers of Alaska to find easy meals,

which creates close encounters with humans.

(dramatic music)

(bears growl)

(dramatic music)

A team of bear experts are traveling upriver

to try to get an accurate count

of the local bear populations,

and to study the male to female ratio in the wild.

But identifying the sex of a brown bear

can be a challenging task.

If the bear has a slender face,

then that's probably a female.

Roger, Roger, look, do you see this one?

Might be a she.

You think it's a female?

Yeah, it's gorgeous.

As soon as she turned towards us,

it was confirmed that she had to be a female.

Her face was slender, and her shoulders were really narrow.

All her weight was carried inward.

Whereas the male that we had seen, his shoulders were big,

and all his weight was outside of his shoulders.

What do you think, Sarah?

It's pretty small, like a small male.

What you're calling small is not small.

It's a big bear.

He's still a big bear.

Our black bear's aren't that big.

Well that's 'cause you're used

to the size of a good black bear,

but that's not what we're looking for.

It's amazing how close we're getting to him.

There he goes, looky, looky.

Man, he's quick, isn't he?

(cheerful music)

Yeah, just about every year,

there's people that are wounded, maimed,

and even killed by bears, you know?

We read it in the paper every so often,

and so the chances of us getting

nailed by one is even greater.

When you're in close proximity,

100 yards and in from a big animal like this,

he's just seconds away from being on you.

So everything's gotta work.

Now, as beautiful and majestic as these animals are,

they're also very dangerous.

We must respect them tremendously.

They're extremely powerful, extremely quick,

I think most people know that, from the dead start,

they'll be the quarter horse for the first 50 yards.

If you're looking at an animal between 600 and 900 pounds.

The power in these bears, they're just brutes.

When they start popping their jaws,

that's their way of telling you,

you really should not be where you are now.

You have to be careful, you have to be very alert,

because things can go wrong.

A grizzly bear can flip over boulders

and split open tree trunks.

Its bite is among the strongest in the animal kingdom.

Even its sense of smell is over

2,000 times stronger than ours.

It's like a ghost, it's like a ghost.

You never, you never hear them coming.

They're absolutely amazing.

Their power, when you watch them take a moose leg bone,

and they just pop it like you would chew

on an overdone chicken bone.

I've got a very good friend in Nome,

who was severely mauled two years ago.

They were hunting grizzlies,

and they were tracking them with snowmobiles,

and apparently the bear had gone up over,

into some area where there was not much snow,

and he turned back, so they weren't really on his track,

and he stopped to work with his camera.

The bear came out of the deep snow,

and by the time he realized what was happening,

he looked up and there was no time at all.

The bear ripped his lower jaw off,

and ripped his vocal cords out.

Nothing punctured his brain, the helmet saved his life.

As Wesley said in his own words, he's been through hell.

You know, 99 bears out of 100 will probably leave you alone,

but every once in a while you'll come across

the one percent that will charge, will attack.

And the power in a grizzly bear is just phenomenal.

While the brown bear has the reputation

of the most dangerous animal in the Alaskan wilderness,

the smaller black bear is also a creature

to be respectful and mindful of.

These cagey predators can quickly turn a peaceful encounter

into a fight for life or death.

Over 600 thousand black bears live across North America,

making them by far the most populous subspecies

of bear in the world.

And as urban sprawl moves into bear habitat,

deadly attacks are on the rise,

wherever these fearless bruins roam,

including the summer of 2017, when two black bear fatalities

occurred on consecutive days in Alaska.

Darren DeLuca once survived a bear attack

while guiding a client through the back country.

We were moving in on a black bear,

and he was laying in the sedge grass there,

and we could only see part of him.

And so I lined the hunter up, I said get ready.

When he gets up, take your shot.

And the bear got up on just two legs,

just on his front legs, and the hunter shot.

So he shot a little early, didn't let the bear stand up,

and he ended up gut-shooting the bear.

You know, with a gutshot bear it could take days

for that bear to die out, so we had to go in after him.

Followed for about another hundred yards,

so we'd been tracking this bear

for probably about 250 yards, and suddenly I turned,

and the bear was charging.

And it came busting out of the bush

so fast that I couldn't swing my gun.

The bear leaped, and I could see the bear going for my face.

That was the one thing I remember the most,

and it clawed me across the face,

and clawed me across the chest,

and I was holding it like this,

and then the bear dropped to the ground

and it went back down the tunnel we had just come out of.

You know, the adrenaline was pumping,

so I dropped down to my hands and knees,

and I could see the bear in front of me,

and I was going fast, and he was going fast,

and suddenly the bear took a left turn

and went off a side tunnel.

We ended up finding it dead up the trail,

about another 300 yards.

(dramatic music)

They're sneaky.

I've been stalked here like three or four times.

They basically wanna kill you.

It's their, their thought goes from

not eliminating the threat, they kinda see you as food.

Outdoorsmen should be well aware

of this 140-kilogram beast, underrated lethality,

leveraging its cunning speed

and extraordinary sense of smell to close quickly

on its prey with deadly results.

With spring in the air,

the black bears have awoken from their winter hibernation,

and are now hungry to refill their bodies with calories.

See one watering there.

Looks like he's on a mission.

It seems like when the smaller ones

come out and start wandering around,

usually a little after that, or a little later,

is when you'd start to see the bigger ones.

These bears came out of their dens

about a couple weeks ago,

and they literally have starved themselves for six months.

And these bears are very, very hungry.

Most of the areas they don't seem

to be quite as aggressive as this area, and like I say,

I believe it is because of the high population,

and I believe it is because they're,

the black bears are also competing with the brown bears.

I think it makes them a more aggressive bear.

And with each other,

they tend to try to push each other off the food.

There's plenty of food here, but I think that's just it.

I think the population's so high

it makes them more aggressive.

The only time you really get attacked

is if you surprise a bear, or a sow with cubs.

Hairs on the back of my neck were standing up

straight up when that little bear started mauling,

and she started running around the bottom,

and looking for some trouble, and she,

that's what she does, and she will literally kill herself

to protect that little baby cub.

There is perhaps nothing more dangerous

in the Alaskan back country than to find yourself

in an encounter with a mother bear protecting her cubs.

We went up on the hill, and we were glassing around,

and I noticed that there was a bunch of ravens,

and that they were circling, and a lot of times ravens,

they circle around kills that might be a bear kill,

it might be just an animal wounded,

but in this particular situation,

we saw the ravens flying around,

and we wanted to go and check it out.

Researchers often carry rifles

into the Alaskan bush to make sure they have protection

in case they find themselves in such a deadly situation.

You know, you're always cautious,

but at least you can see around you.

This time we were going into some really thick brush.

You couldn't see around you very well, it was getting dark.

We came across what we think is a caribou leg,

and then things got serious.

We went a little bit farther in,

and then that's where we noticed there was a sow with cubs.

Oh, she's got, she's got--

She's got cubs, she's got cubs.

Warning shot.

I got you covered, I got you covered.

Go, go, go!

Good, she's gone.

We got her running.

All right, let's get out of here.

Let's get out of here.

We fired off a warning shot to try to scare her away,

and we cautiously backed out of the woods.

We actually are seeing the most dangerous thing

we could've seen at that point,

and that was a sow and her two cubs,

and that's when it really got a little spooky to be honest.

'Cause you don't know what they're gonna do.

That sow's gonna protect the cubs,

and she is for sure gonna protect that meat,

and hide that she's just hauled off,

so that was a dangerous situation for sure.

We're still in bear country.

You cannot get comfortable, anything can happen,

and anything can go wrong.

(calm music)

The dangers of Alaska

are not restricted to the ground.

The weather here is notorious for violent mood swings,

making this a challenging location to fly in.

Alaska is not a tame lion.

Beautiful, majestic, but not to be messed with.

(dramatic music)

Alaska averages over

100 plane crashes annually, and one in 10 are fatal.

If you fly in Alaska, anytime at all,

you're gonna have close calls.

Whether it's a mechanical issue, or whatever.

Flight plans are frequently changed

due to threatening weather.

A seemingly safe route one minute can quickly turn lethal.

This is usually the worst spot.

It is more dangerous to fly in Alaska than other places.

It's the unknowns, it's the weather,

and the wind, and the mountains,

and all the things you encounter that you can't predict.

There is quite a swell.

[Deep-Voiced Man On Radio] I mean, with these big seas,

easy to get this show, it's right in the water, so,

between those areas, you're gonna have shears.

Shears are quick changes in wind direction,

creating hazardous flying conditions.

[Deep-Voiced Man On Radio] I'm just gonna stay down.

(exciting music)

The state of Alaska is home

to 39 different mountain ranges,

with gigantic peaks and deep valleys

that can trap pilots with rapidly changing conditions.

Flying in Alaska has been compared

to flying inside a glass of milk.

This can lead to a catastrophic condition

known as controlled flight into terrain,

which means a fully functioning aircraft

has crashed into the ground, or the side of a mountain,

due to the lack of visibility or situational awareness.

Unwavering commitment is required

in this dangerous business, as every day pilots in Alaska

are faced with life and death scenarios.

These are dangers that veteran pilot,

Bob Stanford, knows all too well.

Anton Larson.

It happened June 30 of 1995,

one of the few dates I can remember.

We flew out to a village and picked up a group of people.

They were all close friends, who all knew each other.

There was a line of nine of us, and I was in the lead.

I flew around a place called Yunuzinky Narrows,

which is all over water.

I had this gut feeling to hang around and wait for Chris.

Everything in my life, my natural life,

told me this is not what I should do.

I flew down to the basin, landed in the channel.

Chris got into the pass but he tried to turn around

at the very narrowest portion of the pass.

About 10 minutes later I heard these,

all these sirens headed back out there,

just going by me, and I knew right there.

You see crosses on the side of the hill.

I see their faces.

It'd change him as a pilot, it'd change him as a person.

You know, it affected me, it still does.

(exciting music)

Kodiak Island is the second largest island

in the United States, and lies 50 kilometers south

of the Alaskan mainland, nicknamed The Rock.

Kodiak's extreme weather and rugged mountain peaks

make it a challenging, even deadly, location for aviators.

Kodiak is a tough place to fly,

because of, you know, challenging terrain,

and even more so is the challenging weather conditions.

Within a period of 15 minutes,

you can go from sunshine to nearly zero zero and fog.

A quickly changing weather pattern

is to blame for one of the worst days in this pilot's life.

July 13, 1989, I was going on down to a fish camp

near Moser Bay to pick up some folks, and bring them back,

into Kodiak, and on the way back,

as I was going along Sharatin Mountain,

as soon as I got to the top of the pass,

I was in the clouds.

And now I don't know how low I'm getting.

To me, the thing that's most frightening,

is when I can't see where I'm going.

But within a minute or two I saw

a patch of grass off to my left,

and I realized then that I was closer to the mountain

than I thought I was, I was scared to death.

So I just cut the power, started pumping flaps.

I'm gonna cut my losses here,

and make sure that touch down under control.

You know, this should be survivable.

And so that's what I did.

I set it down on the side of the mountain,

and we slid along for just 40 or 50 feet,

and then the plane slid sideways down the mountain,

and then we hit a gully.

Both the front seats ripped out of the floor.

Course, I was knocked unconscious.

So when I came to, about that time,

the male passenger said, Dave, it's on fire.

I reach down, you know, between my legs,

grab the fire extinguisher,

handed it to him, and he put the fire out.

I broke both ankles, I had my head split open.

I knew that 10 minutes getting help

might be the difference in surviving or not surviving.

They managed to lift us off the mountain that evening.

When you start getting too comfortable

with where you are in aviation,

then you should start getting these little voice

in your head saying, think about what you're doing.

You know, what could go wrong here?

(dramatic music)

The perils of taking to the sky

can shake the nerves of even the most experienced pilots.

Because of Alaska's massive size and remoteness,

forest fires are commonly fought from the air.

There are over 500 wildfires a year in Alaska,

and they are often inaccessible to crews on the ground.

To fight these infernos, crews take to the sky.

There's no roads in Alaska.

There's just no way to get to these locations.

So there is actually a very close tie

between Alaskan aviation and firefighting.

So many of the state's firefighters

are pilots that battle these infernos from above,

mixing two of the most dangerous jobs in the world

can be a recipe for disaster.

99 percent of all of the wild land fires

are fought with aircraft,

and about half of the firefighter deaths on the memorial

are pilots that were engaged in firefighting.

One that sticks out in my mind,

large DC-3 firefighting aircraft was taking off,

and on takeoff, either an engine failed,

or they were overloaded, and for whatever reason,

it then nose-dived down and crashed.

There was 27 people on board the aircraft.

Four people died in the incident.

It was a number of years ago, and safety,

and investigations, and finding out what went wrong,

was just not at the level that it is now.

So we will never know to this day what could have happened,

and maybe that's the big tragedy of it all,

because we aren't able to then make changes

so that it never happens again.

(dramatic music)

Danger is no stranger to Alaska.

From flights in small aircraft,

to frigid weather, to the aggressive bears,

injury and even death is not uncommon,

and tragedy is an everyday stanza in this song of life.