Expedition Unpacked: No Turning Back

Steve Backshall: One year of expeditions... hundreds of adventures... many unforgettable moments... Whoa!

moments that very nearly stopped us in our tracks... [Muffled screaming] adventures that made us question whether we should even be out there... Oh, my god.

I can smell the rope burning.

points where we knew if we took one step further there was no turning back.

Aah!

Help!

These are the stories of those extreme adventures...

I hadn't mentally prepared myself for this bit to be dangerous.

of epic world firsts... Man: This is a waterfall that is not mapped, Steve.

It's new!

Steve: and adventures into the unknown.

It is truly one of the forgotten wonders of the world.

♪ I'm Steve Backshall... and this is "Expedition Unpacked."

♪ Announcer: "Expedition Unpacked" was made possible in part by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Steve: This is the story of 4 extreme moments... when I took on ferocious Himalayan white water... treacherous arctic mountains... Arabia's deepest canyon, but my experiences in Bhutan were not just life changing, they were almost life ending.

I was there to paddle the last unrun river in this remote Himalayan kingdom.

♪ Even with my 35 years' experience kayaking... nothing prepared me for what was to happen next.

♪ Aah!

Woman: Whoo, whoo, whoo!

Man: Up!

Up!

Steve: The decision-making that led us to run that monster rapid began one week earlier.

The team and I spent two days training.

Himalayan white water is immense, and we had to get used to its power.

♪ Nice.

Lovely.

Good start.

Steve: Darren Clarkson-King, a Himalayan veteran, was our lead kayaker.

Sal Montgomery was our safety kayaker.

♪ She's a waterfall and big drop specialist.

♪ To paddle these rapids, you have to learn to read the water to understand what's going on beneath the surface.

♪ Scouting rapids is absolutely critical because you just have no idea what's gonna be around the next corner, and getting up close to it, looking it at it from river level, you can get a much better idea of what the potentials are from a rapid.

Darren: As it curves, we come down.

We're gonna take a conservative line.

When we make the move, we have to paddle hard, but, you know, once we're through them, you know, we're into the promised land.

Steve: So what we've got here are a couple of holes or stoppers.

The river is changing direction by a rock under the water.

It's driven up and then driven down, and it recirculates, and if you hit it wrong, it captures you.

You can't get out, and if you hit it sideways, then it flips your boat over and over and over like an old-fashioned shutter just going bada, bada, bada, bada, and it's, uh--it's one of the scariest things in kayaking.

Dragging yourself out of that is really hard.

♪ I'm ready when you are, Steve.

Steve: OK. ♪ You learn so much from paddling with someone superexperienced like Darren, just sitting right in their tracks, watching how he reads the river, following his line, and that's everything.

♪ ♪ Gets the heart going, doesn't it?

As if it wasn't intimidating enough, seeing you spinning out in front of me didn't massively help.

Give us a man hug, man.

Ah.

Well done.

Good job.

♪ Steve, voice-over: The training run was well within my limits, but we'd be facing white water that could be twice as powerful.

If things were to go wrong, we'd be relying on former royal marine Aldo Kane to call in the helicopter rescue team.

♪ Aldo: Where we're going is essentially locked in for at least 40 kilometers in a gorge, and it's unknown, and these gorge walls will be 50-100 meters straight up, so even if it is paddleable and we have an injury or something happens, we still have to go one way, and that's the direction of the river, and then after that, we can then look at trying to get someone out.

It's quite terrifying really.

♪ Steve: Our expedition to paddle the last unrun river in Bhutan started at the entrance of a steep-sided gorge.

Our goal was to paddle from one end of the gorge to the other, a journey of about 25 miles... ♪ but before we'd even begun, we were forced to change our plans.

The gorge entrance was littered with boulders.

There was no way the raft team could make it through in the bulky raft.

From the moment we entered the gorge, there would be no turning back, and worse, we were on our own.

♪ We've come into this steep-sided valley with giant boulders the size of houses everywhere.

To keep tabs on us, Aldo scrambled down to a point where the gorge narrowed.

We've come down to the boulder chuck, which is why we can't come in on the rafts, and we can see from here it's too tight a constriction for us to go past, so we've leapfrogged ahead of them.

We can't get down any further than here, but at least we can spot.

We know that they've got down this far in the canyon.

They're safe at this point.

We then lose them again after this rapid back into the canyon.

Steve: Ooh.

That's a bit more serious.

As expected, the river's starting to constrict, and as it constricts, all that power has to go somewhere, and it's going into something quite full on here with quite a lot of potential danger.

Sal: We want everyone to be aiming right.

There's a hazard of us getting stuck underneath that sloping wall.

Yeah.

I got to be honest.

That scares the living daylights out of me.

I don't know.

It was my first big test.

♪ Darren: OK, Steve.

You can do it, mate.

Pull it as you come over.

Pull a big lefty stroke.

That'll pull your boat this way... Yeah.

And, uh, just keep going.

Will do.

♪ Darren: Whoa!

♪ Darren: Yes!

Sal!

Sal: Whoo-hoo!

Darren: That's it, Steve!

Yeah!

You beauty!

Whoo!

♪ I was full of confidence.

I didn't know it then, but what lay ahead would beat that confidence out of me.

Aldo: For them, they're only 10 feet above the water, so they can only see down to the next line, but from where we are, we can see that it goes on for at least 400 meters, and that start of it looks pretty tasty.

[Static crackling] Steve, Steve, Aldo.

Over.

[Static] We can't get in touch now.

They've sort of dropped into the gorge, so the radio signal doesn't work anymore.

Worst-case scenario is that they're their own.

This is quite a steep cliff.

I don't think they'll be able to climb out of here.

We just need to wait and see what happens.

♪ Steve: The rock walls are vertical on all sides, and there is absolutely no getting out of this, and ahead of us, it looks like a big drop.

This is exactly what we were nervous about, a situation where there is no escape and you're completely committed.

What do you think, mate?

I'm gonna get out and have a look, guys, but it's not looking good.

There's also nowhere to climb out and portage, is there?

No, but from here, we can get back up to there.

What, and carry out from here?

Well, let's see.

Steve: With vertical rock walls, we couldn't walk around the rapid.

We had to find a route through.

♪ What do you think?

Darren: It's a very hard rapid, Steve, with a 30 left lie, which means we fall off this ledge, or we can stay left and just paddle through the dirt at the bottom.

I'd rather paddle this than walk out.

Steve: Hell, yeah.

I was just wondering, though, if there's no way of getting over river right and carrying, but there's not.

Darren: On that far side, Steve, we could do it, but there's not.

The only way out was down, and on this rapid, there was no margin for error.

Ohh!

Darren: Sal's going first.

She'll call it yes or no.

♪ Steve: Good luck, Sal.

♪ OK. ♪ Steve: Oh, yah, yah.

She's sneaking that line.

♪ Oh, my god.

She's got some guts.

Do it, Sal.

Yeah.

She's through.

She's good!

Darren: Nice!

Steve, voice-over: Next up Darren.

♪ Darren: Ohh!

Whoo-hoo!

Hey!

♪ Steve, voice-over: Then it was my turn.

♪ The next few minutes would be some of the most harrowing of my life.

Whoa.

OK. OK. Get it together.

Get it together, Backshall.

Come on.

Come on, Steve.

You can do this.

Come on.

You got this.

♪ Darren: It's good.

We're good, we're good.

Steve, voice-over: The unstable churning flow threw me into the wall... and it knocked me off my stride.

♪ Darren: Aah!

Whoo, whoo!

Up, up!

Move, move, move.

Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo!

Steve: Agh!

Ugh!

He's gonna come out.

Steve: Help!

Steve, voice-over: I grabbed for the front of my cockpit, found my ripcord, and pulled.

Steve: I'm in big trouble.

Darren: Steve!

Steve: Aah!

[Screaming] I'm coming!

♪ Steve: Help!

Sal: Come on.

Come on.

[Steve screams] Sal: Come on!

Steve!

♪ Steve: Help!

OK.

I got it!

I got it!

Get the rope!

Hold on!

Take out the bend!

No!

♪ Darren: Oh, Steve!

Swim, swim!

Swim!

Swim!

Swim!

Swim!

Agh!

Ohh.

I've got you I think.

Steve: It kept dragging me back into the fall.

Ohh.

♪ Steve, voice-over: It was the closest I'd ever come to dying, but when the chips were down, my team had saved me.

Together, we'd paddled the last unrun river in Bhutan.

I've got a lot to be thankful for now.

It's a time for remembering how lucky I am just to be here at all.

What we've done is an amazing achievement.

I mean, we've paddled through at least 50 rapids that no one's ever paddled in before.

We've got into a gorge that's never seen a kayak, possibly never seen a human being, and to do that in this day and age is mind-blowing.

In the 21st century, you can still find parts of the planet which have never been explored, but you have to head deep into the unknown, where rescue is not possible.

In Greenland, I was attempting a first ascent with a team of experts, but even with our years of combined experience, this mountain would push us all to the very limit.

Rock!

Watch out!

Rock!

Hit, hit, hit.

You OK, Steve?

♪ Steve: Summiting that mountain was perilous, but retreating down the crumbling rock face even more dangerous.

There was no turning back.

The shocking state of the rocks had dawned on us two days earlier when we'd reached the glacier.

♪ We have a vertical kilometer of ascent to do before we can even think about making a basecamp.

Just got our backs into it and get stuck in.

♪ Aldo!

There's a rock fall here.

We've got all this avalanche debris.

We've got a big rockslide has come down in front of us, so we can't carry on skiing up this side.

We're gonna have to cross back over to the other side.

Cheers.

Nice work.

OK.

I'll come back down and give you a push.

Steve: It's all right.

I think Tamsin's got me.

Oh, that's much easier.

Thank you very much.

Steve, voice-over: Joining me were mountain experts Libby Peter and Tamsin Gay.

Tamsin: We've got to keep the momentum up.

If you go too fast, it kind of gets all jerky.

See, better to stay sort of smooth and slow.

Definitely quite hard work.

♪ Fresh avalanche.

♪ Steve: By the time we reached basecamp, we all knew that a first ascent in these treacherous conditions was far from a done deal.

Aldo: So what are the main dangers that we need to watch out for?

Libby: Quality of the rock.

That's a major issue, isn't it?

Sort of anticipating lack of decent belays for sure.

Tamsin: Security underfoot.

Which--which is fine if we're moving steadily up but of course makes retreat really-- you know, really difficult, you know, so there's a sense of commitment in terms of our options for coming back down because we can't just go "Oh, we'll have off here," because we know that the snow is really poor, and from what we've seen, the rock is really poor, so we can't kind of rely on your normal get out of jail free options.

Steve: I think the main danger is gonna be heavy, slushy, nasty snow.

All of these have got slides in them.

None of them particularly big.

Still big corniced edges along the top of the ridge, and as you're saying, it's gonna be in the sun all day long, so...I don't know.

I guess it's just being wary and picking our route up carefully.

Steve, voice-over: On a first ascent, there is no guidebook.

Our plan was to stick to the ridges, climb up, and return hopefully within 24 hours.

For a quick alpine ascent, we needed to pack light and stay nimble to avoid fatigue.

The most important thing with what we're doing is weight.

Every tiny, extra gram you take, you'll feel it after 10 hours, 15 hours, so it's kind of going through things and chipping away and cutting down the weight wherever you can.

Supposed to be packing fairly lightly for a quick alpine assault between 24 and 36 hours.

That still means I have a massive rucksack, and I'm looking at Libby and Tamsin's, and they've got tiny, little bags.

Tamsin: You just have to think about it and then decide "No.

I'm not gonna take it."

Got to be strong.

Don't take anything extra.

Libby: We've got enough to survive a night if we got shut down on our route for whatever reason.

It wouldn't be comfortable, but we'd survive it.

Steve: In the Arctic summer, you have 24 hours of daylight, so we planned to climb right through the night.

We'd hoped the cooler nighttime temperatures would mean the snow would be crisper and the rocks more stable.

♪ But on a mountain, what you hope for and what you get are two different things.

♪ Momentum is your friend on this kind of terrain.

Stop for a second, and you sink.

Keep moving, and you might just get away with it.

Ohh.

I seem to remember you saying, "Let's go up that easy snow slope.

That'll get us started nice and easy."

[Laughter] Good--good call of yours to do this at night, though, for sure.

This in the daytime would be horrific.

Tamsin: Be actually quite frightening, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

♪ Aldo: The snow so far has been... anything but pleasant for--whoa--climbing up.

It's just like a top layer of--top layer of crust.

Your foot goes through it, and then you go down up to your-- well above your knees.

Watch out!

♪ Watch out!

♪ Steve: After hours wading through snow, we reached the ridge and roped up to one another, putting our lives on a line literally.

♪ Libby: The first bit, Tamsin, is the worst in terms of looseness.

Everything is loose, so you just have to sort of, like, cat on a hot tin roof it a bit, and it gets marginally better as you get up a bit.

Tamsin: So you might want to do axes away and gloves off here.

Gloves off.

It's a bit rock climby.

Tamsin: Yeah, but not very much.

No.

It's more like a sand dune.

Steve, voice-over: Our worst nightmare was becoming our reality.

Ohh.

Every single rock you're standing on is coming away.

Libby: Nice one, Steve.

♪ Right now, this is less like climbing and more like tip-toeing along a wire.

♪ Steve, voice-over: I began to seriously consider aborting this first ascent.

Libby and Tamsin have just been having a chat.

I think we're kind of realizing that this is a big pile of rubble.

It's just falling apart.

There is no good rock, there are no good handholds, and we're moving very, very slowly, but even so, there is every possibility or potential to pull something big off, and when you're this far away from civilization and from help, you've got to be superconservative because no one's coming to help us if someone gets hurt.

So we're gonna push on a little bit further, but I think in the back of our minds, I think we're knowing we have to rationalize our expectations.

We are gonna be from here on in looking for possible bailouts, keeping them in the back of our mind, knowing that we might have to use them.

We certainly don't want to go back down that lot.

Our only escape route was to rappel back down, but there was no rock secure enough to anchor a descent rope.

Just watching every single footfall, trying not to dislodge anything, and that's not easy because everything is ready to go.

♪ Rock!

Watch out!

[Rocks clattering] ♪ Hit, hit, hit.

You OK, Steve?

Steve: Yeah.

[Exhales] Steve, voice-over: we were roped up, but it was cold comfort.

If any of us had slipped and fell, we'd take our teammates down with us.

It's hard, isn't it?

It's tenuous.

It's really quite serious.

♪ Steve: We were halfway up.

This was our point of no return.

We knew the gravity of the situation and what our next decision could mean.

Aldo: This is not pleasant.

Just have to be super...light on my feet.

Steve: That last bit was horrible.

We took stock of our energy levels and mental fatigue and decided unanimously to go on.

Aldo: If anyone's interested, it's... 2:30 in the morning.

[Laughter] Steve: What'd you think?

What do I think?

Yeah.

I think actually we're doing really well, uh, considering it's really hard going.

What about you, Great Aldini?

My feet are bloody cold.

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

Are you satisfied if we get to the top?

It's not about getting to the top.

It's about taking part, Steve.

Ha ha ha!

[Wind whipping] Steve: The people that I work with on expeditions like this, I think, people back home will think they've got a death wish, they're an adrenaline junky, and that's so far from the truth.

In fact, it's the opposite of what's really true.

It's not about risking your life because we all love life more than anybody else I know.

You know, you see the excitement and the vigor and the emotion in the eyes and the faces of my expedition colleagues, and it's clear that they embrace life, but being here gives you the opportunity to have control over it.

Controlling your mind can make the difference between life and death on extreme adventures like these, but in Mexico, I came close to losing my nerve.

♪ We were mapping an unexplored cave system, and a thousand feet underground, I was trapped.

♪ [Muffled screaming] ♪ The events that led to that life or death moment began 4 weeks earlier when I was searching for an unexplored cave system with world-class cave diver Robbie Schmittner.

Just blows your mind that somewhere like this can still exist in the 21st century.

♪ It's a long time away I saw a road.

It's a long way.

♪ Steve: the Yucatan Peninsula is composed of limestone formed on the ocean floor as shells and coral compacted over millions of years.

Over time, it's been eroded by the movement of rainwater, and the porous rock has crumbled away, leaving a honeycomb of subterranean caverns, thousands of miles of tunnels which have never been explored.

4 weeks before the main dive, Robbie and I needed to road test our gear on a training dive.

♪ OK. Should we wander down?

Mm-hmm.

We rely completely on our equipment in cave diving.

That's why we carry everything double and triple-- drei--3 lights, 2 regulators each-- because we cannot go up to the surface.

We're under the ceiling, and sometimes, we are 800 meters, a kilometer in the cave, so we need to fix problems there and make sure we can get back out.

Anything goes wrong, and you're on your own.

Exactly.

Steve, voice-over: But our routine safety dive quickly turned dangerous.

[Air hisses] Woman: Was that on camera?

Steve: One of the hoses just exploded.

I'm completely deaf in my right ear.

Um, don't know why.

Not happened to me before.

This gear has all been designed to work in the ocean, and we're using it on razor-sharp limestone in the jungle, and, you know, nothing works in the jungle.

Everything just starts to rot, and kit doesn't like it.

That was pretty spooky.

Yeah.

That's a major failure.

I mean, that's a-- you know, fortunately have the redundant cylinder, but that's a catastrophic loss.

That tank would lose all gas.

Steve, voice-over: If I'd been a thousand feet underground and my air hose had burst like that, it would have been fatal.

That thought played on my mind for the rest of the expedition.

Over the last 20 years, Robbie has mapped nearly 600 miles of these caves, but he believes he's only just scratched the surface.

Robbie wanted to explore a cave he knew, one he had a hunch went much further under the peninsula.

In an unexplored cave, to find your way back out means laying a safety line as you go.

♪ Robbie: All right.

Everybody happy?

Can we go?

Are you ready?

Steve: Happy as I'll ever be.

All right.

I'm going to do that.

♪ Steve: Robbie started fixing the safety line, but I quickly lost sight of him.

Don't know where I'm going... and it's really tight.

Steve, voice-over: We'd disturbed the silt, making visibility almost zero.

Steve: Cave team, we are calling the dive.

♪ That was proper sketchy.

What happened?

I didn't see anything.

No.

Just absolute zero visibility.

That wasn't good.

[Sighs] Steve, voice-over: It was a wakeup call.

Undaunted, we pushed deeper still into undiscovered territory to map new sections of this unexplored cave network.

To dive a cave unknown even to Robbie, I knew I'd need ice in my veins.

Robbie: This is the side entrance, isn't it?

Steve: Massive.

Steve, voice-over: We were hundreds of feet inside the cave.

Whoa!

It's a lake.

A complete underground lake.

Steve, voice-over: It was our nirvana, exactly what we'd been looking for.

Robbie: I think we should get the scuba gear here and get in there and dive it.

Steve, voice-over: The prospect of exploring an undiscovered cave was exhilarating but tinged with fear.

To one side is the jungle.

The other is the cave, and somewhere deep in there, it's probably the thing I'm most frightened of in the whole world.

Never been much good at little narrow spaces and squeezes.

We'll see what happens when the sun comes up.

The real skill in cave diving is learning how to master your fear and control your mind.

Robbie: Our main danger always, always in cave diving is our own mind.

The cave doesn't squeeze you.

You're gonna squeeze into that place, and the question is can you take it mentally?

To allow yourself get stress level so high that you could get to a point where you can't take more stress and go to panic.

When you panic in a cave dive, you die.

Aldo: Once you're underwater then, there's absolutely nothing we can do up top, so what are you under there, 400 meters underground?

In cave diving, usually if you'll be able to make it out, you're fine, right?

If something goes badly wrong, you usually stay in the cave.

Hmm.

Right.

And if you do stay in the cave, then quite happily take your rucksack, your bergen, and you car.

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

♪ Robbie: I go in front with the reel.

You know, stay close by the guideline, always in reach distance.

Anything goes wrong, anything's not ideal, let's just call it and go back.

All right.

Sounds good.

All right.

Let's do it.

1400 hours.

Robbie: All right.

Steve: On you, Robbie.

Robbie: Let's do this.

[Inhaling] ♪ Steve: Every foot of lifeline Robbie unfurled took us one more foot away from the safety of the exit.

I focused on keeping calm and followed Robbie's lead.

♪ Robbie has just struck down into a little crack, and he's disappeared, and he's gone completely, which is pretty nerve-racking because it means that I'll have to follow.

Nobody's ever been here before, and where Robbie's gone now, I'm not sure anyone should ever go really.

♪ Steve, voice-over: With Robbie out of sight and out of comms, I had to follow.

♪ What happened next was like a waking nightmare.

[Grunting] ♪ [Muffled screaming] ♪ [Muffled scream] I forced myself to control my panic... and squeezed through.

♪ On the other side was a simply stunning cave, and we were the first people ever to witness it.

♪ We were 700 feet in, and Robbie signaled a tight passage ahead.

♪ In cave diving, you only get once chance.

♪ I'd already had mine.

I recognized that I was at the limit of my ability and let Robbie push on alone.

♪ Everything I'd done up to that point was the maximum that I am capable of, and I knew that, and there's something good about turning back when there is no option, when the only choice available to you is to turn and go.

There's a finality to it that means you can leave with a clear conscience.

There's never any moment when you think, "Oh, maybe.

Maybe, maybe not."

There was 100% I wasn't going any further, but the cave, the cave just kept on going.

It's a tantalizing thought, that sense of infinity, of incredible endless possibilities and potential, but for me, that's enough.

The key to survival is controlling your own fears.

It's something I also experienced dropping down into Oman's deepest canyon.

♪ I was rappelling a free hanging descent of 1,250 feet.

♪ Oh, my god.

I can smell the rope burning.

At that moment, I had a choice-- climb back up 300 feet or trust the rigging and keep going.

My resolve was based on a training run 5 days earlier.

Rappelling--or abseiling as it's called in the UK-- requires training.

To prepare for such a long drop, we'd rigged the ultimate test run.

That is something very, very special, a gigantic fossil cave passage, which is absolutely cavernous.

Crucially, this drop was free-hanging.

Ropes expert Aldo Kane was in charge of the rigging.

Conventional kit isn't really rated for abseiling more than 100 meters, 150 at absolute max, so we're testing out some new bits of kit, which is friction on bars basically.

Steve: Our lives were going to depend on one key piece of gear-- the gold tail.

It's a friction device which puts bends in the rope to slow your descent.

The more bends in the rope, the slower you'll go.

♪ That is a very big, black hole.

Aldo: You're happy with all the system, yeah?

Yeah.

Apart from this thing.

I've never used one of these before.

Good time to learn.

Yeah.

So the idea is just that it's really heavy and it just gets rid of all that excess heat?

Yes, because all of the standard kit that we use for abseiling isn't gonna cut it on what we're about to do.

That's 120 here.

Yeah.

And we need to test this kit out to then make sure that when we're doing 300-, 400-meter abseils that we're not gonna snap ropes with the heat which is generated, so...

So essentially, it would heat up so much over the descent that it would burn through the rope.

Exactly.

I mean, it works by friction, so this is why we have to use this massive big lump of metal because it dissipates the heat.

Steve, voice-over: But friction is a dark art.

Too many bends of rope, and you stop.

Too few bends of rope, you drop like a stone.

A test run was crucial.

Our lives depended on it.

Steve: We happy?

Aldo: Yeah.

I'm happy, mate.

This is the horrible bit.

Stepping back over that edge.

♪ Whoa!

♪ Right below where you're standing, this cave opens out into immense blackness.

It goes on forever.

[Radio beeps] Aldo: Made me feel good standing on top of it.

Just thinking ahead.

Obviously, the abseil that we've got coming up is 4 times that height.

Do you think we'll have to start on much, much less friction, or was 3 holes OK?

Over.

Steve: It was actually quite tough at the beginning, but now it's not enough.

Over.

Aldo: Roger.

Ahh.

♪ What a place!

The gold tail worked well on our test rappel, but that was 400 feet.

The canyon we were about to drop into was more than 3 times that at 1,250 feet.

We had no way of knowing how the gear would react to the heat and pressure of such a long descent.

Aldo: Whoa.

Steve: Well, we've done some big abseils together in the past, but that's-- that's out there, isn't it?

Bigger.

This is the biggest single-drop abseil that we've done.

Steve: It was also the biggest drop Aldo and ropes expert Justin Halls had ever rigged.

[Goat bleating] Their first task was to drive anchor bolts into the first hundred feet of the rock face.

♪ [Hammering] Aldo: The reason we hit the wall with the hammer is just so that you-- this stuff here is calcite, and it forms over millions of years onto the actual rock surface.

We've just to make sure that that's-- make sure that that's pretty bomb-proof before we start putting any protection in.

Otherwise, they can pull out.

Steve: And it wasn't just the face of the wall that had loose rock.

[Rock clattering] What was that?

Dropped stone.

That's coming down now.

Where?

Cor.

There's nothing more terrifying than being on the rope and hearing a rock fall that big.

Just shows you how--ooh-- dangerous this place is.

That wind's picking up.

Steve: The mountain ledges were littered with loose rocks.

Huge slabs which had sheared off could have fallen at any time.

♪ The plan was for the camera crew to follow us down, but these were my friends.

I didn't want to put their lives in danger.

Director Rosie Gloyns called a safety meeting.

So how's the room feeling about tomorrow?

Aldo: That part of the top was so loose that--ahem--if you're, like, 200 meters down, which is only halfway down, and a rock gets kicked off-- there's goats walking around all over the top here.

They can kick stuff off, so as many of the loose rocks that we can get rid of to start with, then it reduces the risk of them accidentally being whipped off or pulled off.

Steve: Even a tiny rock from that kind of height will be going like a bullet by the time it hits you, and your helmet would do nothing.

It would just smash it to smithereens.

Steve, voice-over: It was a huge wakeup call for all of us.

It's tricky because there's a big part of me that is very excited at the possibility of doing it, and obviously want to get down there and capture on film the beauty of the place and the amazing things that we might find at the bottom, but there's also part of me that thinks it's way beyond my ability.

I've been asked to do this video diary I can only assume because someone thinks there's a chance I might die tomorrow.

No one's ever asked me to do this before.

I trust everybody obviously.

You know, you don't do something like this that could risk your life unless you trust the people with your life.

Quite honestly, I'm terrified.

It's massive rock face of about-- I mean, god, it looked like a mile high, but it's about 400 meters.

Thought of dangling, like, well, almost half a kilometer above, like, sharp rocks, trying to film on a spinning rope--ha ha!

Don't think that's gonna happen, but possibly I'll go down it tomorrow.

We'll see.

I think Steve and Justin and Aldo will kind of make a decision whether the camera crew will go down.

It's a huge ask.

We've got 7 people, including the crew to get down a near-on 400-meter abseil.

It is not to be taken lightly.

Steve: Sitting round the campfire and seeing the worry in the eyes of my crew, I felt a huge weight of responsibility.

Aldo finished the rigging in the morning, but watching from above, I knew in my heart that I couldn't send the crew down.

[Aldo grunting] You all right, Aldo?

How you doing?

Aldo: It's, uh, terrifying when you first get over.

Steve, voice-over: Aldo was concerned about the extreme exposure, strong winds, and unpredictable rock fall.

I would very definitely have my worries about chucking you guys off.

Rosie: Yeah.

I don't-- I mean, there's no point putting the whole team at risk for the sake of us going down there.

Steve, voice-over: We decided that only Aldo, Justin, and I would make the descent.

The film crew would drive round to meet us at the end of the canyon.

Rosie: All this kit and all this, um, faff getting it rigged safely is because people just don't go down this far on single-drop abseils.

It's just not done, so it's really sort of pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Steve: Once I stepped over that edge, it was a one-way trip.

There would be no turning back.

Aldo: When you get to the bottom and you radio up, can you just let us know, like, the heat of the gold tail?

Yeah.

Of course.

Friction-wise, just be aware.

All right.

That's me.

Ohh!

Too fast!

♪ Oh, my goodness.

That...is... unbelievable.

Aldo, Aldo, this is Steve.

Come back.

[Beep] Aldo send.

It seems to be working OK, mate, so far.

Lots and lots of heat, lots of friction in the system, but I think it's going OK. Aldo: You're probably only 100 meters below me.

You've got another 300 to go.

Over.

Steve, voice-over: We knew that on a descent of 400 feet, the gold tail had worked well with 3 holes of friction, but there was still no way of knowing what would be needed on a longer drop.

We're dropping pretty fast at the moment.

I've got to be careful not to go too fast because obviously there's a real danger of heating up the equipment and burning through the ropes.

♪ Oh, my god.

I can smell the rope burning.

Steve, voice-over: The point of no return.

I faced a choice-- to climb back up over 300 feet of rope or continue.

I hadn't come this far to give up so easily.

Everything now depended on the gold tail.

It's really heating up.

Whoa!

That's too fast.

Too fast.

Steve, voice-over: I needed more friction, but spinning in thin air, feeding more rope through the gold tail was tricky.

Steve: That's too quick.

That's too quick.

Steve, voice-over: The quickest way to slow my descent was to get another loop of rope through my karabiner.

Oh, get in there!

Oh, yes.

[Exhales] Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

[Exhales] Down.

Alive.

Safe.

You beauty.

Mate, I'm down.

Aldo: Whoo-hoo!

That was good time.

How long did that take?

15 minutes?

10, 15 minutes?

Over.

I have absolutely no idea, but yeah.

Holy moly, that is a big drop.

Steve, voice-over: For me, that drop was a journey into the unknown in many ways.

We had no way of knowing whether the rigging would hold or whether the gold tail would work.

My life was quite literally in Aldo's hands.

When you look at all of the work that Aldo and Justin did to make that abseil safe, I was 100% confident that those ropes were gonna hold me.

I'm really, really lucky to have a team full of people who are at the absolute top of their game, that are the very best at doing what they do, and I know that I don't have to be worrying about them, I don't have to be thinking about every step or are they gonna trip, are they gonna fall, are they gonna stumble, are they gonna be OK because I know they will be, and I can get on with doing my job.

They'll get on with doing theirs.

Being reunited with Rosie and the team was a great feeling, one that I will remember forever.

Ahh.

Aw.

Hello, mate.

Thanks for waiting us, Rosie.

You're a legend.

Look at this.

It's my... Well done, mate.

Ha ha ha!

Justin!

Ahh!

You done good.

Thank you, mate.

Yeah.

It's interesting that that's the warmup.

Yeah.

♪ Steve: Expeditions to remote parts of the world are full of wonder and danger in equal measure.

Each one has its own set of challenges, and each one has its crucial moments of decision.

♪ Success depends on skills and training, but above all, it comes down to teamwork and a passion for exploration.

[Birds chirping] ♪ "Expedition Unpacked" is available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪