Fire and Ice Taken To Extremes (25 pic warning!)

coldclimb · February 7, 2008

Alright, so I can't really say TOO much, since that will blow it for you guys when it airs on TV and nobody wants that, so this post I'm going to be as vague and elusive as I can, and let the pictures do the explaining for you. I'm sure most of you will be able to fill in all the details yourselves!

Last week I was notified of a job with the Mat-Su Water Rescue Team. I'd been told to "keep a couple days free," and on Monday morning I woke up to a phone call telling me when to be where. Upon request I also rolled my roommate Richard out of bed and asked him if he wanted to work for the day. Three hours later and with only the word "mythbusters" as a faint clue of what we were doing, I threw my camera in the support vehicle and followed the dive rescue van on a bit of a drive. We wound up down a recently plowed road through a snowy gravel pit that took us to a small pond excavated from some sort of quarry operations. Still mysterious.

At the end of the road there were some vehicles. Several police cars from a town a good distance away, some shiny SUVs, and two large motorhomes. An odd collection to exist in a gravel pit in rural Alaska. Cliff, the dive team chief, took off to find out our roles in what-in-the-world was going on.

We learned quickly that day that for the next three days, all we'd really be doing was standing out in the cold, but somehow subzero temperatures were tolerable. I mean it's not every day that a couple of poor rough characters from a town the world knows nothing about get to work on the set of an international television show.

I took out my camera.

Joe, a water rescue team member, with some filming going on in the background.

Jamie hucks some "dynamite" into the distance.

These mics are super sensitive. They told us about our whispered conversations from 200 feet away. Hope I didn't say anything unkind! :rofl

Raise your hand if you like explosions?

Big, big, big ones?

I asked myself a couple of times: Why here? Why US? :rofl

Quite fitting that a bomb technician should use a canon, eh? These guys were having as much fun shooting pics as us, although their services were a bit more in demand.

I'll give these guys credit, everybody on the show works VERY hard from sunup to sundown for days to make that quick segment we all watch on TV. I was duly impressed... no slackers here!

Of course, a candid or two were in order.

And there's always room for some Alaska appreciation.

That's sunset above, and early the next day it looked like this:

And here's a few assorted people shots. Got more of these than of the action, but that's why you'll have to actually watch the show!

Starting with a bomb technician.

A water rescue technician.

A little of both water and bomb.

Adam and some icy machinery. He had a canon around his neck too, by the way. :thumb

The setup for the big fun.

Not exactly where you'd envision thousands of dollars of camera...

Giving "kick the bucket" a very literal meaning... except it's a box. A very fun box.

This girl makes me smile every time I see her.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

Adam again. Alaskan winters keep the sun low on the horizon, which can work well for midday light.

A few more people shots as the action winds to a close. Here's a bomb tech.

Joe again, hiding behind a motorhome.

A high school friend of mine, also invited out to work for the show.

Hehe... it was cold. More bomb squad here.

Well now here's a puzzle... Didn't there used to be a vehicle there?

Huh... It's gone...

Ahh... found it again!

That's it for last week's excitement! When the show airs in two to four months, you'll get to see more than I actually did of the big booms, and learn a bit more of the story, and without even suffering the frigid cold! Look for me in the credits, and maybe a brief flash on screen here or there.