Man Vs. Wild "Arizona Sky Islands" Review/Recap

The sixth season of Man Vs. Wild premiered last night on Discovery. After five seasons worth of episodes, does Bear Grylls have anything left to teach the audience about surviving in the wild? The man has been in the toughest deserts on Earth. He's been in the coldest places as well. The show even placed Bear in a post-apocalyptic urban area. Bear Grylls confronted 200 elephants in Africa and scared each and every one of them away. He fought crocodiles for food. Bear tried catching a shark to eat. In Siberia, he transformed a wolf carcass into a toboggan. I trust that Bear has more insane tricks up his sleeves. Remember, he buried himself beneath twelve feet of snow despite the possibility of suffocation if an error occurred.

Bear Grylls seems like the Bodhi from Point Break (except Bear isn't a fictitious character). Bodhi sought the ultimate ride and the perfect wave. He believed in only "upping the stakes of the game." Bear Grylls will only the up stakes of his challenges now. I mean, the normal hiker who gets lost in the wilderness won't be able to do most of the things Bear Grylls. Bear has imparted the essential survival skills to the audience. The man will continue to impart basic and essential survival skills; however, his challenges will remain designed for a man who climbed Everest twice. I have no complaints at all. Man Vs. Wild is the best when Bear's doing crazy things and eating crazy food. Now, let's dive into "Arizona Sky Islands."

-Now, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, treacherous deserts aren't new for Bear Grylls. In a past desert episode, he urinated on a shirt and wrapped it around his head to keep him cool. The heat in the Arizona desert reaches 128 degrees during the day and can sink as low as -40. Bear plans to find water as quickly as possible. Before he reaches the desert ground, he jumps out of a helicopter in one of those wind suits that allows people to glide in the sky at extreme speeds. On the ground, the search for water continues. Bear reminds the audience how important water is. Ideally, in the desert, one should drink plenty of water but mother nature makes one work for water in the desert. Bear studies the ground for moisture. Eventually, he reaches a long patch of clay. Clay, Bear tells us, retains more moisture than sand so he begins digging. Soon enough, Bear reaches damp clay. He gathers a clump of the dirt, removes his sock and uses the sock to extract water from the dirt. In the past, Bear used his shirt. Later, Bear finds a spring of stagnant water. He warns the audience about the dangers of drinking stagnant water. After cooling off for a minute in the water, Bear uses an actual emergency filter to drink from the spring. These emergency filters are part of pilot safety packs should fighter pilots go down in foreign countries. With the filter, they can keep themselves hydrated even if their water source is dangerous.

-"Arizona Sky Islands" featured plenty of climbing from Bear. His chief goal is to ascend the small mountains in the desert for cooler air and the chance of water. Of course, one needs to climb other surfaces to navigate around the desert. Usually, Bear uses his hands and feet to climb. Near the end of the episode, he reaches a tricky surface to climb. Naturally, he uses his rope and a rock as his anchor to move across the gap between the surfaces. Of course, he needs to set the anchor into place on the surface in the distance. Like any one would, he builds a bow-and-arrow similar to the ones the Apache Indians used to hunt to launch his anchor onto the distance rock surface. Bear never reveals how many times he failed to accurately shoot at the surface but he preached patience because the bow-and-arrow takes skill and practice for accurate shots. Once he successfully sets the anchor and travels across the gap, he finds the potential for rescue rather quickly.

-At night, he made camp in the woods. Bear told the audience that mountain lions hide the animals they kill so Bear quickly finds one of the mountain lion's prey tucked into a tree. On his way to camp, he finds bear poop and decides to develop another plan once he's eaten. A night in the woods with neighboring bears, mountain lions and jaguars is too dangerous. Instead, he uses his old parachute to suspend himself fifty feet above the ground as his shelter--the dangerous predators can't get to him. Bear describes how relaxing the shelter is until he remembers how high from the ground he. Sometimes, during the night, pebbles fell onto his foreheads so he worried about the possibility of his anchor loosening. Every person must remember how much of survival is a mental game. Bear needed rest and energy for tomorrow so he separated himself from those thoughts.

-My favorite part of the episode is when Bear discovers wreckage in the desert from a small aircraft. Bear explains that drug smugglers from Mexico will use such aircraft to transport drugs through the desert. Bear improvises with the parts to develop a Parachute-car so the heat of the day won't zap him of his energy. We see comical images of the parachute dragging Bear through the desert as he tries to hook the chute to his "car." For a little while, the car works until...well...it doesn't and he crashes. But Bear's happy that he eliminated a small part of his hike during the desert day.

Overall, "Arizona Sky Islands" was a fairly ordinary episode of Man Vs. Wild, Nothing too extreme took place. He mostly climbed thing, ate a scorpion and then found civilization by the end of the episode. But it's great to have Man Vs. Wild back on a weekly basis.

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