Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Bear Grylls man vs wild Copper Cyn eats trout

I have a problem with the Man vs Wild TV show as basically staged (Bear Grylls' show on surviving the Sierra Nevada quite obviously was), just watching tonight's show about him surviving Mexico's Copper Canyon kinda raised an eyebrow. He showed how to catch trout by damming above and below in a slow moving stream and then hitting in the water with a stick and then throw the stunned fish up on the bank, remove the head and tail, gut the fish, wash it off in the creek and start eating sushi.

Safe?

I won't eat even cooked fish so doesn't matter to me but I wonder if this is a good practice, even when desperate? He was at pretty low elevation closing in on tropical.

He did mention quickly and almost unnoticeably that the fish where he did the stunt were planted.

Just how realistic can any of those shows be, with a camera crew following you? I've even heard that Mr. Grylls sometimes relocates to the Hilton after the cameras are turned off!

Pure entertainment. I liked the Sierra one. "I could walk down the mountain, but it's be a whole lot more fun to make a raft." Or "I could walk out, but why not tame a horse instead." It's what any of us would do! Right?

What I couldn't stomach was the Africa Savanna(?) episode where he squeezes "water" out of elephant dung. No thank you very much. Where is my SteriPen? Wait? The water must be clear! Break out my HikerPro! Ick! Insert float into dung and start pumping?

man vs wild is pure garbage! Yes most of it is staged and yes he has stayed at the hilton! He should have paid his camera crew more (they let the cat out of the bag) I only watch survivor man. I love that guy!

This was posted on the mtwhitney-info board:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1771093

I almost died laughing! It is pure entertainment for sure.

That is hilarious!!!

The last quote is the most relevant.

http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1735669

Its a TV show. Its entertaining. much more entertaining then Survivorman, I can fall asleep watching that guy.
Bear Grylls is DEMONSTRATING what any person could possibly do in a survival situation, not ever claiming to be in desperation, since its obvious that he is not alone and is not in a desperate situation.
When pilots are trained, they do not set the airplanes on fire so they can learn to deal with an engine fire. Its simulated.
Just as effective, without the unnecessary risk.
I just love the guy in Hawaii exposing the big secret that there happens to be a highway where the clip was shot. Man, thats some good detective work.

In this season of Man vs Wild they're going to be more honest. For example, in the next episode Bear is going to show us how to survive with just frozen pizza, a pizza pan and an oven.

I am surprised at citing a site called "collegehumor.com" as a reliable reference.

A more evenhanded treatement of the subject can be found at Wikipedia, for example.

Note that there's been no show at the locations referred to in some of the quoted quotes above (Andes, Himalayas)

When I see the name Bear Grills I stop laughing about the fact that I call myself Sierra Snail.

I don't have cable, so I've only seen the show while sitting in a hotel room. I thought it was fairly interesting. I laughed pretty hard when I saw the video that shows that it's all staged though.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I cited collegehumor.com purely for humor, not as some kind of reliable reference. I came across those quotes when I looked up the video link posted earlier. I thought it was pretty obvious that at least the last quote was never on TV.

Speaking of sources, given the nature of the project, it is amazing how much good material is to be found on Wikipedia. It is a good starting point for info on many subjects.

I did enjoy this:

When I saw the show, I was jealous, having never come across a bunch of horses to speed up a hike out of the Sierra. I make a raft for downstream travel on all of my trips now, but the horses just weren't happenin' for me!

If I ever see a horse without saddle out there I am not lost. I would probably be on someone's property. In that episode, just because he thought he heard a bear he jumped 30-60 feet into a river. Then he kept saying he did not want to go east because that would mean he would encounter the desert. As if reaching the 395 before that would be a bad thing. I'm sure for people that know the areas he goes to the show is more of comedy than anything.

How'd you like his out of control glissade in the Alaka episode?

I know a guy who knows Bear Grylls. You can mock him all you want but he is in fact hardcore. He has fought in Afghanistan killing Taliban and he has also climbed Mt Everest.
His show is clearly a DEMONSTRATION of how one might survive in the wild and anyone who thinks he is trying to pass the show off as anything other than that is dumb.
The show gives some bad advice however and I think they need to be more responsible.
Girls love the guy and I personally think he is more hardcore than YOU !!!

The best always get ragged on...

Yeah, that does tend to be the case sometimes. I took a shot at Bear on this thread, partly for fun and partly because I didn't like being deceived and partly because watching his show wasn't as interesting for me anymore because I don't know what to believe. Especially if you might need a survival tip he gives and when you need it, it turns out to be bogus or too difficult to implement even for him without cheating.
When I saw this on TV I thought of the people who lost their lives glissading like that on Whitney. Both he and some of the Whitney victims used ski or hiking poles to control their speed which didn't work, even when Bear tried to make it work better by breaking it in half and using the thicker shorter part of the pole. Maybe someone who saw his show may die trying that some day.

But the guy definitely has skills and abilities that you have to give him credit for. Truly superb. Too bad about the fakery in the past which is self-demeaning. Maybe he came under the bad influence of an unethical producer because he's young. Who knows.

I saw his Everest adventure last night where he flew a powered paraglider near Mt. Everest which I thought showed a lot of skill and daring. Unfortunately, there might have been a blemish which I hope wasn't a residue of his/their former deceptive style.

The goal was to fly near the Everest summit at an altitude higher than Everest. (Directly above the summit was considered too dangerous because of wind or turbulence IIRC.) At the end they said that his altimeter froze at 27,000' so they couldn't tell for sure that he got high enough but they figured that he made it because of his rate of ascent before the altimeter froze.

What I don't understand is why they couldn't get his altitude from the GPS that he also carried. It would be a stupid misrepresentation that he went higher than he actually did if that was the case, but I suspect there is a reasonable explanation. Or maybe I made a mistake trying to understand what happened and I might have been prejudiced by his previous credibility problems. Maybe GPS's can't give you decent altitude readings? I'm not experienced much with them. In any case it was quite an adventure to watch and it was an accomplishment to get to at least 27,000' ... assuming he actually got that high.

This fellow has an impressive resume....the most impressive of which, is how much of what he does benefits charity.

However, what is tragic, is that there is a "taint" now, over the various things that he does, due to a *pattern* of exaggeration or deception. From his Wikipedia entry:
=====================


"Following allegations that the show deceived viewers into believing that he was really stranded in the wild when he wasn't, Channel 4 suspended broadcast of the show. Discovery aired re-edited episodes designed to remove faked elements, with a fresh voiceover, and has continued on with season three of the program. [7]

An adviser to the Man vs. Wild/Born Survivor series had claimed that rather than 'roughing it', Grylls had in fact been staying at a Californian hotel between filming. Similarly, it was alleged that Grylls had stayed at a motel in Hawaii while giving viewers the impression that he was stranded on a desert island. These allegations, and others, were confirmed by Channel 4, who argued that it wasn't a documentary, but a 'how-to' guide to survival, implying that 'faked' or re-shot scenes were acceptable in that context.[8]"

or,
"Then in 1998, Grylls claimed to have broken another record of becoming the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest, a claim also referenced on his personal website. However, James Allen, who Bear describes as "Australian" and ascended in 1995 with an Australian team, using an Australian passport, but has dual citizenship, was born in Britain, lived in Britain, and was referred to by the British press as British, beat him to the summit it at age 22.[9][10] Additionally, British climber Rhys Jones reached the summit on his 20th birthday in May 2006.[11]"

or,
"In 2007 Grylls claimed to have broken a new world record by flying a petrol-powered paraglider over the Himalayas, higher than Mount Everest (original claim, "over Mount Everest"[12], and after being challenged, "above Everest" on his website[13]).
While Bear initially claimed that the flight was over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly over the Pheriche Plateau, and later news reports indicated that he didn't approach Everest itself out of fear of violating Chinese airspace."

"From there, the mission website reports him “riding the wind into the record books”. However, Meredith-Hardy, who adjudicates records for the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the body that governs aviation records, said it was highly unlikely their altitude record claim would be ratified.[9]

“There are various formalities and rules. You need a proper flight recorder trace, an FAI license, you’ve got to take off from flat ground – you can’t just take off from the side of a hill. You need to have a flight observer. If you don’t, it’s not a record.”

He added, “It’s the responsibility of anybody who does anything ground-breaking to prove what they have done.”

He said that even if the instrument displays froze mid-flight, as Grylls wrote afterwards, it doesn’t mean they stopped recording. “It may well be they’ve got a trace.”


And I stipulate that the guy is tougher than I am. It is just a shame that he has been in this pattern of deception, apparently to make the story sound better. I don't think that what he has done has required any amplification. I'm sure that some would say the end justifies the means.

I've only seen one episode, the one he did in the Sierra, and he lost me nearly immediately with his statement that he couldn't hike East. Then, building a raft for a stream filled with snowmelt - risking hypothermia - and finally his 'wildhorse' encounter, all of which left me shaking my head.

Personally, I don't care what his qualifications are when his credibility is zero. It's not even good entertainment.