Reality TV lies

I guess I should be dead. An earnest and concerned voice said as much on TV. Fall in a glacial Alaska river, the voice said, and, by golly, it's all over in a minute and a half.

Well, that isn't exactly what it said. This is exactly what it said:

"(The) trip begins on a dangerous note -- first they must cross an icy river. If Tim falls in, he would only have 90 seconds to get out before hypothermia sets in."

Ninety seconds. Ninety seconds to get out of the water before Tim is in the deep doo-doo.

I've spent a lot longer than 90 seconds in icy rivers. I've gone swimming in them, albeit unintentionally. I've been knocked down and rolled in them. And that wasn't the only icy water. I once spent a lot more than 90 seconds, probably five or 10 times that long, bobbing among icebergs in Glacier Bay while trying to swim under a sailboat to free the prop of an anchor line.

Do you know how hard it is to hold your breath in 33-degree water? Do you know how hard it is simply to breathe when you first splash into water that cold? I could never hold my breath long enough to get much work done under the boat. It would have been nice to have a SCUBA tank and regulator, and then again maybe not.

The coldest I've ever been in my life was after completing an open-water dive to finish up PADI Scuba certification. Because I forgot my wetsuit that day back in the 1970s, I did the dive in Lake Superior in May in a swimsuit. I don't know exactly how cold the water, but the western end of Superior usually averages 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (35.5 to 39 F) in May and June.

Thirty years on, living in an America that has become increasingly safety conscious and lawsuit wary, it's hard to believe dive instructors even let me dive in a swimsuit in those conditions. I spent at least 20 minutes in that water, and a good 10 or more fully underwater. Afterward I shivered for hours. Not even sitting in an overheated pizza joint stuffing my face with pepperoni pizza would stop the shivering, but I'm still here.

How can that be? Is it possible a TV show could have made a mistake? Heaven forbid that "reality TV" would mislead viewers for dramatic effect.

Then again, the show in which Tim appears -- "The Alaska Experiment" -- does portray a guided big-game hunt as a matter of life and death. An IT tech from Los Angeles, Tim goes on a guided hunt because that is the only way Tim, a "volunteer'' as the show calls its actors, is allowed to hunt mountain goat in the 49th state.
Alaska has a law requiring non-residents like Tim to hire a guide. Alaska lawmakers in their wisdom decided such a law was necessary to protect non-resident hunters from the big, bad Alaska wilderness. In other words, non-resident hunters are required to hire guides specifically so that hunts in Alaska don't become matters of life and death.

Never mind. In "The Alaska Experiment," Tim is sent off into the mountains with the guide, or the "son of the show's resident survival expert" as the guide is called, to kill a goat so that he and two companions dropped at a log cabin in the Chitina River drainage don't starve to death, which, of course, isn't going to happen.

Tim and the gang aren't going to perish because camped nearby at all times are the cameramen filming the show plus, as "The Alaska Experiment" reveals on its website, "the wilderness experts ... there to provide emergency assistance if necessary (CPR, treatment of sprains, serious cuts, etc.) and to protect against predators."

It would be a bad thing if a bear ate one of the volunteers the way a bear ate actor wannabe Timothy Treadwell from Malibu. Treadwell engaged in what was a real "Alaska Experiment." He spent 13 summers living, often uncomfortably, among the grizzly bears near Hallo Bay in Katmai National Park. The experiment came to an unfortunate end when he stayed too long, and an apparently hungry old bear ate him and his girlfriend.