Tougher in Alaska
Frozen Freeway
TV-PG
S1 • E10 Jul 16, 2008 60mWhere else, but in Alaska, do high school sports teams travel to their away games on snow machines along a frozen river? Geo travels to the wide-open tundra of western Alaska to experience how life keeps moving along the Kuskokwim River. Translated from the Yupik word for "slow moving thing" - the Kuskokwim is a 724-mile lifeline for the Native Alaskan communities scattered along its length. The river provides a ready-made highway for moving people and goods, year-round. In this episode, Geo races the coming winter "freeze up" to deliver home heating fuel with a tug and barge crew. And once winter descends, he witnesses the transformation of the river into a frozen freeway as he plays mailman on a giant hovercraft for a day, plows out an emergency ice road so that a needy village can get heating oil before they run out and goes on a search and rescue mission for any stragglers on the icy, fierce frozen river.
