A Dry Valley Mystery | Continent 7: Antarctica

Scott Bay's choppers will be here to pick up the team in 15 hours. It's an early start this morning, and we've got to break the camp down, but not everyone is ready.

Yes, I mean science in the Dry Valleys. He's gone really well; we've knocked out pretty much all of our sample sites except for two of us. That's Kurt and I are gonna go up the mountain over there and hit off the last sample site whilst the rest of the team down here takes care of pulling together the camp. It's gonna be a really long day.

Yeah, science may only take 30 minutes, an hour maybe, but four hours of walking to get to that site. Right, let's do this. The Dry Valleys are done like any place else on Earth. Every step you take is actually an exceptionally unique one. You're walking in an area that has never been experienced by another human being.

You kind of get completely captivated, but at the same time, your body feels incredibly tired. The impact from walking hits you. Yeah, that's pretty tough. Stop for a second. The mummified feel is actually in pretty good condition.

Yeah, let's wrap it. This valley is 30 miles from the ocean, and it's so cold and dry that dead organic tissue can be preserved for decades or longer. You know, this guy's probably been sitting here for a couple of hundred years.

You know, they've come a long way to get here. These guys are not very good at navigating when there's a storm. When they get lost, they just continue to walk until they die. The dryness of the system will slowly dehydrate them, and then they'll just shrink and become mummies.

The question is really how they got here because it's really difficult to get from the ocean into this valley. It's one of these Dry Valley mysteries. Move on to our next state; still got quite a lot to go.