When watching adventure films and documentaries about extreme sports—the kinds of things where people are hanging off the side of cliffs or jumping out of helicopters to ski down uncharted mountains—it’s hard to shake the intense anxiety of wondering: What would happen if something went wrong?
In the new National Geographic series Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin, we find out.
The series is from the directing team of Chin and his wife, E. Chai Vasarhelyi, who won the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award for their film Free Solo. The movie is the prime example of the “This Is Very Stressful; What If He Falls?” documentary film genre. In it, Alex Honnold attempts to be the first person to climb El Capitan without any safety harnesses or equipment. Edge of the Unknown is an entire series documenting extreme examples of athletes and adventurers in the vein of Honnold: pushing the limit of what should be humanly possible to achieve—or, moreover, survive.
One episode reveals more of Honnold’s solo-climb journey. In another, skier Angel Collinson recounts a 1,000-foot fall off the side of the mountain that changed her perspective on the sport completely. Gerd Serrasolses recalls the time he nearly drowned running a 50-foot waterfall while whitewater kayaking. Climber Conrad Anker relives the time he had a heart attack while hanging from the side of a peak in the Himalayas at an altitude of 20,000 feet.
In this exclusive clip for The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, it’s Chin himself who is, this time, in front of the camera. He talks about the time he was nearly buried alive by a class-four avalanche while skiing, and we see footage of the cascading snow crushing trees and causing chaos as he’s trapped in the downward slide.
“Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin” premieres Monday, Sept. 5 on National Geographic, with all episodes available on Disney+ beginning Sept. 7.
