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Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
Nahanni National Park (July 13/01) - The Nahanni River and a famous rock-climbing area nearby are about to be introduced to a million Welsh people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
 Cameraman Alun Hughes and adventurer Caradoc Jones getting ready for their mountain climbing and river trip. - Dave Sullivan/NNSL photo |
Caradoc Jones, who scaled Mount Everest in 1995, is leading a group of four other Welsh people on a month-long trip that starts at the base of Lotus Flower Tower, a 2,200-foot-high granite pillar known as one of the most dangerous climbs in the Cirque of the Unclimbables.
"Wales is an important area for rock climbing. It's a melting pot of climbing action," said Jones.
After spending two weeks scaling the Lotus, the group will proceed down the Nahanni on rafts being flown in.
"Normally climbing the Lotus takes two days but we're filming so we need five clear days," Jones said.
Jones still hasn't made it big enough in television to quit his job as a fisheries scientist.
The show's emphasis will be on the hardship and "seeing if they can do it," said producer Gwion Hughes. The filmmakers say they are not cashing in on the popularity of prime time survival-type shows because they've been making similar films for a decade.
Jones and partner Tona Thomas have videotaped climbing and river challenges around the globe, including India, Chile, Mali and Greenland.
Their Canadian adventure will be the 18th episode they've produced for the Welsh network.
The trip will be aired in two half-hour episodes on Wales' S4C channel, the country's government-funded equivalent of the CBC. Most of its shows are broadcast in Welsh. The trip is being recorded on a compact digital video camera.
This is the film company's first trip to Canada, except for camerman Alun Hughes, who visited the Nahanni area in the 1970s.
Nahanni Park's senior warden Barry Troke says there have been about 10 or 15 film crews on the river, around one a year on average.
