San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SAN DIEGO TRIO JOINS TV SHOW ‘RACE TO CENTER OF THE EARTH’
Over the past few years, San Diego rock-climbing buddies Autumn Fryer, Jon Irwin and Sierra Knott have long challenged each other to push themselves to their physical limits. Now the rest of America will get a chance to see them in action.
At 10 p.m. Monday, National Geographic Channel will launch a new global competition series called “Race to the Center of the Earth.” Fryer, Irwin and Knott are one of four teams who will use all manners of travel and athletic feats to cover 3,500 miles in a quest for a $1 million prize.
The new show was created by the producers of the long-running CBS series “The Amazing Race.” Through a new partnership with National Geographic,
the producers created a show that takes the four teams and viewers to some of the most remote and unusual places on Earth.
Fryer, who lives in the Carmel Mountain Ranch area of North County, said filming the series fulfilled all of her “bucket list” dreams of adventure, but it was also physically and emotionally exhausting. And while the trio sometimes battled in the heat of the competition, their trust and friendship deepened.
“There were days when your body is asking things of you and you’re wondering if you can do them. There were days when you felt great and excited and extremely motivated,” said Fryer, who is in her early 30s. “There’s a lot of ups and downs. I cried every day, and not just from being overwhelmed but also I’d see something that was breathtaking and I started crying because I felt so lucky.”
The San Diego trio met at Mesa Rim Climbing Center, a rock wall climbing gym in Mission Valley. Irwin, who lives in Mira Mesa, and Knott, a Pacific Beach resident, became friends about five years ago and Fryer met them both three years ago. A few years ago, Knott shattered her leg from the knee down and was told it would take a year for her to walk again. But with the support of Irwin and Fryer, she was back on her feet and rockclimbing again. Between them, the trio have climbed in Joshua Tree, El Capitan in Yosemite, Australia and Mexico, and they all train daily with climbing, swimming, yoga and endurance conditioning.
Fryer said they first saw a casting notice for the new Natgeo series in May 2019. All three friends had computer-based jobs they could do remotely and they were eager to test themselves, so they applied. Along with three other American trios, they were chosen and filming took place in October of that year. Fryer said her team’s personalities and skills complemented each other for an endurance event like this.
“We all have different personalities, but we come together and we click,” Fryer said. “Me and Sierra can get fiery with each other and Jon is just a teddy bear who’s soft and neutral. Going into the filming, we picked roles for ourselves. Sierra was going to be the pusher who would motivate us if we got down, I was the navigator and Jon was the mediator and the driver of all things. Of course, all that shifted around in the mix when we were filming.”
Fryer, Irwin and Knott are Team South America, so named because their continent-crossing journey began in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. Team Russia, made up of three police officers from Alaska, started its trek in Irkutsk, Russia. Team Southeast Asia, three teachers from Seattle, started at the Ma Pi Leng Pass in Vietnam. And Team North America, three co-workers from Denver, crossed Canada, beginning in Tadoussac, Quebec.
All four teams had to navigate roughly 3,500 miles in 13 days, traveling through multiple elevations, environments and across water on foot and by kayak, canoe, horseback, bicycle, raft and more. Each team traveled with a GPS transmitter and had to check in at multiple pre-planned GPS way stations each day. If they arrived before the prescribed maximum time, they earned points, and if they arrived afterward, they lost points. Those points gave teams an advantage or disadvantage on the final leg of the race to a buoy floating in an undisclosed location where the $1 million prize awaited.
The show was created for National Geographic by married co-producers Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri , who this year will celebrate the 20th anniversary of their co-creation, “The Amazing Race.” In 2018, National Geographic approached the couple with the idea of creating a similar, though even more expansive competition series that celebrates the beauty of the Earth.
“It’s meant to entertain, but for National Geographic its true purpose is to represent global exploration,” Doganieri said. “The show is about the world and travel and showing the most beautiful and spectacular places on the globe and keeping us aware of how precious these places are so we must protect them.”
Van Munster’s decadeslong career of producing films and television around the world includes a long-ago documentary for National Geographic. He said that his company shares Natgeo’s philosophy about environmental stewardship. The camera and support crews and the competition teams for the new series had to maintain a nearzero carbon footprint wherever they traveled. The teams planted trees in forests, used no plastic bottles or bags, and they were required to clean up behind themselves.
Doganieri said the way she and her husband approached the Natgeo series is the same way the do with “Amazing Race” each year. They put a giant map of the world on a wall in their home and they use it to chart their routes and plans.
To ensure that all four teams traveled the same distance and faced the same level of difficulty in their journeys, van Munster worked with a team of explorers to travel each of the teams’ routes three times to figure out the longest time each day’s journey would take, and the shortest. Then the difference was averaged. The San Diego team encountered an unexpected blizzard on the first day of its journey, but the team that started in Vietnam had to run up mountain trails in 100-plus degree heat and high humidity, which Doganieri said was equally punishing.
The co-producers said they’re happy with how the series turned out and National Geographic is, too. This begs the question of whether there will be a second season of “Race to the Center of the Earth” in the future. Doganieri said that she and her husband already have a new map on the wall and a route already planned out, just in case.
To learn more about National Geographic’s “Race to the Center of the Earth,” visit nationalgeographic.com/tv/.
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com