"Planet Earth" presents Mountains

CEBU, Philippines - This Saturday, July 14, GMA News TV continues the biggest natural history series produced by the BBC, Planet Earth, with the episode that takes viewers to an extreme landscape of rock, ice and snow… a vertical world as alien to humans as the surface of another planet.

Humans like to think that once they’ve climbed a peak, they have somehow conquered it. But they can only ever be visitors to this hostile world. Planet Earth’s “Mountains” introduces the ‘real’ mountaineers and discovers the secrets of their survival on the mightiest peaks of our planet.

Narrated in Filipino by GMA News TV anchor and environmentalist Raffy Tima, “Mountains” takes you on a tour of the mightiest mountain ranges, starting with the birth of a mountain at one of the lowest places on earth and ending on the summit of Everest. Mountains are home to some of the planet’s shyest and most secretive animals that have risen to the challenge of mountain life.

In Ethiopia, Planet Earth ventures into the heart of a volcano to discover one of earth’s rarest phenomena, a lava lake that has been erupting for over 100 years. The same forces built the Simien Mountains, home to troops of gelada baboons, nearly a thousand strong.

In the Andes, a family of five puma struggle to survive the most unstable mountain weather on the planet. Surviving the full force of an avalanche in the Rockies are grizzlies that spend their winters denning inside the dangerous slopes. In summer, the bears climb the peaks in search of moths, which they devour by the thousand.

From the icy core of a glacier in the Alps to the largest glacier in the world, this realm of giant peaks is home to the highest land predator on the planet – the snow leopard. Astounding images of the snow leopard hunting on the Pakistan peaks are a world first.

The wildlife spectacles continue with the first footage of a wild giant panda nursing her week-old baby in a mountain cave in China, and an aerial journey alongside demoiselle cranes as they attempt to cross the largest range of mountains on our planet, the Himalayas.

Planet Earth’s “Mountains” airs this Saturday, July 14 at 9:55 PM, only on GMA News TV Channel 11. (FREEMAN)