This was an education, an eye-opener and a corker of a series to work on.  

Into Alaska is a new strand showcased on The Travel Channel and designed to look at the wild life and scenery of the most beautiful place on the planet.  

Jeff Corwin, the US’s biggest natural history star, known for his Animal Planet and Discovery wildlife/travel shows, was signed to host.  

This was a major coup for the production and from my point of view it was very interesting to have the opportunity of working with a face who had led me round the planet many times on the box.  

It was a similar feeling to the prospect of working with Clarkson for the first time. Everyone who works in telly tries to adopt a certain amount of cool and “seen it all” about their persona in case they aren’t – cool that is.  

But Clarkson’s attitude had always fascinated me as had Jeff, and I was pumped about the prospect of working with him.  

Would he have the cunning Clarkson has? And the spontaneity?  

When I worked on Top Gear I would sometimes be filming a piece to camera with Jeremy as he popped up from behind a car or something and he would utterly change what he was saying between takes without warning and without missing a beat and make it better into the bargain.  

Jeff has the same brilliant quality. We’d be standing in a snowy clearing about to record a piece to camera and would be struggling for the right words to encapsulate what we were trying to say.  

I’d be throwing out all sorts of dumb suggestions to spark something in Jeff and he’d nail it right off. He’ll come out with a gem of a line, plucked out of the air, and it’ll be perfect. No need to go for a second take because the same level of spontaneity and rightness would never be there.  

This can never happen all the time but when it does it’s exhilarating somehow. Sort of like bottling the genie!

I hadn’t done much wildlife filming when we started this series last year so I was looking forward to diving in with arguably one of the world’s best, and most knowledgeable, wildlife hosts.

Jeff is a walking lexicon. His thesis was on the Mayan Culture and he can talk for hours about their rise and fall.  And this is one of the things I love most about doing what I do. It brings you into contact with people like Jeff, Kerry Sieh and Roger Bilham who not only have the education, they’ve applied what they know out in the big, wide world.  

Because as well as the subject in hand you might be setting out to film and document, there is all the marvelous peripheral experience along the way.  

On day two of our first leg of filming in Alaska for the series, which by the way has more coastline than the rest of the US combined, has a population the size of Austin, Texas and the most volcanic activity in the world, we were filming Humpback whales.  

We saw six line abreast so close to our vessel, I could have walked across their backs like stepping stones. And these were 40 ton mammals which swim from Alaska to Hawaii and back every year.  

Our captain said it was the most intense showing of Humpies in 20 years. And that was day two.  

We filmed glaciers amongst the most stunning mountain ranges I have ever seen from a heli and placed Jeff alone on a 9,000 foot peak then circled him while we filmed him from the side door.  

It’s singly the most spectacular shot I’ve ever been involved in. There wasn’t a breath of wind which made the shot possible, the peak where we touched down to drop Jeff was the same length as the heli and it was downwards of minus 30 deg C.  

We ran with dog sleds, caught 20 pound salmon, saw 12 foot bears – that’s enormous close up – and followed a pod of Killer Whales while they were reunited with a massive male.  

We visited Sea Lion colonies in seas which were so rough our faces were turning red and green like traffic lights with sea sickness and we flew to tiny islands half way to Russia where Fur Seals come to breed.  Jeff does an uncannily-authentic Fur Seal imitation.  

Actually, it was so good he narrowly escaped being attacked by the largest bull in the colony and had to run for it. All of which happily we filmed.  

It is great to work in a sector of tv where you often only get one chance at a shot and you just have to get it.  

When we were filming the dog sled with Iditarod race winner Martin Buser, the dogs slipped away when we were stationary and about to shoot Martin on the sled, followed by Jeff on a Snowmobile.  

What we got was an empty sled pulled by some happy, charged up escaping dogs – 12 of them – followed by Jeff on the Snowmobile with Martin clinging to the back. And Jeff had the presence of mind to reel off a quick one liner to camera on his radio mike as they went through frame: ”He lost his dogs!”.  

You would struggle to fabricate a shot like that. Not that we ever do of course.  

By the way, we had a Snowmobile champ driving us on the “camera gurney” and he jumped aboard the escaping sled and brought the dogs under control – without getting in shot which I was grateful for.  

20 miles facing backwards perched on the Snowmobile with cameraman Glenn Evans and sound recordist Jonah Torreano behind me on the gurney passed in a blink. It was only when I tried to stand up at the end and get off I realized I was frozen in position.  

Through my profession I’ve learnt so much about geology, geomorphology, physics and biology and have been lucky enough to see theory put into practice many times over.  

Occasionally I feel I should be sitting behind a desk making deals and the millions a few of my friends are starting to accumulate now they have grown-up professions. 

But only for a few moments.