EPISODE 4
Episode 4
Published: Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 5:03PM
Catch up with the action from episode four- and watch video clips from the show, including a very scary bungee jump...
Jack is lying in a freezing tent, deep in the mountains 300 miles into the Arctic circle in Northern Finland, too ill to move. Outside, the merciless wind is dropping the temperature to minus 28. The nearest major hospital is 250 miles away, and he's 50 miles across savage, storm exposed terrain from the nearest road. If ever there is a moment so far in Jack’s adventures on Adrenaline Junkie when they look like they could come to an end, then this is it.
After a night of vomiting next to his sleeping bag Jack is moved to a cramped emergency shelter, where the local Sami guides get a heater on. The doctor suspects malaria – a dangerous and potentially fatal tropical disease which Jack may have picked up on his Borneo expedition – and they need to get him out, fast.
The local guides strap Jack into the back of a sledge, and take him to the nearest clinic. The recruits wake and are shocked that they are without their leader, but are determined to press on with the Arctic programme that Jack had lined up. They head off on foot into the wilderness to go ice fishing – drilling holes through the frozen lake and dropping a fishing line to hook the chilly potential dinner below – and on their return to camp, finish the snow holes they started digging as shelters the day before – DIY ice caves to sleep and live in.
Meanwhile Jack's taken 200 miles to the nearest big hospital, but he's so ill he has to return to London. That night the recruits sleep in caves dug into the snow, missing their leader. Conditions are still so cold even inside the caves that Kai tries to set fire to his boots to get his frozen laces undone, so he can crawl into his sleeping bag.
Next day the recruits return to base and home comforts, and have a swim in a frozen lake – through a hole cut in the ice. They then take part in reindeer races.
Returning back to their base, the recruits all speak to Jack on the phone, who tells them he’ll be out of action for some time. While he recovers, Jack sends the recruits back to the kick boxing school in Thailand that licked him into shape in the first series of Adrenaline Junkie. It's a punishing regime of fitness training and learning how to fight, Thai style. Here, Londoner Kai, who has struggled with many of the challenges, comes into his own.
The recruits move onto Macau, China, and the boss is back in town. Jack is fully recovered, and has the perfect tonic to get the Adrenaline Junkie adventure back on track – the world’s biggest bungee off the pencil thin Macau Tower - 733 ft of clean free fall through space.
On the two previous bungees in New Zealand, both Anthony and Kai backed out, and gap year Georgie was ruled out with an injury. Jack makes it absolutely clear that while no one is physically forced to do it, the recruits have reached a stage in their journey that he expects them to.
The bungee leaves the recruits elated, and they gather to hear Jack tell them about their next activity – they’ll be heading into the heart of China for Kung Fu training with the Shaolin monks. Jack’s adrenaline adventure, so nearly derailed, has turned a corner for everyone concerned.
