(dramatic orchestral music begins) - [Narrator] Earth is often regarded as inanimate, the solid scaffolding upon which other elements freeze, flow, or grow.

But our planet earth is in flux.

Tectonic plates on the Earth's crust are constantly on the move.

Birthing mountains, reshaping entire continents.

Fault lines form new rivers, rifts tear open new valleys, and shifting sands solidify into monoliths.

To exist on Mother Earth is to prepare for constant change.

(dramatic orchestral music continues) When asked to name the most iconic place on earth, we collectively look upwards to its highest peak.

And our sights always alight on Mount Everest.

Set on the border between Nepal and Tibet, Mount Everest reaches almost 8,849 metres above sea level.

Its summit is the highest point on earth.

So high, in fact, it reaches the edge of our planet's atmosphere and pierces the jet stream.

On Everest, wind speed frequently exceeds 160 kilometres per hour.

Oxygen is one third that of sea level and summer's average temperature is minus 19 degrees Celsius and minus 36 degrees Celsius in winter.

No wonder this summit is now referred to as the death zone.

(playful music begins) Everest is the jewel in the crown of the Himalayas mountain range, which stretches 2,400 kilometres and traverses five countries.

Only 14 of the world's mountains exceed 8,000 metres and 10 of them are found in the Himalayas.

This range is the source of great rivers, like the Ganges and Mekong.

And the inspirational force behind the religion, mythology and literature of generations of Southeast Asian peoples.

(flags rippling) (soft music begins) In geological terms, Everest is young and still growing.

Its formation began just 50 million years ago when two of the planets tectonic plates, the Eurasian and the Indian, collided head-on forcing heavy rock downwards into the Earth's mantle and lighter rock upwards to form towering peaks.

(upbeat electronic music) The Indian plate upon which Everest sits is still on the move northward.

It's thought it'll continue travelling hundreds of kilometres over the next 10 million years, pushing Everest upwards even further by approximately one millimetre a year.

(soft music) On the slopes of Mount Everest, life abounds.

Thick forests of rhododendron, blue Himalayan pine, and silver ferns adorn its lower reaches topped by rich Alpine fields, crowned by glaciers.

Snow leopards, lesser pandas, Tibetan bears, musk deer, and countless birds live here.

(inspirational music) Human cultures thrive here, too.

The Tibetan-speaking Sherpa who have lived in its foothills for centuries call the mountain Chomolungma, meaning mother goddess of the world, or holy mother.

Dogs and demons were believed to live in the higher peaks and the Yeti was said to roam the lower slopes.

Guided by superstition and fear, the Sherpa never scaled the mountain.

But on May 29th, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, set foot on its summit for the very first time in history.

Since then a constant flow of humans make the quest.

Some are protected by the gods, others encounter the demons of avalanche, altitude sickness, and exposure.

But whatever the dangers, few can resist the lure of this extraordinary and enduring natural icon.

(inspirational music continues) Everest's peak is the so-called rooftop of our world.

But not all mountains sit in its shadow.

In fact, one of them harbours a secret that threatens Everest's iconic status.

Just under 400 kilometres north of Anchorage, Alaska's most populated city, is the imposing form of Mount Denali.

Denali is a rock star in its own right.

It's the highest peak in North America and the third tallest mountain on earth.

(electronic music begins) But use the tape measure differently, and Denali is even more impressive.

Base to summit, Mount Denali is actually taller than Everest, but Everest reaches higher above sea level, so gets all the glory.

Perpetual snow, which covers half of its bulk, reflects sunlight that's almost blinding.

At its summit, scraping the sky at 6,190 metres is postcard perfect on a clear day.

(inspirational orchestra music begins) British naval captain, George Vancouver, the first European to record sighting the mountain in 1794, described Denali as distant and stupendous.

He obviously wasn't close enough to see Denali's true nature, which is for most days of the year, violent.

It's close proximity to the Arctic Circle makes it a place of eternal winter.

Storms barreling in from the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea strike the mountain changing sunshine to blizzard in minutes.

It's known as the coldest mountain on earth with a record temperature of minus 73 degrees Celsius.

This would freeze a human body on impact.

(electronic music begins) Denali's geological history is mired in violence, too.

The mountain was created relatively fast when the Pacific and North American tectonic plates collided.

The Pacific plate was forced underneath the two, resulting in enormous pressure and uplift.

Two major fault lines gave way and Denali popped up like a cork.

(bright music begins) Standing tall and strong, Denali is the centrepiece of the Denali National Park and Preserve, which covers 6 million acres.

The park was established to protect Denali's wildlife and wildlife abounds here including many North American species iconic in their own right.

Brown grizzly bears and black bears inhabit Denali National Park.

They hibernate from October to April and emerge in spring often with cubs afoot.

Their emergence is timed beautifully with the warming and melting of Mount Denali's glaciers.

Streams across the park are rejuvenated and offer the bears a seasonal banquet of salmon.

King, sockeye, and coho salmon run the gauntlet.

The bears take their time and take their pick.

Denali is nature in equilibrium, an iconic mountain ecology filling the belly of an iconic beast.

As the contest between Everest and Denali reminds us, a mountain's true height is often hard to determine and humans agreeing on a tape measurement doesn't stop Mother Nature from meddling.

For mountains might look rock solid, but none are set in stone.

Incredibly, most are still on the move.

(cheerful orchestra music begins) The greatest example is New Zealand's Southern Alps.

Stretching 500 kilometres along the entire length of the South Island, this is New Zealand's highest mountain chain.

They're big and impressive and get a tonne of attention, but they're not done yet.

(bright, upbeat music begins) The geological origins began when New Zealand first split from the supercontinent, Gondwana, 85 million years ago.

It's hard to imagine now, but for the first 80 million years, this land was flat.

The Southern Alps began uplifting 15 million years ago, with an accelerated burst just 5 million years ago, which is very young in geological time.

Their formation occurred quickly when the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates collided.

The friction of these plates continues and so does the uplift.

The Southern Alps grow by a staggering 10 to 20 millimetres per year, making them the fastest rising mountains in the world.

Erosion by wind, water, and ice counters some of this mountain making.

Without this erosion, the Alps would be around six times their present height, which would make the highest peak, Mount Cook, almost three times higher than Everest.

(marimba music begins) For mountains, size does matter if you want to be an icon.

Befitting its name, the Remarkables is one of the most famous areas of this iconic mountain range.

Some say it was called the Remarkables because it's one of only two mountain ranges in the world which run directly north to south.

Others say it was given the name by early settlers as they tried to describe the sight of its sheer, sharp rise from the shores of Lake Wakatipu.

It creates a dramatic backdrop for nearby Queenstown, A town known worldwide as the pricey, funky epicentre of Southern Alps tourism.

(birds squawking) Most people come here to get closer to the mountains and there's a myriad of ways to do it.

For adrenaline junkies, this is probably the best way to encounter a canyon.

And to experience the height of a mountain, there's this leap of faith.

(yelling) Another way to appreciate the Alps is to sit back and relax.

Gondolas offer year-round access to the high country and a unique bird's-eye view.

This is true Alpine country.

And an unexpected flower garden.

Of new Zealand's 2,500 native plants, 500 species live exclusively in the high mountains.

In this monochrome landscape, they offer a welcomed splash of colour.

Summer in the Southern Alps is magic, but nothing compares to its winter wonderland.

In winter, over a third of New Zealand's South Island is snow-covered and most is concentrated in the Alps.

In some places, there's snow from the peaks right down to sea level.

As soon as winter begins, the snow bunnies bounce in.

The Southern Alps are one of the major skiing destinations of the Southern hemisphere.

With 185 kilometres of slopes and 44 ski lifts crisscrossing the range, there's no end to the action.

(dramatic music) Like the skiers carving its surface, this icon of earth is young and dynamic.

Every day, lifting higher, keeping us on our toes.

There's a saying, did you feel the earth move?

In the Southern Alps, you can.

(dramatic orchestral music) Like the mountains of the Southern Alps, the Himalayas, and North America tectonic uplift played a significant part in the formation of the African continent.

So it's tempting to once again look upwards to find its icons.

Cape Town in South Africa is the second most populated city in the country after Johannesburg.

But Cape Town is instantly more recognisable because of what looms above it, Table Mountain.

(slow electronic music) In local language, Table Mountain's name translates to see emerging.

(birds chirping) Poised on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, the mountain flows down into Table Bay and harbour, creating a natural amphitheatre for Cape Town, home to nearly 4 million people.

In December 2012, Table Mountain was declared as one of the seven wonders of the world and is the only one in an urban area.

But it's the geological story behind Table Mountain that makes this mountain so wondrous.

(fast, upbeat music begins) The mountain's flat top, a three kilometer-long plateau, was once the bottom of a valley consisting of quartz-rich sandstone laid down between five and 600 million years ago.

At that time, the entire region was covered in an extensive delta carved by ever-changing streams and tidal flats.

Over millions of years, swirling silt compressed into sandstone.

Volcanoes added magma, which hardened into granite.

Continental uplift pushed the whole Cape upwards.

Then ice ages, rise and fall of sea level, and weathering played their hand, sculpting Table Mountain.

(fast marimba music) While the bay below has become a home for humans, the mountain is home to stunning flora and fauna.

Table Mountain is home to the rock hyrax.

(fast electronic music begins) Incredibly, these rabbit-like mammals weighing barely four kilogrammes are closely related to elephants.

The giveaway is their hoofed toenails.

They love the high altitude of the mountain and live in the crevices.

Keeping a constant lookout for predators, they are as fixated with the view as the tourists.

(dramatic music begins) Table Mountain is also a biodiversity hotspot, one of the world's richest floral kingdoms.

Table Mountain's Cape Floral World Heritage site comprises less than 1% of the African continent, but sustains over 20% of its flora.

It's a rare place where ecology, geology, and humanity are celebrated equally as they shape-shift their way through history.

But Table Mountain is not unique in this respect.

The sandstone compression, uplift, and sculpting that resulted in Table Mountain has a parallel in another geological icon in another continent.

This is the Simpson Desert in the heart of the vast Australian continent.

The Simpson's unpaved and heat-hazed roads traverse a burning landscape of red sand and spinifex.

(inspirational music) But the journey is worth it because travellers eventually arrive at the standout icon in the land down under, Uluru.

(dramatic orchestral music begins) Formerly known as Ayers Rock, Uluru is located in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

It's incredibly remote.

Sydney is almost 3,000 kilometres to the southeast.

And the nearest town, Alice Springs, is five hours drive away.

But what makes Uluru so extraordinary is not its isolation, but that it's here in the first place.

(gentle orchestral music begins) Around 500 million years ago, this desert was sea.

And Uluru was a large, compacted sandy deposit.

Then approximately 400 million years ago, the sea subsided and shifting tectonic plates lifted Uluru's bulk high above the desert floor, tilting it 90 degrees.

Striations in the rock remain visual proof of this extraordinary tilting from horizontal to vertical.

Over millions of years, softer rock eroded away, leaving behind the iconic landmark we see today.

Uluru is 863 metres high and nine kilometres in circumference, But like an iceberg, most of Uluru's bulk remains hidden six kilometres beneath the surface.

Adding to Uluru's mystique is its famous colour.

The rock sandstone is called arkose, which has traces of iron.

The arkose colour is grey, but when it's iron content is exposed to the elements, it rusts.

This luminous orange hue is amplified at sunrise and sunset when the low light reflects through the red colour spectrum.

(suspenseful music) Indigenous Australians have lived in this region for over 30,000 years and Uluru is sacred to the local Anangu people and central to their culture.

(tribal singing) The Anangu believe that Uluru was created at the very beginning of time by a number of ancestral beings, including warring serpents.

One of those serpents is said to be the woma python.

It's one of many reptiles which live in the central desert and it's sacred to the Anangu people.

As most of the world knows and fears, the Australian continent is snake heaven.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is home to 13 snake species and about 150 species live across the continent.

All told, Australia hosts 869 reptiles species and has more lizards than any other country.

Slithering around Uluru is one species bearing the most terrifying name of all, the Death Adder.

But despite popular myth, snakes are not really fearsome.

They are, in fact, fearful and avoid human contact.

Even the heavily fortified thorny devil will beat a speedy retreat when spotted with a gait that looks like his feet are burning and they probably are.

(bird screeching) (gentle music begins) The Anangu have done well to survive at Uluru.

This region is Australia's toughest arid zone.

Daytime summer temperatures are, on average, 40 degrees Celsius.

And the average annual rainfall is barely 300 millimetres.

(thunder roaring) The arrival of rain is unpredictable, but when it does arrive, it transforms both the rock and the life around it.

Within hours of rainfall, the arid sand around Uluru erupts in a carpet of colour.

Native grasses, fuchsias, and wild flowers, including the endemic Sturt desert rose are quick to bloom and seed while the moisture lasts.

(inspirational music) Uluru is much more than a geological icon, it is a cultural and national icon, too.

For many Australians, Uluru is a symbol of self-determination for indigenous people and a symbol of reconciliation between them and non-indigenous Australians.

For 300 million years, this extraordinary icon has stood here as a symbol of a deep and extraordinary past.

Now, perhaps it can stand as an icon of a promising future.

Sometimes, like Uluru, an icon of earth is a singular entity.

Other times it's a complete landscape.

The Rocky Mountains, or Rockies as they're nicknamed, is such a landscape.

One which threads together geology, ecology, and human history in spectacular style.

(upbeat music) The Rockies stretch from British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in Southwest USA, spanning a distance of over 4,000 kilometres and encompassing nine states.

Of the 100 highest peaks in the Rockies with summits exceeding 3,600 metres, 77 are located in the state of Colorado.

Mount Elbert is the highest of them all, rising more than 4,401 metres above sea level.

(helicopter whirring) Geologically, the Rockies began tens of millions of years ago when numerous tectonic plates slid beneath the North American plate at a shallow angle, pushing up the mountain range like a giant buckle in a rug, a 6,000 meter-high buckle.

Then over the course of 60 million years, erosion, volcanic activity, and glaciation helped to create the scenes we applaud today.

Within the range is the Rocky Mountains National Park, which although covering 265,000 acres, is still only a mid-sized national park for the USA.

(upbeat electronic music) Yet it it encompasses a huge variety of ecology and wildlife.

For a touch of Disney and a glimpse of Bambi, Montana is unsurpassed.

Elk and other deer materialise out of the mist.

And with the Rockies offering a film set's backdrop, bison proudly pose.

This huge horned beast used to run the continent in vast herds, millions strong.

But commercial hunting in the 19th century drove it to near extinction.

Today, remnant populations are protected within the Rocky Mountains National Park where rich grasslands enable them to grow fat and feisty.

The animal has been important culturally and spiritually to North American tribes for aeons.

Their bond is expressed through dance, song, and ritual that continues to this day, (rhythmic drum music) Indigenous peoples, including the Arapaho, Crow nation, and Sioux have lived in the Rockies since the last ice age.

Their ancestors hunted the now extinct mammoth and ancient bison here and the animals of the Rockies are totems.

Every year, millions of people visit the Rockies seeking out their own spiritual or physical connection.

Following cougar or coyote tracks sends a chill down the spine.

With a splash of plaster, a footprint is immortalised.

A timeless souvenir of a timeless place.

(inspirational music) Earth icons have inspired pilgrimage ever since our ancestors first straightened their spines and walked.

And hidden away in Central Greece is a place of pilgrimage famous for both rock and religion.

It is Meteora.

(electronic music begins) Situated 350 kilometres north of the Greek capitol of Athens, Meteora is a spectacular rock formation on top of which sits an equally spectacular complex of monasteries.

The name Meteora derives from the word meteor and means elevated or suspended in air.

Befitting the name, huge sandstone pillars seem to levitate off the plane, some rising 600 metres high.

For thousands of years, pilgrims have come here to scale those pillars to get closer to the heavens.

It's this fusion of geology with human culture that makes Meteora iconic.

(inspirational music begins) Meteora's creation story starts over 60 million years ago when the region was covered by a vast delta.

Layers of sand, stone, and mud compressed into sandstone.

As the water dried and the earth stirred, this substrate was pushed skyward.

Wind, water, and temperature then shaped the sandstone into pillars, which still clearly show the layers of that long-ago lake.

Carbon dating reveals human presence from 50,000 years ago.

The first to be documented were hermit monks of the ninth century who lived in Meteora's caves hundreds of metres off the plane.

In the 14th century, more monks arrived, escaping warfare between the Turks and Greeks.

Using rudimentary ladders and windlasses, they scaled the sheer rock faces and started to build monasteries.

In the 16th century, 24 monasteries were in use, used by monks and nuns of the Eastern Orthodox church.

Perhaps the landscape became too challenging.

Perhaps faith was tested.

But over time, some of the monasteries were abandoned and fell into disrepair.

Today, six are still functioning and contain priceless artefacts, recording the reverence of both God and place.

Meteora was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988 and continues to attract a steady flow of pilgrims from around the world.

Whether drawn by theology or geology, to visit here is to touch the divine.

(playful marimba music) A notable landscape that also delivers mineral wealth is a sure-fire way to achieve icon status.

And the Yukon does just that.

(inspirational music begins) This is the smallest of Canada's three territories.

Packed inside it are the country's highest peaks, largest ice fields, and rivers laden with gold.

(birds chirping) Approximately 480,000 square kilometres in area, The Yukon borders Alaska to the west, British Columbia to the south, and the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Circle to the north.

Geologically, it dates back almost 2 billion years to the very earliest times in earth's history.

An ancient sea that once covered the area around 400 million years ago, lift layers of siltstone, sandstone, and black shale.

Volcanism then infused this landscape with minerals drawn from the Earth's core, including lazulite, the Yukon's official gemstone.

(acoustic guitar music) This mineral wealth was discovered by accident in August 1896, when a certain George Carmack was fishing for salmon and instead caught himself some gold.

His discovery of nuggets in the Yukon's Klondike river sparked the last great gold rush of the American West.

For three intense years, over 100,000 prospectors stampeded the Yukon to try their luck.

Prospectors were superseded by gold mines, which operated until 1966.

By then, the Yukon had yielded over $250 million worth of gold.

(western music) The fever still burns today and still delivers.

(soft piano music) The Klondike gold rush remains the stuff of legend and adds a glitter of mystique to the Yukon's many rivers.

The longest of these and the longest river in Alaska is the Yukon River, running over 3,000 kilometres from British Columbia to the Bering Sea.

One section is called the Thirty Mile and is national heritage as part of the Klondike Gold Rush International Heritage Park.

The river runs year round, fed by glacial melt water from the peaks above.

(engine humming) Just shy of 6,000 metres, Mount Logan is the highest mountain in the Yukon and Canada and the second highest in North America.

(inspirational music) Much of the mountain lies in the Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site rich in wildlife.

(energetic music) (peaceful music begins) When it comes to wildlife, few spectacles rival this.

The Yukon hosts the longest migration of any land mammal on earth, porcupine caribou.

(grunting) Over 200,000 of them.

Every year, this mega herd embarks on an epic journey from overwintering grounds in Alaska to carving grounds on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

Cold snaps here are colder than anywhere else in North America, sometimes below minus 60 degrees Celsius.

Snowdrifts, icy river crossings, and wolves provide constant challenges.

But these hardy deer are never deterred.

Their tale of endurance is as iconic as the Yukon itself.

(grunting) (camel lowing) For centuries, the camel has enabled humans to exist in harsh and inhospitable deserts.

This resilient creature gives travellers access to some of the most remote and breathtaking natural icons on earth.

Including this, Wadi Rum in Jordan.

Wadi is an Arabic word meaning valley, and Wadi Rum is the largest in Jordan covering 720 square kilometres.

The closest translation for rum is light or airborne sand and indeed both sun and wind have shaped this place.

(ethnic techno music) First the movement of tectonic plates cleaved the bedrock and lifted huge maces of sandstone and granite high above the desert floor.

Then over millions of years, the wind acted like sandpaper, sculpting gorges, towers, arches, and honeycombed caves.

The contrast of flat desert valley with towering monoliths gives Wadi Rum an other-worldly appearance.

In fact, this earthen icon is best known for its an unearthliness.

Arid, alien, and apparently lifeless, it has earned the nickname, valley of the moon.

(sombre music) Earth, rich in iron oxide provides the finishing touch, tainting the desert a pinky-red hue.

It's said this is the reddest part of Jordan.

So red that science-fiction filmmakers have used Wadi Rum as a stand-in for Mars, the red planet.

(inspirational music) Most famously, it was the setting for the 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, which immortalised the wartime exploits of British army officer, T.E.

Lawrence, who ventured through Wadi Rum in the early 1900s.

To honour the hero, a water source at Wadi Rum is named Lawrence Spring.

And the valley's most iconic geological formation is named after his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

This gigantic formation consists of seven fluted turrets.

At their base is hard granite, which solidified around 1 billion years ago.

At their top, 500 million year-old quartz sandstone.

(guitar music) Humans have inhabited Wadi Rum since neolithic times, over 12,000 years ago.

How they left their mark on the place is as iconic as the place itself.

In Khazali Canyon, in the centre of the Wadi Rum protected area, over 20,000 petroglyphs and inscriptions are hand-carved into boulders and cliff faces.

This ancient graffiti consists of four different Arabic scripts, testifying to widespread literacy.

They record animal interaction and husbandry, pastoral, agricultural, and urban activities, and trace the evolution of human thought, spirituality, and the development of the alphabet.

(dramatic music) In 1933, the shifting sands unearth a huge temple.

It was built by the mighty Nabataeans, a nomadic tribe who roamed and ruled the Arabian desert over 2,000 years ago.

Over the centuries, different cultures of herders, traders, and war makers passed through Wadi Rum.

Today, the masters of camel and country are the Bedouin.

Traditionally nomadic goat herders, they now split their time between wandering the desert and managing tourism for modern day Lawrences of Arabia.

Riding high, yet dwarfed by earth, is a timeless experience at Wadi Rum.

And for a truly cinematic finale, there's nothing better than a blood-red desert sunset.

(majestic chorale music) Since her formation four and a half billion years ago, Mother Earth has never stopped evolving.

In doing so, her restless energy has created some of the most indelible and enduring natural icons on the surface of the planet.

But these icons are far from inanimate.

In a barely perceptible climactic and tectonic dance, these icons are in a state of constant change, physically shaping and reshaping our planet and with it, the lives and destinies of humans and animals alike.

(majestic choral music continues)