Alex Honnold, Angel Collinson And More Extreme Athletes Star In Thrilling New Nat Geo Series ‘Edge Of The Unknown’

Aside from sheer physical ability and disciplined training, there’s something that separates extreme athletes from the average human—and it resides in the mind. There’s an ability perhaps not to escape fear altogether, but to reprogram the mind to accept fear or work within its limits to achieve a goal.

And that’s what alpinist and filmmaker Jimmy Chin is exploring in his new 10-part series, Edge of the Unknown, which premieres Monday, September 5. Chin directed the series alongside his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, through their production company, Little Monster Films, for National Geographic.

Chin, a professional climber, skier and mountaineer, is certainly familiar with that razor-thin line between tragedy and triumph. He’s still the first and only American to have made a ski descent from the summit of Mount Everest. In the series, Chin set out to reveal “how athletes adapt and evolve, even after being confronted by fear, devastating personal loss, and Mother Nature at her harshest.”

“It’s a rare look behind the curtain at the painstaking preparation required by each of these 10 athletes and what they are willing to risk to accomplish transcendence in their sports,” Chin and Vasarhelyi said.

The two are behind some of the most thrilling action documentaries in recent memory, including Free Solo, which documented alpinist Alex Honnold’s near-obsessive drive to perform a free solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, and Meru, which chronicled the first ascent of the “Shark’s Fin” route on Meru Peak in the Indian Himalayas and was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2016.

Each of Edge of the Unknown’s 10 episodes features an intimate conversation with an athlete—including big wave surfers, climbers, big mountain snowboarders, polar explorers and kayakers—about their highest-stakes endeavors and how they evaluate risk and process fear.

The athletes—in order of appearance, Honnold, skier Angel Collinson, whitewater kayaker Gerd Serrasolses, climber Conrad Anker, big-mountain snowboarder Travis Rice, ice climber Will Gadd, surfer Justine Dupont, Chin himself, kayakers Ben Stookesberry and Chris Korbulic and polar explorer Sarah McNair-Landry—all discuss different kinds of obstacles they encountered on their adventures. They include avalanches, suffering a heart attack while suspended from the side of a mountain at 20,000 feet and even being hunted by an apex predator in the Arctic.

The episodes feature the athletes reflecting on these experiences as well as the kind of high-octane, palm-sweat-inducing imagery and videos you’d expect from Chin and Vasarhelyi.

As for what viewers might take away from the series, Collinson hopes it’s, in part, “the power of catalyzing agents and the power of change and challenge.” Her own appearance in Episode 2 comes at a pivotal moment in her life, as she retires from skiing to focus on the next phase of her life.

“It’s just humbling in hindsight as I leave to see how others see you or to be in the presence of great people,” Collinson told me. “What an honor; I’m leaving [skiing] and I’m chosen to be part of this incredible opportunity telling incredible stories.”

Collinson is a trailblazer in women’s skiing and filming, becoming the first woman to have the opening segment in a Teton Gravity Research (TGR) film, 2014’s Almost Ablaze, as well as the first woman to appear in a TGR finale in 2015’s Paradise Waits.

In Collinson’s episode, she looks back at a fall in Alaska that sent her plummeting 1,000 feet down a mountain and how it forced her to reevaluate her life and her goals.

“When I ended up having this fall, I was noticing up there, ‘I’m pretty over it,’ and when you’re not fully committed or when you hesitate, that stuff happens,” Collinson said. “I was ready to be done and this was an opening for what’s next.”

Another benefit to having retired as she filmed her episode of Edge of the Unknown was the freedom from sponsor or ski industry ties and the true freedom to honestly evaluate her ski career in this series.

Episodes 1 (“Before Free Solo,” featuring Honnold) and 2 (“The No Fall Zone,” featuring Collinson) will premiere back-to-back on September 5 at 9:30 p.m. ET on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ on September 7. Episodes 2 and 3 will premiere on September 6, and then the series will continue with two new episodes every Tuesday through