Three Addicting Summer TV Shows

Ice Road Truckers
The History Channel, Sunday Nights, 10:00 P.M. ET

This show follows 6 extraordinary ice road truckers for two months in a race for cash. These brave truckers must drive their big rigs across frozen lakes to deliver supplies to Canadian diamond mines. Ice road trucking is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Sometimes the 18-wheeler tires fall into weakened ice holes; sometimes the road is so narrow they flip over into the snow-packed roadsides. The risks these men take are unbelievable!

Canada is the third largest diamond producer in the world; an industry that blows in $1.9 billion a year. Each year, the lakes around Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territory completely freeze over and engineers build an ice road over the lakes that can withstand the weight of tractor-trailer rigs. Just miles from the Arctic Circle, these ice roads carry ice road truckers who haul supplies to the diamond mines there.

The ice road was closed early last year because of global warming effects, leaving hundreds of tons of supplies stuck at the dispatch station. The entire industry depends on the weather and the courage of the ice road truckers who constantly hear the cracking of the ice right beneath their wheels. The livelihood of many people in the region depends on these uncertain roads, which through the years have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of men.

Deadliest Catch
Discovery Channel, Tuesday Nights 9:00 P.M. ET

This is an Emmy-nominated show in its third season. Captains and crews head out into the freezing waters of the Bering Sea in a race to see who can return the greatest haul of the Alaskan waters - the Alaskan king crab. This is another dangerous occupation, but the usual 4-week fishing trip can pay as much as $50,000 to each crewmember.

The fishermen also go in search of opilio crab, and in a good night, can haul in dozens of 800-pound crab pots. The fishing vessels often get thrown around in high seas and debilitating storms that threaten the lives of the deckhands.