Looming somewhere above us is the vast, white unknown. It tempts a modern world that can seem pat and predictable. And now it gets its own cable week.

"There's a lot there we don't know about," said Chris Rantamaki, who heads "Alaska Week" for the Discovery Channel. "It's beautiful and it's dangerous."

He had assumed he knew the North. He grew up in Canada (Sault Ste. Marie) and has camped for as long as a month at a time.

Last year, however, he tried the Alaskan wilderness and felt like just another outsider. "I can't tell you how many times I got yelled at," he said.

Alaskans, he quickly learned, go barefoot when crossing icy streams. And Alaska has multiple worlds.

The cities aren't completely tame. Bears sometimes visit Anchorage; today's "Bear Attack" follows up on three maulings that happened near the city, in a six-week stretch.

Smaller towns are scattered throughout the state. "To get the mail there, they have these kind of hovercrafts that go over the snow," Rantamaki said. "All of their supplies — food, medicine, everything — gets there that way."

Pure wilderness remains. That's where nine outsiders went in "Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment," which debuts Tuesday.

"You couldn't get away from it," said Jake Nodar, an "Out of the Wild" participant. "Even with a fire going, we were always wet. We were always cold and it was just absolutely miserable."

Then there was the problem of "going four days, five days without eating anything except a blueberry," said Trish Bulinsky. "It was pretty hardcore. We were starving; we were consumed by it."

Three Alaskan series air — "Out of the Wild," the new "Arctic Roughnecks" and the returning "Deadliest Catch." Two other series ("Dirty Jobs" and "Mythbusters") have Alaska episodes. There will also be three documentaries, catching what Rantamaki sees as a broad sweep. "It's the big, awesome and in some ways scary Alaska."