The result is an all-access look at Yellowstone’s stunning animals and vistas.

Premiering on Friday, 6 December at 18:00 on Nat Geo Wild, channel 182 on DStv, Wild Yellowstone employs a contemporary shooting and editing style that combines high production values with advanced technology and a fresh, contemporary score. Cinematographers were encouraged to take the camera off the tripod and look for new and unexpected camera angles to reveal a more immersive side of nature than ever seen before.

The Wild Yellowstone team camped out for a year capturing a cauldron of gripping animal dramas. This two-hour event includes a visit in summer and in freezing winter, an extraordinary world of fire and ice, ever-changing and always testing its animal inhabitants.

In summer, Yellowstone explodes with new life as elk, bison, birds and fish time the arrival of their newborns with the warming and blooming of the terrain. Meanwhile, the wolves, grizzlies and cougars grow eager for the easy protein that summer provides. But Yellowstone doesn’t give up its riches that easily. It has a cruel dark side. From torrential floods to burning temperatures, Yellowstone’s summers are nothing to take lightly.

Summer is also the time when Yellowstone’s animals battle against each other to claim feeding sites, territories and mates, and to defend their offspring. Grizzly bears fight wolves over meals. Trout on their way to spawn run into deadly gauntlets of river otters, and bison bulls fight feverishly with every ounce of their 900 kilogram frames. Even Yellowstone’s smallest bird, the hummingbird, goes to battle; with wings beating 200 times per second, they fight each other in mid-air to protect territories of wildflowers.

Everything changes as Yellowstone’s ferocious winter arrives. Now every animal’s story turns to one of endurance in the face of the coldest of temperatures – dropping to minus 50 degrees Celsius with snow piling nine metres deep. Every animal needs its own strategy to survive these brutal conditions. A young wolf pack must learn to work as a team. A red fox searches for voles, using only its sense of hearing to pinpoint their location deep under the snow. A river otter needs to find waterways with trout – that won’t freeze solid during the winter. Any animal that doesn’t meet the challenges of Yellowstone’s winter head-on will not live to see the spring.

Wild Yellowstone is produced by Brain Farm for Nat Geo Wild. Brain Farm executive producer is Curt Morgan. For NGCI, Hamish Mykura is executive vice president and Head of International Content.

Wild Yellowstone airs from Friday, 6 December at 18:00 on Nat Geo Wild, channel 182 on DStv.