Airing of Nevada adventure reality show begins this week

"The Nevada Passage," an adventure-reality show filmed to promote tourism in the state, began airing this week in major television markets from North Carolina to Detroit to Fresno.

Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt said the hour-long show will air in at least 95 U.S. cities this month and "shatter a lot of stereotyped images about Nevada." It will be shown at 10 p.m. Monday on Reno's KOLO-TV.

Hunt, chairwoman of the state's Tourism Commission, said the program will follow 10 man-woman teams from 11 states as they compete in adventure sports around Nevada.

"We put a group of strangers together and sent them out on a course for adventure that challenged their physical abilities and their perceptions of Nevada," said Tourism Commission Director Bruce Bommarito. "We anticipate that viewers will have the same eye-opening experience."

He said the show was taped in May, beginning with a rock-climbing competition in Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas. Over a week, the teams Jet-skied Lake Mead, did a 200-mile four-wheel-drive treasure hunt outside Ely, climbed more than 2,000 feet up Lamoille Canyon southeast of Elko then completed the ascent of the mountain there on snowshoes.

Bommarito said they then sandboarded Sand Mountain near Fallon and finished with a kayak competition in downtown Reno's new whitewater kayak park.

"When you watch the program, you sense their excitement," said Hunt.

She said the athletes ranged from a 58-year-old Reno lawyer to a 25-year-old female swimwear company owner from Atlanta.

Bommarito said the tourism commission plans to do it again next year "and expose more Nevada adventures and landscapes to a national television audience."