‘Alaskan Bush People’ Siblings Face Perilous Ice-Covered Roads in New Clip

The Ice Road Truckers might want to recruit members of the Brown family. In a new clip from Sunday’s episode of Alaskan Bush People, the Brown siblings try to navigate ice-covered roads with their motor home, which proves to be a tough proposition.

“As soon as the sun starts going down and the temperature really drops because of no sunlight, it starts freezing even worse,” Bam Bam Brown said in the clip. “So the ice we were fighting earlier still wasn’t as bad as the ice that there’s going to be here in about 30 minutes.”

While Bam Bam tried to drive his truck, pulling the motor home behind him, his siblings were outside watching, cringing as he started to slide off the road. As the road began a downward incline, it began harder for Bam Bam to control the truck.

“With conditions worsening, the Browns must decide whether to continue their haul through nightfall,” the narrator noted.

“It’s too dangerous to keep going,” Snowbird Brown said after it got dark.

“We should call it. It’s dark,” Bam Bam said. “It’s dangerous. Let’s pick it up in the morning.”

“You know, if tomorrow, the sun’s not hot enough to melt the road out, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Gabe Brown said in a confessional. “As is, it’s just so slick. You know, with the temperatures dropping the way they have, I don’t know if it’s even feasible to get the motor home down there in this condition.”

In another scene from this week’s episode, Bird and Noah Brown took Noah’s wife, Rhain Alisha, out to their makeshift shooting range to test her shooting skills. When the scene was filmed, Rhian was still pregnant with their son, Elijah Connor Brown, who was born on Feb. 26.

Alaskan Bush People is now in its ninth season, and things have not been going so well for the family offscreen. According to Radar Online, patriarch Billy Brown is scrambling to save the show amid declining ratings. While Season 8 debuted to 3.4 million total viewers in August 2018, the Season 9 premiere only had 1.8 million viewers when it debuted earlier this month. The show’s Nielsen rating was also cut in half, to 0.4.

A source close to the production suggested that fans are not invested in the show any longer since matriarch Ami Brown‘s health is better. It also does not help that a show called Alaskan Bush People is no longer set in Alaska.

“It could be due in part to Ami’s cancer battle being over, but it is also due to the fact that the Alaskan Bush People no longer live in the Alaskan Bush,” the source told Radar.

The source said the Browns “are going to pull out all the stops to save the show. Gabe’s wedding to Raquell, Noah’s baby and family feuding will hopefully bring ratings.”

New episodes of Alaskan Bush People debut on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.

Photo credit: Discovery