All over our planet there are landscapes that hold caves beneath them. Challenged by the underground frontier and inspired by the secrets it may yield, cavers share a passion for exploration. Journey into Amazing Caves follows Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach on an adventure to explore caves in canyon walls, in glaciers and beneath the rainforests of Mexico. In these unusual and hostile places, Barton, a microbiologist, searches for tiny organisms that somehow survive there. The microorganisms that live in environments with no light, few nutrients, and in the case of glaciers, locked in ice for hundreds or thousands of years, have developed unique survival tactics and lethal weapons against other organisms that compete for the same, few nutrients. Barton studies this subterranean life in hopes it may point to new drugs or antibiotics to fight human illness

High on a cliff near the Grand Canyon, Dr. Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach rappel down to a cave entrance, dangling more than 700 feet above a turquoise-hued river. They aim to be the first to explore a little-known cave formed millions of years before the river cut through the canyon.

In Greenland, Barton and Aulenbach join a team of scientists and adventurers who are attempting a record depth – 500 feet -- into a glacier ice cave. They descend dramatic surface crevasses into a cathedral-like world of blue ice. Razor-sharp ice shards fall from the glacier walls. As Nancy studies how these caves are formed, Hazel collects tiny organisms that can survive extreme pressures and temperatures. These organisms are in suspended animation and can be brought back to life when removed from the ice.

The underwater caves of Mexico’s Caribbean coast contain the beautiful formations found in typical, terrestrial caves. In the film, the water is so clear, you won’t know you’re underwater until you see Hazel in Scuba gear. These caves are beautiful, but dangerous. One wrong move by a caver here can be deadly. Beneath the Mayan jungle, Hazel searches underwater cave passages for microorganisms living in the shimmering halocline: where the freshwater that flows beneath the jungle meets the ocean saltwater.

As it conveys the excitement of scientific exploration, Journey into Amazing Caves takes audiences on an adventure in the natural world…to the underground landscapes that are as beautiful and vital as any place on Earth.