New 'Naked and Afraid' season filmed in Sabinoso Wilderness

Claudia L. Silva, The Santa Fe New Mexican
·2 min read

Feb. 18—The new season of Discovery's reality survival series Naked and Afraid is premiering Sunday, exposing the world to a new side of the people and places from the Land of Enchantment.

The season premier takes a pair of au naturel survivalists from Europe to the tall, narrow mesas of the Sabinoso Wilderness, located roughly 50 miles east of Las Vegas, N.M. It follows Lilly Jammerbund from Austria and Samuel Mouzer of the United Kingdom as they venture into the mountainous landscape of New Mexico. Despite their extensive survival knowledge, this new, unfamiliar terrain proves to be a challenge for the first foreigners to take on 21 days in the American Southwest.

The episode was filmed in summer 2022. During filming, Mouzer found himself in a painful predicament when he suddenly burned his penis, according to a report from TMZ. According to the report, the pair were sleeping by a campfire when a hot coal popped, causing embers to land on what he referred to his "little soldier's helmet."

Discovery did not return requests for comment on the incident.

The second episode plops a nude high desert-dwelling local from Albuquerque in the dense, virgin jungles of Guyana.

Kami Elsisie is a skilled hunter, tracker and forager who spent most of her life in New Mexico. As a paramedic in a city that has ranked as the most dangerous in the country, Elsisie knows how to think on her toes in tough situations.

Elsisie was born in Wyoming and moved to New Mexico when she was 7 with her father, who grew up on the Navajo Nation.

Though Elsisie never hunted growing up, she was always outdoors. Her adventures took her to a number of places, including whitewater rafting on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, backcountry backpacking in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico and canoeing in the Arctic Circle in northern Alaska.

She calls herself an "adult onset hunter," as she took on the hobby later in life. All that time outdoors cultivated a passion for protecting public lands, water and wildlife.

The second episode, which airs Feb. 26, will follow Elsisie and a partner as they try to survive 21 days in the wilderness of one of the most remote and sparsely populated countries in the world.

All three challengers will have to find a way to work together with no water, food and clothes to endure "the Everest of survival challenges," as Discovery put it.