Clear Lake’s Mark Holt provides adventures on new Outdoor Channel show

(Above) Mark Holt stands beside one of his beloved Jeeps. -Reporter photo by Chris Barragy.

by Marianne Gasaway

Four-wheeling in the dessert, exploring abandoned silver mines, poking around ghost towns and encountering a fair share of “characters” is just a regular day for Mark Holt.  It’s also the basis of a new television show on Outdoor Channel.

Holt, a Clear Lake High School graduate who now splits his time between his hometown and California, is teaming with his friend, Terrance Prochaska, as the stars of “Rubber Foot Buffalo Adventures.”  Six episodes of the show feature the men off-roading through former mining towns and desert resorts long forgotten and abandoned. Along the way, they share stories and interview locals – the late thrill-seeker, daredevil, astronaut, Michael “Mad Mike” Hughes, shamans and hippies, to name a few.

Holt is a self-proclaimed adventurer.  When he is not flying his own planes, he is off-roading in the dessert, skiing in the mountains or diving in the ocean.  He has always been a four-wheel drive enthusiast, but the hobby reached new levels when he bought a Jeep with a 6.4L hemi engine and big axles in Dallas and took it to San Diego, spending time “rock crawling” on the way.

He called the custom Jeep “the Pack Mule,” but while enjoying it in the Arizona dessert,

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looking for rock fossils and gold, he was approached by a woman who said her group had been watching the vehicle in action.  They had another name for it.  The Rubber Foot Buffalo.

It stuck.

“Rubber Foot Buffalo Adventures seems like a really strange name for a television show on Outdoor Channel until you watch it,” Outdoor Sportsman Group President and CEO, Jim Liberatore said. “The combination of adventure, outdoors, four-wheeling exploration and the characters they encounter create an interesting and spirited show that we believe our viewers will embrace.”

Rubber Foot Buffalo Adventures is distributed by UK-based Espresso Media International.  It is produced by Coleman Television Ltd., a small, independent film production company directed by former BBC Broadcaster Nik Coleman. The company has bases in the UK, Dallas and a co-production home for Holt Coleman Television in San Diego. The companies specialize in aviation, historical and adventure programming.

The first two of six episodes of the show debuted June 12.  Two more will air this Friday, June 19, at 7 and 7:30 p.m. and the final two will be broadcast at the same times a week later, June 26.

The shows follow the exploits of Holt and Prochaska as they journey throughout parts of the western United States (California and Nevada) in search of adventure, interesting people and untold stories. The desert of California’s “Death Valley” serves as the first stomping grounds of Season 1.

The highly-dangerous and potentially-disastrous off-roading is the thread within the shows that take the pair throughout the Southern California desert and parts of Nevada.

“This unwittingly started as scouting for places to go this year and it ended up as six episodes,” explained Holt.  “We will see how it is received and will hopefully shoot more.”

Outdoor Channel is the largest outdoor TV footprint in the country and is available in more than 50 countries internationally. It can be viewed in HD and is accessible by broadband and mobile platforms. For program times and other information, visit www.outdoorchannel.com and follow on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. #WhatGetsYouOutdoors. #MyOutdoorTV

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