[intense music playing]
[hawk calling]
[Dustin] It's devastating.
It looks like a...
A tornado came through here and destroyed everything.
[narrator] The worst typhoon to hit Alaska in over 50 years
has ripped through Dustin's claim...
I'm trying to keep positive, but...
I'm finding it harder and harder to do that.
[narrator] Just as he was getting to the gold.
[Dustin] It's looking hopeless, but I don't know what to do.
We don't have enough gold yet.
I'm stuck.
This rain won't let up.
It's every week.
Every week and this has been the biggest one.
This was something else.
[intense music playing]
[thunder rumbling]
It took a whole bunch of my stuff.
A whole bunch.
We got destroyed.
[intense music continues]
I am anxious to see what it's gonna look like when the water's down.
You can only imagine what Kayla's side looks like.
[water gushing]
[thunder rumbling]
I don't know if my dredge is salvageable or not yet.
I don't know what we have left fully.
I've never made such a huge investment in my entire life.
The numbers we're talking about are enough to break me.
[sighs]
It's got me stressed out.
[narrator] Now, on the finale of Gold Rush: White Water...
Dustin and his crews face the fight of their lives.
When in doubt, blow some [bleep] up.
-[Dustin] Move! -[all screaming]
[Dustin] Move, move, move, move!
Here we go again with the [bleep] weather.
-[Dustin] Yeah! -[James] Whoo!
-[Wes] Yeah! Yeah! -[Dustin] Whoo!
[Dustin] Back in business.
I'm dredging now.
That's not enough rock to stop us.
-Whoa! -Whoa!
[Carlos] That is some awesome pieces.
Gold, amigo.
That's right. Keep the power and the lights on,
food on the table,
gas in your car.
Gold!
[intense music playing]
[James] Wow!
Look at that.
[Carlos] Ooh, that's deep, dude.
Last night this thing was rushing 100 miles an hour.
[James] Holy smokes.
[Carlos] Most of our equipment's been washed away,
so, we're figuring...
This will be our drop up point for our equipment.
So me and James has just, basically, gone on a rescue mission
to see what we can retrieve.
[narrator] At the point where Nugget Creek feeds into the Tsirku River...
[James] Hey, what's that?
Gas can.
Yeah. Every little piece counts that we can reuse.
[narrator] ...Carlos and James are on a salvage mission.
[Carlos] Sheesh!
Don't know what that is.
This is one of our freaking, uh, walkways.
Do you believe that?
-[Carlos chuckles] -[James] Who wants to travel a mile?
I mean, that's some serious flooding.
-There's the Tsirku. -Holy crap.
[Carlos] It made it down here?
-Good job, man. -[James] Wow.
I can't believe it made it down here.
[Carlos] It's a big score for us, dude.
[James] Anything helps, man.
The river may have claimed all the rest of the stuff, but...
At least we found the super claw.
[Carlos] I was hoping to find a lot more.
But it's a start.
Hey! Start picking up the pieces one at a time.
[intense music playing]
[narrator] Just a short window left before the big freeze,
or another storm ends their season.
[James] I'm gonna go check it out.
[narrator] Dustin and his crew need to figure out
if they can salvage enough of their equipment
for one last shot
at the legendary Nugget Creek gold.
[James] Dude.
Look at that area over there.
Forces of nature, man.
[bleep]
So we lost a tote full of tools.
Our comm box got washed off.
This...
is inside of the winch box.
This winch is [bleep]. The upstream winch is [bleep].
Looks like disaster to me.
[Carlos] Seeing our dredge beached up.
Literally reminds me of the aftermath of Katrina.
Disarray of freakin' hate and destruction, man.
[narrator] The power of the storm
hurled their dredge 80 feet downstream.
[Dustin] Doesn't look good.
[chuckles] It is devastation, but...
Let's find out what there is to work with
and then I'll see if we can actually get back in the water.
That's what my head is telling me.
There's big nuggets on the very bottom and...
and we never made it there.
[helicopter hovering]
[narrator] Just six months ago...
[Dustin] This is the biggest investment
I've ever tried to make in my entire life.
[narrator] ...Dustin gambled his life savings...
[laughs]
...on a remote new claim...
Gold Nugget Creek.
...drawn by the promise of monster nuggets.
This is what you're gonna find.
[laughs]
[Dustin] It's awesome.
[narrator] Proven by prospectors in the '80s.
They did this in, like, five days of digging.
Whoa!
[narrator] His crew defied the odds.
-[all] Whoo! -[Wes laughs]
Get out. We gotta go.
[narrator] And the wettest six months in Alaska's recorded history.
The creek has a reason in a biblical way.
[narrator] To get down to the life-changing gold.
Oh, yeah!
I can see it right here.
[Carlos laughs]
[narrator] They have tasted what Nugget Creek has to offer.
-We got gold! -[all cheering]
[narrator] And are hungry for a lot more.
If I can pull this off, this could change all of our lives.
[Dustin] There's all gravel in there.
[Wes groans]
[Dustin] All right, guys. Let's see what we can salvage.
The dredge is in pretty bad shape right now.
All inside the engine is all solid gravel.
Hoses are bent and broke.
I mean...
this was something else what went down here.
[Dustin] She went underwater. Look at that.
[Dustin] It's heavy. I can tell you that.
It's gotta be full of water.
Take these motors off.
I think we should take the pontoons off.
We're gonna tear this thing apart.
Wow.
Look at that pontoon.
Is that all water?
[Dustin] I don't know.
Ready? One, two, three.
[James] Two guys could probably pull it out.
-See how muddy that is? -[Carlos] Yeah.
[James] I think since the floats filled up with water,
it actually saved our dredge.
It was heavy enough
that, uh,
the creek couldn't actually push it away.
If the pontoons wouldn't have filled up with water,
I think our dredge would be gone down the river
and we'd be picking up pieces now.
[James] Pontoons are empty.
Cleaned out and ready to go back on.
[drilling]
It might be enough stuff here to...
continue dredging, but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what's gonna happen here.
They can't even get to their damn site.
That's some wild, wild, [bleep] right there.
[Kayla] Let's see here.
Our walkway is completely gone.
We just need to figure how to get from this point to that point.
[Paul] I'm gonna get my waders on and see if I can find a way across.
Right now, it's not gonna be easy gettin' to our site.
[Kayla] Careful.
[Paul] That's some powerful water.
[Kayla] Paul!
Right now, Paul is tying a rope line.
We're gonna try to set a board across right here,
at least to get to the shallow side.
Think it'll reach?
[Paul] It's gonna be close.
That's a lot of rock that got moved.
[Kayla] Well, we're gonna have to go look at it. See what we can do.
This is the last chance that we have to see hornbill before we have to leave.
Holy cow! It ripped these boulders out.
[Paul] We almost lost our dive tin.
If it would've stayed anymore, we would've lost all of this.
[Paul] Man.
Look at the boulders. We had a eight foot hole right here.
[narrator] Before the storm,
Kayla's crew had made it down to the gold
and were inches away from the fabled four-ounce nuggets.
[Paul] We were on bedrock,
and...
Now what I'm looking at right when we were diving,
it looks like a boulder field.
[Kayla] All that hard work that we did...
basically just got erased.
We were following the bedrock
and every day, for six days in a row, we got gold.
But now,
we have to start completely over to get back to that pay streak.
[Paul] That's some big [bleep] boulders.
[narrator] After the typhoon filled their plunge pool with boulders...
-[Paul] Aw! -[Kayla] That's depressing
'cause we were getting gold every day.
[narrator] ...Kayla's crew prepare to fight back.
We have to get back to that pay streak.
There's a crack in the bedrock.
[Paul] That's a good sign.
[narrator] Last week, in a plunge pool on the bedrock...
This is exciting.
[narrator] ...they started cleaning out the perfect gold trap.
[Paul] We're on the gold streak.
This could be our best season ever.
[Kayla] Get those generators fired up
and see if we can get those winches working.
[Paul] This winch definitely went underwater.
[Kayla] We're not gonna be able to move all these boulders.
Pretty much, if don't have winches, we're at a standstill.
It's drawing power.
[Paul] But it's not moving.
[narrator] If they can fix the winch,
they can re-dig the plunge pool in just days,
and uncover a pile of nuggets worth millions.
[machine whirring]
So there's grit coming out of the motor.
That's the only thing that's not sealed up, is the motor.
So that's where we're locked up.
I'm gonna see if I can spray every bearing down.
If we can get it to free up and spin,
we'll have a usable winch.
[machine whirring]
[Paul] Sounds rough, but...
It is working.
[Kayla] I think this is gonna be a turning point.
This will hopefully save our season.
Equipment wise, we're not sitting too bad.
Our dredges seem to be okay.
However... our diversion wall got completely...
annihilated.
But none of us are quitters and we're gonna do the job.
If you wanna just, kind of, create, like, a little curve dam.
[Justin] Okay.
[Kayla] We just need somewhere calm to float the dredge.
[narrator] While Justin rebuilds the dam...
I see all our umbilicals are...
all buried.
[narrator] ...Kayla and Paul need to free their buried equipment.
We already know that the gold is about eight feet deep.
Without airlines and without communications,
and without their hot water lines,
we can't get to that depth.
So we really need to get these out.
[narrator] Down creek...
Dustin's crew are in a race
to salvage their storm-battered dredge.
[James] And now we can try to get the engine out.
[Carlos] Just put it over here.
Out of the way.
[Carlos grunts]
[Wes] We need some pay this year.
So we're gonna keep pushing and try to get our dredge back in the water.
This is the lifeline of our dredge.
I've gotta try to get... most of this, kind of, stuff out.
This engine is just packed full of that kind of stuff right now.
I've got to be as meticulous as I can.
And, hopefully, we're gonna have the engines clean,
run and ready to go.
I will go redirect the water.
to where we can stand in there and see what it looks like.
James, let's go move some rock, buddy.
[narrator] Dustin's mission...
block off the water raging down the shoot
that pounds into their dive hole.
[Dustin] All right.
Trying to get that water to go that way
Probably gonna get out and go move those little ones.
Let's start by flipping this one.
Let it go.
[Wes] Perfect! Right where you wanted it.
[Dustin] Right where I wanted it.
I'm gonna try to get this water to go that way.
And not so much that way.
Lower the water level here,
to see what we've got down there and see what it looks like.
[grunts]
[Dustin] Is it working?
[Carlos] Yes!
Look how low it went.
[Dustin] Wow!
[Carlos] You guys did it.
That's dredgeable right there.
It'll be kitty litter, so we can just take out and no problem.
[narrator] The storm surge was strong enough
to throw three foot rocks down the creek.
But the 50-ton boulder acted like a dam,
allowing only gravel and small rocks to fill the area directly beneath it.
Meaning they could be back to bedrock and the gold in just days.
[James] That could be where those big...
four-ounce nuggets could be lurking out.
[Dustin] It is not that deep.
I gotta get the dredge right.
We gotta make it run.
We'll just dig this out right here.
One last hurrah.
[James] Yeah!
[Dustin] The guys right now...
We started cleaning out the area that we already dug.
We're getting after it.
That's not enough rock to stop us.
We've been in worse spots.
[narrator] But there'll be no more gold...
So brace yourselves, folks. They're both ready to go.
...if they can't start the dredge motor.
It has to work.
Absolutely has to work.
[engine sputters]
[engine whirring]
-[James] Whoo-hoo! -[Wes] I guess it'll run.
[Wes laughs]
-It's good, man. -All right.
[Dustin] Back in business, baby.
I guess when two things stop and they frickin' go, huh?
Gold, amigo.
That's right. Keep the power and the lights on,
food on the table,
clothes on your back.
Gas in your car.
Gold!
[Paul] I know there's so much gravel on top of our umbilicals.
We can't even get one of them out.
[narrator] Four hours into Kayla's rescue operation,
progress is stalling.
We almost need to bring one of the motors down here with the pump
and have to pump spraying all this dirt away.
[Paul] That's not a bad idea.
Just see if we can wash our umbilicals out.
[engine whirring]
Well, faster than hand digging.
It's working.
We got one free umbilical.
[Kayla] Nice.
[narrator] If they can free their equipment,
and resurrect the dam,
they'll buy themselves one last shot...
-[Paul] Yeah. -[Kayla laughs]
...at Nugget Creek glory.
That's what I'm talking about.
[Kayla] Dang! This one's not cooperating.
We could go get the blaster.
Last ditch effort to get the umbilical.
-[Kayla laughs] -When in doubt,
blow some [bleep] up.
All right. Locked and loaded.
[Kayla] Fire in the hole.
Three, two, one.
[explodes]
[Paul] Oh, yeah!
[Kayla] Oh, boy!
-[Paul] Really? -[Kayla] It's coming out now.
[Paul] Yeah. Yeah.
We got it.
Finally.
[Paul] Holy [bleep]!
[Kayla] That was a lot more labor intensive than I thought it was gonna be.
[Paul] Oh, man.
Now we're ready to go.
We got our winches working.
Looks like our dam's coming back together.
We got all of our umbilicals.
The weather definitely hasn't been our friend this season.
And this creek has a nasty attitude.
So hopefully that holds out.
And we can get the dredge back in the water
and hopefully we can get back to where we left off.
[thunder rumbling]
[narrator] But right on queue,
the curse of Nugget Creek rears its ugly head.
[Dustin] There is another storm coming in.
We cannot leave this [bleep] like this.
-Tools can't be left out. -[Carlos] Sure. Sure.
This needs to be tied off better than it was before.
-You got this? -[Carlos and James] Got it.
We're getting ready for another flood. Come on, already.
Oh, water's already come up.
[Paul] It's coming up quick.
-Do y'all need help with anything? -[Carlos] Uh...
-Take out that winch, man. -All right.
The rain's not stopping, so...
We could do only what we could do and hope for the best and...
If this all blows over we may have an opportunity to get in the water and...
try to get some gold, but...
Right now, it's just a struggle.
[Dustin] So we gotta move this dredge to a safe spot.
I got these a capstan, dude.
[Paul] Nobody can afford to lose any more equipment right now.
And here we go again with this [bleep] weather.
Non-stop.
[thunder rumbling]
[Dustin] What's the chances of us
getting ahold of a steep, steep, crazy claim
and it'd be in the rainiest season of 100 years?
Anybody else would've just quit long time ago.
[Dustin] We have to find some gold to start paying for this.
We can't afford not to.
[narrator] Overnight,
another storm has dumped four inches of rain into Nugget Creek.
I know we are all... tired.
Some, sort of, hope is necessary for this to continue right now.
[Wes] Been having all these floods, so,
you know, we haven't been getting to dredge as much as we want to.
I'm gonna go ahead and process everything we got now.
And hopefully this will cheer everybody up a little bit
because we should have some decent gold in here.
[suspenseful music playing]
It's definitely been a trying year this year,
but we've got good gold sitting in the box,
we know it's here.
That's our hope right now,
it's what we have sitting in the sluice box.
It's going prompt everybody to wanna keep going
till the bitter end.
Hey, guys, check this out.
I just got this cleaned up for the most part,
it's ready to get knocked out and pan now.
-Not too bad. -[laughs heartily]
-I mean, for the-- -[Carlos] That is gorgeous, dude!
Look at that, look at this piece.
[Wes] There is some nice gold in there.
[Carlos] That is some awesome pieces, man.
[James] Look at that.
Is that a good picture or what?
Look at this.
This is just the chunky stuff, it's not all of it.
So...
-Take a look at that. -[all] Ooh!
Look at the size of those pieces in there.
[Dustin] Yeah, those are some big pieces, man.
[James] That's heavy gold.
[Dustin] There's a clay layer underneath.
Soon as we get in that, we'll get big nuggets.
-That was just scratching the surface. -[James] Yeah, we're just--
-we're just getting started. Yeah. -[Carlos] Yeah.
[James] Seeing gold like this
in only small amount of dives,
is driving me crazy.
[Dustin] Soon as the flood goes away,
you guys are wanting to go back up
and give this another shot, right?
-[James] Go assess it. -[Wes] Yes.
[Carlos] One more chance.
All hands on deck, we would really kill it.
-Okay. -[James] I'm down for that.
We just gotta wait for this flood to
just run its course and then
go hit it hard, and...
I'm gonna tell you,
this might be our last shot.
[Dustin] This might be the life-changing event
that we're all looking for.
[narrator] As quickly as it came in,
the latest storm has passed.
Opening the door for the crews
to return to the site,
and see what their future holds.
Wow.
This chain's [bleep].
Look at our basket.
[Justin] I mean, that basket was in the air, right?
[Kayla chuckles] Full of rocks!
[Ryan] Yeah.
[Kayla] It's flooded.
Um,
our dredge is upside down.
[Kayla] That's not good.
[Paul] This is devastating.
At this point, I'm sick and tired of restarting,
with hardly anything to show for it.
This [bleep] getting old.
[Paul] That's gotta be pretty violent right here.
[Ryan] It just about broke that motor off.
That bracket is just barely hanging on.
[Kayla] First thing we need is get this [bleep] flipped back over.
-It might be easier to flip it this way-- -That way?
-And then pull it this way, and flip it all the way? -Yeah.
[clanking]
[Paul] We had our dredges ready to go back in the water
we dug our umbilicals back out,
we had everything ready to go.
And then we got hit again.
It's not looking good.
[Ryan] Oh wow.
-Remember that big old pile-- -No, it took the whole corner of that off!
-[Justin] Yeah. -[Ryan] That whole corner's gone.
[narrator] The end of the season looming,
Kayla faces a critical decision.
[Kayla] Our side got wiped out.
There's so much new material, it would take forever
to move it out the way.
So,
I don't see us recovering this time.
[dredge thudding]
Trying to start over,
it feels like a waste of time.
Yup.
[Ryan] The way the temperature's changing, the weather's changing,
we're going to have to call it quits here.
[Kayla] Yeah, we just need to get our site cleaned up,
then we can go help them.
[Ryan] The only thing we can do right now,
go help Dustin,
see if we can get some divers in the water,
help them move some rock, and see if we can find some more gold.
[thrilling instrumental music playing]
[Carlos] Holy moly!
What's holding it up?
[James] That chain!
[narrator] At Dustin's site,
mining beneath the 50-ton boulder,
just got a lot more dangerous.
We're worried about this rock coming down.
[Dustin] It busted all the bolts loose,
and all the chains and it loosened all the cable clamps.
[narrator] Two weeks ago...
[man] Ooh [bleep]!
This thing could fall
if you dig underneath it.
[narrator] Fred declared the 50-ton boulder a death trap.
[Fred] Total disaster waiting to happen.
[drilling]
[narrator] To protect the divers working beneath it...
Gonna look like Frankenstein's stitches across here!
...he used chains and 12-inch bolts
to secure the 50-ton monster.
Hopefully it lessens the chance of this big-ass [bleep]
dropping off of here.
[narrator] Now, half have come loose,
and some have already broken.
[Dustin] So look what I did.
[James] Yeah.
-[Dustin] This is the most impressive, though. -[James] That's definitely...
-[James] Yeah. Yeah! -[Dustin] It backed off the nut.
That means that it had to hit one side of it
over and over until it's spun it off.
They've been beaten to death by rocks.
They went underwater and got pulverized.
-We got ourselves into a bad situation... -[laughing]
-...is what happened. -Yeah. No [bleep], right?
[Dustin] Stressed out of my damn mind.
I need one of you to tell me that we can dig this.
Yeah, we can dig this, huh, James?
I think we can dig this.
Yup.
We can definitely give it a shot.
We'll just dig this out right here.
What we're doing right now is to not accepting failure.
Pursuing our frickin' dream
of this year, of...
getting gold.
[Dustin] We're getting after it.
And we're gonna keep going where we were.
Wasn't a lot of gold yet,
but it was about to be, and...
we're going to dig it up.
I want life-changing gold. Going for broke.
[water bubbling]
[thrilling instrumental music playing]
Your mission, if you choose to accept it,
we're gonna make a wall right here.
[Dustin] Drag that dredge over the top of it, start it up,
getting the damn water up here, all right?
[narrator] For a final shot at the gold
locked beneath the killer boulder...
We're gonna raise the water level,
get the dredge back in place.
[narrator] Dustin's crew must recover and float their dredge
from where it landed 80 feet down creek.
[Dustin] All right, Carlos, in preparation for this to actually work.
Okay.
We'll put a come along up
onto one of these pulleys.
And we're gonna pull it up high enough, hopefully
to where we can drag it up with the capstan.
-All right? -Yup, gotcha.
[narrator] Dustin's plan.
Use a come along to raise the dredge above the raging creek.
Then with a single capstan lynch,
mounted on "big ass" boulder,
haul the dredge 80 feet back up to the dive site,
so they can dredge beneath the deadly boulder,
in a final attempt to get down to bedrock gold.
Come on!
It's like I'm carrying a spaghetti dinner, man!
We've got so much invested into this place,
it has to work.
-[Ryan] We're going to tie the capstan it up here? -[Carlos] Yeah.
Right there to that pull, right there!
-Down below. Yup. -To that one? All right.
I'll give you guys a hand.
-Appreciate it, bro. -Hell yeah.
Time is of the essence right now.
[James] We got Wes working on the dredge,
Carlos working on the capstan winch,
I'm working on building a weir,
we're going to give it a last shot.
-You want more? -[James] Yeah.
-I wanna get to the middle. -[Dustin] Yup.
-All right. Ready? -[James] Okay, yup.
So I think we should go that way, right?
-Yeah. -Straight-- Which way are you going?
[Dustin] Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on.
-[James grunting] -[water splashing]
-[Dustin] Maybe just leave it right there? -[groans softly]
[James] It's not bad.
Got it almost waist deep,
in a half hour.
[Ryan] It looks light, don't it?
-Without the engines and stuff? -Yeah, it's light.
-It's... It's gonna go real quick. -Nice.
Trying to get it flat like a regular rig,
it's gonna run into everything.
Try to make it into a wheelie.
[narrator] To keep the nose of the dredge from snagging rocks...
[Dustin] Somebody has to be brave!
[narrator] ...Dustin will need to be on the dredge
to adjust the tension on the come along.
-Whoo! -Hey, buddy!
-Hell yeah. -[Dustin] This remind you of anything?
-[Ryan laughing] You're not gonna go very far. -[laughing]
-[Wes] All right, I'm a try to stay clear from this. -[Dustin] Go for a ride!
-[Wes] You ready? -[Dustin] I think so.
[Wes] Cutting her loose.
[Dustin] Watch yourself, don't get caught.
-[Ryan] Do you like it? -[Dustin] I don't know.
If it gets caught in that water, I'm gonna be in trouble.
[Ryan laughs heartily]
Here we go!
-[clanking] -[James] It's going now.
Whoo!
-[dredge starting] -[all] Whoo! Whoo-hoo!
[Ryan] Let's go cowboy!
[Ryan laughs heartily]
-[Ryan] Whoo-hoo! -[all] Yeah!
-Cha! Cha! -[men cheering] Yeah!
Get up that river!
-[all cheering] Let's go! -[clanking]
[Dustin laughs] Ooh, ooh, holy [bleep]!
This feels weird!
All right.
-[clanking] -That's still pretty good right there.
I like that.
-[Dustin] Tie it off! -Oh!
Tied it off! Got it! Tie it off.
-We figured it'd be easier to get up-- -Whoa!
[yells nervously]
[Carlos] You got-- [bleep]
[Dustin laughing maniacally]
[Wes] You can't let go of it!
There we go, ready?
-[engine revving] -[Dustin] Hang on!
Do I have... Whoa, whoa, whoa!
-Tie it off! -[Dustin] I love it.
[cackling]
That felt weird. [laughs nervously]
That was a weird ride.
[James] I thought I'd seen it all.
That was great.
It works.
[Dustin] I don't know what we can get done but,
my goal is to get this dredge in the water, running,
and dredging up there.
I mean, we're free to come give you guys a hand,
so we can just hit this as hard as we can
and see what we can get.
[Dustin] See you guys are done?
At your site? Like...
You're not gonna dig there anymore?
It'll take us a week just to get set up.
-[Ryan] Yup. -I think we're in a pretty good shape
if we could get some more help, we can get somewhere here.
-[Wes] Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. -Last push.
We're down in the bedrock to here.
It'd be nice to just keep punching left
out to the center.
-We know there's gold here. -Yeah.
-Absolutely. -[Dustin] Absolutely gold here.
-[Ryan chuckling] -Let's finish what we started
and let's get to it,
-all right? -[Wes] Yeah. Sounds like a plan.
[Dustin] I wanna dredge today, not tomorrow,
not next week,
it's supposed to rain again, so...
-see what's underneath this rock. -[rock thudding]
I don't want to spend the entire winter
wondering what's underneath there, and we need the gold.
Man, do we need the gold.
[Carlos] I don't know how much time we got left.
And we're gonna make all...
frickin' use out of this time.
Get that hose on the front of this thing.
[indistinct] Steady!
[narrator] Working as a crew of seven,
it's now a race against the freeze or floods,
to reach the pile of nuggets...
-[drilling] -...and salvage Dustin's season.
[Dustin] If you got enough hands,
you can make stuff work, and that's what's happening right now.
This is my only plan.
If we fail at this, I don't know what to do.
Yup! That's it!
[Dustin] Got it.
-This is gonna work right here, ain't it? -[James] Yup.
[Dustin] All right. Let's start with the engines getting on this thing.
[Carlos] Copy that.
[Ryan] One step closer to get dredging.
Soon as we get dredging, we're putting gold in the box!
[engine revs]
-Yeah, boy! -Yeah, buddy!
Back in business!
Good.
Yeah, looks like it's dredging.
They're still working that hole from their bank.
[James] Yeah!
-I'm dredging now! -[Dustin] All right.
[James] If I can haul ass to get us all this [bleep] out of here,
it'll save our season and we'll get down to the gold.
Wouldn't you say that bedrock we dug till about right here?
-Yeah. -About right there.
-Right here. -Now everything here that way.
Dig a hole, man.
[narrator] Working in the shadow
of the 100,000 pound widow maker...
[Dustin] Don't hurt yourself or nothing,
but let's see how big a hole we can make today!
[narrator] ...Kayla must use extreme caution
as she removes large boulders blocking them from bedrock.
[Kayla] So far everything seems to be going smoothly,
we're getting a lot done,
hopefully this will result in us seeing more gold before the season ends.
[James] Nice to have Kayla's team helping us,
so we can get down to the gold.
[Dustin] Oh, we got the dredges running!
James' is, uh, starting to hold off.
[Dustin] Kayla's crew is helping.
They're gonna start cracking rocks.
-Hey, guys, I'm about to do a pop! -All right!
[Kayla] Fire in the hole!
Three, two, one!
[Ryan] Good pop!
[narrator] Working at double speed...
That's a good pop, holy [bleep]!
-Whoo! -[James] Whoo! Look at that!
[narrator] ...two crews make fast work of this storm in-fill.
[clanging]
-[James] I hope there's big gold in there... -[drilling]
...so all this can be worth it.
-Get in the big hole! -[Ryan] Hell yeah.
[Dustin] Part of me wishes we'd did this the whole damn season.
We'd have butted heads a lot more, but...
[drilling]
...getting a lot of work done real fast.
[James] That's starting to look more and more eerie.
Look at that.
-[Dustin] Ooh! -[Ryan] That thing could fall.
[James] Yeah, I see it too.
[Dustin] Back up, go left.
I don't want you underneath that [bleep].
Watch an eye on that.
[Kayla] All right, fire in the hole! Three...
two, one!
[explosion]
Nice hit.
Starting to get some depth now.
Pretty soon, we'll be able to suit up!
[James] Starting to look good!
I'm gonna get so wet!
[Carlos] Argh... That's heavy!
[grunts]
[Dustin] Hold on! Back up, back up!
Oh, move!
-[rumbling] -[all screaming]
-Move, move, move! Oh! -[bleep]
[bleep]
[grave instrumental music playing]
[water bubbling]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dustin] Nugget Creek...
There's gold here.
There is definitely gold.
But this Nugget Creek is not for the meek and the weak.
This is a different, dangerous animal,
that just don't like us.
[birds chirping]
[James] Starting to get some depth now.
Pretty soon we'll be able to suit up.
[metallic scraping of hooks]
Starting to look good!
[grunts]
[Dustin] Hold on.
-Back up, back up! -[rumbling]
-Oh! Move! -[all screaming]
-[bleep] -Move, move, move, move!
Oh!
[bleep]
Oh, my [bleep]!
[exhaling loudly]
We almost got got!
-Everybody okay, right? -Yeah.
[Dustin] Oh, that got me shook, dude.
[narrator] Undermined by relentless currents,
the 50-ton boulder could have crushed Dustin's entire crew.
Can you believe that thing fell like that?
That went so fast.
-[James] Look at that thing, it's terrifying. -[Wes] Wow.
[Dustin] I just watched half of my crew almost die.
[Wes] That would have been a permanent grave.
That was [bleep] close, man.
[Ryan] Out of all the [bleep] I've seen up here,
that's probably the scariest thing I've ever seen.
-Yeah. -I'll second that.
-[exhales] -[Ryan] Wow.
[Dustin] I'm gonna call in the season, that's it. We're done with this.
[Wes] This whole season's just been
one disaster after another.
Today was the one to almost top them all.
Happened so fast, it just...
I...
I'm lucky to be alive.
Ahhh, blew my damn mind just now.
[Dustin] Could have crushed every one of us
and never had a single thought about it.
I got a lot to process, but we're done here.
That's a sign to leave if I've ever heard one.
[narrator] The hardest six months of Dustin's life
ends in defeat.
The curse of Nugget Creek has robbed them of glory,
but allowed them to live to tell the tale.
That was some scary [bleep], that boulder coming down.
-[James] Yeah it was. Damn. -Whoo!
I'm not gonna forget that, I'm gonna have nightmares about that [bleep].
A near death experience right there, my man.
-That was too close for comfort. -[James] Mmm-hmm.
[Kayla] That's pretty.
-[Wes] Yeah, it's not too bad. -[James] Wow.
For the limited amount of time that we got to dredge,
we got pretty good gold out here. Just imagine
if we got to dive every week
week in, week out,
-this pan would be full. -[Kayla] For the amount of time
that we did find gold, we did pretty well.
-Yeah. -[Ryan] Yeah, kind of the same big pieces that we got.
That looks good.
-But we never hit the bottom. -[Kayla] We never hit the deepest part.
-Uh-huh. -Nah, we didn't either.
That's where all the big nuggets are.
[narrator] These few ounces of chunky gold,
are proof they're scratching the surface of the legendary nuggets.
-[Wes] You got a good claim out here, Dustin. -Yup, yeah.
[narrator] But not enough to cover costs
or pay for them to live through the winter.
[Dustin] The well's drying up, man, that's it.
All this stuff costs money and it's just... it's... it's running out, man.
And when I go broke,
it's...
it all comes to a screeching halt.
And I actually don't know what we gonna do.
Thank y'all for all your hard work.
I'm sorry it didn't work out the way we thought it would.
Let's pack this stuff up and get out of here, y'all.
[Carlos] Little disappointing, let me tell you.
It wasn't enough gold
to sustain us for this winter, so...
Hey. Got to get a couple jobs during the wintertime
to keep the family happy.
I think this season has definitely been one of the most,
not only physically draining seasons,
but mentally draining as well.
Smashed just about every finger,
'cause I've got cuts and bruises, and...
I'm just, I'm worn out.
It was a hard year, it was my hardest year to date.
Like...
I don't think I've worked so hard in my entire life for so little
and it's been a weird one.
But, hey...
I truly believe if...
If we can make it up to next year that,
this will be a huge success.
We gotta try to see if we can bounce back from this,
and next season, we'll crush this.