[bird chirping]
[producer] Hey, Fred, if you wanna take a break at any moment or...
-You know, just let us know. -Well, we just go through it. We'll go through it.
-[producer] We got... We got plenty of time. -I'll let you know.
[producer] We're just gonna get some sound levels. Just have a little talk.
Hello there. Yeah. We can have a little talk.
Hello.
My name is "Dakota" Fred Hurt.
And today is... Who knows what date?
April the something or another, 2023.
And we're doing this right now
while I'm still able.
Symptoms are creeping in on me a little bit at a time.
[sighs]
Several months ago,
I was diagnosed with brain tumors.
Not just one brain tumor.
How about four brain tumors?
It's an end-of-life diagnosis,
so it's terminal.
Hey, I'm about 80 years old now.
Yeah, I look back on my life...
and I've led
a little bit of an adventurous life at times.
Here we go.
Yahoo!
Some good stuff.
Oh!
Nothing like good old Southern boy ingenuity, huh?
Yeah!
We're just kind of in that little zone
between crazy and insane.
Some not so good stuff.
-Don't argue with me. -Hey, stop it.
I asked you to not [bleep] do this.
-You did it anyway. -[man] [bleep].
[grunts]
Things you didn't know about.
-You bought it out from under us. -[Fred] That is correct.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
-Fred. -No. Come on. Hey. Hey.
Ain't gonna do any good if you kill him.
It was a hell of a ride.
Eighty years.
Yeah! Yee-haw!
-We're living. -[man laughs]
Ain't we having fun yet?
[birds chirping]
[dramatic music playing]
[Dustin] I'm heading up to Alaska.
Gonna get back to work.
And I'm gonna make a detour.
I have to find out how Fred's doing.
Quite frankly, I think that this is probably
gonna be the last time I see him.
We'll see.
That's pretty sad to say that out loud.
I think that's the first time I've really,
really said that out loud.
[dramatic music playing]
Hey, Fred.
Hey, what's up, man?
-How is it going, man? -I'm doing fine.
-Good to see you. -Yeah.
-Have a seat. -Okay.
So how are you doing, man?
[Fred] Hey, the best as I can do right now.
My balance is down a little bit.
A little bit of blurry vision.
It's progressing every day.
Sorry to hear that, Fred.
That's too bad.
So how long did they give you?
They don't know.
I mean, anywhere from a few months
to six months.
I know you're concerned
and I know it bothers you.
Hell, I lived a good life.
[laughs]
Yeah.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Fredrick Richard Hurt
was born on the 10th of July,
1943 in Robstown, Texas.
[Fred] My dad was an electrician.
He had his own business.
My mother was a registered nurse.
We had a regular middle-class life.
But money,
that was hard to come by. [chuckles]
I was fascinated by the ocean.
We lived on the coast of Texas
and I loved the water.
Got into college.
I went and bought myself some old scuba gear
and had a little pamphlet about that big
that said how to scuba dive.
And that's how I learned how to scuba dive myself.
Somewhere along the way,
I decided I wanted to be a commercial diver.
My career was successful.
Mostly oil field construction.
Offshore, the Gulf of Mexico.
After my career doing the diving,
I got into my own business
doing lots of pile-driving,
dock-building, concrete work.
Hell, I even put up bus stops.
But after 30 something years of doing this,
you finally just kind of get tired of it,
and I was ready for something else.
Back in, gee whiz, '04,
my son-in-law says, "Let's go gold mining."
I said, "Hell, that sounds interesting."
[upbeat music playing]
[Fred] It sparked something in me.
We'd make contact with Earle Foster.
He said, "Well, I got this place down in Porcupine."
I packed up and I go to Alaska.
And Alaska is mountains,
waters, trees.
You can't capture it on a camera.
It's impossible.
It's the feeling.
[exhales] Unbelievable.
Didn't know a thing about gold mining
but I belonged there,
'cause I already knew all the skills.
I had bought the little shaker thing
for pasta shells
and I said, "Hey, that might make
a pretty good gold mining equipment."
And I literally was taking a pipe
and washing material from this dump truck
right down into this little shaker plant
and it worked quite well.
[dramatic music playing]
When you first find gold,
it kind of sets your heart sailing.
I did it. I found some gold.
Real gold.
We occasionally started meeting
some of the locals there.
Some guy named John.
John Schnabel.
Been mining there for 25 years
or something like that.
We started getting set up
to do a little mining over there.
Here comes this little kid on a little bitty motorbike.
[mimics tiny engine]
He says, "Hi, my name's Parker."
[dramatic music playing]
[Fred] He's about nine. Eight or nine years old at the time.
So that's where it all started right there,
six years before the Gold Rush
people ever showed up there.
And we were successful in getting
some gold out of Porcupine.
But in 2010,
Earle Foster called me and said, "Fred,"
he said, "I've got a proposal for you."
He had made some sort of a deal
with a bunch of guys out of Oregon
that they were gonna mine on his property.
[chuckles]
We're going all the way, so we'll see how we do.
He said, "Fred, they've been there
for a couple of months, two or three months."
He said, "I hadn't heard a word
from what they're doing over there."
He said, "I'm just wondering
if maybe you guys could come pick me up
and we could drive down to the mine
and see what's going on."
[narrator] Little did Fred know
he was walking straight into the first season
of Gold Rush.
Hey, Fred. I'm Todd.
-How you doing? -Yeah. Good.
[narrator] complete with Todd Hoffman
and his rookie crew.
We get to Porcupine Creek Mine and...
whoops, some guys with cameras.
They stick microphones on us and all kinds of stuff.
[narrator] It didn't take Fred long
to settle into mining
or the world of TV.
[producer] Well, can you tell me? I mean, why are you here?
Why are you helping these guys?
I wanna see them succeed.
Very much so.
Um...
do you realize that most working guys
out there across America
would just love
to tell their bosses,
"This is it, I'm going gold mining"?
Well, these people are living
that fantasy.
[Todd] Fred, you like TV now? Pretty good?
[Fred] Uh--
-[Todd] We'll see if... We'll see... -[Fred] We'll see.
[Todd] ...how much you like it when you're at home...
-[Fred] Yeah. -[Todd] ...and all your family's laughing at you.
[Fred] Yeah. That's fine with me.
[laughter]
[narrator] At Earle's request,
Fred set about making improvements
to the Hoffmans' operation.
[Fred] There were so many things wrong
that I couldn't even... [sighs]
Where the hell is everybody?
I was just trying to get them to get up and go to work.
We can get some gold out of this place.
They didn't wanna work.
They seem to be missing in action.
[Todd snores]
[Fred] He's in the extended stay
bed and breakfast or something.
The Hoffmans considered W-O-R-K a four letter word.
[laughs]
Up. Come on.
[narrator] And from the get-go,
he was never afraid to ruffle a few feathers.
What are you doing?
There's no reason we can't eliminate
about half of these grizzly bars in here.
[James] Fred, you can't do that.
I totally,
absolutely disagree.
Clear.
I was pushing quite a bit
and it irritated people.
You're messing with the threads down there.
-You're messing with me. -You're hitting on it that way.
Get out of my way.
[man] Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
-Go ahead. -You want this up your ass?
-[man] Hey. -James, you're sitting there
beating on the threads.
-Don't argue with me. -Hey, stop it.
Don't push him.
He wanted to start fighting and I said,
"James..."
It is my job to question
some of the things y'all are doing anyway.
It's not your [bleep] place and it's none of your business.
Well...
[sighs] I was just trying to help.
The most important thing
is to feed material in that thing,
keep it going, keep it going.
And one more thing, keep it going.
Finally, we got some of the plant running
and we were running some good material.
Let's wash some rocks, man.
Let's wash some rocks.
Put some material in there.
Dig your stuff away from the edge there real careful.
There's gold up here on top of this rock.
[man] Good Lord.
Finally, we're actually getting gold.
Got our first real nugget.
Woo-hoo!
-[laughter] -[man] That's it.
[firework explodes]
[man] Fred, your house is on fire.
[Fred] The very fact that he even got 14 ounces of gold
out of that thing was amazing.
[laughs]
They finally earned the title of being miners.
[laughs]
[man] Hey.
[Fred] But during the offseason,
Earle Foster calls me up. He said, "Fred,
how about we work out a deal on Porcupine Creek?"
And...
this is where it diverges...
[laughs] ...big time.
[Dave] No. Seriously. Relax, man. Look.
[narrator] Up ahead,
Fred sets the record straight...
Dave, get Greg out of here.
[narrator] ...on the most controversial incident
in Gold Rush history.
[Fred] I bought the Porcupine Creek claim
from Earle.
I'm gonna mine this claim this year.
[birds chirping]
[producer] So top of season two,
what was your plan of attack?
Well,
this is where it diverges...
[laughs] ...big time.
[dramatic music playing]
I'm coming home with 500 ounces, minimum.
[narrator] Gold Rush, 2011.
The Hoffman crew head back to Porcupine Creek...
Here we are, boys.
[narrator] ...unaware...
there's a new sheriff in town.
[man] Hey.
[Todd] Fred Hurt.
Todd Hoffman.
-Doing all right? -Yeah.
I see all the boys are here.
Fellas,
I bought the Porcupine Creek claim
from Earle.
I intend to mine that thing this year.
It's right smack in the middle of your glory hole.
-So you bought it out from under us? -[Fred] That is correct.
I didn't buy anything from under anything.
-Come on, Fred. Let's go talk. -[Fred] All right.
[narrator] In the eyes of Todd's crew,
68-year-old Fred had muscled in on their claim.
I'm gonna go have a little chat with Fred.
No. Come on. Hey. Hey.
Hey.
No. Seriously. Relax, man.
Look, just relax.
[clattering]
-Come on, man. We gotta... -[man] Chill out.
[Dave] ...just relax.
It ain't gonna do any good if you kill him.
[Todd] Dave, get Greg out of here.
It still affects me even today.
[producer] I know.
I mean, it was...
Because of what all it cost.
I mean, we're talking years
of goddamn [bleep] torment.
[sighs]
[narrator] Now, Fred shares his side of the story
and the events that led to this tense standoff.
[Fred] During the offseason,
Todd calls me up and said,
"Fred, Earle and I
are at each other's throat with the lawyers.
We're gonna threaten to sue each other.
They... We want out of the contract with Earle."
I heard that Todd got out of his contract
and made arrangements to go north.
-[man] Virgin ground that way. -All right.
-So all that... -Dirt mining right up there.
...is all virgin from here on up?
-[man] Yeah. -[Todd] This is it.
This is the place we're supposed to be.
[Fred] A couple weeks later,
Earle Foster calls me up.
He said, "Fred," he said, "I've already got
two offers on the claim but I don't trust them."
He said, "I know you."
He says, "How about we work out a deal
on Porcupine Creek?"
That's a good claim. There's plenty of gold there.
It'd just take someone with experience
and know-how to get it out.
[Fred] All right.
If Earle Foster had not sold that to me,
he'd have sold it to one of the other two offers
that he had had.
[narrator] But little did Fred know...
Water license is not happening this season.
Ooh.
[narrator] Todd's virgin ground had fallen through
and he now hoped for another shot
at Porcupine gold.
As of right now,
we're back at Jack's glory hole.
I had no idea this was going on.
So I show up out there
and I was just aghast. I--
[Todd] Dude, you've got to be kidding me.
This wasn't a long-term plan?
No. Absolutely not.
I believe you.
I'll go talk to Jack. Make yourself at home.
It's all legal.
We're out of here. We gotta go.
Looks like I probably screwed this whole thing up big time.
[narrator] In the end,
Todd abandoned Porcupine Creek
in search of his fortune in the Klondike,
leaving Fred the sole owner.
[Fred] And that's when I got to thinking,
"I wonder if Dustin would wanna come up here and help us?"
[truck horn honks]
-[narrator] And so... -Hey, Fred. How are you?
-[Fred] You all right? -Yeah, Dad.
[narrator] Fred's son, Dustin, started what would become
a decade-long mining career.
The last time Dustin and I worked together,
he was a teenager.
He was the adventurous sort.
And I knew he knew how to work.
And I thought for sure that once Dustin came up there,
we'd have a pretty good
father-son relationship,
and I was looking forward to all of that.
Ain't it more comfortable using both hands?
It's killing you. You can't not touch it, huh?
-No. No. I mean... I mean-- -[laughs]
[laughs]
Boy, did that start an era of conflict
and... [laughs]
To say the least.
-[Dustin] What am I doing? -Hold on.
[Dustin] You're giving bad instructions
and getting pissed off about it.
The father-son thing was not working well at all.
Just standing there, holding it. You're not saying nothing.
You're just walking back and forth is what you were doing.
-And you're not saying-- -I asked you to hold it.
What else I gotta say?
I wanted you to hold it while I was trying to get a pair of vice grips.
That ain't the show, folks.
That was the real deal.
This continues, I'm not gonna be here much longer.
Oh, don't give me that crap.
I guess it was just two strong-headed people
not seeing each other's perspective.
You're pissed off about everything I say.
I am not being condescending.
"What the hell you doing?"
That does not sound like condescending [bleep] to you?
[narrator] In a matter of weeks,
their relationship reached the breaking point.
I love him to death but just sometimes,
he can get to you.
[Fred] He stomped off the claim and left.
And to this day,
I still do not understand
what all that conflict stuff was about.
Absolutely hated
that part of our relationship.
Next day, I'm out there running a dozer.
So I'm sorry, Fred.
Why? [clears throat]
I snapped. You didn't deserve that.
I wish I could take it back.
I would be care...
A bit more careful from now on.
-Well, it's not even that. -It's just, you know--
I should've handled it better.
So I love you and, you know,
-it's just-- -I love you too.
Good to see you back.
[Dustin] Yeah. Good to be back.
Just that little situation
on the dozer with Dustin,
it helped us get through the season.
[Dustin] Woo! We're digging gold now, baby.
All I can see is gold soup going out here.
[narrator] Over the next three seasons...
Down, down, down.
10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet, 40 feet,
50 feet, 60 feet, 70 feet, 80 feet.
In fact, we get it down to a hundred feet deep.
[narrator] Fred and his crew edged closer
to what they believed was life-changing gold.
[thunder rumbles]
[narrator] But Mother Nature
had other ideas.
[man] [bleep]
[groans]
[Fred] Water is pouring
into the hole from about 25 feet down.
[woman] No, no, no.
[narrator] The surging Porcupine Creek
was undermining the steep fragile walls
of the glory hole.
[Fred] If that wall goes,
you understand that it could really come in fast.
I didn't want anybody else going down in that hole.
I'm declaring it right now abandoned.
We had to call it.
It was kind of like the end of a era.
Porcupine Creek hole
was no longer viable.
[narrator] Fred's eight-year obsession
with Porcupine Creek was over.
280 ounces of gold.
-[man] Oh. -[woman] My--
-Yeah! -Woo!
-Hell, yeah! -[man] All right!
[man] Yeah!
I'm proud of you, guys.
I'm proud of my team.
[Dustin] Woo! Woo!
We got a total of, I guess over the years,
maybe three-quarters of a million dollars'
worth of gold out of there.
Of course, it cost me $600,000 to get it.
[laughs]
And, God, I thought that that was the end
of some of our conflict.
Oh, Lord, was I wrong.
[laughs]
[dramatic music playing]
[dog barking]
-[producer] So, Fred... -Yeah.
[producer] ...you finished lots of mining at Porcupine.
Why not stop there? Why not call it quits?
I wanna just keep mining.
[dramatic music playing]
[Fred] Woo!
I wanna get enough gold,
it'll just mound up like that.
Ah, this is gonna be great.
[Fred] I could never envision myself
as actually just like retiring.
You've got to keep yourself active.
There it is, Fred.
[Fred] Dustin comes up with this harebrained idea.
He's gonna mine a big old waterfall.
[Dustin] Hot damn.
Wait a minute.
Mine a waterfall, 50-foot waterfall?
Eh, I don't know.
Difficult to get here.
Can't get equipment in here.
Vertical cliffs, powerful water
presents a lot of challenges.
Dustin said,
"Hell, there's a whole bunch of creek up there to mine."
So he had bought
all of this three-quarters of a mile of claim.
So we looked and looked and sure enough--
[Dustin] Holy [bleep] this is beautiful.
There's all them round boulders.
Hey, Fred. You got a copy?
It's on the inside of a bend.
It's got a plunge pool and big round rocks
that are on a bar.
Yahoo!
I think we're gonna do some good there, boy.
[Dustin] It's the trifecta. [laughs]
[Fred] The trifecta of gold mining.
Dustin, he's the one that was the driving force
to go up to do the mining in McKinley Creek.
He really turned into a real gold miner.
But we found out it was a difficult...
Very, very difficult situation.
[narrator] Just getting to work
was a test of bravery
and endurance for the entire crew.
Everybody be safe.
That's the only rule.
Be safe, don't die.
[narrator] Even at 72,
Fred was not about to sit this adventure out.
You have to ride up the mountain three miles.
Harness up and go sliding across a cable
about 400 feet across a canyon.
Yahoo!
Let's go get some gold.
Then hike another mile up to the claim site.
Then you have to climb down another 300 or 400 feet.
Oh. Oh, [bleep].
Hell, that's where I wanted to go in the first place.
And then you go to work. [laughs]
Gonna be a good day.
[narrator] Fred is no stranger to pushing himself.
He spent his life battling the odds.
I had a medical problem when I was a young man
and it followed me through my life,
and everybody has seen it.
I got one leg considerably shorter than the other.
Big Boot, that's my...
kind of my nickname, you know?
Got that big old boot down there.
I never ever considered it a handicap ever.
Hang on, men. I gotta get myself down a little bit.
I worked in refineries, construction work.
Nothing slows me down.
It was only a handicap to other people,
the way they perceived me.
-What's your nickname? Big Foot? -It was good.
-Big Boot, man. -Big Boot. Big Boot.
-That's my email address even. -Why did they you call that?
There are different stories that I'd tell about it.
We was out picnicking.
And about a little...
Just a little old 6-foot alligator
decided he wanted me for breakfast.
Dude, you're BSing us. Let's pray.
[laughter]
I guess, mostly, to make people feel comfortable,
I put jokes to it.
[laughs]
[Fred] And what happened,
nobody will know
because I'm not gonna tell you.
It did make me a better person
because I tried harder
and I knew I had to try harder.
[narrator] So when Fred first faced
the raging whitewater...
[Fred] It's just like riding a bicycle.
You don't ever forget.
[narrator] He met the challenge head on.
[Fred] That type of mining
with the dredges and everything
was a totally new thing for me,
but I didn't feel threatened at all.
[man] All right. We're gonna give you a quick countdown.
Three, two, one.
Get it, Fred.
[Dustin] Yeah, Fred. You're dredging, man.
[Fred] I know, man.
[Dustin] Woo!
[Fred] About time.
[Dustin] About damn time.
Underwater and digging dirt.
[Fred] Boy, this remind me of old times. Holy cow.
I got into my '70s and I'm in there diving,
and I thought, "What the hell are you doing?"
[laughs]
It just didn't dawn on me that I was getting older.
My body said, "Hell, you can do this,"
and sure as hell I could.
[Dustin] Good dive, Fred. Good dive.
Good job, Fred.
Fred did awesome today. He's fearless.
He just tunnels down where nobody else is going to.
He's taking chances. That's for damn sure.
[laughs]
[narrator] And after just two weeks of diving...
[man] Fred, look at that right there.
[Fred] I see it.
[man] Holy [bleep].
I'll be damned. We found nuggets.
[Fred] Yeah! Woo-hoo!
Here, we've been working our tail off
and finally we found gold,
and everybody's spirits just kind of soared.
Clean that sucker out.
Woo!
Way to go, buddy.
-Clean it out. -Good job.
Well, as it turned out, it was much deeper
and it was much more difficult than we thought.
[man] You ready, Dustin?
[Dustin groans] All right.
Yeah, we're just trying to get down as deep as we can.
[Dustin] [bleep] [groans]
[Fred] Dustin.
[Dustin grunts]
A rock just came through that tunnel,
the tight spot.
[man] Holy [bleep].
[Dustin] I can't take a hit to the head.
[man] No, that wasn't good.
[Dustin] This [bleep] is dangerous.
[Fred] The current was so fast.
So I had this little idea.
One of the things I had up in my scrap pile
was about a 20-foot long little I-beam.
I got it. No, that's good.
[Fred] My fix was to just go ahead
and put it out on about a 45-degree angle
and then just add these 2 by 8s along.
That's perfect.
Hide from the current is what we're trying to do.
All right. Let's go over with it.
[Dustin] Here we go. This is gonna be crazy.
-You got a hold of it? -Yup. Got a hold of it.
Come on. What happens when you add Fred Hurt,
a full sheet of plywood, and raging water?
This can't be anything but chaos.
[Fred] Coming down with it.
A full sheet of plywood and he made that [bleep] work.
-Wow. Go, Fred. -[Fred] Yup.
-That did a lot. -[Fred] That did a lot.
[Dustin] Wonderful work by Fred.
I definitely wasn't giving him the credit
he deserved in the beginning.
But went right together
and he did a damn good job.
[laughs]
Oh, that was one of the fixes that we did.
Oh, hell. What did I break?
Most of the like things like bush fixes
and things like that came from a sense...
We never had money.
The main thing was
is you got by with what you have.
He's gonna make this thing right here out of steel
that we got from the grizzly bars.
[Fred] It just takes so long to get parts.
You have no chance of mining if you just sit there
and wait till a part shows up.
Go ahead.
Hold right there. It's on. It's on. It's on.
[cheering]
[woman] Fred did a tremendous repair.
I mean, I don't know anybody that does repairs like that.
Nothing like good old Southern boy ingenuity, huh?
[chuckles]
[narrator] Up ahead...
-Hold up. -I asked you
to not [bleep] do this. You did it anyway.
[Fred] Let them get it the way they want it.
They could do it without me.
[producer] And, Fred, tell me...
Tell me about diving
with your son at the bottom
of McKinley Creek, in the Trifecta.
That must be a special memory for you.
[sighs]
Always said if we can get into a wetsuit,
we can be a diver.
-Ooh, my bad. -[laughs]
I think you put on a little weight, buddy.
Suck it up.
Getting into trifecta, it was a little bit more
of the father and son adventure.
Hey, Fred.
It's you and me.
Here we go, buddy. The moment of truth.
[intense music playing]
[Dustin] Damn, Fred. Can you believe it?
We're both diving McKinley Creek together.
[chuckles] I guess one of our culminating moments.
[clicks tongue, makes sound]
[Dustin] Double the bridges, double the Hurt.
The two Hurt boys
mining and dredging all at one time,
and that was cool.
Of course, I thought Dustin was digging
in the wrong place. [laughs]
[Dustin] Fred, there is no reason to be over there.
[Fred] I'm dredging in the right place.
I just got down to the damn good stuff.
And I figured we should have been mining
about 20 feet, 30 feet further down.
You give the gold a chance to drop a little bit.
-All right. -[Dustin] I'm done.
Abandon. I'm done.
We have to have a meeting now.
Get out of the [bleep] water.
[Fred] We both knew we... what we wanted.
It's just we couldn't agree on how to get there.
How about you coming up with a better solution
for your problem with it falling over in the hole?
You're my problem though.
And... [chuckles]
The little conflicts continued.
-Hold up. -I asked you
to not [bleep] do this.
You did it anyway.
Now, it's [bleep] up.
Now, we gotta redo it.
Don't give me no [bleep].
You can do it yourself.
His style of what he wanted to do
was totally different than mine.
If they don't need me there, so be it.
They're expert operators. They know better.
Let them get it the way they want it.
They can do it without me.
We just decided I just couldn't work
with Dustin anymore.
He just couldn't accept the way that I was.
There it is.
Father-son conflict.
It lasted for years.
Hated it.
[dramatic music playing]
The best thing for me to do, work my own claim.
I will make the decisions. I will be in charge.
That's just the way it is. Dustin.
I wanted to run my own operation.
Dustin wanted to run his own.
I like being in charge.
It's better.
-[Dustin] We each get to find some gold. -[Fred] All right. All right.
Let's get in there and get it on.
That kind of actually started to...
We started getting a little better together.
[Dustin] Don't you miss doing fun [bleep] like this, Fred?
[chuckles] Maybe nothing quite as dramatic.
[laughs]
[Fred] Patching our differences up.
Things were doing much better.
[Dustin] Fred, you gotta take out
one of those pigeons, man.
[man] Five bucks I bet he hits it.
[Dustin] Come on, Fred. Don't let me down, boo.
-[gunshot] -[man] Woo!
[Fred] Pigeon 40 feet away.
[man] Yeah, I'd give you that.
[man] That was good. That was good.
But I think, over the years, that Dustin and I finally
figured each other out a little bit.
[Dustin] There was times when everyone doubted me
except for Fred.
Of all people, Fred's the one.
Fred's the one.
Gonna stand by your side as much as we fight.
Now, the situation is totally reversed.
Dustin and I get along quite well.
[Dustin] All right. So lay it on me.
Where would you dig if you were digging?
[Fred] I would dig all across right there.
-[Dustin] Yup. Fred... -It's like--
...it is possible that this is the very first time
that you and I agree on where to dig.
[chuckles]
I kept on diving until, I don't know,
76, 77 years old.
Oh, there's, you know, like a big chunk of gold.
Yes! [laughs]
Fellas, I'm just more than ecstatic.
I don't know. I guess I started feeling
my mortality or something.
Sad to see it go.
I noticed that climbing up and down those mountains
was getting to be a little bit tougher
than it used to ever be.
Time for Fred to admit
just not as tough as these young guys.
[laughs]
It was a little humbling to be able to say that
but I really felt that.
They definitely, definitely
are tougher than I was.
Hey, y'all get down there and find that pile
of leprechaun gold that I didn't get.
[laughter]
[narrator] After nearly two decades...
[Fred] It's been a thrill of a lifetime.
[narrator] ...the sun set
on 77-year-old Fred's Alaskan adventure.
[dramatic music playing]
[Fred] At this point in time, there's no regrets whatever.
I guess if people have never done like hunting or fishing
or the old golfer that thinks
he's gonna get him a hole-in-one
or something like that,
they would never understand that lure...
every day, every day.
Wow. What an adventure that was.
[laughs]
Adios, Porcupine.
Wow.
I'm gonna miss Dustin, you know?
I worked together with him for the last 10 years.
We've had our differences but I'm gonna miss him.
That was the end
of the Gold Rush era.
[dramatic music playing]
So what are you gonna do with your final days then?
[sighs] It's the strangest thing in the world.
I got a little hot rod out there that...
I think that...
I always wanted to kind of spruce it up a little bit.
I call it my Black Beauty.
Here's what it look like now.
You know, you talk about bucket list or something,
maybe, you know, we could just drive down there...
General store down here
and I get me a nice big cup of ice cream.
I'd be happy with that.
[Dustin] That's fun, Fred. Look at that thing.
I think this thing will start up for you.
[Dustin] Okay.
[car engine rumbles]
[laughs]
Well, I feel naked out here.
Yeah.
[Dustin] I can't get my foot on that pedal, man.
Boy, that is something.
Like a go-kart, huh?
-Yeah. -[laughs]
She bounces a little bit too, eh?
Oh, tell you what, it's kind of cool though.
You know, you and I have never done
something like this before.
-Nope. -Ever.
I look back on...
everything and it...
Hell, it seems like we were always working.
[laughs]
Nobody ever, on their death bed, says,
"I should've work more."
Nope. That's one of my regrets is I didn't take a vacation.
Sometimes you wonder why you do certain things
and lots of times,
you just don't even question it.
When Dustin was younger,
I buried myself in work at lot.
That era of my life,
I'd prefer to kind of put it in the past
and work on a new relationship.
[Dustin] All right.
[Fred] Hey, look like we got a good
front row seat right here.
Oh, yes.
[grunts]
Yeah, this is one of the things
I wanna do on my little bucket list.
-I can cross it off. [laughs] -[Dustin] Okay.
[narrator] Up ahead...
[Dustin] I love you.
I'm pretty damn sad.
I have to accept this is probably the last time
I'll see him alive.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] Frederick Richard Hurt,
do you have the gold... rings that is.
Jen, I commit myself completely to you.
[man] You may kiss your bride.
[cheers and applause]
[Fred] Jen and I have been together for six years now.
It's been a pleasure.
Most incredible thing ever.
Okay. We're off to Australia, right?
[Fred] I think our honeymoon's gonna have to wait.
We gotta get back to gold mining.
[gobbling]
Well, you heading on up and I'll be here
just trying to do whatever I can do
to deal with all this stuff on a day-to-day basis.
We're gonna miss you up there, man.
Everybody likes having you around.
[Fred] I want you guys to go up there
and have one hell of a season.
I know you got a good plan,
and I'll be rooting for you.
[Dustin] Hopefully, you make it long enough
to where we can... show you some gold.
I'll be looking forward to it.
[Dustin] Okay.
That's my goal. [laughs]
To hold out long enough to see some gold
come out of Nugget Creek.
So just bring me some.
I'mma try with all of my might but...
-Yeah. -All right.
-Love you.
You take care.
I love you.
I hope we get to see you again.
[forlorn music playing]
[Dustin] I'm pretty damn sad.
He's just not doing quite as well as he was
the last time I saw him.
And I have to accept
this is probably the last time I'll see him alive, so...
I've never known life without Fred Hurt.
Fred and I started making up about two years ago.
I'll say the truth, I think that Fred and I have made
huge leaps and bounds from where we started.
And now that we're doing better,
old man's gonna die.
[Fred] Love you, hon.
[Jen] I love you too.
Nobody's ever ready to let somebody go.
You just deal with it when it happens. That's it.
I'm heading up to Alaska with his blessing.
He wants me to succeed.
He wants me to find gold.
He wants me to have adventure.
He doesn't want me sitting here watching him die.
[somber music playing]
[Fred] Well, a lot of people would remember Fred
as that grouchy character on Gold Rush: White Water.
[laughs]
Living 80 years is...
I guess, is long enough, although I was thinking about
another 10 years, 15 years.
I look back on my life
as definitely a well-lived life.
-Hey, Fred. How are you? -You all right?
[Fred] Oh, anybody can go and live a boring life.
[laughs]
Years ago, I could've just retired. Uh-uh.
Woo!
What the hell do you wanna retire for
when you're still enjoying life?
Yeah! [laughs]
Find something you really enjoy doing.
-We're getting this. -[man laughs]
[Fred] Go out and search for that adventure.
Woo-hoo!
It gives your life a little bit of meaning.
[Dustin] I love you.
[Fred] At the end of your time...
Woo!
You can say, "Yeah, I had a good time."
Yeah!
[laughs]
It was a hell of a ride.
Eighty years.
[laughs]
[dramatic music playing]
I'd do it all over again.
[laughs]
[dramatic music playing]