[narrator] Deep in the Alaskan wilderness.
This year, we got something to prove.
-Extreme gold miner Dustin Hurt... -Let's go.
-...leads his crew of fearless miners... -Whoo!
...to the most remote claims on Earth...
[Dustin] I feel like the guys are hungry right now.
[narrator] ...hunting for nuggets where no one else would dare.
Really hungry. I'm loving it.
Good to go.
Diver in.
Risking everything...
-Oh, get out of there! -Watch the swing.
Do or die, amigo.
-[all clamoring] -[grunts]
-[bleep] -He would have been dead.
[cheers]
This is still not how I die.
-...for the big score... -There's gonna be giant nugget
just about 10 feet down.
This season, they finally hit the jackpot.
-Nugget! -Oh, my God!
Everything we've heard is true.
There is so much gold down there.
Breaking the record books...
That's the biggest nugget in Gold Rushhistory.
...but face a catastrophe...
Hey, guys, I have some bad news.
...no one is ready for...
Never known life without Fred Hurt.
[all cheering]
-[whoops] Yeah. -You guys ready for this?
-Oh, yeah. -We don't have to set up camp.
We don't have to move anything.
We go in there, open everything up,
get the dredge out, get up creek and go.
[narrator] In remote southeast Alaska,
veteran gold miner Dustin Hurt and his band of brothers
are heading deep into the Alaskan wilderness.
Let's get some good gold, guys.
On a mission to start mining operations earlier than ever before.
And I can't find the tent or the camp.
Did you see it?
By the way, you can't see anything right here.
I got to figure out how to get on top of this stuff.
We can find the right ledge. We can probably do that.
Y'all ready for that?
Ah, yeah.
We're probably going to run over a whole bunch of rocks,
so everybody don't trip over.
Whoa!
[grunts]
[grunts] Come on.
Whoa. What the [bleep] was that?
-We're not going to make it! We're not going to make it! -[bleep]
Oh, my God! That was insane!
[all laughing]
That's not my intention.
I thought hopefully I could get up on top of the snow
and maybe it would go.
All the ledges, look how tall all the ledges are.
We're so close to camp.
[narrator] 30 miles north of the nearest town
lies Dustin's mining camp at Nugget Creek.
He sunk his life savings into buying it,
but getting there is a risky nine-mile journey up the Sercu River.
The dangerous access is why it's rumored
to still have legendary chunky nuggets.
We have to freaking take all this snow out, dude.
All right, let's get the shovels, and we got
-to get some of the weight out. -Yeah.
We're trying to find a water track for the airboat to ride on all the way to camp.
And what it looks like is it got too narrow,
and we started busting through snow, and I got us stuck.
The whole point of getting up here early
was so we could get digging before the rain comes and floods us out.
But right now, we can't even make it to camp.
I knew we'd be digging snow, but I didn't think
-we'd be digging snow out of the boat. -No.
Dude, that was crazy even for me.
Oh, my God.
Sorry, guys, I tried.
We got most of the way. If we can just get this out.
Well, it was too narrow, obviously.
We got no choice, man.
We have to follow this.
It's not looking good for us making it to camp,
which we could see camp, but I can't get up on these banks.
I'm going to keep trying, though.
So I'm wondering if I should cut y'all loose, go by myself,
-and try to jump up on top without killing us? -Yeah.
And then try to come get you if I can ride on the snow.
You ready to push out?
Let's go for a shove.
All this is just gonna slide off.
We're gonna turn it on and...
[motor whirring]
There we go. Ready?
Yep.
-All right, up. -Watch yourself.
[engine revs]
[yells]
-[all laughing] -[bleep]
-Oh, we made it! -Holy [bleep], we made it.
We made it! Yeah!
-No way! -[all] Yeah!
I knew I should have stayed on.
-What are you doing, Carlos? -Trying to get up on the shelf.
Woo-hoo! Yeah!
-Hell yeah! -I didn't think I was going to make it.
Let's go jump some [bleep].
Yeah, Carlos.
Woo!
Let's get to the other side now.
I agree.
All right, let's get a camp.
Look, we were so close to the gold last year.
It's driving me crazy, knowing what we left out there.
I just grabbed the dredge and just yank it up there
and start dredging.
That's all I want to do, too.
Woo-hoo! We got this down.
[laughs]
We're crash-test dummies. [laughs]
-[bleep] Whoo! -We're here, boys!
Back at Nugget Creek.
Let's get in the water.
[all whooping and laughing]
[narrator] Last year, Dustin shifted his focus to the remote
and inhospitable Nugget Creek claim,
rumored to hold nuggets worth up to $50,000 apiece.
The word is that Nugget Creek has more gold up there
than I can handle.
More gold and bigger gold.
[woman] That's promising.
[man] With a little bit of luck, this could change our entire lives.
[narrator] But those dreams quickly turned to nightmares
when his two crews were annihilated by a series of ferocious storms.
[woman] That [bleep] is so loud.
You can hear the boulders rolling down the creek.
Sound like I'm in a Texas thunderstorm right now.
[Dustin] We're about to lose everything,
and there's nothing I can do but watch it happen.
This place is destroyed.
I'mma call in the season. That's it.
We're done with this.
Mother Nature beat us last year.
After all that flooding, it destroyed my bank account,
-I can tell you that. -Yeah.
And it was a choice between completely stopping this
or basically going to debt to do this.
So I went into debt to do this, and this is where we're at.
Couldn't afford to bring everybody back, so this is it.
This is us. We either weren't going to come back,
or we're going to have a single crew, and that's it.
And I decided on us.
We're going to have to hit it as hard as we can
-because we know the rains are coming. -We got to.
We got to make up for what we didn't do last year.
That's true.
[narrator] Dustin is down to just a five-person crew.
And to make matters worse, he will have to face
the season ahead without his most trusted ally.
I have to find out how Fred's doing.
They just diagnosed him with severe brain cancer.
Quite frankly, I think that this is probably going
to be the last time I see him.
Um...
We'll see.
It's pretty sad to say that out loud.
I think that's the first time I've really, really said that out loud.
[narrator] Mining legend, Dakota Fred
brought his son, Dustin, to Alaska over 10 years ago.
They can go on by, baby.
The two mined side by side, sharing good times...
-280 ounces of gold. -Yeah!
-[whoops] -Hell yeah.
...and bad.
What the hell are you doing?
That does not sound like condescending bull [bleep] to you?
But nothing could stand between father and son
and their dream of a bonanza in gold.
Hey, Fred, can you believe it?
We're both diving in McKinley Creek together.
Double the dredges, double the Hurts.
But Fred's recent diagnosis changed everything.
-Hey, Fred. -Hey, what's up, man?
How's it going, man?
-Good to see you. -Yeah.
-Have a seat. -Okay.
So how you doing, man?
I guess you know I got, uh...
good old brain tumors right now.
My balance is down a little bit.
A little bit of blurry vision.
It's progressing every day.
Sorry to hear that, brother.
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've lived a good life.
-[chuckles] -Yeah.
-Uh... -We're gonna miss you up there, man.
Everybody likes having you around.
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.
Hopefully, you make it long enough
to where we can show you some gold.
-I'll be looking forward to it. -Okay.
That's my goal. [laughs]
To hold out long enough to see some gold
come out of Nugget Creek.
So, bring me some.
I'm gonna try with all my might, but, yeah.
-All right. -All right.
Love you. You take care.
I love you.
Hope we get to see you again.
Pretty damn sad.
I've never known life without Fred Hurt.
Nobody's ever ready to let somebody go.
You just deal with it when it happens.
That's it.
-Love you, hon. -I love you, too.
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.
So, it's gonna be a little rough.
Snow's a little deep.
The things that we do to go for this gold,
[narrator] It's a 1,000-foot hike through deep snow to their camp,
which they left under wraps
through the harsh Alaskan winter.
[bleep]. He found a spot.
Oh, [bleep]. Gotta catch a breath.
[laughs]
That's destroyed.
Oh, [bleep], that's not good.
Oh, [bleep]
That's not what I wanted to see.
To give themselves a head start this year,
the crew left all their mining gear
in a steel-reinforced tent to protect it from the elements.
Everything is under snow.
Our tent, our buggies, the dredges are buried.
This mother [bleep] was supposed to be snowproof.
[Dustin] This was a big setback.
Yet again, I messed up.
I bought the wrong tent, obviously.
And now we're set back.
Um...
The most perfect day to go out and start dredging,
and I'm not out there.
I'm picking up the damn mess.
Did we lose everything?
On our first day, it's a rescue mission for all our gear.
Phase one, find out what's in this destroyed tent.
[narrator] At Dustin's Nugget Camp, the collapsed storage tent
threatens to derail their early start to the season.
We had an idea right before the end of last season,
put up a nice tent rated for freaking, kind of, buku snow, like Arctic snow.
And we thought we would come back this season
With all our gear nice and toasty,
obviously,
snow wins.
That's slick. Whoa.
-Dang it. -It's like a maze in here.
I [bleep] can't move.
I'm literally stuck.
Solid ice down here, too.
-We need this snow out. -Gotcha.
Oh, [bleep], there's a shovel right here, James.
-Oh, boy. -Can you get over here?
Can you reach it?
-You have to bring it back to where you were before. -Okay.
-[groans] -Good job, dude!
[grunts]
Get out of town!
It's not even about trying to beat the rains.
I need my gear to be okay.
If it's smashed and all of my dredges are destroyed,
we're done. We're done here.
We got to just go, because I can't afford
to replace all this stuff.
It's just not going to happen.
All right, I'm going to see if I can get the dozer running
and start cleaning out some of the snow around the camp.
Hell, yeah. There's a lot.
I mean, we can work at it and get it.
-Yeah, man. -Arnold.
-[engine starts] -[laughs]
Yeah!
[bleep] yeah! Fired right up!
Well, the dozer started right up,
so that's a good sign already.
That means we can get rid of snow.
It's a big deal here.
Getting rid of snow is always a plus.
[narrator] Dustin gets to work clearing the snow, while inside the tent,
there's a search-and-rescue mission.
Oh, there's a lot of snow on top.
-Oh, [bleep] -I'm going to go to the other end.
-Jeep got [bleep] up, too. -Did it?
Yep.
-Yeah, the windshield. -Oh, [bleep].
Dude, it popped the tires.
-Yeah. -[bleep] bad.
Holy [bleep].
-That crushed in the whole roof. -Oh, my God.
I don't even know if we should be in here.
-They're crushed. -Oh, [bleep].
Holy moly, dude.
That's not good, bro.
-Ah. -That's not going to happen.
The tires are popped...
-All our vehicles are done for. -...from all the weight.
Well, they're going to need a lot of work.
Who's going to be the first one to tell Dustin?
Not me, amigo.
-How's it going over there? -It smashed everything.
They digged up the ATV. It's smashed too.
Somewhat.
The whole bed is crushed to the ground.
I can't tell on the axles yet.
I can't get over there to actually see.
We'll just have to assess it once we can get some of that [bleep] off of there.
-Let me take a look. I haven't looked in here yet. -Yep. Okay.
I've been out here playing in the mud.
The excavator's fine, but I need to take that bar off
down there before I can get the excavator out.
Can we maybe get it out of the tent, or...
-Yeah. -Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
-Don't you think it's smashed up? -Yeah.
Yeah.
It took it pretty roughly.
Don't get in here. There ain't no reason.
-Just let it happen. -Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Don't get in here.
Ooh, it's got me pinned.
-Wow. -What do you need?
-Balls. -There you go.
-Um... -It might come.
Just let us get out of the way and...
Okay, you're good.
-Free at last. -You got it.
All right. Let's pull this Jeep out,
see what's left of it.
Sit tight.
Keep driving.
-Watch your fingers and toes. -Go for it.
-I'm about to bounce on you. -Go for it.
Ooh.
[bleep]. Wow.
She's in there.
Carlos, James, come hang off the back of this thing, man.
Yeah!
-Okay. Here goes. -There it goes!
Yeah!
Thank you, guys.
[bleep], man, it's so apocalyptic, dude.
Oh, that poor Jeep.
Let's get the ATVs out.
We might have a flat tire.
[engine starts]
It's alive!
Yeah! [laughs]
You don't even need to tow it, dude.
-It works. -Holy [bleep].
-That's a good sign. -Yeah, it is.
[groans]
I thought that thing was trashed completely.
It's all wonky, but God, man, it still goes.
That tire flat on the front?
Man, I bet you that ice came down,
just pushed the air out of that.
-Yeah. -We're trying to get to this dry spot.
That thing was pancake.
You couldn't tell if it was going to drive or not.
It looked like it was toast.
Now we got an ATV we can drive.
We'll be able to get around in the snow.
That's a huge win for us right now.
-So... -Yes, it is.
-Takes a licking, keeps on ticking. -Right.
How are the dredges looking over there?
-Did they make it? -Huh.
You know what?
All the dredges are on this side,
and they all look just fine.
I cannot believe that made it.
That is awesome, man.
The one thing that it didn't smash is my dredges.
They made it, and it was just blind luck.
-That was it. -Hang on, hang on.
The dredges got pontoons and we've got snow.
Why don't we try to stage that dredge?
-You want to drag it up on the snow? -Drag it up with the ATV.
Then it's just a short jog to get it to the site.
Yeah, we can stage it.
Tell you what, right now, we need to finish getting our cabins fixed up.
Yes, then we can go check it out.
So first thing tomorrow, we'll get the tracks on that ATV,
and we'll drag that dredge up to the creek.
-[chuckles] -That's a great idea, Paul.
Hopefully, we can get minin' real soon.
Well, you slept hard, cos I could hear you snoring.
-[bleep] yeah, I slept hard. -You didn't wake up at all?
Uh-uh. I woke up at 1 o'clock.
It was still dark. I had to take a piss.
Then that freaking light, Paul's light came on.
-I said, oh, thank you, God, man. -[all laughing]
Check it out. I've got something cool to show you.
It's in a map.
-And it's from 1928. -Wow.
This is the known perimeters of our claim
If you go on the online stuff,
it is different than the original stuff.
I got ahold of the original stuff,
and this is, uh... this is our boundaries.
And what I've been told is we, and this kind of proves it,
that we're about 200 to 300 feet upstream,
-too far, what we thought was our property line. -Mm-hmm.
Dustin spent the whole of last season
battling at what he thought was the southernmost limit of his claim.
But the 1928 survey map
has revealed that his boundary extends 250 feet further down creek,
gifting him the potential of new gold-rich territory.
So I'm pretty psyched about this map, guys.
-Yeah. Me too. -And what it did for us,
I think it's a good spot to dig.
Last year, we had to walk right by it,
-because I thought it wasn't on our property. -Yeah.
But it's within our reach to dig there.
It's a good settling area for ancient gold that came down.
Yep.
And it settled there, and everything else
smoothed off on the other side.
-That's freaking awesome, dude. -Come on.
You see, the way I see it, too, big boulders, big gold.
You know, if the big boulders stopped right there,
the big gold's gonna drop out right there.
[Carlos] It's gonna be it, man. Nugget patch, bro.
Just picking them up and putting them in your basket.
I haven't seen any damn gold.
-Man. -There's no speculation until I see it.
-Yeah. -Right, right, right.
This is not real until we actually hold it in our hands.
-Yeah. -Exactly.
So we can talk about how much we're gonna get,
but the truth is, if we don't beat the rain,
-It's all for nothing anyways. So we have to beat it. -Mm-hmm.
-Yeah. -We have to be to the bottom of this thing.
No time wasted. We have to get up there.
We have to smash this.
Just absolutely dig it out.
Just... [grunts] just everything you can.
-Mm-hmm. -And then when it's flooding, you can take your break.
-All right? -Yep.
All right. Everybody know what they were doing?
-Mm-hmm. -All right.
Man, I can't wait to go mining.
Last year, we found out how hard it was to drag
these dredges up to the creek.
So we need to put tracks on this ATV.
We're going to put these dredges on the snow
and slide them right up.
We want to take advantage of the snow
so we don't have to drag it over all the boulders.
Come on.
Yeah, a little bit more. Yeah, there you go.
-Back on. -That's it. [bleep] yeah.
That is almost it.
Hold on. Stay right there. Stay right there. That's it.
I just got to tighten this up, but it's over with.
It shouldn't be a huge accomplishment,
-but it really is right now. -It really is.
All right. That's it. Tracks are on.
Let's move the dredge up to the cul-de-sac.
All right.
Oh, we're way ahead of the game right now.
-Yes. Absolutely. -I love it.
Just ride in.
Just make sure we don't hook anything.
Yeah, we'll have to watch those boards.
-I'll walk behind it to help us guide it. -[engine starts]
Yeah, baby.
Oh, that's no problem, dude. Get on top of it, Paul.
-There you go. -[laughs]
Look at the mountains behind him. That's badass.
How badass is this, dude?
-Looks like a freaking dog musher, dude. -[all laughing]
So we're going to beat one of the all-time honors this year.
They did it in the fall and the winter when there was snow.
Get it set up, things melted down,
their equipment was sitting there,
and they were ready to go as soon as the snow melted.
[narrator] The frenzy for Alaskan gold
began over 120 years ago when the discovery of gold in the Yukon
sparked the original gold rush.
Thousands of intrepid adventurers raced to the Chilkat Mountains,
eventually digging out more than 80,000 ounces of gold
worth over $160 million in today's money.
It's estimated there's 200 million ounces of gold
still in the ground in Alaska,
but only in the hardest to reach locations.
We made it!
Oh my gosh, it's so bright out here.
We're weeks ahead now.
Dude, we're way ahead, man.
-That saved a lot of time. -Good job on the idea
of dragging it up in the snow.
It's better than trying to carry it out here by hand, man.
-Oh, my God. -Let's get this going.
We're just one step closer.
We need to be in that water yesterday, all right?
Yesterday.
All right. Let me go look at this creek, man.
Just see what we were dealing with, right?
Yep.
-It sounds mild right now. -Man, look at that water.
Look how clear! Whoo!
Oh, man.
Holy [bleep], dude.
Do you remember how hard of a time we had just
getting across from here over to there last year?
Yeah, I do.
One of the things I'm worried about right now
is last year when we went up there, it was ice.
Giant slabs of 15-foot thick ice.
And you can't see up there to see what's going on.
So I'm going to grab my little drone.
I'm going to fly it up there
and see what we're going to see.
Hopefully, when the drone goes up creek,
He can locate our dive site.
Best case scenario, we can set shop up
and start dredging tomorrow.
Let's just tilt this straight down, shall we?
I am so confused at what I'm looking at right now.
That's got to be Big-ass Boulder right there.
That's all that ice that we were looking at last year, isn't it?
Whoo. Look at that.
So let's back up.
All right, where's my new property line?
Let's look up.
There it is. That's it right there, look.
That looks perfect, actually.
So do we have to go through that ice bridge to get up there?
I think so.
[all groaning]
It's the snow bridges that freak me out, man.
That's stopping us from dragging that dredge up that creek.
That is a big snow bridge, man.
I got to make a plan.
Uh, in order to pull our dredge all the way up
to our dig spot, there is one snow bridge.
And we have to melt through this stuff really quick.
Not like last year.
We spent so much damn time cutting on ice.
I'm not having it this year.
We need to be in this water yesterday.
You guys ready to melt some ice?
Hell yeah. That snow bridge has to go.
[narrator] Desperate to get a jump start on the season,
the crew waste no time getting to work
on the 20-foot snow barrier blocking their path
to the new section of their claim.
-Yep. Got it. -There we go.
Going for the drop.
[narrator] This year, they've come prepared with
a new weapon in their arsenal.
Right now, what we have is kind of...
convoluted.
We have a water pump.
It's gonna pull out of the creek.
It's gonna pump it into a high-pressure
water pump over to a heater that's gonna convert
the water into really hot steam.
Dustin's plan?
Use the BushFix device to create a jet
of pressurized hot water capable of slicing through
the 20-foot-high snow barrier like a hot knife through butter.
-Ready to run? -[bleep] yeah.
Oh, man.
Oh, yeah!
-Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! -Nice!
Yeah!
Good pressure!
Oh, look how quick that is! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
That thing works great!
This thing's working perfect!
Look what we got now!
No, no problem.
Big boulders, no problem.
Flood?
We're working on that.
Dude, this water is scorching hot, dude.
-Yeah. -Scorching hot. Holy moly.
I can see the steam coming out underneath it.
So the hot water helped, right?
Oh my gosh.
That's a game changer, man.
This is cheating, dude.
I love it.
Dude, I bet you can get that big chunk to come off.
-I bet you can get that. -That's what I'm trying to do.
Nice.
The hot water and the pressure together
cutting right through ice bridges.
That's pretty awesome. That's a win for me today.
It's going to cut weeks of snow cutting
the way we were doing it into hours.
It's nice that it worked, but I've accepted that it's going to work.
And now I've already moved on to the next stage,
which is decision making and where to dig
and how to dig it.
And what are you doing and...
And the only person to blame when this is over with,
if I fail, is me.
But if I succeed, I get that too. [laughs]
Hopefully I succeed this year.
This is where we're going to dig?
This is what I want.
While James and Carlos battle the mammoth snow barrier,
Dustin, Paul, and Wes head upstream to inspect the ground
inside their new claimed boundary.
Yeah. Check it out, man.
Our property line, just so you know,
-Okay. -is right the [bleep] here.
This is our property line. It goes right through here.
The fact that this is going down, and as wide as this is,
it makes a great gold catch, because the canyon
narrows back down, it's going to slow the water down,
and this is a fallout area.
-Yep. -Oh.
-That would be the inside bend. -I think that's so close.
-That's tough. -Yeah.
Fifty feet up from the ice bridge lies Dustin's newly extended boundary line,
containing a section of prime ground as it lies just
below a steep, narrow drop-off in the river.
Capable of carrying the largest and heaviest
material on the creek,
it runs directly into the slower-moving waters
of the inside bend
where gold, 19 times heavier than water,
can settle and could have deposited the monster nuggets
this creek is famous for.
We're going to start right here.
Where the snow patch is, we're going to go right through that.
Matter of fact, while he's cutting that ice,
we can start popping some of these rocks, man.
Why not?
They're going to be done with that soon.
I need these rocks.
That one, that one, that one, anything that'll crack.
All right. I'll do that.
Don't get hurt. Don't die.
To quickly remove the heaviest boulders
from their dive site, Paul will blast them
into smaller pieces using targeted
rock fracturing technology.
So the mission for today, drill and crack
as many big rocks as I can find.
It's the perfect time for me to come over here and break rocks.
The more rocks we get broke now, the better off
it'll be when we get the dredging spot.
Years past, there's no way we'd be busting rocks right now.
We'd be still trying to set up camp.
It's so nice being ahead of the game right now.
What?
Don't need no frickin' blanket.
I'd like to see the rocks explode.
You guys are so frickin' sappy, man.
Everybody ready?
-Fire in the hole! -[explosion]
[whoops and exclaims]
Perfect! [laughs] Whoo!
That did more than I thought it would do.
-Yeah, George, it's a lot more. -Holy [bleep]
Right now it's working great.
We're making big boulders into pebbles.
That looks like bedrock underneath this one.
That might be interesting.
I'm seeing that bedrock.
It could be a good thing because it might just be a fin
that comes across, and if that's the case,
we've got a plunge pool up there.
There's a plunge pool.
The gold's not going past that plunge pool.
There's going to be a lot of gold up there.
So hopefully, that's just a fin that's going across.
I think we're going to cut through this ice like nothing.
This is going to be easy for us this year.
Paul has already busted rocks to clear space
for our new dive site.
-Fire in the hole! -[explosion]
[laughs] This is awesome.
Oh, [bleep].
-James, look at the water. -I see that.
Look at this water, dude. Cave-in, dude.
We're about to have a landslide.
Holy [bleep]
We got to get out of here.
Every so often, we get that steam
coming underneath the ice.
Oh, that's a telltale sign that we broke through.
[narrator] For this crew to succeed in the untamed
wilderness of Alaska,
they must operate in the zone
between craziness and insanity.
-Okay, that's getting a little scary. -Yeah, dude.
It's starting to scare me, man.
[both chuckle]
-Oh, [bleeping] -Oh.
There it goes.
-Woo-hoo! -Man.
Yeah!
Oh, it scared the [bleep] out of me.
We need gold. Everybody needs gold.
Oh, [bleep]
-James, look at the water! -I see that.
[narrator] At Nugget Creek, a landslide upstream has turned the creek
into a raging torrent of murky whitewater.
Holy [bleep]!
We must have had a landslide!
With all these snow bridges that we have, just like
the one we're trying to cut, there's a bunch of them upstream,
so anytime one of them lets go,
it puts a lot of dirty water and debris...
It closed up. We gotta get out of here
because that means it dammed up the creek
and when it melts that snow, it's gonna be a wall of water.
Keep an eye on that for sure.
It's not doing nothing, dude. It's not even cutting, man.
Yeah, we did get some chocolate milk in the water,
meaning that we got a landslide up above us.
That's a big, big problem with any machinery that uses hot water
or any kind of water filtration.
We went from 100% destroying down to 50%.
No heat.
What the [bleep] is up with that pressure washer?
[whistles] They have no pressure.
-They have no pressure. -No pressure.
What's going on?
For some reason, they got no pressure at the wand.
-I don't get it. -So it was pumping,
-but it... -Yeah, they don't have...
They just barely got a [bleep]. It's just barely pushing out.
It may have sucked some rocks in, so...
That's what it did, I'm guessing.
[narrator] The silt and debris from the landslide
has found its way into the pressure washer
and is blocking the flow of hot water.
-Let's find out about this. -[motor whirring]
Yeah, he sucked up some rocks.
Every setback costs the crew precious mining time
in the small windows between the floods of Nugget Creek.
You want to put this on the end?
-Yep. -Yeah.
Double, triple it up, whatever the [bleep] you got to do.
That's clean now, so it can't get anything through it
that's smaller than that screen,
so we should be good there.
Ooh, she's pressurized, I think.
Without having a foot valve, there's nothing to keep us
from sucking rocks up into the impeller.
Once we get a rock in the impeller,
we don't have no water pressure at all.
So hopefully this mosquito net...
is going to act like a little bit of a screen.
Water can go through, but the rocks and the gravel can't.
We've got to have that impeller working.
[motor whirring]
Just as much water pouring through there.
You'd think it wouldn't be able to pick that [bleep] up.
Oh, here it goes.
It won't come until I squeeze the trigger.
[whistles]
It fired up!
There it goes.
I just want to go clear it.
It's going?
Oh!
-Something happened. -We got fire!
It's working!
Nailed it.
Woo!
Now let the fun begin.
Ah, we're at full steam ahead, amigo!
Woo-hoo!
The best part is watching that fall off, one chunk at a time.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, look, you see? Hey, you see the steam?
It broke through.
That's our telltale sign.
Getting this out of the way will mean
that we'll be dredging way faster than last year.
So that's great. That's frickin' awesome.
We need this. This season, we need this win.
-Whoa! -It's gonna go!
It's gonna go!
Holy moly, man!
Whoo! Yeah! I saw!
I came and got my weapon!
I kicked its butt!
[laughs]
[narrator] The huge ice bridge demolished,
the crew can now access the inside bend of Dustin's new claim
and begin digging down for bedrock gold.
Man, it looks amazing.
We can now bring the dredge up here.
I think what we have is about a month and a half
before all hell breaks loose here.
Can we get enough gold in that month and a half
to stretch out?
-We're here already, man. We're already here. -I know.
I feel like there's going to be giant nuggets, right,
where we're standing, just about 10 feet down.
I'm loving our new style.
This is going to be a good season, guys.
Let's get some good gold, man.
[narrator] On the season ahead...
So what do you see, man? What do you see?
It just drops off, man. Completely.
We have to win this time.
-There's no second chances on this one. -[grunts]
[grunts, bleeps]
I'm so hopeful, but...
-No gold? -No.
...this place scares me.
-Oh, get down in there! -[bleeping]
-Watch the swing. -Don't think about me, man.
Get out there and frickin' find that damn gold.
Oh! [bleeping]
[grunts]
-Whoo-hoo! -[bleep]
-[all cheering] -[overlapping chatter]
-I told you so! -[all cheering]
Yeah!
-It's our season! It's not just stories anymore. -Whoo-hoo!
This place is for real.