[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] in south east alaska...
[indistinct chatter]
At the bottom of mckinley creek...
-[ryan] just hold on for a little bit. - [man] copy that.
[narrator] ryan has never dived this deep.
[ryan] I'm going to sink it, hold on.
Now reached the bottom.
Okay, yeah.
[indistinct audio]
[man] what do you need?
[ryan] the gas is leaking out the front.
Yeah, it's no good.
Paul, you got me?
Done. I'm finished man.
I'm finished.
Just too much for me to deal with, man.
Yeah, we're up.
I feel like I'm winnin' at life.
I want to obliterate that wall.
I'm a little irritated right now.
Just clean it up bedrock.
[man 1] the thing is banjo tight.
The engine quit on the other side.
[indistinct chatter]
Want to have fun.
Now we're trying to get to the gold on the very bottom of this break.
I like to hear files that go.
Holy [bleep]. Look at the gold.
-That's nice. Nice nice. -Whoo!
Music to my ears.
Nuggets, nuggets, nuggets, nuggets, nuggets
-What's up, fred? -I'm glad you all are getting to go now.
I'm home. I'm glad we can help too.
A nugget here, a nugget there, not bad.
Carlos did us good.
He left a little bit down there.
He walked away with heavy buckets but.
He left us all of these.
-Well, thank you, guys. -Thanks. We appreciate it.
-Yeah. -[indistinct]
Well, let's get some more gold.
This is badass. [laughs]
[narrator] last week...
We got a big rock.
We won't be able to blow this at all.
[narrator] dustin came to fred's rescue.
We're here to save the day.
Using his new rock blasting technology
To blow up a 3000lbs boulder.
Three, two, one
-[blast] -[all laughing and cheering]
Getting fred back on the hunt for bedrock,
And on the gold.
It was only by that busted rock.
Holy [bleep].
That's a damn nice piece of gold.
Splash that whole wall down towards the other side,
Uh, so could go down.
And we're four to six feet deeper.
[narrator] at thetrifecta,
Fred's crew are racing to hit bedrock.
We're trying to get to the hill of a lot of gold
On the very bottom of this creek.
[narrator] fred turns to rookie miner, scott allen to do some heavy lifting.
I'm a big boy. Plain and simple.
I'm 250lbs.
When I want to rock to move, it's going to [bleep] move one way or the other.
I might have to dredge around it, losing some material,
But, hey, I'm going to get her down into that basket.
I'm going to get her up and out of there.
Go ahead, get him in the water.
[narrator] for the last week and a half,
Fred and his crew have been stuck
At a depth of almost 14 feet.
-Good luck today, uh, scott. -[scott] thanks, boss.
[narrator] still over six feet to go to reach bedrock,
And only a third of the season left,
They need to pick up the pace.
-How's that feel? -[indistinct]
Just go in, go to the ladder. That's the easiest way down.
[indistinct]
[scott] uh, I see the hole.
[fred] check your whole perimeter there. Everything around the side.
[scott] stand by. Stand by. All stop. All stop.
All stop. All stop. All stop.
Some of this lost [bleep].
All the rocks [bleep] rock's been tearing up.
If we don't do anything with it, we go down.
The perimeter has got rocks on top of it,
And if it goes down,
They could easily fall right down on top of the diver.
We flash that whole wall down,
And then he'll go down and he'll dredge all that material out.
[narrator] blasting the huge boulder has loosened
Every rock on the steep sided hole.
Working 14 feet down has become a death trap.
Before he can get back on a hunt for bedrock,
Scott must use the gold blaster
To quickly clear the deadly widow makers.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] fred's convinced the gold blaster is the quickest way
To bring down the dangerous rocks in the wall.
[scott] the gold blaster is up on the land,
[indistinct]
[fred] copy that.
[machine roaring]
[indistinct]
[scott] we got to turn the rocks...
Let that fall right down the wall.
Know what, when you come across rocks,
You just back them off from one side.
[indistinct]
Come back with that.
I'll get the rock blaster down here and and toss rocks at the same time.
Yeah, just, uh, flash the boulder down.
[narrator] after one and a half hours,
Rookie miner, scott abandons the gold blaster.
[indistinct]
[scott] I can't even get to the wall right now.
[fred] but what about that wall? Is it all the way down?
[scott] now I've run into all the material edges and plastic loops.
Okay.
This is what I do, I work with my hand.
I want you to come up and do a bunch of handwork
On rocks and things like that, then I can tell him that
Water blast will mock them rocks down
Three times faster than you can move them by hand.
I want to obliterate that wall.
[scott] I know that you can have it blasted,
And have it laying in the bottom
Then come up and do it again.
Still not doing it.
We got no time at all.
[narrator] scott's decision moving the rocks by hand
Is costing a critical time.
I'm a little irritated right now, so, you know,
I tried to convey what I want to say to him, but...
He's doing something totally different than I want him to do right now.
[scott] now what I'm doing is trying to find some gold today.
[indistinct]
Just finished off.
Uh, I got a present for you fred.
Come here.
Give me your hand.
[narrator] scott's three hours of clearing the side walls by hand
Has netted him a peace offering.
[fred] oh, [bleep].
Where the hell did you get that?
Outside wall.
That is really great job, man.
[cheering]
[fred laughing]
Good job. Good job, man.
Feels good, don't it?
Oh, my [bleep] dude.
First time I've seen gold underwater.
Holy [bleep].
That's a damn good feeling right there.
You got a lot of material.
[narrator] scott's only dredged for 30 minutes,
But the crew are still hopeful.
I see a piece in there, though. Nice piece.
-Oh, there's one right there. -Yeah.
We got a little lucky
'cause of the nice little nugget out there.
What do you think? Am I a gold miner now?
Well, I don't know about that.
[all laughing]
[narrator] finding gold in the side walls is a great sign
That the bedrock bottom holds a big payday.
[scott] tell you what, though, after finding that one picker,
I don't feel cold anymore.
[narrator] but at this rate, they may not reach before winter hits.
We've been delayed for like, three days now.
There's no reason we shouldn't find a lot of gold
Right in the very bottom of our bedrock,
But, uh, we're running out of time.
It's time to get back to work, time to go diving.
[narrator] for over two months,
Dustin's crew have mined the richest ground of their lives...
-[all cheering] -oh, my [bleep].
That's paid out large, chunky gold from day one.
[dustin] this is happening boys.
[narrator] two weeks ago,
They used a new technique
To blow up the huge hipple rock.
[dustin] all right, let's do this.
-[blast] -did you see that? Did you see it?
Whoo!
Holy crap. Look at all that gold.
[narrator] all that's left to explore
Is the large bedrock bowl underneath.
-[man 1] what do we get for that? -[man 2] another boom.
I hope this never runs out.
This is amazing digging.
[narrator] and dustin believes the best is yet to come.
Today all that is going down what we call nugget bowl.
We're cleaning up the bottom, going down the bedrock.
So, hopefully, he gets a whole bunch of gold.
[indistinct]
Dive in the water.
Clean it up, man. Clean out.
See what kind of gold we can get out of that hole.
Holy moley, best of luck.
There's just so many hiding spots in here, you know.
So, what I would thinking was you start getting all the...
Yep. Yep.
And then, we'll, uh, we'll give you a drill,
-And you break those rocks into smaller pieces, right? -Yeah.
[indistinct]
We're cleaning up the bottom. There's a few rocks that we can't move.
We're just going to go ahead and crack them.
So, he's got to drill a few holes,
And we put the expanders in their.
That's the third one, I'm cleaning all the small bits.
[indistinct]
Got our power heads ready to go.
[narrator] these blasters will crack boulders,
Allowing carlos to hunt for any bedrock gold
They hope is trapped underneath.
Get these two out to carlos.
We're going to split these rocks
To make big rocks into small rocks again.
[dustin] good luck, man.
[drill whirring]
Okay. Coming up.
[carlos coughs]
[indistinct]
All right.
We're ready wes. All on you, brother.
[wes] is everybody, clear? Clear.
Everybody's clear right now.
Going hot.
Ready? Three, two, one...
-[blast] -whoo!
[all laughing]
I love that sound everytime.
I love it.
-[dustin] you can go, bro. -[carlos] okay.
[indistinct]
All right. Very often...
-[indistinct] -[dustin] I love that, man.
-I love it. -Oh, I'm loving it.
[carlos] oh, yeah. Found bedrock.
[narrator] after weeks of diving,
They've finally hit bedrock,
Where the largest deposits of gold should lie.
This has been amazing.
Good job, carlos.
There's a lot of good clean up here, dude. Lot of good clean up, man.
Uh, I feel like I'm winning at life.
We've got a whole bunch of rock.
This is where it's at right now.
Holy [bleep]. Look at that gold.
[laughing]
[laughing joyously]
Look at this. Look at this gold.
[continues laughing]
[regulator hissing]
I thought so, man. I love it.
[carlos] it just is a little...
I keep talking, dude. Holy crap!
[laughs]
It's everywhere, dude. It's everywhere.
[laughs]
[regulator hissing]
[man laughs]
[carlos] a nugget.
Nuggets, nuggets, nuggets.
[carlos] all right, man. I'm gonna suck this gold up.
Good bye gold, good bye gold.
That's so cool, this gold, man.
It's all stuck in these little cracks.
[laughs] gold. Gold, gold, gold.
[motor whirring]
[carlos] look at that.
[laughs]
Look at it.
What do you need now?
[wes] oh! The engine died.
-What? -[wes] the engine died.
The engine died. Diver up, diver up diver up!
[man] no air, no air.
The engine quit on the other side.
[man] get out of here, get out of here.
[man] no air, no air.
The engine died. Diver up, diver up diver up!
[narrator] carlos is on bedrock
12 ft underwater,
And his vital air supply has failed.
[man] get out of there, get out of there.
[carlos] coming up, coming up, coming up.
[man grunts]
No air, no air.
[carlos] okay.
-[man] you okay? -[carlos] yes.
-[man] breathing air? -[carlos] yes, yes.
Okay.
[wes] oh, good job.
[man] everything okay, huh?
[carlos] yeah, my vitals are back. I'm breathing in.
[wes] I hope that it'll be there.
The engine quit and, so, the air shut off.
But luckily, we we're able
To get carlos out pretty quick.
I mean, that ends his dive for the day,
But we're gonna go see what's wrong with the engine,
And hopefully we'll get it back on by tomorrow.
I mean, I don't... I don't know what's going on.
Not exactly sure what would happen,
But, I'm worried the engine stalled on you.
[carlos] it's okay.
[breathing heavily] oh...
Oh, my gosh.
-[wes] you all right? -Ran out of air.
And then, I just saw the sun.
And then I got to the sun.
It was just...
[wes] don't go into the light, buddy.
Don't go into the light.
I think we're done.
Glad, you're all right, man.
[narrator] carlos made it down to the bedrock
Bottom of the nugget bowl,
And it's living up to its name.
[carlos] what do you say, james? It's pretty good pieces?
[james] oh, yeah, yeah.
[carlos chuckles] yeah! [james] it's gotta be from here.
[carlos] we go some good pieces, man. Whoo!
-It's a good day. -[james] oh, yeah.
-[carlos] what the hell! -[james chuckles]
There was a rock that was over a bedrock,
I took it out, found a little pocket gold.
Just like that.
[dustin] it's a lot more than he was letting on or what?
[james] there's piles of gold on each side.
[dustin] I like to hear piles of gold.
Piles of gold seems good to me.
Music to my ears.
[wes] this place is spectacular.
I mean, you know, the old timers
Got 4,500 ounces
Out from underneath mckinley falls,
So there had to be a lot left up here.
And, uh, we're proving that, uh, they didn't get it all.
They didn't get to the bottom of these boulders.
[narrator] now, west must overhaul the dredge
Before they can get back on the gold.
We'll have to find out exactly what's down there.
Hopefully, we can get a few more paydays
-Out of this one nugget bowl. -Yeah.
The water is incredibly clear again.
Got four or 5 ft of visibility.
I've got, uh, ryan going down, uh, and clean everything out.
Go down a little bit more.
[narrator] at the trifecta,
Experienced dredger ryan is on a mission to go deep
In their push down to the bedrock.
I haven't seen the hole
For a really, really long time.
So, it's gonna be pretty surprising to me,
I'm sure to be the dive hole.
As well as the depth of it.
Eight pound gold since the last time I dove.
But I haven't been able to get down there and find any yet.
So, we'll see what happens.
[narrator] the deadly widow maker's cleared.
Ryan must get the crew closer to the bottom.
[paul] good luck down there, ryan.
[ryan] thanks, man. I'll see if I can get some gold.
Yeah.
-Sounds good. -[ryan] yeah, sounds good.
Thank you, guys.
[paul] get him back up.
I'm gonna go ahead and set
The basket in for you while you're out.
[regulator hissing]
[ryan] okay,
Let me get that dredge to start working here.
You just work your way down from that whole wall.
[paul] basket is on the go.
Get it down.
[narrator] the crew are chasing the wall
Of an ancient waterfall.
They've dug the dive hole down to 14 ft.
At the top it's 20 ft wide.
At the bottom, it's just 6 ft.
Ryan's mission is to pile as many rocks into the basket
And dredge as much as he can
To get to the gold, waiting on bedrock.
[ryan] I'm gonna be on the bottom right now.
Yeah, pretty close. I'm filling out the basket.
It looks like it's working out pretty good.
Not to scare you, but you're down a good 14 ft.
[ryan] not to scare me?
[regulator hissing]
[ryan] whoa!
-[fred] the hell you got? -[regulator hissing]
Oh [bleep]
[ryan] I was just gonna leave it down there,
But it was just looking at me.
[fred] I'll be damned. All right.
Nice!
Very nice. All right, ryan, go ahead.
If there's one, there's gotta be more.
That is nice. Go get some more.
That might be one of the biggest pieces
We've picked out there yet.
[narrator] more gold in the ground
This far away from bedrock
Could mean the crew are at the top of a pay layer
Leading down to the creek floor.
[regulator hissing]
[ryan] so, basically I dredged down most...
Almost everything but the rocks.
[narrator] ryan's tunneling down
Deeper than he's ever been.
[ryan] still no sign of bedrock.
[narrator] the narrow walls are near vertical.
And barely shoulder width apart.
[ryan] okay, uh...
Let's see.
May have reached the bottom.
Just hold on for a little bit.
[paul] copy that.
[ryan] one of my, uh, umbilical caught on.
Whoa!
Look what I...
That's no good.
Let me see. Hold on.
Okay, yeah.
Hey, paul.
Paul, you got me?
[paul] what do you need?
[ryan] my mask is leaking out the bottom.
[ryan speaking]
[regulator hissing]
[ryan] done. I'm finished man.
I got an irrational fear of diving going, man.
I can't mentally deal with it.
I've been battling it for [bleep] ever, man.
I'm finished.
You know, ever since last year,
I had that little bit of panic?
[fred] yeah.
I've been fighting it all year long.
All last year, it's just too much for me to deal with, man.
-But, uh... -[fred] all right, look.
Uh, diver up, right now. Diver up.
Diver up.
Go on out here and, uh, let them drag it down.
[bleep] man.
Gotta down it.
All right.
Y'all move out of the way, 'cause he's coming this way.
Diver up.
Uh, get him undressed.
Take him out.
Ah! [bleep] man!
[narrator] the depth and dangers of the dive hole.
Have become too much for ryan.
All right.
[ryan] well, it's really not all right.
It will be.
I know. Thought it everything single dive,
All this time.
And I figured I'd make it
To the end of the season pretty good.
-But, yeah. -[fred] just give it a couple of days.
The mental [bleep] thing
That I can't get over the hump.
[bleep] ...Horrible. It's ridiculous.
You'll get it.
[narrator] hardly any closer to bedrock,
Fred now finds himself down a diver.
We're a long way down into a hole.
[narrator] at the trifecta,
After ryan's abandoned dive,
Fred's called a stop on all operations.
I can understand anybody not going down there.
Nobody is pressuring you one way or the other.
You make your own determination,
If you could go down in that hole or not.
I won't think any less of anybody
That does not want to go in that hole.
Because this is... This is serious danger.
And if you've gotta loose material
On the side, that's really scary.
Yeah. Yeah.
I could see some on the top right now
That are on the verge of coming down.
It's not something I wanted to say.
I think I'm out on it, man.
This is getting pretty dangerous, man.
-If you ask me. -[fred] uh, tell you what to dive
In the bottom of that hole is strictly,
Strictly voluntary.
[narrator] diving 14 ft down a narrow hole
Has become too much for ryan.
Fred's now a diver down and still not any closer
To the bedrock gold.
[fred] it was best...
In the best interest of everything and him
And me and the whole crew
To take him out of the water right now.
Fire up the bridge.
Fred's gonna go in the water now,
[narrator] having lost a valuable day of diving,
Fred takes matters into his own hands.
[indistinct chatter]
He's gonna go down and, uh, take over where ryan left off.
Very first thing I wanna do
Is go down and use the water blaster, uh,
Get the full blaster to get it down
And see if we can find some gold.
It's really cool out here this morning.
[paul] give me a head turn to the left.
[fred] I can already hear you. I here you.
Yeah, it's over the top of me.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
[fred] we gotta get to the bottom.
[regulator hissing]
[paul] here we go.
How's it looking down there?
[fred] uh, drag it down here.
Uh, the edges have got a lot of rocks
That needs to come down.
-I'm ready. -[paul] okay.
Water blaster's on.
[fred] oh, yeah.
[water blaster whirring]
[fred] yup, there it goes.
Today's gonna be a busy damn day.
A really busy day.
The water is crystal clear.
Holy crap clear!
[narrator] half a mile downstream,
Wes has fixed the dredge, and dustin's desperate
To get his eyes on the nugget bowl gold.
Whatever he did it, I'm gonna get today.
Time for me to get suited up.
[narrator] carlos dredged the bedrock in the nugget bowl
For three hours before the dredge failed.
Now dustin's mission
Is to hunt out any gold blood behind.
Water is low water.
Water clear as glass.
I mean, clear.
Look how clear that bedrock is.
Holy moly.
[dustin] air checks?
[man] air is fine, man.
[dustin sighs]
Whoo! It's cold.
Oh, wow, it looks so different down here now.
[regulator hissing]
[dustin] a lot of bare rock here so...
[wes] yup, all right.
Do your thing.
[dustin] what he has cleaned out pretty good.
[wes] yeah.
Man.
[dustin] where am I? Can you see me or no?
[wes] no, I can't.
I can't loose water with [bleep] like this.
That's ridiculous.
[narrator] out of nowhere,
The visibility underwater has dropped.
Man.
No, I can't see your bubbles or anything right now.
[dustin] all right. [wes] well...
[wes] the dredge's gotta be up there
Running that gold blaster.
They're up there blasting.
-You think? -They are.
[man] are you kidding me?
We radioed and found out.
[wes] they're up there blasting.
-Who's blasting? -[wes] fred is.
-With [bleep] what? -[wes] they're blasting with that gold blaster.
Right they're stirring the [bleep] water up.
[dustin] this is gonna be long day.
[narrator] now, with zero visibility,
Dustin's got zero chance of seen gold on bedrock.
There's more than a quarter mile upstream from us,
But, it just infiltrate the whole streaming,
And, now we've got, like, all this mud.
With this water like this,
You know, dustin's trying to do
An inspection of the nugget bowl
I mean, it's almost a workout
Trying to do an inspection right now with these guys
Up there blasting.
And, uh, I mean, our water
Has totally gone to [bleep] down here.
We gotta get to the bottom.
[narrator] at the trifecta,
Fred is 14 ft underwater,
Blasting his way down to bedrock,
Filling the creek with clouds of dirt.
[blaster whirring]
[narrator] topside, paul is called over the radio
By dustin's crew, half a mile downstream...
[wes over radio] we're doing an inspection of the nugget bowl.
[narrator] ...W here dustin's struggling to dive
In poor visibility.
[wes] right now, the water went totally dark,
So we can't see anything.
Copy that.
Fred, slow down.
[fred] what?
Why do I need to stop blasting?
[paul] dustin's got no visibility.
[fred yells]
Shoot, I think.
[paul] shut it down?
[fred] ah! Hold up a minute.
Not great for a walk.
[narrator] fred agrees to shut down the blaster.
[fred] uh, I'm not let it clear out
A minute and look around.
See what the hell.
Let's see what I got here now.
Thing is wobbly.
[regulator hissing]
Wow, a very large rock right there.
And another one, just the same size
Coming down off the top.
[narrator] clear visibility reveals that fred's
Blasting has exposed more widow makers.
[fred] looks like we could to drill this from the top.
[narrator] they must haul out the boulders immediately.
[man] all right, paul's on the opposite side of the creek
Walking up towards up.
[fred] all right.
Pull it.
[narrator] paul uses a 10 ft long extended drill bit to bore into the rock.
[drill vibrating]
[fred] all right, going up.
We're able to drill a huge boulder
That we've got overhanging the hole.
Ready to pull it. Just waiting for fred
To give us to go ahead
And we can yank that [bleep] out of there.
[fred] all right. Hold on to that rock a little bit.
[motor whirring]
[indistinct]
[fred] not yet no.
This thing is latched on tight.
[paul] all right, give it hell.
[fred] give her hell.
[man] I think it's moving.
[fred] lift it up.
[man] how's it coming, fred?
[fred] uh, little by little.
[paul] yeah, I have a lot of tension on that.
[motor whirring]
[man] that sounded bad.
[fred] what happened?
[paul] we just broke the cable.
He was pulling on the winch and...
You know, something had to give apparently.
[fred] everybody okay?
[paul] everybody's okay, man.
[man] did our cable break?
[paul] whole cable broke.
[narrator] the quarter inch steel winch cable snapped.
[man] oh, [bleep]
[man] that [bleep] apart, man.
[paul] I heard that it sounded like a damn gunshot.
Yeah, so, say we fire the 22.
[man] yup.
[paul] what our greatest limp
That broke the lip on the, uh, quarter inch.
[man] what the hell?
[grunts]
You didn't pull the anchor bolts out.
Well, that's not good.
We've cracked our rock
And we've had our, pull-back pully on.
Until I get some new anchors in here,
There's no way we can use this right now.
The entire wing system has suffered message damage.
Until I could find a better spot on this rock
And drill some anchor bolts.
We can't use this system.
This system is out of order right now.
Coming up.
[narrator] fred's operation is at a standstill,
His potential payday is now further out of reach.
Encounter a lot of big rocks.
I don't know, if we could pull them out or not.
We got a couple of big granite boulders
That they're gonna try to top down on us, and that's not, that's not good.
In my spare time I'd like to build a lot of stuff, so...
[narrator] at mckinley creek, wes has been fabricating.
Converted old steel fuel tank into a torch.
You pull this principle out of here. That's got aluminum in it.
[narrator] for the last six weeks, he's been collecting aluminum cans.
See what we've got it.
This is going to work or not.
The end game,
If we get enough gold to be able to smell our own gold,
Goal is to have gold bars the size of that bar.
Then we know we're good getting somewhere.
And it's going to be something that we're gonna think
Motivates us to keep looking for gold.
Let's get this thing cleaned out and find out what's down in that match.
[narrator] at the trifecta,
A massive failure to the wing system has lost them
Another day on repairs.
Wash her down.
[narrator] the only thing that can salvage this week is some gold in the box.
First time running the gold here, this thing is pretty cool.
[fred] now we all look, we got anything in there.
There's another one.
We have a pan to pan into.
Oh, there's a nice gold.
Hey, I like that. A large picker.
There's a nice chunk.
-That's a nice piece. -[fred] way bigger than I thought.
I did not expect to see this kind of gold.
[narrator] after three days of tough mining, fred's crew are rewarded
With the most gold they have seen all season.
That's a nice nugget, dude.
-That certainly puts a smile on my face. -[bleep] yeah.
[narrator] this haul proves there's gold for the taking at the trifecta,
But they'll have to dig much deeper
If they're to reach bedrock before season's end.
That's it.
To date.
-We're doing this better, haven't reached bottom yet. -Exactly.
For where we are, I'm happy with whatever we're getting right now.
Get down on the bottom, who knows what we're going to get?
I thought, all those cleans it out.
We're trying to find really hard to get the stuff.
We're gonna go find it, if it's there.
[narrator] at roackfall ravine,
After nine weeks of dredging, dustin has finally made it down to the bedrock.
But a dredge malfunction and low visibility
Has kept the crew from seeing how much gold they have uncovered.
I think it's about to have all you biz back.
Maybe they stopped that goal blaster for a while.
I mean, it's coming back.
I know that's what it was.
-I know for sure. -We can see clear now.
That's amazing.
Wow.
Here we go, that's good.
That's good. That's good.
Clean the bedrock, good man.
Looks like he cleaned out all.
-That's different. -Beautiful, beautiful formation.
It's a perfect crack.
It looks like a really cool pond.
Look cool.
Nobody got this [bleep] made it.
There's a crack.
[narrator] dustin has discovered a crack in the bedrock wall
That could form a perfect nugget trap.
[laughing]
Nugget, right there.
It's gonna be awesome.
What you've got is some dirty ass water coming out.
Holy. What did you do down there?
[indistinct]
[cheering] yeah.
[whooping]
[laughing]
Yeah, we like that.
Keep bringing those nuggets up.
Come on, baby. Show me the nugget.
One look at this.
I like that.
[laughing]
Yeah, that's what we want, another pocket.
Hit a pocket over here or something.
Big pocket, small pocket, we like hearing that.
It's still producing.
[indistinct]
There's about, there's about thirty of it.
What the hell?
Think about it, still going into the dredge while I'm talking to you.
-What? -Yeah.
What is this?
-[laughing] -no freaking way.
This is starting to add up already.
-Good. -I like that.
-Hey. -Got them.
[indistinct] clean this out.
Copy that.
Nugget wall is finished.
[narrator] after conquering the fiercest water they have ever dived,
Mining their richest ground,
Dustin has cleaned out every inch of the bedrock gold.
-Good, dive. -Good job.
Nugget wall is gone, we have finished nugget wall.
I mean, there is no rock unturned.
It's all done. Everything is done.
-Jay, mc. -What have we got?
[narrator] after cleaning out every inch of the nugget wall
Up at mckinley camp, the cleanup is nearly done.
Let's see what we got to add to that.
So the very end of nugget ball.
That's the end of nugget ball right there.
-All right. -That's pretty good.
-Some good pieces too. -Holy moly.
That's over 29.5 ounces we got so far.
That's amazing for dredging.
-That is unreal, man. -I like it. I love it.
I'm pretty happy with what we've got so far.
That is the best gold we've had out of one dig.
-Absolutely, absolutely. -Right?
We couldn't have done it without new techniques.
There was a boulder down that we knew we couldn't move at all.
We got to crack it and move it out of there.
That's a whole new game for us.
Without being able to crack that boulder
We couldn't have got to this stuff.
We would've left 90 percent of that gold underneath that boulder.
Oh, yeah.
We're moving up in our gang right now.
Look at that.
We got a late start, so we're gonna stay
As long as we possibly can, get as much gold as we possibly can,
Because right now, gold is, it's over $2000 an ounce.
I feel lucky that the old timers did not dig this up and left us some gold.
I don't know why they would not dig this area, but they didn't or couldn't.
Whatever the reason is, I'm happy for it,
We're up to $60,000 right now, which is awesome.
[narrator] though the nugget bold bedrock didn't hold the
Mother load they all were hoping for,
They are on track to shatter their previous season records.
We've got malls of creek up above mckinley, cahoon, all that.
And I guarantee there's gold there.
If we get another hot area, if it's good moving upstream like it is,
Or if we do a recon and find other areas up there,
I think we're going to come out with a lot more gold this season.
[narrator] dustin and his crew still have a third of their season left
And miles of unexplored creeks and they're all fired up.
That brings our total up to almost 30 ounces of gold.
Times that by...
-[cheering] -[gunshots]
Yeah!
I told you it was in his car.
Good for you.
[narrator] next time on, gold rush, white water.
Today is pretty windy, cold, winter is not far off.
Got to get down.
[indistinct]
-Look at it. -I expected to find some big gold.
Why else would I do this?
[whooping]
Water is so bad.
[bleep]
Where are you? Hold on.
[indistinct]
Stop, stop.
Oh, look out!
Anything?
Look, yeah!