Right now, we're failing.
We won't be able to come back next year
if we don't find enough gold to continue this.
I'll have to take out loans and I don't wanna have to do that.
We survive off the gold we make and right now we have not made enough gold.
We've been working so, so hard
and right now,
as far as I'm concerned, we haven't even paid for the gasoline yet.
[Carlos exclaims] Brain freeze.
[man] No hot water, diver's got no hot water.
-[man] Get back! -He is going straight down.
Leaving that wall that could collapse and just bury you.
He's building a death trap.
Three, two, one.
Oh!
[man over radio] Lots of rocks.
I need to find out what's in the bottom of this damn chute.
That just excites the heck out of me right there.
[Stamper] There's more! [exclaims]
-Sexy gold. -Oh, my [bleep].
Look at that!
[all shouting]
We're back on the gold!
[Carlos] This is [bleep].
We're doing worse.
Way worse than the first season.
We have nothing, zero.
I mean... [sighs]
-[Carlos] We need gold, man. -Yeah.
We gotta do this quick, man. We gotta do this really, really quick.
All right, you ready?
[narrator] Two-thirds of the way through their season,
Dustin and his crew don't have an ounce of gold to their name.
[James Hamm] Ooh.
I'm [bleep] tired, man.
Right now, we have no gold.
I've been working hard, my leg's sore, my shoulder's sore.
My muscles are twitching and [bleep].
[Dustin] Keeping me up at night.
Losing sleep over not getting gold.
It's plagued my mind.
I need to get to the bottom.
[narrator] Two weeks ago...
[Dustin] We gotta figure something else out, because this is not working.
[narrator] ...Dustin abandoned House Rock
after finding no gold on his side of the creek.
Wow.
That water is outrageous.
[narrator] To change his fortunes, he returned
to proven ground at the Chute.
[Carlos] We're back at it again, back to the Chute.
[Kayla Johanson] If we have two dredges going,
two people diving, then we can move way more material.
[narrator] Leaving Kayla running the show
and seizing the chance to double down with two dredges...
I may be able to put together a junkyard dredge.
Hmm.
-There it goes. -[man] There it goes.
[narrator] Now, Dustin must run a dredge
he built out of scraps from their junkyard.
[over radio] I sure hope this junkyard dredge holds up.
I sure hope it still lives.
Right now it feels like it should be in an ICU, you know what I mean?
DNR.
- All right? -[Dustin] All right.
[over radio] I'm still diving.
[exclaims]
Oh, yeah.
[Dustin over radio] How's your water temp?
[Carlos over radio] Good. No, everything is good.
[Dustin over radio] Awesome.
[Carlos over radio] Where's my dredge hose?
Oh, here we go.
We're ready to rock and roll, dude.
There's a wall that drops straight down right here.
I'm hoping Carlos can make that flat
all the way across the entire thing.
I need to find out what's at the bottom of this damn Chute.
[narrator] An ancient waterfall of the Chute,
cut a plunge pool in bedrock,
creating a perfect catch for nuggets washing down the creek.
Carlos's mission, clear the rocks and gravel in the narrow ravine,
exposing all four bedrock walls
that form the top of the plunge pool
and lead down to what could be life-changing gold.
[Carlos over radio] This dredge don't got no power, man.
[Dustin over radio] Let me find out if they're maxed out, bro.
[Carlos over radio] That's all of it, man.
Oh, man, if we had our big dredge,
we would be eating this thing up, eating good.
Carlos, right now, is getting into a good spot.
He's trying to open up a hole, but the material that we're going through
is a lot of rounded rock, a lot of, uh, irons
and, uh, a lot of heavy, uh, granite rock.
I don't like that hose at all.
We gotta kill this Chute and get down to the bottom.
We're digging a hole.
Not fast, but we're digging a hole.
Do what we can.
[Carlos over radio] Hey, James, can you, uh,
give me some more slack for my nozzle?
Oh, [bleep].
Uh-oh.
See, that's the problem there's no suction.
[Dustin over radio] Let me see what the problem is.
[Carlos over radio] Oh, [bleep].
It sucks it up.
That's bad.
This clog's really bad.
I don't know what... I mean, look at the flow.
It's gotta be solid with something.
We have a hose that is so flimsy...
This is, like, the very first hose we ever used.
It's all we could get ahold of right now.
And, uh, it just wants to keep like this.
We keep going like this all day long, this is not gonna get any yardage moved.
We really need the dredge to work along with all of the other systems as well.
[narrator] The worn out dredge hose can't keep up
with the amount of material Carlos is trying to move,
causing a clog in its pipe.
[Dustin over radio] Hey, Carlos, coming back down with the hose.
[Carlos over radio] Yup, yup, yup.
[Dustin] We're gonna throttle back up and see if that clears it.
[Carlos over radio] Okay, go ahead.
[Dustin over radio] Do we have suction now?
[Carlos over radio] Uh... Oh, I got no suction.
It's a [bleep] show.
[narrator] The blockage has been cleared,
but Carlos still has no suction.
[James] It's gotta be the [bleep] hose.
It's got a flapper or something in it.
[Carlos over radio] Wow, that rip...
[Dustin over radio] What are you saying?
[Carlos over radio] A rip by the collar.
It's got an opening right there, when he lifts it up,
it just pulls air, like, through that crack, hard, hard, hard.
Just wrap the hell out of it until it stops.
[narrator] A tear in the top of the hose
means Carlos is getting zero suction.
We thought our hose was stopped up, but this is a rotten hose,
so we're just gonna try to duct tape if for today,
see if we can get a suction on it.
[Carlos over radio] All right, got suction now.
Let's give it another start.
This reminds me of our first days of dredging, when we had pieces of junk.
Nothing would work, we forgot how to fix
all the crappy stuff that we've already eliminated.
We'll make it work.
[narrator] A thousand feet up creek...
[man] [bleep] look at that water.
Oh, my [bleep], clearer than yesterday.
You're gonna have great vis today.
[man] Holy [bleep].
-[Kayla] Look how far down you can see rocks now. -[man] Yeah.
Let's get in the water while it's clear.
Yeah.
[narrator] For the last month, Kayla's crew have had
a steady stream of gold in the box,
but are yet to hit a big deposit.
We need to start finding more gold.
This late in the season, you know, we don't have that much gold yet.
So, we're gonna get two divers in the water,
it's gonna be Stamper and Paul.
They should be able to work all new materials
and hopefully get more gold in the box.
So you just have to look at the main goal,
which is getting to bedrock and getting more gold.
[narrator] Running two dredges and two divers,
is the only way the crew will hit bedrock before season's end.
[Stamper] I'm not happy with what we've got so far.
I'm done with these itty bitty cleanups. I'm done with that.
Today is gonna be nothing but ounces.
All right.
[Paul] He's got a pretty good hole opened up down there.
Open the top up as much as you can
and then work down, that way you can expose as much bedrock as possible.
I definitely like having two divers in the water.
It's perfect. I can't wait to see what the bedrock looks like.
There's amazing gold right here.
[Stamper over radio] All right, Kayla,
how about we go get some ounces of gold?
[Kayla over radio] Do it.
Yeah, let me know what it looks like.
[Stamper over radio] Oh, my [bleeping] , it's beautiful.
[Kayla] How deep do you think you are down there?
[Stamper over radio] Only got about 14 feet.
If I know what's good, I'll just keep dredging over here along this wall.
[Scott] How's that?
[Paul over radio] Feels good to me.
Good to go.
[Scott] All right.
[Paul over radio] Whoo-hoo!
[Scott] Stamper, Paul is in the water.
[Stamper over radio] Hey, Paul.
[Paul over radio] How's it going?
[Stamper over radio] Going for the nozzle right now.
[Paul over radio] Let's get it.
[Stamper over radio] Get it, brother, let's get it.
[narrator] To get to bedrock before winter hits,
will require them digging down to the depth of a two-story house.
At 13 feet, they're around halfway.
But with less than two months left in the season,
they need to be running two dredges daily,
if they're going to hit what could be a life-changing payday.
[Stamper over radio] I love this kind of dredging. I don't have to move anywhere.
[Paul over radio] Ah, I'm ready for the basket.
[Scott] Yup, we're bringing the basket.
[Stamper over radio] All right. [grunts]
Right now, what I'm looking at
is a massive boulder.
What the [bleep]?
How big is that rock?
[Stamper over radio] It's over 6 feet long and about 4.5 feet tall.
[Kayla] [bleep]
[narrator] Weighing over 7 tons,
this is one of the largest boulders the crew have encountered.
And it lies directly between them and bedrock gold.
I'd just love to get that big [bleep] out of there.
Right now, I'm prepping these power heads, so that we can drill rock
and expand them.
We're encountering rocks that are too big for our winches to haul off.
So, in order to move them, we have to make them smaller,
so that our winches can handle them.
[Stamper over radio] We gonna go, "Kapow,"
and a big old piece will fall of then.
That would be nice.
[Stamper over radio] Okay.
All right, fire in the hole!
Three, two, one.
-[Stamper and Paul exclaim] -[bleeping]
-[Scott] I felt that. -[Kayla] I felt that up here.
[all exclaiming]
[man] Hell, yeah.
[bleep], yeah.
Nice.
So, are the pieces small enough that we can pull it out with the winch?
-[Stamper over radio] Yup. -Awesome.
[Kayla over radio] Good job, whoo!
[Stamper over radio] Busting rocks.
[narrator] The blasted boulder cleared,
the divers can get back to their mission
to reach bedrock gold before winter hits.
[Scott] Get back to work, you scurvy dogs.
[Paul over radio] You're not gonna [bleep] believe this.
[Kayla] You found gold already?
[Kayla over radio] Holy [bleep].
[Paul over radio] I'm not even looking for it
and it's just laying right here in front of me.
[grunts]
[Stamper over radio] There's more!
Suck it up that [bleep] up.
[Kayla over radio] You're gonna have to suck it up.
I'm really excited to see what we get when we hit bedrock,
'cause we don't know how deep bedrock is yet.
We haven't hit bedrock at all,
so to be finding gold like this, that's a good sign.
[narrator] Down the creek, at the Chute...
How's progress down there?
[Carlos over radio] This dredge is not letting me get where I wanna get today.
I hear you, man.
[narrator] After losing half their day
battling with a hose on their junkyard dredge...
[Carlos over radio] Aw, man.
[narrator] ...Carlos is back on the search for the bedrock walls
that form the top of the plunge pool
that could change their fortunes.
[Carlos over radio] I got bedrock on my left-hand side.
[Dustin] I like that. Like it.
[Carlos over radio] I'm just working on the left.
I've got bedrock on my left, man, yeah.
-[James] That's good news, man. -[Dustin] That is good news.
[Dustin over radio] We're not there yet, but real close.
Hey, man, how do you feel about coming up?
[Carlos over radio] Yeah, man. I'm coming up.
[narrator] Carlos has succeeded in uncovering
two of the four bedrock walls at the top of the plunge pool.
[Carlos] What a very...
-Hard dive, right? -Ugh, gosh.
-Frustrating dive. -[Dustin] Frustrating.
[narrator] But the worn-out hose cost them valuable time.
[Carlos] We got progress.
I did what I wanted to do, uh, it was very frustrating.
Very frustrating, but the job got done.
I'm telling you, man, if I had that big dredge right now, man,
I would have frickin' went down to 10 feet.
It'd be great, man, if we had some gold.
Nothing in there but false hopes.
[man] This hose is so [bleep].
Yeah, man, new hose or new dredge, man, we need one or the other, man.
We'll be here forever, dude.
[James] Right now, we're at zero, we need to see some gold.
[Dustin] This turned into a bit of a nightmare.
I don't see any other way. We're gonna have to take that hose.
That's it.
I got no two ways about it.
[Kayla] Hey, guys, I think we're done here, so let's see how we did.
[Paul over radio] All right, Kayla.
[Stamper over radio] All right, coming up.
[narrator] At House Rock, Stamper and Paul have finished four hours
of double dredging.
[Paul grunts]
[Kayla] Good dive.
[Stamper groans]
You wanna check the box?
Holy [bleep]! [laughs]
Oh, [bleep]! Look at that.
[Stamper] G-O-L-D. [exclaims]
Sexy gold. [laughs]
Oh, my [bleep].
I love seeing gold.
It puts a smile on my face.
[Paul] Oh, damn, look at that piece.
[narrator] Running two dredges is paying off for Kayla,
with gold in both sluice boxes.
[Stamper] It's awesome.
[narrator] And if they continue at this pace,
they will hit bedrock before the season ends.
[Scott] Well, there's another piece.
-[Stamper] Hell, yeah. -[Dustin] Hey, Paul.
[Paul] Uh-oh.
[Stamper] Hey, y'all.
[Scott] We're in trouble.
[Kayla] What are you doing here?
[Dustin] Came down here today 'cause we've been trying
to dredge over there in the Chute, and the hose that we got...
As far as I'm concerned, it's unusable,
and it's costing me a lot of time and effort.
So I'm going to have to take one of these 35-foot hoses.
Okay.
-Uh-- -[Dustin] I was trying to give you guys everything I could,
but at some point, if it stops my work over there,
I got to do something about it.
Basically, I will not finish this if I keep going like this.
That's gonna slow us down a little bit, getting to bedrock.
[Dustin] I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.
It's got our progress down to... Just a crawl.
Okay. Um--
Sorry about that, but I have to take one of these hoses.
[Scott] This is bull-[bleep].
[Dustin] You guys ready?
Let's grab a hose.
[Carlos] Holy [bleep].
Don't drop it, whatever you do.
I feel bad for taking it, but--
[Carlos chuckles] Oh, we have to, man. There's no doubt about it, man.
[Kayla] Jeez Louise. [bleep]-show.
[narrator] Without the hose, Kayla can only run one dredge,
a major setback in her march to bedrock gold.
[Kayla] So them taking that hose, it definitely puts a roadblock on things,
so we need to figure out what we're gonna do about that.
So we just have to make the best of what we have, which is only one dredge.
We need every advantage we can take right now
to speed up the process of getting the bedrock.
'Cause it's getting late in the season.
It's a pain in the ass, but we gotta do what we gotta do.
[Dustin] What do you think?
What's the chances of me falling and really hurting myself, man?
[James] 85% to 90%.
I'll take that.
[Dustin grunts]
-I got a backpack. -[Carlos] Holy [bleep], man.
-[Dustin] Holy [bleep]. -[Carlos laughs] Yeah! Dustin.
[Dustin] Let's dig a hole, y'all.
[narrator] As Dustin departs with her precious hose, all Kayla can do is push on.
[Kayla] I mean, look at that. There's gold on that.
[Stamper] There you go.
It's pretty.
We're seeing some gold in the box,
The top net had more gold than we've seen in the last clean-up, So...
...at least we know it's getting better.
That's not good.
There's gold on the carpet this far back.
There were actually several flakes on the carpet,
which was under the moss, in this back section.
And that's really concerning.
[narrator] A sluice box should catch all the gold
in the first two-thirds of the mats.
[Kayla] Well, this is just the last two.
[narrator] Finding any gold at the bottom of the sluice
is a sure sign you're sending gold back into the creek.
[Kayla] I mean, there's three good-sized flakes right there.
That means we've blown a lot of gold out.
So we definitely need an extension on our box.
It's a good thing we caught it when we did.
So that's our next step. That's what we'll be working on tonight.
It's making an extension for the box, and we'll be putting it on tomorrow.
Roger!
[dramatic music playing]
-[James] Damn, dude. -[Carlos laughing]
-[James] I can't believe you're doing this. -[Dustin groans]
-[James] You're crazy. -[Dustin groans] Yeah, I know.
[narrator] To get the vital hose to their dive site just a 1,000 feet down creek--
[Carlos] Whoo! Holy moly. I can't believe he's doing it.
[narrator] ...Dustin, first, has to haul it a quarter mile up the side of the ravine.
[James] Sucking all the energy out of me just looking.
[Carlos laughing] Holy [bleep], man.
[Dustin breathing heavily]
[bleep]. Whew.
Having trouble getting air. I need help.
Back there, back there.
[breathing heavily] [bleep].
[bleep]
[sighs and exhales]
[James] We never should have brought that [bleep] down here.
-[Dustin exhaling] -[Wes] Come on.
-[bleep]. -[James] This has turned into a pain in the ass.
[Dustin breathing heavily]
[Carlos] Holy [bleep], dude.
-[James] Sit down somewhere. -[Wes] Sit down on this rock.
[James exclaims]
-[Dustin groans] -[Wes] You can sit on this rock.
[Dustin groans]
[sighing] All right, I'm gonna take this [bleep] off for a sec.
[breathing heavily]
[Carlos] Dude.
[Dustin] You're worried about me, aren't you?
-[James] Yes. -[Dustin laughing] Me too.
[exclaims] Let's see if I can get this to the rest of the way without dying, huh?
[all laughing]
[Carlos] I think that's too much, man.
[Dustin] You just gotta believe, Carlos.
-You just gotta believe, man. -[Carlos] Yeah. Yeah, I hear you, man.
-[Dustin grunts] Yeah. -[James] There you go.
[bleep], buddy. [bleep].
-Dude. -[Carlos] Yo, let's stop.
-[James] [bleep] beast, man. -[Carlos] Holy [bleep], man.
-[James] [bleep] beast. -[Carlos] Holy [bleep], man. Ha!
[narrator] Next, they have to get it across the zip line to camp.
[Dustin] That was easy.
Five years, Carlos.
-[Carlos] Holy [bleep], dude. -[Dustin] How the [bleep] you still doubting me?
[Carlos] I never doubted you, man.
I just can't see how it works!
-It's like watching a bumblebee fly. -[Dustin laughing]
[narrator] Next day, at camp.
With Kayla now down to just one dredge--
[Kayla] Hey, Wes.
[narrator] ...she needs to ensure they're capturing every single flake of gold
that goes through their sluice box.
-What's going on? -I got a question for you.
-Um, I think we're losing gold out the end of our box. -Mmm-hmm.
So I'd like to make an extension to go on it to catch more of that gold,
and I was wondering if you had anything laying around
that we could use to do that?
You know, there are a couple of old sluice boxes we found in the tunnel over there,
a bunch of years back.
-You never wanna lose any gold at all anyway, so-- -No, it all adds up.
Um, yeah. I mean, we can't cut up any of our good sluice boxes.
But those old ones, they should be fair game.
Yeah, I just think it would catch the gold a little bit better.
-You're gonna have to give me a share of that though. -[Kayla chuckles]
[Wes] Here, see if that'll go. [moves riffle] What now?
[Kayla] There it is.
-What about this piece? -Where did you get that piece from?
I found it laying in the woods over by our outhouse.
[Wes] It's been around here for probably 40 years.
Yeah, you're welcome to that, for sure.
[Kayla] For now, we're working on coming up with an idea for an extension for the box.
Um, 'cause we're blowing gold out the back of the box right now.
The goal is to catch the gold, not blow it out the end of the box,
so we're gonna make a longer sluice.
So that we can catch more of the gold and not lose as much.
Should work. Hopefully, uh, it solves our problem with losing gold.
Um, 'cause that's a problem that we can't afford to have right now.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Up ahead...
-[Kayla over radio] Holy [bleep]. -[Scott] What?
[Kayla] I just got the biggest piece we have so far.
[Scott] You're [bleep] kidding me.
-[Stamper] Damn! -[Scott] Oh, my good [bleep].
-[Kayla chuckles] -[Scott] Those are [bleep] nuggets, dude.
[Dustin] James? Hey, James?
Can you hear me, James?
He's building a death trap.
[dynamic music playing]
[Stamper] Whoo!
That looks pretty damn good!
[narrator] At House Rock, the crew's double-dredging days are over.
But Kayla is determined to not lose any gold from the remaining dredge.
I mean, it fits pretty snug.
[Kayla] I don't think it's gonna go anywhere.
Now, the dredge is very back-heavy.
so it steepens the angle on the box.
So when you steepen the angle, the water flows even faster.
So what we need to do is add pontoons to the back,
just to lift up the extension a little bit more to flatten out that angle a little bit.
Here's your pontoons!
It's the one time I might actually clip in.
-[Paul] Well, you have your floatation built in. -[Scott] Yeah!
It's not like we can go to the store and just go buy them,
we gotta make do with what we got, so...
This is what we got. We'll make it work.
[Stamper] Oh, there we go.
[instrumental music playing]
[narrator] Kayla's plan:
add extra pontoons to their dredge
to float the back of the sluice box higher in the water...
...slowing the flow of material,
and giving the gold more time to settle into the mats.
-[Scott] There we go. -[Paul] That's gonna work really well.
There shouldn't be any gold going over the back of this thing,
Strap the [bleep] out of it.
[Paul] I mean, it should catch what we've been losing.
I think that's good right there.
[narrator] Kayla may be down to one dredge,
but, at least, she won't be losing gold anymore.
[Scott] That'll work.
I'm happy as hell to see these on here. It's like... [exclaims].
Now we're gonna have some little stuff, big stuff,
and a whole bunch of stuff in it.
Whoo! I feel good. [chuckles]
[dramatic music playing]
Make sure it hooks, because it bounces a whole bunch.
-[Carlos] It's hooked. -[Dustin] Okay.
If it falls, you gotta go get it, man.
Clear!
[narrator] The last stage of the hose's journey
is to send it down the haul line from camp to the tunnel.
[Dustin] All right. Y'all know what to do.
[dramatic music playing]
Man, this hose is heavy.
-[James] That's what I figured. -[laughs]
All right. We got a hose. Whoo!
[Carlos] It looks like it'll fit just right in, man.
This thing will never come out, dude. Oh, my [bleep].
[chuckling]Yeah, dude.
-[James] What is that? -[Wes] What?
What you got there?
[both guffawing]
[James] [bleep], yeah!
-How the [bleep] did we miss that? -[Wes chuckling] I don't know.
[James] Holy [bleep].
[Wes chuckles] I just spotted it. I was like, "That looks like gold."
-[laughing] -[James] Dude! That's a nice one.
[both laughing]
[James] [bleep], yeah! Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo.
[Wes] We found gold in the sluice box.
-[Carlos] What! -[Wes] Yes!
[Carlos] What the [bleep]? You [bleep] with me?
-[Dustin] Get the [bleep] out of here. -[Wes] Gold!
[all laughing]
[narrator] After three months without seeing a single speck of gold,
Dustin and his crew finally have their first nugget of this season.
We had so many problems the other day. We really didn't look for gold.
We're not expecting any gold till we get down to some depth.
And the next thing... Yeah! There's this nugget sitting in the box.
Can you believe it? That just excites the heck out of me, right there.
[James] That's a great sign.
I want to get to the bottom of the Chute, see what's in the bottom.
And it made my day.
I'm tickled pink right now.
And can't wait to get dredging.
-[Carlos] Yeah, dude! -[Dustin] That's awesome, man.
-[Carlos chuckling] -We need to see some gold.
-[Wes] Yes. -No, no, no. Seriously.
-[Wes] Yes. -Need. I don't use the word, "need," very often.
-[Wes] I agree. -We need to see some gold.
Clear! Let's go dig a hole, y'all.
[Carlos] Let's dig a hole, y'all.
[both chuckling]
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] At House Rock--
[Kayla] Will you zip me up?
[narrator] ...Kayla is down to one dredge.
[Kayla] Today, I'm doing a solo dive.
Ideally, we wanna be running both dredges every day.
But they took our hose.
So I'm gonna dive by myself.
[narrator] On the last dive, the crew cleared some boulders
and found a decent-sized picker.
Hopefully, under those big boulders will be big gold.
So I'm looking forward to seeing what's in the box at the end of the day.
[over radio] Okay, I'm going in.
-Yeah, this sucks. -[Scott over radio] Your visibility went from 6 feet
to 6 inches in a matter of seconds.
[Kayla] Oh, well. I'm gonna start dredging.
-Please turn the motors up. -[Scott over radio] Motors up!
[suction dredging]
[Scott] That looks so much better.
[Stamper] That's what it's supposed to look like. A real dredge.
So much better.
[Stamper] That's gonna catch everything.
[Kayla] Well, we just need to focus on what we're doing today.
We'll be able to move more material and...
we'll see some shiny yellow in the box at the end of the day.
That's our hope.
[suction dredging]
-[Kayla] Hey, guess what? - [Scott over radio] What?
[Kayla chuckles] Get the bottle.
-[Scott] You're [bleep] kidding me. - [Kayla] I'm not kidding.
-There's pickers down here. - [Scott] I like hearing that.
[Kayla] I'm coming up.
[Stamper chuckles] Nice!
-[Scott over radio] Get back in there. Go get more. -[Kayla chuckles]
[Scott chuckling]
[suction dredging]
-[Kayla] Holy [bleep]. -[Scott] What?
[Kayla] I just got the biggest piece we have so far.
[Scott] You're [bleep] kidding me.
-[Stamper] Damn! -[Scott] Oh, my good [bleep].
[dramatic music playing]
-[Kayla over radio] Holy [bleep]. -[Scott over radio] What?
[Kayla] I just got the biggest piece we have so far.
[Scott] You're [bleep] kidding me.
[narrator] At House Rock, despite being a dredge down...
...Kayla is the on the gold.
-[Stamper] Damn! -[Scott] Oh, my good [bleep].
-Don't tell my wife, but I think I might love you. -[Kayla chuckles]
[Scott] [bleep]. Those are nuggets.
Those are [bleep] nuggets, dude.
Holy [bleep].
[Kayla] All right, I'm going back in.
[Scott] In the bottle. Suck that [bleep] up!
[Stamper] It's great that we've been getting gold all week long.
[Kayla] It's nice, pretty chunky gold.
So I'm really happy. We aren't even on bedrock yet.
So the deeper we get, the bigger it should get.
[narrator] After three hours, Kayla has gained an extra foot.
[Kayla] Hey, I'm coming up!
[Kayla] Look at the front.
-[Stamper] Oh, yeah. -[Scott] There's a lot of gold in there.
[Stamper] But the good thing is, we don't see gold way down.
It's catching it right up front.
[Kayla] Nice.
Normally, you gotta work for it a little bit.
And today, it was just easy picking.
-Easy pickings! -[Kayla] Easy picking.
Yee-haw!
[laughing]
[Kayla] These were the first, like, actual nuggets that we found.
That's really exciting.
I think that's a really good sign that there's gonna be a lot more nuggets on bedrock.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Down the creek, at the Chute...
[Carlos] We got a new hose for the dredge, so we're gonna get great suction.
[narrator] ...the crew are on a high
after catching their first nugget of the season.
Looks like my ass is in the water today.
And hopefully, I can find a nugget.
I'm just dying to get in there.
I'm gonna tear it up today.
See if I can get some gold.
-[Dustin] Feeling good? -Yep.
Just take your time. One rock at a time, man.
[James] Yep.
[Dustin] All right, ladies and gentlemen.
It is time...
...to get some [bleep] gold!
-[James over radio] Ready? -[Dustin] Yeah, go on.
[James] Dive with the wind!
I love my job.
What's it looking like down there right now, man?
[James] I just, uh, I keep doing parameter checks,
and I see big rocks and stuff.
Make sure they don't hit me in the head.
Copy that.
-[over radio] Be careful. - [James] Yes, sir.
[instrumental music playing]
[narrator] In his last dive, Carlos found the sidewalls of the ancient plunge pool.
James's mission: get through a layer of gravel
and identify the downstream bedrock steps,
which Dustin hopes will lead them
to the bottom of the plunge pool and a monster pile of gold.
-[Dustin] Don't go too deep. Just keep digging. - [James] Yep.
I got a lot of work to do, but it's looking good.
[Carlos] He's getting things done.
He's getting things taken care of.
And the best thing is, if he keeps going deeper,
the more chances of bigger gold.
More gold is gonna be there.
[James] That basket is full.
Basket up!
[James] I'm just tearing it down. Yes!
I'm loving this. I feel good about this.
I'm chomping at the bit
to get some frickin' gold, man.
[Dustin] That's awesome, man.
[narrator] After two hours,
James has dredged 4 feet down.
[James] There's that wall starting to go across.
[Dustin] So is your giant ball of dirt... Is it, uh...
Is it vertical or sloping?
[James] Vertical.
Does that sound safe to you?
This boulder's in...
[Dustin] Can you hear me, James?
[indistinct]
[Dustin] You can't hear me?
[Carlos] The mine shaft.
He's booby trapping himself, dude.
I know. I can't stop him.
[Carlos] He's about to bring the whole [bleep] down, dude. [bleep] vertical wall.
No vertical walls! No vertical walls.
[Dustin] Hey, James?
[James] Yes, sir?
[Dustin] Make sure you don't go any deeper, all right?
[James] Yeah.
[Dustin] Don't go any deeper.
If you do anything, do not go deeper. All right?
[narrator] Instead of removing the dirt in layers,
racing to get to the gold, James has dug straight down
leaving a steep upstream gravel wall that threatens to collapse at any time.
burying him alive.
This is what gold fever does sometimes.
You just wanna get the gold
and you're not paying attention to what the hell you're doing, you know?
[Dustin] Don't go too deep or that wall will collapse on you.
[James] All right.
[Dustin] One surge and it'll ruin your life, man. I mean,
It would take me two days to get you from underneath that stuff.
You just don't want that to happen.
[James] Got it. I have to go from wall to wall. Sounds beautiful.
[narrator] Taking Dustin's advice,
James gets back to dredging in layers,
searching for the downstream steps that leads to the plunge pool.
[Dustin] Come up.
[James] Copy.
[Dustin] Some good size rocks, man.
[James] Yeah, dude. Getting them out of here.
We're getting somewhere.
I'm very excited about it. I'm loving this.
-Dustin. -[Dustin] Copy.
[James] I recognize the steps that I saw last year.
I'm down to, like, those three steps again,
and there's a big rock down there.
[narrator] James has finally uncovered the downstream bedrock steps
which Dustin hopes will lead to a massive pay day.
I hope there's so much gold at the bottom of this thing
it changes our life forever.
[Dustin] Hey, Kayla. What're you doing?
[Kayla] I'm trying to get good-sized ones so we can just pick them off out of it.
[narrator] Kayla is moments away from seeing
if her sluice box extension has caught any gold.
Ah, the sound of a trommel on a cool Alaskan morning.
[imitates trommel]
It's got a good beat.
[laughs]
Beautiful. Look at those little pieces.
Should just keep getting better and better.
[Wes] It's beautiful.
[Kayla] To see this chunky of gold
this early
is definitely a good sign that it should be good when we get down.
That's sexy.
Sexy gold.
[chuckles]
[Dustin] Hey, y'all.
-[Wes] Hey. -[James] Check this out, dude.
[narrator] After a week of setbacks...
[Dustin] Holy crap!
Damn.
[narrator] ...Kayla is looking for a win from her sluice box extension.
Wow.
That's that shiny stuff.
-Look at that. -[Kayla] That's a lot of fines.
[narrator] Using only one dredge,
Kayla's crew is pulling more gold than Dustin.
[Kayla] The first clean up barely had that much fine gold, like, right there.
-[James] Yeah. -[Wes] Look how shiny it is.
[Kayla] So we added an extension to it
and look how much more fines it's catching.
-So you were losing fines? -We were losing gold like crazy.
[James] That is a lot of fines.
[Dustin] You're not at the bottom yet. That's the important stuff.
-[Wes] Yes. -[Kayla] Yeah.
[Dustin] Not at the bottom because all the gold's gonna be at the bottom.
[Kayla] That's over an ounce right there.
[Dustin] It's picking up.
-[man] Yeah. -Well, good for you guys.
[James] You guys will hit it down there in the chute though.
We're, uh, still not paying for the gas,
but you guys are getting closer.
I can feel it.
[man] Yeah.
-[man] Awesome. -[Dustin] Nice job.
-[man] Good job. -[Carlos] Nice job. That's...
-Damn. -[Carlos]...beautiful gold.
Yes, we were losing gold previously,
but now we've corrected that problem.
And so it just gives us a little bit peace of mind.
[Dustin] Little bit on the desperate side.
They're at an ounce and
we found one little picker.
And the chute has gold in it.
So we gotta get there.
What we really need is to get down to bedrock and find out what's down there.
We doin' it?
Go. Let's go.
[narrator] Desperate for results,
Dustin's crew dive for the last time this week
to see if they can turn around their fortunes and find some gold.
[Dustin] We're back.
We know there's gold down here.
We got the long hose from the other site. Reach farther.
It's gonna make everything better.
I feel hopeful.
I'm hopeful that we're gonna get gold.
That's the plan.
[Carlos] We all wanna finish this hole.
Yardage, yardage, yardage. He's gonna kill himself trying to get yardage.
As of right now, there's gold in there, I know it for a fact,
at the very, very bottom.
So anything that's on top of that has at come out.
We can't go through another winter with not finishing this hole.
-[Wes] Have a great dive today. -[Dustin] Oh, I hope so.
[Wes] Move a lot of material. That's the main thing.
[Dustin] This will do.
[narrator] Dustin's mission:
get through the last layer of river gravels and into
the ancient plunge pool where the nuggets should've collected.
[groans]
[man] What was that?
[Dustin] Ah, my [bleep].
Ah, come on. Come on.
[Carlos] Frickin' engine died.
No hot water. Diver's got no hot water.
[narrator] The engine that supplies the hot water to the diver has turned off...
[Carlos] What is the problem?
[Dustin] Come on, hot water.
[narrator] ...leaving Dustin diving in water just 3 degrees above freezing.
[exclaims] [bleep] It hurts, too.
-[screeches] -[Dustin] Ugh. [bleep]
Oh, my [bleep].
[narrator] They must restart the engine quickly
or Dustin will be forced to abandon his dive.
[groans]
-[screeches] -[Dustin] Ugh.
[man] We got it. The hot water should be working fine.
[Dustin] That's more like it.
[narrator] The hot water now flowing down to Dustin,
he can try to locate the upstream wall of the plunge pool.
It should lead them down to gold.
[Carlos] We're getting a lot of flow.
Dustin's in there right now getting a lot of material
dredged out of the way.
[Carlos] Your mission for today is to find that upstream wall.
So far, so good.
Yeah, you got a big-ass pile behind you already.
Oh, you just had a huge one come through.
[Carlos] So far, things are going great.
With this new hose, he's digging like no tomorrow.
He's digging like we should be digging.
Hey, Dustin. How deep do you think you've got down there now?
[Dustin] [static] Uh,
hard to guess right now.
Probably about 8 feet.
[Wes] How much have you uncovered from what we had last year?
[Dustin] Uh...
Well...
I did dig down pretty deep.
-Yeah. -[breathing over radio]
[Dustin] There's a substantial wall in front of me.
It's that upstream wall. It's just a big wall.
[Carlos] Hell yeah, dude!
We're finally back on it now. Whoo-hoo!
[narrator] Dustin and his crew have finally exposed all four
bedrock walls of the plunge pool.
Now, it's a straight shot down to what they hope is
a life-changing deposit of gold.
-[Wes] You gotta be pretty close to 8 feet deep then. -[Dustin] Yeah.
Just cleaning bedrock as I go upstream, man.
[Wes] You're still coming across small rocks, right? No boulders yet?
[Dustin] Not yet. No.
[Dustin] Oh, [bleep].
What's up?
[Dustin] Oh, [bleep].
[Wes] Are you all right, man? What's going on?
[Dustin] Something's standing up on deck.
[Dustin] Tell me if that's gold or not. I can't tell.
Whoo!
Oh, my [bleep]!
[Carlos] What, what, what?
[James] Look at that!
Hell yeah!
[Wes] Holy [bleep]
Oh, my [bleep]!
What the heck, man?
-[Wes] Good job. -[Carlos] Whoo-hoo!
[James] Wow. Awesome. It's gonna be a big payday. [chuckles]
-Good job. -[Carlos] That's like a quarter ounce, man.
We're back on the gold.
[Dustin] [bleep] , dude. It was such a surprise this time.
It was like, "Are you kidding me?"
It was the most convincing white rock I've ever seen,
but it wouldn't go in the nozzle.
I was like, "No way."
[Carlos] Yeah! Yeah.
I love it.
[James] Good dive. Damn good dive.
[laughs]
[Dustin] I needed that, man.
[James] So did I.
[Dustin] I needed that.
-I bet. Because today-- -I haven't...
I think we haven't seen gold all season.
I know. It was scary.
[Carlos] Dude...
Quarter ounce nugget.
Now, we have hope. Hope is back.
[narrator] After nearly four months risking their lives
without seeing a dollar in return,
Dustin's crew is finally on the gold.
[Dustin] That nugget was something else.
Just sitting there. Just beautiful.
Bang. Beautiful.
It was sitting there going, "Hello. I'm down here. I've been waiting on you.
I'm the nugget you've been waiting for."
Oh, I needed to see that.
What's at the bottom?
[narrator] On the next Gold Rush: White Water...
[Kayla] What the hell?
[James] The whole engine is on fire.
Dustin, get the [bleep] out of here.
Fast.
[screams]
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
[grunts]
[Wes] It's taking me.
[exclaims]
[man] I don't have any hot water.
[Kayla] Get the [bleep] out of there.
That's getting to the point of hypothermic.
[Kayla] What the... The [bleep] string broke.
[bleep]
[man] We dredge till the end.
Oh, yeah! Look at that.
Whoo-hoo!
Yeah! We're back.