Original subtitles

It's moving.

Water's getting wider and wider.

The water's coming up, Don.

Yeah, it's coming up quick.

Looks like Niagara Falls, dude.

Good job, James.

If we don't get any gold in this hole, we're going to be in real, real, real,

real trouble.

I don't know if there's anything in the box.

Probably not, but...

Oh, my God.

If we keep falling the wall down, it's just going to pile up into big fistfuls

and handfuls of nuggets.

Just nuggets, nuggets, nuggets.

That's amazing.

We know there's gold here. It's everywhere.

We just got to dig it up. Wow. That just gave me gold fever up the ass.

Back to classic whitewater.

This water's trying to stop us. Every piece of my equipment is trying to stop

us. Oh, man, am I this high?

Kind of stuck between irreparable damage to my hand or miss out

on a season.

It's an easy choice to me.

I'll give up a finger for that.

I'm on the Penn Rock wall, man, and it's just diving down, dude. I like to hear

that. Gold on my first dive.

We're going to be coming out with hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe

millions.

Let that dry out a little bit, and our umbilical will be nice and clean.

Nearly a month into the gold diving season, Dustin Hurt is MIA, and all work

ground to a halt.

I'm going to take some time off to go get his hand checked out, man. It must

pretty bad. The question is, how long will we be down the guy?

I don't know.

You know, is it just for a couple days? Is it a week? Or is this kind of deal

going to mess up the whole season, you know? This is a dangerous job. Any of us

could get hurt at any time.

It is beautiful up here.

In this do -or -die season, Dustin staked his future on the most extreme

yet.

There are a bunch of waterfalls all the way up here that could have piles and

piles and piles of gold. This has to be the year. I mean, another season not

hitting the jackpot? I'm going to have to think seriously.

What do I do with these claims?

Out of money.

If Dustin can't uncover Nugget Creek's proven riches, he'll have to sell his

claims to pay his debts.

It's not melting anytime soon.

If we don't get a bunch of gold, I could lose claims.

Desperate for gold, waiting for 80 feet of snow to melt isn't an option.

So Dustin shifted focus to prime ground down creek to jumpstart his season.

I've been looking at this spot. I think it'll be less dangerous.

We can call it the wall.

All right.

Hey guys, I found some gold over there.

There's gold. We just got to get to the bottom of it, man. To double their

chances of finding gold, Wes and Paul made the deuce loose using parts from

three dredges.

It better live up to its name because...

You got a lot of ride doing this right now.

But before they could run it, Dustin suffered an injury that could cost him

season. One of my tendons slipped over on one of my knuckles and it hurts like

hell.

I've never ever, all these years working with him, ever seen him want to go to a

doctor. So that must be pretty bad.

Hopefully the doctor will give him a clean bill of health.

What we need to do is get as much work done as possible so when he comes back,

he'll be happy with what we've got going. For sure, yeah, man. We know what

do. Yeah, man. All right, man. Let's go to it.

The

pain

when I bend my finger is so agonizing that it feels like I'm doing real

30 miles from Nugget Creek.

Dustin's in desperate need of medical attention.

At about 3 o 'clock in the morning, I must have just gripped into a fist

I jumped up and I almost ran out of my little cabin because I felt like I was

being attacked.

That's how much it hurt from a deep sleep to me, all my feet trying to run

of my cabin because I thought something was trying to kill me.

That's how bad this thing hurts.

Hopefully, with any luck, they're just going to tell me to rest it. I'll patch

it up and we'll keep going.

As claim owner, if Dustin needs surgery, he'll be forced to shut down his entire

operation and end his Nugget Creek dream.

Woo, look at that water.

Yeah, it looks good.

That's a day to dive.

I have a good feeling about today.

I can smell the gold.

Back at Nugget Creek.

It's the moment of truth for the new double dredge.

Two divers on that freaking deuce loose, that's going to be amounts of gold.

I want to see gold in two boxes at one time.

Oh.

Holy freaking moly.

That drop.

Nightmare. The 2 ,500 -pound dredge.

has dropped dangerously close to the water, another inch, and the brutal

would tear it apart.

Looks like our dredge sunk overnight where it is right now. If we had a

rain and we got flooded, that dredge is gone.

Two years ago.

What the hell? The water is coming up.

Catastrophic floods wiped out their site and their dredge.

The water took everything today.

We're just barely off the water. I don't know if the water's up a little bit

more or what.

Or if the dredge came down, huh? Which of the two?

Need to check the skyline anchors.

I'll go take a look.

I don't know.

You have to go up there, dude.

Let's see.

Be careful, man.

Oh.

Yikes.

That's ugly, dude.

Is it all up?

That's ugly. Every anchor is being pulled out. Oh, that's not good.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, dude.

That's not good.

Those cracks are made by every anchor that's in there that's ready to rip out.

Oh.

This year, this skyline is to keep that deuce loose.

The biggest dredge in the world up in the air is safe.

The only thing we can do is just tie it back up, go really, really big through

three -quarter -inch bolts and all that with anchors. Yep. And just hope the

rock stays together. That's all we can do.

The 550 -foot skyline was secured by a set of primary anchor bolts.

But the weight of the 2 ,500 -pound dredge has overloaded

the rocks, causing them to fracture.

Carlos and James' plan?

Find solid rock and install another set of four anchors to act as a backup.

I found a new spot.

I mean, holy smokes, this is solid.

It's going to be holding like this.

All four anchor bolts straight at that line.

Bam!

So I ended up having to go to the doctor to find out what's wrong with me.

It's not good news.

I thought, man, I got another broken finger, no big deal.

But then, come to find out, I ruptured a tendon pulley.

I mean, I can back out and go get surgery, and my hand will be great, and

season would be destroyed.

Absolutely annihilated. So I would have to give up on basically gold mining for

the year if I go get my hand fixed.

The other choice is to just keep going.

I'm kind of stuck between irreparable damage to my hand

or

miss out on a season.

It's an easy choice to me.

I'll give up a finger for that.

That's working. Good job, man.

If the top anchor bolts blow out, these four will be the backup.

I feel better about that.

That looks good.

Even with the backups in place, there's still a deadly threat from above.

If the primary anchor bolts break loose.

If we break the skyline with this thing, then we can't pull boulders. We still

can't pull the dredge up.

So, I mean, we're just going to shoot ourselves in the foot if we keep putting

this thing to the max. I think we need to figure out a plan B or something.

I'd almost say it'd be safer to pull the dredge up here every day and tie it

off. I would, too. We could build a nice little ramp.

What's up, fellas? Yeah, bro.

Yo. How's your hand?

Just wanted to let y 'all know what's happened.

I'm here. I'm back.

That looks bionic.

I made it myself.

Is that what the doctors want you to do, is put a splint? They want me to go get

surgery. I'm not going to do it.

It's a six -month recovery.

So I made the decision, I'm going to come out here and work.

I'm just going to be on light duty. I won't be diving with you.

If there's a broken bone, wrap it up.

By the end of the season, you'll be diving again. But this one's a bigger

injury. That just won't allow me to dive this year at all. And I'm sorry.

That just means one of us is going to have to dive every day. And maybe we can

figure out some kind of rotation. We did it before. Two days on, one day off.

Thank you, guys.

Appreciate that.

Being that Dustin's got a busted hand right now, we've got to do a rotation.

everybody's going to dive two days in a row, get a day off, two days in a row.

I'm sure it's going to get tiring. We just got to pace ourselves.

Welcome to the human condition, man. Yeah, I know.

You going to check out those anchors right quick? Yeah. Take a look.

So you can see that one anchor bolt came completely out. It's just hanging.

I don't think we can pick that dredge up anymore with that system.

We're going to lose it.

We've got our backup plan for getting the dredge up on land.

Until we can get that fixed, we have no choice.

Here's the equation.

Time to fix this thing, to go reset the anchors. What are we going to spend? Two

days? I'd probably say a couple days.

At least two days, right? Yeah.

In three weeks, we'll be done with this area.

My brain tells me just tighten that sucker up and it's going to keep

and just tighten the hell out of it until that whole mound is gone.

That's not going to allow that to slip over the edge. That could only take less

than a day of work opposed to a couple days to do it the right way.

That's going to be risky. We can't afford to lose the skyline.

My plan is to keep tightening the damn skyline up. Then the rock breaks,

it up again. Just keep tightening the hell out of it. Break it.

Dustin's radical break -it -to -fix -it plan cranked the skyline so tight that

the primary anchors blow out the unstable rock and transfer

the load to James' secure backup anchor bolts, allowing them to re -tension

and raise the dredge clear of the water.

Just take your time, bro. For real. Just click it, click it, click.

Right now, intentionally, we're going to break some stuff. We want to see the

mountains come down.

I think that's it.

Copy that.

Hey, should I go check those other anchors?

Not a bad idea. It feels like it might be pulling pretty hard.

Jim, tighten it up. I'm talking about banjo tight. I mean, you can't get any

tighter than this.

It's still holding.

We've got the cable so tight that I'm going to put something heavy on it and

what I can break.

The primary anchor bolts won't come out, so Dustin resorts to extreme measures.

All right, guys, let's find us a rock. I need a rock to pull on.

What about that one you're standing on right now? Would that move?

Who cares if it moves? Put an anchor in it and pull it.

That's right.

You want to put a little bolt in it? Let's do it.

Bingo.

Break it!

That cable is not even flexing. That cable is tight.

We're putting a pretty good pull on it right now.

Cable's not really even dipping. We can't get the rock to move yet.

I'll just go wiggle it upstream a little bit and see if that'll grab it.

The winches generate 60 ,000 pounds of pulling force.

If the skyline snaps, it could slice a miner like a hot knife through butter.

Holy...

It just blew out. I just saw all the rocks come down. I saw that. At the wall

dive site, Dustin's attempting to remove the failing primary anchor bolts on the

skyline.

All right, Carlos, what's the situation up there, buddy?

Oh, my God.

For his plan to work, he needs the cable to stay firmly on the ridge.

It blew out the face of it.

There was no anchors, no anchors attached.

Nothing's going to flip, shift, or jump except for the rocks. It looks that way,

man. It looks like it's pretty solid right now. It buried itself into the

The backups look beautiful.

Yes! Oh, my God! Yes!

That's kind of what I was hoping on right there.

The skyline is now anchored with James' rock -solid bolts and resting on the

ridge strong enough and high enough to lift the 2 ,500 -pound dredge clear of

the raging creek.

It's not our original anchors, but I don't see any difference. No, not if

solid. My plan actually worked out to fix it by breaking it. I know that

weird, but it worked.

One single good day of diving would set this all right.

It's got me a little bummed because I don't have any gold in my hand yet.

I'm ready.

Let's do this.

Today, I want the dredge running perfect.

Everything has to be on track now. I busted my hand, and I'm sorry I'm

'all down with this, but it is what it is. We're going to have to keep going. I

got no choices no matter here.

I'm counting on the two -diver thing to catch us up. I think two divers are

going to make it exponentially more. I'm banking on that, by the way. It's going

to. It's going to make all the difference.

All right. Well, let's get out there.

I need something to work out. We need a win here.

I expect to see gold on day one.

We have to work during the winter as hard as we can to fund our life.

Why do it if it's not paying for itself in a big way?

I need to know if there's any gold down there.

Look how high the dredge is.

Yep. Skyline, better than it's ever been.

Best it's looked.

Yeah.

A couple hose clamps to go on.

Put the foot valve on.

I think we'll be ready to fire this thing up.

Paul and Wes spent two weeks building the deuce loose.

The season ride on its maiden voyage.

This is the new dredge built with a bunch of old parts. I mean, getting two

divers in at the same time is something that we've never really been able to do.

Hopefully it works like I planned it.

Getting frustrated.

Need some damn gold to show our labor.

I need this to start happening because we're just working.

There's no money coming in, but there's a lot of money going out.

Ready to give it a try?

Yep.

Are you kidding?

Wait a minute.

Okay.

I love it.

Two sluices running. You wouldn't believe it.

Can you imagine at the end of the day shutting those babies off and seeing

sluices chocked of gold?

All right.

I'm going to go get ready. I'll see you in a minute.

This is a big moment, man.

This will be a fun dive today.

First dive of the year.

First time having two divers.

Now it's time to bear down.

Get going and just bust ass.

We need to get to work. You know, a lot of people back home are counting on

this. You know, just let the team.

Man, there's people back home that's counting on this as well. So got to do

Addy got to do it.

Carlos and Paul are about to get in the water. They're getting geared up.

It's go time.

You remember how to do this?

Got me? Yeah, we got you. All right, get here.

That was good, dude.

All right, man. I think we're ready to rock and roll.

All right, here we go.

All right.

Moment of truth.

All right, guys. Let's make a living.

Diver in the water.

All right.

Oh, yeah. Good morning, water.

Two divers in.

Well, here it is.

Two divers.

After nearly a month of work, the whitewater gold diving season has

begun. And with two divers in the water, they have doubled their chances of a

massive payday.

That's the first time I've ever seen a deuce salutes.

One machine that runs two divers. Hopefully this pays off.

Finally! We are in the water.

Now let's see what they can do.

This deuce list, I think, is going to do the trick. We can get two guys in the

water, you know, and get twice the dredging done in one day than we

That means at least twice as much gold this year.

He's already digging pretty good. We'll see what he's got.

Dustin's convinced the wall dive site is the perfect nugget trap.

When the gold travels down creek, it hits the vertical rock face and drops to

the deepest point.

If they can dig deep enough, they should find a bedrock bonanza.

The water's pretty fast right here.

It's only coming up. It's raining upstream right now.

At Nugget Creek, after just two hours,

the Deuce Loose's debut run hits a wall.

The foot valve is completely jammed with sticks right now.

Give me one minute.

At least the boil -over valves are working. It blows out when it gets too

That's how they were designed.

Debris washed in from up creek clogged the filter basket on the water intakes,

restricting the flow.

superheats the hot water supply into deadly steam.

Fortunately, the boil -over valves opened and released the steam

before it could get to the divers.

Oh, there it goes.

Okay, that's good.

Carlos, you good to go? I'm good to go.

It's warm. Feels pretty good.

Paul, how you doing?

Right now, it all feels good.

About time. We're back in the water. We need to get down to gold.

Gold gods are teasing us right now. To keep his Nugget Creek dream alive past

this season, Dustin needs the deuce loose to work as promised.

wall, man, and it's just diving down, dude.

Is it going straight down?

Yep.

Let's get it down. Let's get it deep.

Yep. About like three feet, four feet.

I'd like to hear that.

So it looks like the deuce loose is going to turn out to be a pretty good

dredge. It's been a lot of work, but we're going to get caught up to where we

should be and surpass where we need to be. So this year is going to turn out to

be good.

All right, guys, you're almost on four hours right now.

Who was that?

Sir Milky.

Yo, hey, if this goes chocolate milk, we're going to stop you.

I don't want your machine to stop up.

If the football stops up, the water stops up. If the water stops up, you

up. Gotcha. Cover that.

The sharp right angle at the wall. dive site makes it an excellent nugget trap.

But when it rains in the mountains above, it's slammed by the full force of

raging creek.

Holy crap, dude.

Whitewater stuck.

I couldn't see anything.

You dig?

Nah. Nothing but pyrite.

That's disappointing.

We got a lot to discuss about today, though. We got a few bugs we got to work

out. Yeah, yeah. It's our first day. But we still got some material moved. Yeah.

Got some bulls, Doug.

Nice diving, man.

I didn't dig through either, but yeah, man, there was a bunch of pyrite in the

box. But at least you have pyrite there. There's going to be gold around it.

It was a successful day in that.

We got both divers down.

There's a few things. The foot valves keep getting stuffed with sticks.

As soon as you have a problem with water, check your foot valve because

probably what it is. Right?

Yep. All right.

We'll do better.

Somehow, we always do.

It sucks that I can't do my job. I can't dive again.

So, are you okay to go back in tomorrow?

Yeah, sure. I can go back to it tomorrow.

We'll do better tomorrow.

Good job today, though.

Today was frustrating.

Whitewater, man.

Whitewater won't give you an inch of mercy, man. It does not care if you're

miserable.

I'm not gonna sleep very well tonight. I'm gonna be on my inner chalkboard in

brain trying to figure out how to fix all these issues.

Do this.

Check it out. Look at all the rocks coming down. Holy crap.

It's moving today.

That's some harsh water.

At the wall dive site, a disappointing maiden voyage for the deuce loose piles

on the pressure for Dustin's make or break season.

All right, James, Carlos, if you're going in today, everybody be safe today,

right? With the water being up this high right off the bat, what's it going to

be this afternoon?

It's going to be awful.

All right. Let's go get the dredge in the water, dive as long as we can. We

to see some gold, y 'all.

On the last dive, Carlos discovered the bedrock wall dropped straight down into

what could be a deep nugget catch.

We're waiting to dredge against the wall. I want to follow it down. I want

get gold.

The water's up. It's going to be hard water to stain.

I'm putting a lot of weight on today because it's back to classic whitewater.

Now I'm starting to get excited.

We got the dredge in the water real easy. It's like we're getting better at

or something.

There she goes.

There it goes.

There it goes. Oh,

hold on.

A little bit.

Hold on.

It's going to work. Hold on, hold on.

It's going to work.

We've got a big old air bubble in here still.

That's all right. Yep. Okay. Yep.

Oh, holy.

What's that?

You all right?

It blew the foot valve off.

Grab the foot valve.

That's long gone.

The whole problem is this water.

We need it dammed off like we used to so we can actually dredge in this.

The raging white water.

has ripped one of the dredge's intake valves clean off.

It just snapped out like it was nothing.

Wow. Without a replacement foot valve on site, the deuce loose can only operate

with one diver.

Sort of lose my cool, Carlos.

Already sick of it.

Wish I'd have never let this happen, this double dredge.

I mean, that dredge is starting to part ways right now.

I hate that dredge.

My stress levels are reaching a dangerous level for everyone else here.

I just need a break.

Stop wasting my money.

This is turning into a waste of cash if we just keep messing with little parts.

It's not even big picture stuff. It's like a foot valve.

We've all worked too hard for this not to work.

I need a successful season, which I haven't really had yet. We had some big

nuggets, but we haven't had any real, real success.

Today, I need this.

All I'm asking is find some gold.

Is that so hard to ask?

It's sitting here.

Are we just too incompetent to get it out of the ground? It's right there.

We got one hat rocking.

One of those should be enough to heat a diver.

It's going to be a one -diver day today.

Do you want me to dive?

You sure?

I'll do it. Why don't you get dressed up, man? Yep. Get a suit.

Suit up!

Their chances of finding gold cut in half.

Dustin's faith in the new dredge is fading fast.

We need a high.

It's higher to low.

I sure hope this all pays off after all the chaos.

This is not a hobby.

Gold, not just some shiny thing you just put around your freaking neck and put

it in your teeth, man.

It's what put food on the table. We come up zero today. You know what that

means?

You're falling behind your bills, bro.

Then you start wondering, what the heck am I doing here, man? I put all this

freaking work and effort into all this.

And what are you getting out of it, you know?

Can you hear me? Yes, sir.

I need a good, solid day of dredging after all this nonsense. Let's get it

right. All right. Found some gold down there?

I'd love to, man.

Good luck, James.

Yeah. Have a great day.

Okay, there's definitely whitewater pillars.

James's mission?

Follow the bedrock wall, dredging out material to get down to its deepest

We're diving!

We are diving!

shoving you back.

He's got rocks coming at me right now.

I mean, big rocks coming at me.

What starts to happen is these rocks start rolling.

It's a hell of a fight.

It's almost filling in as fast as he's digging it.

For the next two hours, the water's getting wider and wider.

The water's coming up, son.

James fights the fierce current as he dredges down

towards bedrock gold.

It's moving.

Got about a four foot ish hole right now.

Trying to find out which way the bedrock's going.

What's the material look like?

Stuff like that.

Pretty important.

this one spot, the wall, it's freaking really scary.

I mean, this is major booby trap.

And that can go at any freaking time. You got to remember, right here where

we're diving at, that's the focal point of all that water coming down hard as

hell. That's it. We're in the freaking danger zone.

On his first dive of the season, James is struggling against the raging

whitewater.

I got you?

is coming back up again. I don't feel comfortable leaving him in there.

That was a hard dive.

Not gonna lie.

Good job, James.

Just need a break.

I just need you to calm down for a day or two.

There's so much to ask. Just chill out for a day, water.

I wonder if there's anything in the block.

Probably not.

There's so much material in here.

A lot of pyrite.

Holy.

Hey.

No way.

Wow. That just gave me gold fever up the ass. That is spectacular, dude.

There's gold down there, so thank you for proving that because now we know

in the right spot.

Good job, man.

This is what we needed because we started getting down a little bit with

issues we've had. I mean, the dishless is badass, but getting it here, getting

it set up, getting in the water to start dredging, it doesn't get any better

than that.

Gold on my first dive.

On my first dive, dude, right here at the wall proves that if we keep falling

the wall down, it's just going to pile up into big fistfuls and handfuls of

nuggets. Just nuggets, nuggets, nuggets.

This is what we're here for.

That's not a small piece of gold. That is a large piece of gold right there.

the work that we put into this, that makes it all worthwhile.

It's a golden day.

Good job, James.

You're going to be tired tonight, buddy. Oh, man.

That was one of the hardest dives I've done in a while.

This year, we're going to get more gold than we've got from last season. Oh,

yeah. That's what I think. This is going to be the most gold we've ever seen in

our life.

Well, good job, everybody.

Just keep trudging, all right?

This is the start to our season, boys.

Right here today is the start to our season.

Good job, Ben. Way to go, man.

Yeah.

We're going to be coming out with jars full of nuggets. Just hand.

Fools. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions by the time we clean all

this out.

Woo, what a dangerous job.

But I love it.

We dredged. We found gold.

That's amazing.

We did what we came to do.

It's a great start.

We know there's gold here. It's everywhere.

We just got to dig it up.

On the next Gold Rush, Whitewater.

What did Robbie do?

I'm standing on the hard path, and bedrock's somewhere underneath.

Get close.

We're rocked out, dude.

This whole area's freaking good, dude. It's loaded, bro.

We're going to have tons and tons of gold.

God dang it. We have no power. It's spinning, sputtering, backfiring.

mayday, mayday.