Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

how would you like to think, on your deathbed,

you didn't know the truth?

I couldn't do it.

♪♪

I was doing some work in a refinery in dumas, texas,

and that's where we lived our lives for 30 years...

Until I run into this project.

This got my [bleep] attention here.

Pardon the french.

[ laughs ]

♪♪

I've never been on a project before that I didn't finish.

♪♪

when you got something hanging over your head,

that's not a good feeling.

Basically, we just want to get into that cavern

because there's good signs

that there's some serious gold in there.

But, man, it's a tough son of a butt.

A few years ago, we were grinding down,

and finally, we'd fell into a vault.

And the hole was surrounded with frogs.

[ frogs croaking ]

it was weird. It was very weird.

They would just sit there on the edge of the bank,

and they wouldn't move until you walked up

and touched them on the nose, and they'd jump.

They had no -- no way of knowing that you were there.

I mean, they couldn't see nothing.

They asked what we was gonna name it,

and I said, "that's simple."

"we'll call it blind frog ranch."

[ thunder crashes ]

there are some places on earth that just don't seem...Right.

The land feels different, it acts different.

And this here is one of those places.

Some say the land is trying to hold on to something.

Aztec treasure...

Holy [bleep]

...Caverns of gold...

Look at this.

...More than riches.

It'll be a million dollars here.

Some even say there's a buried spaceship.

Aliens.

Me? I never cared much about the stories.

I just care about finding whatever the hell is in the ground.

Aah!

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

♪♪

♪♪

we had heard about this property up in utah

where there was precious metals on there.

So we hired a group that was associated with nasa

to run scans on the property.

Basically, the scans showed

that there was about two miles worth of flooded caves,

or voids, underneath that property.

So, that was enough for me, and I bought into it.

The project cost me a lot...

Not just in money.

It's really high-risk,

but we always liked high-risk projects --

always.

Well, skinwalker ranch is just south of us,

20 miles plus or minus.

We're on a strange plot of land

that has a lot of stuff going on.

♪♪

my son chad is invested in this, too.

He sold his crop-dusting business, sold his house.

So he's up here pretty well year-round

helping me on this project.

♪♪

-do we have breakfast stuff? -I have oatmeal.

Oatmeal, yeah. Got to heat it up.

My motivation in life used to be making as much money as I could.

But you always want more stuff, so I was always working,

and I couldn't, like, hang out with my family.

And I'm -- I'm kind of done with stuff right now

and more -- more about the experience.

All right. This is real hot, guys. Watch out.

Got one ready? -Yeah.

All right.

We pretty much sold everything

and bought a school bus.

And now we're just gonna try to live simple

and just enjoy life more and live free, really.

Woman: Go give it to daddy. Give daddy a bite.

Give me a bite.

It's a really bonding experience.

I mean, that's why we're up here.

I get to spend more time with my dad now.

Chad, come here.

We've put in so much time and energy to this.

It's been a long road,

but, you know, it looks really promising now.

[ children screaming ]

it's just a little mouse. -We didn't like that, did we?

Chad: Oh, man, I'm sorry. Sorry.

-We all have our limits, don't we? -Yeah.

-That was real fear, huh? -Real fear.

Heck, yeah.

Let me see what we're going to do here.

♪♪

what kind of price are we talking about on one of these?

I'm gonna say half a million...

[ whistles ]

...Counting all the bells and whistles on it.

Duane: It's just not me and chad.

It's also charlie boy I've known for years.

He's one of the few that I could trust.

All right, big boy, she's all yours.

Here's the fun part.

[ engine starts ]

♪♪

yee-haw!

Excellent job. It's really helping, isn't it?

Had one of those back in the '70s, charlie boy.

Snider: I spent 20 years with the sheriff's department,

so I've had a lot of experience in security.

You got a $200,000 rig back up there.

You got a half-million-dollar piece of equipment here.

He's really raising the stakes this year.

So I need to do everything I can out here

to protect the investment that duane has made.

Duane: Basically, we just need to get into that cavern.

So, a year ago,

we drilled a hole about four foot in diameter,

and we fell into a void about 20 foot down.

So I reinforced the hole with a 48-inch casing.

So that was it. After a lot of hard work,

we finally had our entry point into the cavern system.

So I dove down there myself.

And I about pissed in my wet suit

because there was a huge flooded cave.

Bring it up, bring it up.

But when we came back the next day,

the hole had completely flooded.

So now not only is our entry point

under about 15 feet of murky water,

the chute is now buried under a massive amount of sediment

that came in on our pipe whenever the water came up.

So the long boom track hoe is a huge game changer.

Looking good, old man.

Let her rip.

As soon as we get all the muck out of there,

we can take a shot at sliding down into that hole.

And hopefully into a cavern full of gold down below.

♪♪

♪♪

[ laughs ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

hell yeah!

[ laughs ]

digging out that hole is just the beginning.

We still have a long ways to go to get into that cavern.

The truth is, I know a lot more about drilling for oil

than I do digging for gold.

So this year, I'm bringing in some extra brain-power

to help me get to the bottom of what's going on.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

I get hired a lot by oil companies,

by mineral companies.

Basically, I'm hired to find things.

I got contacted by this man from texas.

He has a project in northern utah.

And he said that there's --

there could be tons of gold involved.

I like that.

But he's informed me

that there's there's an extra element to this project.

I'm not sure exactly what it entails,

but I've been a professional geologist for 40 years,

and I think it might be worth the risk.

♪♪

[ light buzzing ]

duane: So here's the deal, fellas.

The overall picture of what we're wanting to do

is to get in these caverns

that run underneath this property.

-Okay. -So whether it's treasure or natural gold,

it doesn't matter much to me,

because I'm sure there's gold down there.

And that's why you're here, eric,

is to help us, kind of lead us down the right path.

We have a couple leads of our own that we want you to look at.

But one way or the other, we need to get into these caves

before winter sets in, and we will do that.

And so, we want your expertise

to be right in the middle of this deal.

I appreciate it, and I'm happy to help you guys.

So, I'd like to start from the big picture.

Geologically, caverns are known to exist along fault lines.

And not only that, faults are breaks in the earth.

And so, you have displacements,

and that's where your gold, silver, copper will find itself.

And that's documented.

Your ranch here is very interesting

because you can see these little lines right here.

We have several faults in the area.

That's what I'm calling a fault swarm.

That jumps out at me from the start.

And I think it could be a new discovery.

Bingo.

That's exactly what we want to hear.

His information is matching up with our satellite scans.

And some of that information matches up with the legends

that we've heard about caves full of gold.

So we're looking real good.

All right. Let's do it tomorrow morning early.

Let's go. -Sounds like a plan.

You have a really interesting project here.

-Yeah. -[ laughs ]

duane: To say the least.

♪♪

man: Are you familiar with blind frog ranch?

I know the area well. That's my deer hunting country.

Those guys are looking for gold up there.

What do you think of that?

There's gold in there.

It's all through here.

So you think they have a reasonably good chance of finding gold there?

I know they do...

Without a question.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

♪♪

drummond: Duane's convinced that there's gold here in these caverns.

I'm not so sure about that at this point.

But if these caverns are really filled with gold,

I would expect to see it

in the soil that's coming up through the tube.

So the first thing I want to do is test that sediment

that duane pulled out of the hole yesterday.

That's the scientific method to search for gold.

Been the same for over 100 years.

Duane: Isn't this a cat's meow?

This isn't a mining tool. It's more of a sampling tool.

But before you mine, you got to find the gold.

♪♪

gold is much heavier than all the other rock materials

around it.

So the water gets the material in suspension.

When the gold finds the ripples,

it'll sink them and stay down in the ripples.

Hell, that's cheating, eric.

-Nice, isn't it? -I'll be damned.

♪♪

chad: We're hitting it from all different angles, you know?

So we brought a geologist in

that's looking more for the vein or something like that.

It's really helping us pinpoint where we need to dig

and where we need to go and what we need to focus on.

You know, I kind of think you know some stuff now.

Now we got to find it.

Drummond: That should about do it.

That should tell us if there's gold in there.

There we go. -Wow.

Drummond: The gold's in the bucket.

This is blind frog wash number one.

-I'll be darned. -I'll bring it over here, and we'll pan it,

and we'll see what we got.

♪♪

and you just slowly wash off the top.

Huh.

If there's gold in there, it'll show up right --

right up in here.

And right off the bat...

♪♪

you see that?

Holy [bleep]

[ laughter ]

that's natural gold.

I'll be darned.

We're gonna document that.

I'm gonna say one gold.

So that little speck of gold means that there could be more in the cavern?

Yeah. Yeah, it could be significant.

Yeah, yeah.

Duane: Eric just found gold in the sediment

that's been washed up out of the cave system

that we're trying to get into.

So I'm damn happy.

Now we just have to get into that cavern.

Come on, eric.

♪♪

drummond: Gold isn't formed in the earth one speck at a time.

It's formed within larger veins.

So every piece of small gold you find on the surface

must have come from a larger deposit.

Working in areas with large caverns,

the first thing that comes to my mind

is there could be a honey hole,

a void literally filled with gold.

With the size of the cavern systems

that we think are under the site,

there could be huge potential.

You're looking at millions of dollars.

♪♪

-you ready? -Yeah, yeah.

♪♪

pick up one air tank live with hoses on it.

For chad to go in with. -10-4.

Duane: Eric finding gold in the sediment

coming out of the cavern is huge.

So now that we've pulled all the muck out of the bottom,

we should be able to get down into that chute

and look into the cavern.

So chad's gonna see what he can find.

My first thought is safety -- the safety of chad.

Whenever you go underwater, bad stuff can happen.

And so, when you go into a cavern like this,

it's serious [bleep]

I've never dove in a water-filled cavern, no,

but we're on the right track, and why not keep going?

Ooh, that looks hot. [ laughs ]

okay.

[ engine starts ]

duane: Chad's gonna go slide down that chute

and see if he can get into the cavern.

Drummond: All right, be safe, brother.

Normally on a dive like this, chad would use a scuba tank,

but -- but it's just too tight to get down through that pipe.

So what we had to do is rig up a compressor

that would pump air down to chad through his face mask.

It's pretty damn dangerous,

but it's the only entry point right now that we know of.

♪♪

you know, you probably shouldn't try this [bleep] at home.

♪♪

♪♪

drummond: It's hard to see in there.

This will be easy.

♪♪

[ static ]

I can't hear you. It's not working.

[ walkie-talkie beeps ]

[ static ]

I can't hear you. My radio is not working.

Hang on.

[ beeping ]

ah [bleep]

machine's fixing to die.

Damn it.

[ beeping continues ]

♪♪

[ compressor powers down ]

[bleep] charlie boy, what about that compressor?

-Dead. -[bleep]

a lot of air coming up, so he might be fighting it.

♪♪

♪♪

duane: [bleep] we're gonna have to bring him up.

♪♪

all right?

Yeah.

Straight down over here?

It's just sediment? Okay.

Chad: Where I was feeling around,

there's just so much dirt blowing in there.

You can't see anything. You can't even see your hand right here.

It's, like, feeling around.

It's kind of eerie.

You gonna stay in there all day?

All right. Here we go. I'm bringing you out.

Duane: The good news is chad found the hole,

but it's still plugged up.

So we're gonna have to keep working on a way to get in there

so we can get down to the gold.

But what happened with all the equipment dying

out of the blue today,

well, it's not the first time that something weird

has happened around here.

So we're trying to stick with our plan,

but there's just certain things that just keep coming up.

[ insects chirping ]

no, it's a little more complicated than that.

Here's the deal -- I can't help it

if it sounds weird or whatever,

but in all fairness, eric, you kind of need to know

some of the scenarios that we have run into.

Drummond: Okay.

When we got here,

the people just didn't seem right.

The whole deal was just a different deal.

Blind frog ranch -- something's out there.

Ufos, skinwalkers.

It's hard to wrap your brain around what's going on.

Duane: You know, the locals say

that we're right next to the skinwalker ranch,

and that's where all this weird stuff happens.

And they also say that there's gold mines

and buried treasures that came from old mexico.

But what's strange is

there's some kind of a dark force

that keeps this gold from being found.

The night does not belong to us.

I didn't believe a lot of it until I live here.

[ thunder crashes ]

I'm in panic mode now.

I mean, it seemed like it was a far-fetched deal

until all these things start happening,

things that made us scratch our head.

When we were drilling down

and we first punched into that cavern,

that's where hundreds of blind frogs

started coming to the surface.

[ frogs croaking ]

an electromagnetic pulse

screwed our gauges up the rest of the day.

But the biggest deal is

the equipment we were using on the project

all disappeared.

Well, I haven't seen anything like that myself,

but I have an open mind.

And however I can help you guys, I'm here for you.

You know?

Drummond: Yeah, I'm here to help them as a scientist

using the scientific method,

and I'm not I'm not judging them by any means.

Maybe I'm just a boring geologist or something,

but until such a time happens

where I see something like that...

I don't believe in that kind of stuff.

♪♪

♪♪

duane: Working gold projects like this,

it's not for everyone, and it damn sure ain't easy.

But if I wanted easy, I wouldn't be out here.

♪♪

this is a pretty neat little deal.

Chad: Make sure everything's tight.

This is the deep trekker.

It's legit.

Basically, this is an underwater drone.

♪♪

we've launched.

But this is a pretty sweet tool.

It's got a camera, it's got sonar,

and it's got a ripping motor.

It's going down.

When I was down there diving, I could feel

that the hole was all plugged up.

So right now, I'm gonna go down with a drone

and see if we can get through all that sediment.

It's basically like snaking a clogged toilet.

How deep are you?

12 feet is what it's showing.

This is the pipe.

We can see it.

All right, let's give this a shot.

♪♪

all right, I'm in the wall right now.

There's just so much sludge.

♪♪

it's stuck.

You want to pull it back just a little bit

and see if it'll go down more?

♪♪

♪♪

no good.

It's not working?

[ sighs ] I'm trying to move it.

♪♪

how deep are you?

12'6". I just got another little bit.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

it's just sediment, so it might just open that hole up.

♪♪

roll, you bitch!

[bleep]

you're not gonna be able to do it.

[bleep]

♪♪

unfortunately, we didn't have enough power

to get the drone through.

It's packed in really well,

so we have to come up with something else

or find a whole new entry point.

♪♪

duane: Ain't that a dropkick in the ass?

Man: How would you describe this area of the basin?

I would call the basin phenomenal.

Spiritual.

Active.

I'm sure that you've heard of...Ranch,

but there are other spots in the basin

that are just as active.

Are you referring to blind frog ranch?

You better believe it.

Why do you think it's such a hotbed of experiences like this?

Well...

[ bell dinging ]

...I live right here in the middle of town,

and a lot of people have talked about

there being, perhaps, a buried spaceship

or something like that.

I suspect that it's probably something more natural.

But I also believe that

it's not a good idea that they got there.

Don't go looking for trouble.

These guys at blind frog ranch are digging a lot.

Excuse me?

At blind frog ranch, they're digging a lot.

Well, surely would be careful.

It's not a good idea that they got there.

And I would strongly urge that they pray.

Hang on one sec.

Well, we're plugged up, but once we get all that sucked down,

I guarantee you it'll be our entrance.

Snider: We just need to get the dredge here.

Drummond: Well, I'll give you the bad news.

The conduit is at, what, about 15 feet below surface,

right? -Right.

And that's where the start of the sediment is.

-Yeah. -That's where it starts.

So we're starting at 15 feet.

But the thing is,

we only have 35 foot of hose.

-35 foot total? -Yeah.

[ sighs ]

dredging out the clog is the obvious solution

to open up the hole.

The problem is now the hole's in the middle of the pond

under at least 15 feet of water.

So we're using half our hose just to get from the surface of the water

to the lip of the hole.

Who knows how far the clog goes down from there?

It could be 8, 10, 12 feet. We don't know.

So the longer we extend the hose, the deeper we get,

the less suction power we have.

So we don't want to push it. It's a tricky proposition.

But I'm working on a solution.

This is just a schematic of what it would look like.

Here's the dredge right here.

Here's the suction hose.

And this is your conduit, right?

First off, we can put that dredge on pontoons,

put it right above the hole floating on top of the water.

That gets us pretty close.

What is the spout coming off that dredge?

It's a sluice box.

We already know for sure there's precious metals down there.

So as we're cleaning out the hole,

we'd be nuts not to run the material over a sluice box

and see if there's anything in there.

I think between the four of us here,

we can make it happen. -Yeah.

-Good deal. That's a good way to start. -Happy about that.

Improvising 101 right there.

♪♪

the frame let's set on here.

Put the motor on there.

Yeah.

Now, this is the nozzle you're going to be on.

I can't stress enough --

keep your fingers away from the intake.

Yep.

Basically, this is a huge water vacuum.

And with this rig, we'll be able to guide the hose down

and suck all the sediment out of here.

Thing is, though,

there has to be someone down there doing the vacuuming.

So it looks like I'm gonna go back in.

So the two pulls...

You do two pulls, we pull you out.

Okay. Two pulls, then...

-Then you come up. -I'll just come up.

Yeah. Gonna put this here.

There's a little bit of a danger to this whole deal,

but we have good equipment, good people on the job.

[ engine starts ]

♪♪

♪♪

nothing much. There you go.

-There we go. -There we go. He's on it.

He's on it. We got sediment coming through.

Copy that.

That's it.

Yes.

♪♪

♪♪

okay, we're gonna only be good for 15 minutes

the way he's blowing air right now.

Copy that.

♪♪

♪♪

he's doing a good job. We're getting good sediment up here, duane.

Copy that.

♪♪

uh-oh.

What's the deal? What's the deal?

Snider: Anything can happen down there.

My concern is he can be working in the hole,

and if it gets enough of it out,

will the rest of it just collapse on through?

We can't signal him.

♪♪

he's breathing like a frickin' horse, charlie.

At that point, I was prepared to dive in immediately.

♪♪

lawson: This is important for this area.

Long ago, due to starvation

and really bad times,

if a new baby was born,

the mother was forced to drown him.

Some of the indian cultures,

they believed that these -- these babies

still live in the water.

But...

They're not nice.

What I'm getting at is...

That they will drown you.

♪♪

snider: What's the deal? What's the deal?

We need to get him on a safety line.

Duane: Scuba diving, it's very tough.

It's no game. That's the real deal.

It does make you nervous when somebody goes in

and especially when it's your kinfolk or anybody.

It doesn't matter who it is.

Charlie boy, I hate to tell you this --

pull that [bleep] shirt off.

First thing -- you get rid of your clothes.

Clothes will drown you.

You're better to go in there nude

as you are with a pair of pants on.

Drummond: He's not on his line.

Charlie boy...

He's good right here.

Okay. [bleep]

chad: [bleep]

what? What the [bleep]

oh, I thought you lost your deal.

Let's get chad in here. He can take a rest.

We're gonna do a clean-up of the sluice.

Copy that.

Chad: The safety line came off,

but I didn't even notice anything,

which could have been, you know, pretty scary for the people up here.

I was just dredging away down there.

Charlie boy, I hated to make you pull them boots off,

but I didn't like that [bleep] at all.

They see the rope, they're like, "oh [bleep] do we need to go?"

I guess they were taking their clothes off, getting ready,

but I had no idea.

Yeah.

Same thing?

You were moving a lot of dirt.

Oh, absolutely. You moved a hell of a lot.

Yeah. You had a lot of good material come out.

-Yeah. -There's a lot of mud in these riffles.

Couldn't see nothing.

What is this?

♪♪

duane! Duane, get down here.

We got something big.

What is it?

[bleep]

look at that.

Does that look like a spanish coin to you?

-Oh [bleep] -[ laughs ]

it looks like it's gold and some silver in there.

Drummond: It was amazing. It was that feeling of discovery

that happens maybe a couple times in a lifetime.

To be honest, I was kind of doubting this whole project,

but I've just done a 180.

There is something going on there.

Yes! This is great.

We find that, it's like, "oh [bleep]"

we're not even inside the cave yet.

We got to keep going.

There could be some crazy stuff in there.

Duane: There is a lot down there.

I'm telling you, this is part of a huge story.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're gonna go forward big time.

This is a good sign right here.

There's got to be more. There's just not one lost coin

in that cavern down there.

Exciting find right there.

Chad: [ laughs ]

it's huge to get to be on a project with your son

and to get to experience things like this.

It's a very honorable deal.

And it's just a matter of time before we get into that cavern.

Yeah!

Oh, no!

[ thunder crashes ]

[ laughs ]

♪♪

we have 9,600 feet of caves underneath that property.

It's a void literally filled with gold.

It could be worth millions --

tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

Like, "what?"

duane: We need to get in these caves before the winter sets in on us.

And we will do that.

But the locals say there's a dark force

that keeps this gold from being found.

Look at this.

The riches of this area don't belong to us.

You hear that?

Now these legends seem to be coming true.

The insides are gone.

There's risks on this deal,

but it's all about finding the truth.

And...

Maybe there's just a little more to the story

than what you think.

Your ranch is part of the most famous treasure hunt that's never been solved.

"rhoades"? What?

[ grunts ]

duane: It seems like every time we make some progress,

something else steps up and starts fighting us --

cave-in... -Let's get out of here.

Duane: ...Air problems.

Extract, extract.

Snider: We don't have any control.

We have to go with what mother nature gives us.

It's like it has a mind of its own.

Duane: Sure, it's weird,

but if we lose focus...

You see anything?

...We're screwed.

This could be a major discovery.

Chad: Something is not normal here.

It's unexplainable,

but it has to be connected to the cavern system.

You see this?

We have to get in there.

Duane: I've paid some dues, and I haven't backed off yet.

-Let's get out of here. Let's go. -[bleep]

duane: I will make this work...

Keep going.

...And I'll make it good

for everybody that hangs in there.

-Hey! -Oh [bleep] -aah!

That's sounded a little cocky, didn't it?

[ laughs ]