Gold Rush: White Water

- Mornin', fellas. - Mornin'.

In remote southeast Alaska,

Dustin hurt and his crew

are on the richest gold streak of their lives.

- Hell of a day, James! - Yeah, man.

These guys, they worked so hard.

We're getting gold and we're getting it early.

But we're not just getting regular gold, we're getting big gold.

Like, huge gold for this area.

James went down and found more gold in one day

than we've had in entire seasons.

On his last dive,

James delivered the biggest single day gold haul ever.

So, we're gonna weigh this gold up.

All right.

My god! 1.19.

- I told you! I told you! - Holy moly, dude!

Put some of them other ones on there.

That's absolutely the biggest one we've ever had.

- My god! - 3.87 ounces.

- Wow. - -Almost four ounces in one day, James.

Yeah, man!

Look at the size of those nuggets you got, dude.

- Look at that... - I'm gonna have a heart attack... Nuts.

That's a $3,000 nugget. That one nugget is worth three grand.

Well, maybe more.

James, you've had the best dive so far, man.

- Ever. Ever! - We've been ever doing

just about half an ounce per dive until today.

Yeah.

Everybody, just look at this, feel this, and enjoy it.

James found a bunch of nuggets.

We found the gold line, finally.

It's probably only about this wide.

But it's an actual line that goes straight up the damn creek,

and we just need to follow it, and there's gonna be plenty of this.

Now we gotta put in the work.

Put in the work, get the gold,

and it's going to change our entire lives.

That wall is coming down on you.

Gonna fall on your head and crush you like a damn bug.

Holy crap, man! You couldn't be in a worse place in the world.

Get out of there!

Right back!

Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it!

I have visions of it being the worst day.

Is the gold worth it?

I just don't want to die.

We spent seven years just killing ourselves.

We stuck it out. We put in the effort.

We got this.

Whoo-ho! Look at that.

Black gold...

My god!

Look what you just found, buddy.

My god!

There we go.

That's the biggest nugget in gold rush history!

Another day, another dollar. I'm excited.

Just 12 hours after their best day of mining ever,

the crew is ready to pick up right where they left off.

We know that there's gold here now.

We just gotta go get it.

- I wanna see it. - I gotta hold it.

And then you gonna see that hoop and hollering.

You know what I mean? The jig, you know...

Doing the jig and all that.

I gotta get focused for the gold.

Over two months ago

the miners were handed the ultimate test.

Whoa!

Mother nature beat us last year.

We couldn't afford to bring everybody back.

So, this is us.

We're gonna have to hit it as hard as we can

because we know the rains are coming.

The scaled back operation has meant double the work.

- Keep going. - Keep going. Keep going.

Keep going. Keep going. It's going underwater.

Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull.

And a relentless fight to overcome

a never-ending barrage of obstacles.

Watch out behind you!

Carlos is pinned!

Get him out of there!

- Okay. - Okay. Okay. Okay.

Whoo. Okay, got it.

Every time mother nature tried to knock 'em down...

Carlos!

- You all right? - Something popped.

The crew fought back with everything they had.

Holy moly, man!

Whoo! I kicked its butt!

And their determination paid off.

- , a nugget! - No way!

It's a nugget?

First gold ever this early!

Until a bombshell rocked Dustin and his crew.

I got a message this morning that, Fred died.

And he went peaceful in his sleep.

He said he wasn't in any pain.

- I'm sorry, man. - -Sorry to hear about that.

Try to be patient with me.

- Just lost my father. - Yeah.

And he'd give you the shirt off his back.

That's enough of that.

That's too much.

Driven to honor Fred's legacy

I wish Fred was here with us.

Maybe from above, he's helping us out.

The crew refused to back down

from their toughest season ever.

That just drops off, man, to oblivion.

Holy moly!

I hit the jackpot today. Big nuggets!

My first thought was to call to tell Fred.

Everybody wants to be that person to come up with nuggets.

It's a contagious disease.

Once I see the gold,

the excitement's just gonna... Boom!

Change everybody's future for the best.

Gold, gold, gold, man.

- All right, here's the deal. - You're gonna dredge.

All right.

- You're gonna find gold. - -Dredge, find gold.

- All right, guys. - Going in the water.

All right.

- Nice deep hole, guys. - You guys did a great job.

Right about where you're at, Carlos,

on that shelf, is where I was seeing nuggets yesterday.

- Gotcha, man. - I'm looking. I'm looking.

I'm looking.

Can I get that sprayer down here, please?

- I got it right here. - Thank you.

Looking for James' nuggets.

The gold.

Carlos uses the high-pressured hose

to break up the centuries old hard pack

and free the ancient gold locked inside.

You know what, like, seven years we've been burned,

so we all got that feeling of, like, "is this actually gonna happen?"

And it still doesn't feel like it.

- Yeah, I know. - -Well, let's see how this goes.

I know it seems too good to be true.

It might be that we blow this out and...

- Yeah, yeah, yeah! - Yeah.

I know there's nuggets left behind because I didn't finish it.

- Yeah. - I wanted it so bad.

I'm like, "you know what? I'm gonna let Carlos get some of that glory."

In this hole, and I am finding the small gold

in the layer and the hard pack.

Yeah, yeah.

- All right. - Yeah.

And it seems it's going toward the Weir.

So, it's the Weir.

So, I mean, it's going down.

I'm at hard pack.

- All right. - I like to hear that.

Following the deepest part of the bedrock

on the center line, Carlos found an anomaly.

Instead of going up, the creek bed is dropping down

into what could be the perfect nugget catch.

Carlos is finding gold.

Which I love.

He said this bedrock's coming up on the right side,

and it looks like it's going deeper towards the Weir.

Whoo!

That's the color I wanna see coming across right there.

The red and the black both, that's absolutely what we're looking for.

That's what I call acing nuggets.

We've gotta keep an eye on the blocks on that one rock right there.

I don't like that.

Those aren't so bad, but that one,

well, that one's too, but...

He might be able to pull it off the wall and pull it right behind him.

The more he comes into the Weir,

the steeper the wall gets, the more chance

of some of these rocks falling in on top of him so...

Following the nugget-rich center line

is taking Carlos straight into the Weir,

where towering 12 ft above him

are a thousand boulders that could come crashing down at any time.

I come over here periodically,

check 'em, make sure nothing's moving.

If they move, I'll get them out of the way.

We do not wanna crush the divers.

Man, that's pretty good.

This is a little bit deeper spot.

Getting a lot of material out, for sure.

It's a crack, man.

It goes underneath the hard pack.

Carlos, get out of there!

- What happened? - I don't know.

Come get him.

- You all right? - Yeah.

Did you get clipped.

Yeah. Right there.

That was a close one, dude. How big was it?

That big. It just took off my index finger.

- You good? - It's good. It's good. I got this.