Gold Rush: White Water

Are you kidding me?

You mother.

Hey, James. What you seeing down there, man?

I saw a nugget and I was gonna grab it with my hands.

But now it's clouded out.

Don't worry about having to pick them up by hand,

All you gotta do is just suck it up and get in there.

I can actually see everything.

I've spent many years looking for this stuff.

I'd like to actually succeed and blow this all the way.

We get enough gold, it might just make it worth it.

Might just make it worth it.

What's the laughing for?

I see a nugget.

Is that gold?

- Nugget. - Yeah!

- Pretty good when you can see 'em. - Holy crap!

- Look at that. - My God.

I'll be damned, man. Now, that's heavy.

That is coming!

He brought out a nugget, man, in his hands.

You're in a damn good spot right now, man.

It's gonna be hard to get him out of the water today.

He's gonna wanna keep going after that gold.

I'm a-digging fool...

He's about to hit a huge pocket.

There we go.

You've got a couple of big rocks moving through there above your head.

Holy.

Hey, watch out. Back up, back up, back up, back up, back up.

- Holy... - Yeah.

Hey, guys. I got some bad news.

Fred died.

We've gotta push extra hard this year for him.

But he'd want us to work, right?

We need to find more gold.

My God!

Hey, look at that.

Big nuggets.

We got a future, dude.

If all the stories are true, that one ounce nugget is just the beginning.

Yee-haw.

Dustin Hurt battles the wild circle river.

Desperate to get back on the hunt for gold,

at his remote nugget creek claim.

It's the longest break I've ever had out here. It's time to grind.

Last week, Dustin made the 1,200 mile trek to Oregon.

Well, hello there.

To celebrate his father's 80th birthday.

I just wanna let you know that I'm glad that you guys have passed through my life.

And, hope you meet some people as nice as me.

He made it to his 80th birthday party. That's a big deal.

So...

Time to get back to work.

Time to get digging, see what the guys are up to.

- Sounds like Dustin's back. - -Dustin's back.

What's up, fellas?

- How's it going? - It's going. I'm back.

- How's everything going around here, man? - -Not too bad.

We had our own adventures.

- Yeah? - Yeah, we did.

Let me show you what we pulled up.

James found like, a handful of gold.

Man. You guys are doing it.

They're a hot street gun cold.

And Dustin away, Wes took radical action to hunt down the gold.

Wes is trying out his new witching rods.

Maybe there's a bug nugget sitting there.

You see that?

- Right here. - Right there?

- Good, man. - Yeah.

Good job, amigo.

- Fist full of nugget. - That makes me happy.

- It's looking good, man. - Yeah, it's a start.

Wes used some devil sticks, man.

Hocus pocus, hocus pocus, and...

You used the dowsing rods?

Y'all weren't supposed to tell him we used the dowsing rods.

That was gonna be a secret. He was never gonna know this.

Nah, he already admitted it. You can't take it back now.

How's Fred doing, man? How's his party?

Um...

He enjoyed it. He was a little out of it. He's going.

He's on his way out, man.

So that's gonna happen.

- I'm sorry, man. - Very, very soon.

Yeah. That's a tough one, man.

Anyway, thank you guys for stepping it up and keep on working.

I appreciate the hell out of it.

It was unavoidable.

Nah. It worked out, man. Everybody vibed with each other.

You know, like we usually do.

Let's go check out the site. I'd like to see what y'all got done.

Where y'all are heading, and get back at it.

- Yep. - All right.

- Yeah. Let's do it. - Awesome.

I can only imagine how it's weighing on Dustin, right now.

I mean, he doesn't wear his feelings on his sleeves or anything like that.

But clearly

it's the same inside, man.

That freaking sucks.

I am glad he got to go down there and spend some time with Fred.

That's... That's his father.

He hasn't lost any of his parents yet. So, this is all new on him.

But Fred's health isn't Dustin's only concern.

Nearly halfway through the season,

the crew has yet to find enough gold

to fund a future at nugget creek.

This is a lot of rock we moved. I'm impressed, guys.

All right. So where did the gold come from?

I think that line of gold was coming through right in here.

'Cause this is where James go into it.

- And same with Carlos. - I get it.

- So, there is a consistent line... - -Yes.

That we need to follow.

And it's got gold in it.

Wherever it goes, that's where we go from now on.

- Yep. - Good job, guys on working this out, while I wasn't here.

I should take off more often is what I'm hearing, so y'all can do better.

No, you got important things you gotta deal with and...

- Well, we wanna find a lot of gold too. - Yep.

All right, Carlos. You're in the water. Let's go get your gear.

You tell me where to dig, I dig.

Carlos will move up creek and dredge down the bedrock,

in search of the next pocket of nuggets.

I'm gonna try to get to bedrock as quick as I can.

And I want gold. I want that nugget.

Hey, James, can you submerge that pipe?

Get it, James.

That working good?

Is going on with that boat?

Something's really wrong.

- The sluice box is sitting on the rocks. - -Yeah.

- It's sitting on the bottom. - It's sitting on the bottom.

The water's dropped a lot.

Can we suck the water down?

That's got some big pumps.

Let's make it right.

We need more water.

We're running into a weird problem that

we're not putting in as much water as we're taking out.

The dredge has to have enough water to flow.

And we're having problems with that right now.

We just need to keep it at the right angle.

So we don't wash any gold out.

The water in the dive pond is so low

the dredge is grounded.

The sluice box is horizontal.

If they run the dredge, the riffles will pack up with gravel.

And gold will flow off the end.

Raising the water level will float the dredge.

Putting the four foot long sluice at the optimal five degree angle,

to catch gold in the few riffles.

So what's happening is we gotta open this up,

just to keep our water level up, so the dredge will keep floating.

And keep the angle of the sluice box right.

Enough? Not enough?

No. It'll take a minute to fill back up.

I've never had a problem with not enough water before.

This is my first time.

It's always the extreme opposite of this.

Which is, way too much water.

We got flow coming in now.

Holy. That's a lot of water.

It takes a lot of water.

It's crazy, right?

Water management is key.

Our dredge need to be floating, and now it's finally floating.

Always something though.

We can't just show up and go to work. That would be silly.

First you have to break and fix something.

All right. Let's see what you got. You copy?

Let's go. Okay.

Let's get some gold.

Bingo. Life-changing gold.

Last year, I went into debt. This year I need to find gold.

And lots of it.

We should see some gold in the box this afternoon.

We should.

Looks like you're getting at some real material, right?

- Nah. - It's just.

That's nothing.

As I'm trying to go down, you know, all the kitty litter is coming right down on me.

That white water's just dumping buckets of kitty litter.

And it filled the damn hole right back in.

You can see right here. This is what we call kitty litter.

It's just pumping it in.

Hey, watch out. Back up, back up, back up, back up, back up.

Holy.

That would have been a bad one.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. We pulled on you a little bit.

It dropped about six rocks, man.

Holy.

The extra water they needed to fill their dive hole

is now raining rocks directly on to Carlos.

- Right in my wall. - And weakening their weir wall.

A lot of handfuls of rocks, man.

We might have to punch a couple of holes right here.

That's perfect. Because I thought if we let water come in from here,

from the down side,