Evolution is as vital to miners as it is to every species.
Over a century ago, the first form of gold seekers
brought their primitive methods to the Nome shores.
And while today's fleet has advanced far beyond their forefathers,
if they don't continue to evolve,
they'll be left out in the cold.
And on the icy Bering Sea...
There's a storm coming up,
but, you know, I got to make money before that,
you know, because it's pretty much
gonna be for a while, you know.
Ain't no [bleep] around today.
Into the face of adversity,
a young gun's looking for an edge to rise to the top of the gold chain.
This winter is all about letting
the mining community know that there's a new force in town.
I've always got to be thinking outside the box.
I need to use every edge that I can because I'm aiming
for a hundred-ounce season, and that's a Mr. Gold number.
I'm gonna prove that I'm as good as Mr. Gold or anyone in this fleet,
and I want no storm to slow me down.
Push it in there.
So I got a two-pronged plan to help me
stay ahead of the game before the storm hits.
First, I'm gonna send Yukon John down
and finish up the rest of this hole.
The guy is a killer. Total Nome OG.
I just want to make sure what happened last summer
didn't mess up his confidence.
A strong diver will fix that in a hurry.
Hey, Freddie.
Game time.
And I'm also gonna break out some new technology.
I have this cool underwater drone
that will help me scope out the sea floor.
I want to find some new ground to crush after the storm passes.
A lot of old-time miners shy away from the new technology,
but I think this is the key to progress.
I'm gonna send you the drone down there.
Let us know what you think from there.
Mic check. Mic check.
Loud and clear.
Diver down, baby. John is my gold dog.
I sent him down there and he gets it like a dog
looking for his bone.
We'll go idle up.
Hey, John. How's it going?
Oh, it's going pretty good.
Right on. Right on. Okay. Got it.
Whoo!
- My diver's happy... - Everything's running smooth.
...we'll get it. No matter how hard it is, we'll get it.
As the youngest miner in the fleet forges a new path...
Nobody throw, uh, cigarette butts in the tailings,
'cause they film it and make us look like white trash.
Good morning!
Today we're starting off, we're kicking ass.
The plan is simple.
I need a third of an ounce of gold an hour,
and I need less than a foot of overburden
for my crawler to work properly.
After a disastrous summer,
Kris Kelly is looking to evolve his winter operation,
if he can just get out of his own way.
We're gonna get Andy in the water,
just because he doesn't trust my prospecting skills,
even though I'm always right.
So it's gonna be an exciting day.
Summer was junk.
We need to absolutely crush it this winter.
We're aiming for 50 ounces and I've got just the ticket
to upgrade Reaper Nation and pull it off.
Tomorrow at 2:00 p.m., my crawler gets here.
I am so pumped. I've been waiting for it.
My secret weapon is an underwater crawler.
Basically, it's like a vacuum cleaner on the ocean floor.
A robot vacuum cleaner.
It's[bleep] strong, powerful, should be able to move
small rocks the size of a truck.
No more diving, just the robot getting our gold.
That's how we'll separate ourselves from everyone else and reach the next level.
So today, we've got to find a good pay streak
with flat ground and not a lot of overburden.
Then we'll dominate when the crawler gets here.
We're getting our sluice box in
I'm getting Andy to reserve his energy.
- We're good to go. - He's gonna get down there and make our money today.
I'm expecting more gold and lots of work. So I expanded my team.
I added Daniel and Andrew, and they're both rookies.
So there's a lot of work to do to get them up to speed.
The foot valves and the high-pressure line's next.
Come on, Andrew, get in there. Let's do this [bleep].
Andrew, in particular, he has the reaction time of a sloth.
Okay. Let's do that right now. Let's do that right now.
Look, we don't need a [bleep] sloth.
Getting everything set up, it's a little slow in the beginning.
We're like a pit crew.
Every single day we do it, we'll get faster.
Got it.
We're ready to go.
Water is flowing, everything's up and ready.
We're gonna start making some money.
Yep. Ready to dive, get it done.
We really need less than a foot of overburden
- from the crawler to making sure it works. - I know.
And it would be nice if we run better than a third of an ounce.
I'm not stopping at a third of an ounce.
- Well, that's nothing, you know-- - Hey, I wanted...
If I get a third,
I want to keep going and see if I can find better.
- Okay. Check, check. - Yeah, I can hear you.
- Idle up. - Okay.
Idle up, Gabe you do it, do it slowly.
But I think it's cobble with a little bit of sand.
Okay. Let me figure out what's wrong.
Our engines are idled all the way up.
But for some reason, Andy has no suction under the water.
Now I have to put my mechanic's hat on,
which has never been my specialty.
We're good.
You know how I fixed it? With one [bleep] nail.
So here's Kris, the mechanic's solution.
I put a nail in the wall and hung the fuel line on it,
so gravity will feed the fuel to the engine.
This is not exactly the revolutionary new operation
that I envisioned, but, man, I can't wait till my crawler gets here.
- How's your suction? - Good.
Well, thank God. I think I took care of our problems up here,
and we're gonna start running smoother.
It wasn't getting fuel at all.
Man, when you were just giving me that little speech, dude,
I just found a crevice that was full of gold.
Well, good job.
Found great gold. I am so pumped.
Minor difficulties right now, nothing big. Nothing I can't handle.
But everything's fine. Everything's fine.
And at least we're getting a lot of gold.
In Nome, if you ain't evolving, you ain't surviving.
And on the outskirts of town...
We got a big storm coming in.
Time is money.
Every hour you're not running, that's another hour you ain't making an ounce of gold.
...the king of Nome is trying to adapt to stay ahead of the competition.
I've never been this excited about ice season.
Having the mini excavator changed the whole game
you're almost, even more efficient
in the winter than in the summer.
Every season on the Bering Sea is different.
So my blueprint for mining has always got to be changing.
This winter, I developed a new approach.
I have the sherp now that'll maximize my mobility
and give me access to new areas.
And I have an excavator.
The ultimate tool for efficiency.
We'll be able to dig holes and pivot faster than anybody else.
Oh, yeah.
And this year, I'm aiming at a big goal, 100 ounces.
But the biggest change of all is the spot that I picked,
the East Tract Claim, not where I'm used to mining,
but the drill hole, see, there's an ancient channel of gold.
Trick is, it's deep, real deep.
You're 36 feet deep.
I mean, a lot of guys won't go out that deep.
If something goes wrong, you better figure out
what the hell you need to do to get the hell out of there and get out of there quick.
Otherwise, you're done.
A lot of guys wouldn't take a chance on ground this deep.
You get far away from the dive hole, chance of the bends,
ground freezing up.
But I have to take the risk.
There's guys like Chris McCully
just waiting for me to slow down so they can be the top dog.
I just can't stick to what's comfortable.
I always have to be pushing myself.
Yes, sir.
We're here, back in business.
We're on it.
Get that gold, Joe.
The second diver on the hole, I'm gonna get suited up,
get down, try to clean the hole up,
finish it up, it's 'cause we got a snow storm coming.
Get down there and pile up some gold.
He thinks he's ready.
We'll see when he gets to the bottom.
That gold, it might just [bleep] shock him.
Sounds like he can see the bottom.
That's good.
If he can see the bottom, he'll see the gold.
Oh, yeah.
There's some big chunks of ice up above us.
Right at this particular area, you can see the big,
huge chunks of ice coming down.
That's why we got the excavator.
He'll dig me a new hole and pull me out if he has to.
But we ain't down here to google at the ice, we're here to make some money.
Yeah, go ahead. Throttle me up.
[bleep] Dammit!
Pry bar in one hand and kind of pop your way along as you're sucking it up.
Come on, baby.
Yeah. You got to bust through the ground
and kind of tear it down layer by layer.
A lot of potential in it.
Come on, baby.
We got it.
Kind of fan it a little bit.
You should be able to see the gold on top of here.
Oh, yeah. Look at there.
A piece there, a piece there, a piece there.
We can just get this stuff going up the nozzle.
We're gonna make some money, honey.
Booyah!
You see gold, just keep on digging, keep digging.
Got to keep digging.
As the mining veteran keeps changing up his game,
across the ice...
All right.
Let's go. Let's go.
Steve and I got out here early.
You can get the ice off here.
Waiting on Jeff and Eddie.
I like to call them Jeff... What do I call them? Jeffeddie, like confetti.
Jeffeddie.
With Emily and Homer about to deliver her baby,
rookie Jane Kilcher is just beginning her evolution
into an ice miner.
No matter how many times I do this, it's just... It's never-ending.
Really nice to be able to have all the light possible.
This is for light, to get the light down there.
You want the light down to the bottom.
Water's fine. Come on in.
Yeah.
I'm starting from scratch when it comes to ice mining.
And it's pretty stressful 'cause I've never done it before,
so this is a big transformation for me out here.
Very excited, but I'm definitely feeling the pressure,
because not only is this my first time ice mining,
but I'm expected to be like "Captain" Jane as well.
I've got to come through for Emily 'cause nobody
wants to get a pregnant woman worried more than they need to.
It's not pretty.
We're pretty excited. We're doing real well.
The crew is getting along. We're well fed.
- Jane's a hoot to work with. - Whoo!
Everyone's doing really well.
Here come the boys.
Hey, guys.
We cleaned your hole.
Today, we're gonna get Jeff under the ice,
which is totally crazy to begin with.
And hopefully, today we get some gold.
'Cause with the storm that's coming, today might
be our only day for getting gold, like, for a while.
Jeff's gonna drop down first. We're ready to just get gold.
Oh, thank you.
If the word 'pull' ever comes up on the comms, start pulling.
That's it. Somebody needs to leave the shack and start pulling.
When it's 'pull' or 'air' or 'I'm frozen' or...
- 'Get me up.' - ...you know--
- Yeah. - 'Help.'
When the regulator freezes, it freezes.
There's no, like, it's...
- I'm coming out of the water. - Okay.
- So... - I hear ya.
- Okay, all right. - So,
here we go. Let's, uh...
There it is.
Eureka! It's really gushing.
All right.
- Yeah, do you hear me? - Yeah. Getting you loud and clear.
- ... - Wow, loud.
That's what we're here for.
You're at 120.
Thank you, Jane.
Whoo!
He's on the bottom.
Oh, that's awesome.
Copy that.
Whoo!
Oh, man.
I'm gonna text Emily and let her know.
What are you on?
I'm on really good gold.
So packed full of gold?
For the first time this winter,
the Kellys may finally have the building blocks for success...
Well, good job.
...or maybe not.
Sorry, buddy. We're having engine problems again.
Oh, that [bleep] sucks.
It's running like a sack of[bleep].
The problem is, they've been running the engine
with the choke on for two days.
Everything just went to [bleep] real fast.
So the guys have been leaving the choke on.
That's not good.
Guess who? Everybody out there knows,
not putting the choke back in will ruin your engine
if you run it at high speeds.
It can fry it fast.
!
Hey look. We're lighting
everything on fire in there.
That right there was wrapped around like a circle
around the foot valves and the extension cord.
So everything's touching it and melting it.
So we're literally gonna light everything on fire today.
While inspecting the engines, I also noticed that
someone coiled the exhaust line,
and everything is heating up.
Trust me, I know what a fire hazard looks like.
Oh, we just lost our entire winter mining operation.
Now we're down an engine.
And so, basically, our suction power will suck.
Sorry, one of our engines are[bleep] up.
I figured out what the problem was.
I got a bunch of [bleep] idiots
constantly surrounding me at all times.
So we were running it yesterday
with the choke on and ruining our engine.
'Cause everything's falling apart in there.
The exhausters are burning everything.
How's your suction down there with just one engine?
Hey, do you want to call it a day?
Break down everything, fix everything again?
We can point fingers and guess all day long,
but someone left that throttle open since yesterday.
And now it's time for a game I like to call "Who [bleep] me?"
It could have been Andrew.
It could have been Daniel.
Let's not forget about my brother,
and last but not least, Turtle, who set up my engine
and who's not here today.
So who's the POS that did this?
Were you running the engine yesterday
with that throttle not off?
- Who said that? Turtle? - Turtle.
Yeah.
It was Turtle.
Turtle!
This is the second day of mining.
These are all the problems that, you know,
at the beginning of the season,
even though these are dumb problems.
Dumb [bleep] problems.
Okay, well, let's pack up and get the out of here.
I've had enough for today.
Saw a nice amount of gold,
I can't even touch it.
That was a bust to me.
Nothing pisses me off more than
looking at the gold and knowing I can't touch it.
That's the worst [bleep] part.
While the Kellys face more problems...
across the ice...
Hey, John.
How you doing with the Gs?
Woohoo!
John is the gold dog in this operation right now.
Chris McCully's operation is blossoming,
as his gold dog has logged four hours of bite
under the ice.
All right, John.
I'm gonna send you the drone down there.
I'll give it instructions.
That sounds good.
John is killing it.
The gold is flowing nonstop.
The storm is coming in fast, so it's time to unleash
my other gold dog.
It's the missing link, the underwater drone.
It's like an animal out in the wild,
always searching for that next meal.
The same thing as me.
So this drone is really sick.
I can just send it down there
and move it around the sea floor
and I can easily find new ground.
And it's way faster than sending a diver down there.
If I'm gonna end up on top this winter,
I've got to keep looking for this kind of edge.
This is the baddest, the greatest,
the latest prospecting tool.
All right. We're gonna go down.
I'm gonna start descending.
Okay.
Now I'm slowly approaching John.
- Yeah. - I can see his umbilical.
Hey, John. Come on.
I'll let you grab the ROV and then...
All right. Okay. Here we go. Approaching.
All right. I got it.
All right. Go ahead. Yep.
Keep it level.
I'm gonna take, uh...
It looks like it is facing towards north east.
Okay. You can let go of the drone and then I'll go, uh...
We'll go ahead and scout that area.
There you go.
Yeah!
Wow.
Yeah. So look at this.
This is real promising area.
I like this ground because it goes uphill and then it goes...
I think we're gonna... We're gonna make
our next hole over here, dude.
I had a great feeling about this.
I'm locked into the position right now.
I... I know exactly where it is.
John, it's been four hours.
I'm ready to get out here before the storm comes in, you know.
So, come up whenever you're ready.
Yeah.
So this storm is about to hit, but John killed it.
He was on the gold the whole time
and the drone found some new ground
and I can't wait to dive on it next time.
This is my plan for the season.
I'm just gonna keep producing and producing
and always stay one step ahead.
I did my due diligence.
So now you have ground for the next hole, really.
So...
I'm ready to get out of here.
We're done we're finished.
Finito.
Yeah.
Little by little.
Booyah!
Mr. Gold's rolling with
every punch Mother Nature throws,
determined to crack through a frozen pay streak
before the storm hits Nome.
Oh, yeah. Look at there.
Yeah, it is.
There's definitely gonna be some good gold in the box.
Big storm coming in, so I better come on up, honey.
Whoo!
yeah.
That wasn't easy.
The water at this depth is so cold,
it freezes the bottom rock hard.
Had to chip away at it for hours.
Good thing is, I cleared out the hole before the storm hit,
and I think it's gonna be huge.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
That's a wrap.
Way too good.
Five miles east...
How are you doing down there?
Are you talking about the air or your hair?
Oh, that's at 110. Your hair...
As the storm creeps a 'hair' closer,
Jane's knee deep in the earliest stage
of her ice-mining career.
Just coming up on three hours.
How's the view?
All right. What do you need me to do?
All right, [bleep].
Nope, one more time.
Eddie, he said one more time.
Give it a couple seconds.
Okay, I'll tell them.
Hey.
Cut. You can't... Killin' it.
We're done.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm not really sure what happened,
but Jeff wanted to call it.
Something stuck in one of these blue pipes,
and tore out the full power.
We have to fix that.
So we're having a great day and we're doing really well,
but then now, something's totally freaky with the hose
and we're having no suction.
So we're shutting down for the day
and we're gonna figure out, like, what is the problem?
Not the way I wanted things to go on our first dive.
Yeah.
Okay. So...
When we were building it, had a buddy of mine helping,
and we mysteriously lost a tape measure.
But we found it.
Today is the day.
Obviously, you know, we had a little plug.
And I'm coming up trying to figure out
where this plug is, and long story short,
there's a tape measure in a four-inch pipe.
- It's literally... - Yeah.
- ...sideways in the venturi. - Yeah.
Taking about 70% of the power easily.
- Oh, my gosh. - Yeah.
- Easy, easy. - Yeah.
Well, you know, surgeons leave scissors
sometimes inside your body and then they stitch you up
and then you've got a pair of scissors.
Well, in this case, it's a tape measure
that's in our jet.
First day of my ice-mining experience
and the good news is we found gold.
Bad news is we had to shut down for the day.
It was kind of a gong show, so I definitely have room to grow.
I'm definitely gonna tell Emily about the gold.
I'm definitely not going to tell Emily
about the tape measure.
Somebody grab the tape measure?
I haven't seen it.
- Yeah! - Yeah.
So right here, we have the pimpmobile, John's pimpmobile.
John always rides with a flat tire.
He, uh, he said it adds traction.
Manual deflation tire.
So, every... Every night, after he dives,
he has to pump his... He has to pump his tire every night.
One night, he, uh, he was pumping his tire
and his 12-volt pump caught on fire...
and he had to walk home.
So I was like, "Oh, happens, I guess."
John's pimpmobile.
The storm has arrived,
and although it's wiped out all life on the ice,
two miners manage to thrive.
And in Nome...
So freaking heavy, dude.
...the fleet's young gun is looking for proof
that he's got the momentum to reach the top.
Yeah.
Looking good so far.
Lumps of gold right there.
On the Bering Sea, you've always got to be adapting.
We knew the storm was coming and that we needed to clear out
this hole fast and, you know, find a new one simultaneously.
We did that.
Now, I just want to see a strong number on that scale.
All right, we're ready. We're ready to weigh it out.
Yeah, we're gonna go by grams.
- Okay, here we go. - Got it.
We got 40, 60, 100, 200.
300.
400.
446.
442 grams.
So that translates into 442 grams
divided by 31.1 troy ounces.
We got 14 ounces.
Whoo!
Fourteen ounces is worth over $26,000.
Evidence that Chris's blueprint for growth has legs.
This is a good start for us.
My crew is happy.
Olson and John is really happy.
I could not be more excited the way
this winter's been going.
I don't know where Shawn's season's at right now,
but I think he'll be hard-pressed
to have this much gold.
We're just gonna keep crushing anything in our path
for the rest of the season.
Tomorrow is a new day. We're gonna go back again.
We're gonna keep mining, but right now,
we're ahead of the game, baby.
We're ahead of the game, kicking ass, you know.
Chris grows stronger by the day.
But across town...
What have we got here?
Nice, big, fat clean-up.
That's what we're looking for.
...Shawn's new strategy
also looks to be reaping dividends.
Get that gold, Joe.
I was seeing gold the whole time I was down,
but it was frozen. Really hard to move.
Need to hit the jackpot before the storm hit.
By the looks of it, we killed it.
Feels good.
Feels nice, a handful of gold.
Now it's time to put it on the scale.
Let's see a big number.
Oh, baby.
That's a nice pile of gold there.
Oh, yeah.
It's looking good.
Ooh.
Let's see what we got here.
What are you thinking?
Over 20, that's for sure.
Five, ten, 15.
Come on.
17.
20.
Oh, 22.
27.
28.15.
Heck, yeah.
That will put a smile on your face.
28.15 ounces is worth over $53,000.
And the frozen pay streak proved to be red hot.
This is beautiful.
It looks like a big pile of cash to me.
Yeah. Yes, indeed.
Off the bottom of the ocean floor, in the pan,
it'll be in the bank here pretty soon.
Oh, yeah.
Well, the moral of the story is,
no matter how many years you've been mining,
no matter how successful you are,
you always have to keep learning,
growing and improving, and you can't ever quit.
That's the only way to stay on top
and to keep everybody that's chasing you at a distance.
I think we can fill it up if we hit the right spot.
Mmm-hmm.
Keep moving at pace.
Get back out there and get it.
Mmm-hmm.
Mr. Gold still atop the gold chain,
but young gun, Chris McCully, is quickly growing
into a threat.
Next time on Bering Sea Gold...
There's a snowmachine race called the Nome-Golovin.
Oh, yeah.
All right. Go on in.
Heck yeah, baby.
Sweet, I'm gonna suit up
and then I'll send you down, Nate.
We're supposed to go down to the ice for the first time today.
I'm expecting Daniel and Andrew to get down there.
Hey, you're not supposed to swallow the gasoline.
Come up.
All right, this is the spot.
This is very bad.
Very bad. Very bad.