[drilling]
[man] Whoa!
Super not ideal.
I don't like the ice here.
It's like, there's this big overhead ice feature
right behind the dive hole.
If these blocks were to just, like, come loose,
they would plug up my dive hole, like, instantly.
[narrator] In Nome, the miners of the Bering Sea
hunt in low and dark grounds.
And their enemy is the fickle, volatile ice...
There's not a [bleep] thing we can do here.
[narrator] ...unknown depths of the ocean...
[man speaking]
[bleep]
[narrator] ...and sometimes, even themselves.
I'll tell you what, if you don't wanna do it, then don't do it!
[narrator] To succeed in their quest for gold...
they must master the art of war...
on a frozen battleground.
[man 2] Bring that gold!
Yeah!
What could be better than this?
[man 3] Hell yeah.
[engine revs]
[Vernon] We got a nice, flat expense here that, uh,
hopefully is workable.
You don't know what's under the snow.
It might be, you know, a... a nasty surprise.
But this is a nice, big expanse of flat ice.
What could be better than this?
[narrator] El Nino wreaked havoc on most of the mining grounds,
but not for Vernon Adkison,
whose Claim 56 boasts the flattest ice in town.
And miners throughout Nome have come knocking on his door
to become his tenant.
I'll give you two weeks, no royalties,
and then after that, 15%.
[narrator] Including Mr. Gold...
Sounds like a deal then.
What are you, uh, asking for percentages these days?
[narrator] ...and Zeke Tenhoff.
The good guy percentage is 15%.
Well, 15 is fair. I appreciate that.
[Vernon] Right now, we're getting ready to hit it hard and heavy.
[narrator] Claim 56 has become a bevy of activity.
Now, it's the field general's turn to start mining on his own claim,
and the salty skipper has his sights set high.
[Vernon] Well, that, uh, looks like the ice is about
four-and-a-half feet thick here.
So, now we'll drop the camera and take a look around.
See if it looks like it's, uh, gonna be a good area for us.
I've got an ambitious plan for this one.
I wanna pave for a nitrox dive system
that will allow my divers to go deeper
and stay longer than ever before.
That means we'll be able to access untouched areas
that should be loaded with gold.
I put together an all-star crew to try to pull this off.
I've got Gary Panos back with me.
He's been with me a lot of years,
and he's the best diver I've had.
Kevin, who's a great tender,.
And I've got some new blood.
Chris Nunik, he's a rookie diver in the Bering Sea.
And we're going straight to a spot
that was hot last season.
We've got some nice-sized cobble.
You know, there... there's sand.
So, it's likely right on the sand cobble land,
which is a good thing.
A lot of times, uh,
you'll find gold right where the sand and cobble meet.
This is where we're gonna start.
Yeah, let's get on back and finish putting our gear together.
We ought to go ahead and just pull it out there.
We drop down in that hole,
we're gonna be on top of some good gold.
[Shawn] I gotta admit,
it's pretty nice being royalty free,
but we're eating up the first week already.
We only have one more week left,
and then we gotta start paying royalties.
[narrator] Vernon's tenant,
Shawn Pomrenke, is looking to cash in on 56
before he needs to start paying the landlord a cut.
[Shawn] Time is money.
Every hour that you're not running
is another hour you ain't making an ounce of gold.
[narrator] And today, he's looking
for his top lieutenants to come through big.
[Shawn] Yes, sir.
We're here, back in business.
Get that gold, Joe.
-[Joe] Ahoy! -[Shawn] Ahoy!
We got to get some gold before we gotta share it with Vernon.
Joe Fullwood, he's my ace in the hole.
What's up, Joe? [laughs]
He's probably one of the best divers in town.
He's been working with me for years.
[Joe speaking]
[laughs]
Smells like gold, smells like money.
[Shawn] Right now, we're way behind
where we needed to be to kick start the inland mine.
But we tapped into a hot pastry,
so I need Joe to get down there and get at it.
Oh, yeah! Trying to see some gold.
[Shawn] I'm gonna get Joe in the water.
Let's go, Joe!
[Joe] All right, you guys got a copy up there?
[Shawn over radio] Copy, over. Roger.
[Joe over radio] Hell, yeah!
I'm just gonna poke around a little bit.
Ah, nice, big chunk of weathered bedrock right under the hole.
That's a good sign.
They're bunch of overburden.
[Joe] Not where I'm at.
All right, uh, you guys wanna iron-hook me up?
Let this silt suck into the nozzle.
[Shawn] What are you seeing down there, Joe?
[Joe speaking]
[Shawn] Yeah, let's get it, Joe.
[Kris] Okay, let's start up the air compressor,
and let's get going here.
Go get some gold.
So do you feel lucky?
Yeah, I feel lucky.
That's good. I'm glad. I like luck.
[narrator] If any team could use a little luck
so far this season, it's Kris Kelly and Reaper Nation.
As the captain's grand plan to work, rarely mined claims...
[man speaking over raido]
Oh, my God! It's [bleep] going bad.
[narrator] ...hasn't been so grand.
And if they fail to find gold again today,
it could be time to wave the white flag.
All we can hope for right now is hopefully not too much overburden
with enough gold to stay here.
I mean, if it was amazing gold, I'd be happy as [bleep].
But let's-- Right now, let's worry about getting a paycheck.
This season's been a disaster.
I thought these claims were gonna be loaded with gold.
So far, I've been dead wrong.
But my diver, Yukon John,
claims he saw trace amounts of gold
on that claim a couple seasons ago.
So, we're gonna go check it out.
Honestly, this may be our last hope.
Comm, check?
We're good on comms.
[Kris] Uh, light? Light.
Okay, now. Bam!
Good? You're good? Everything good?
[Yukon speaking]
Okay. Good.
Please, Lord, give us gold!
[Yukon] Yeah. [laughs]
[radio static]
-[Kris] John, how's it going? -[radio static]
[John] Uh... Uh...
-[radio static] -[bleep]!
[Kris over radio] Keep-- Well, keep searching around.
Do your best, okay?
[Yukon speaking]
You know, like, we just keep running
across a lot of frozen ground
underneath the water and that bull [bleep].
Okay, report.
[Yukon speaking]
[Kris] Well, that's it for this.
He said the hole's frozen.
We can't even get to the pay layer
to see if there's gold or not.
Like, I'm sure there's gold on this claim,
but with the ground being frozen,
we're not gonna get it.
And it sucks!
Okay, let's get out of here.
[Yukon speaking]
[Kris] We didn't have the greatest plan
coming into this ice mining season,
because if you think you're gonna,
like, spend every day prospecting, making a hole,
moving your operation, when, in the summer,
you wanna move 20 feet, you just float over 20 feet.
You know, like, in the winter, you wanna move 20 feet,
you gotta [bleep] spend all day long cutting holes,
moving the equipment, making sure everything's dialed in.
We're basically a DEFCON 1.
We'll do one more hole on John's coordinates, and then that's it.
If we don't find anything,
it might be goodbye season,
and maybe goodbye Reaper Nation.
The ground's frozen,
we're not gonna waste any more time here.
Okay, let's get out of here.
[narrator] Back in Nome...
We're getting hooked up.
Gonna start dragging the equipment out on the ice.
We've got a spot located out there.
We'll open that hole up and get everything set up.
[narrator] Vernon Adkison is ready to lead his all-star squad into battle.
[Kevin] Getting ready to drag this stuff out on the ice.
Hopefully, it will tow well. A lot of fresh snow,
so it's slick.
[Vernon] Well, we're getting ready to get underway with this comm shack.
And then when we pull it out of here,
because of the way those pontoons,
I don't wanna pull it at a side angle.
I wanna pull it out
pretty much keeping in a straight line.
And see if the, uh, snow machine is gonna move it.
Kind of embedded there right now.
Come over here and help me shake it.
Okay.
-[Chris speaking] -Okay.
As soon as it took a jerk, the... the, uh, rig shifted
on the pontoons and the pontoons,
these lashings have to be at a diagonal.
They can't be straight up and down.
It ain't gonna work.
It's gotta be re [bleep] latch.
Gary's a hell of a diver, but he's been slacking.
This stuff should have been ready days ago.
Now he's not doing things right.
I told him to lash these pontoons diagonally
and he didn't listen.
So now we gotta do it all over again.
This mistake is gonna cost us even more time.
Rope? You can get rope anywhere!
[Gary speaking]
-[Vernon] All right, Gary, I mean, look-- -[Gary speaking]
Okay. I'll tell you what.
If you don't wanna do it, then don't do it!
[Gary speaking]
[Chris speaking]
[Vernon speaking]
[Chris] The job is hard enough, you know, physically.
It's just drama we don't need.
Everybody needs to nut up and shut up.
So we gotta take a job.
It's just in a day's work, you know, [bleep] light this up.
So it's just a matter of blocking up the, uh, shack.
Deflating the pontoons and positioning them properly.
And now we gotta relatch them so that the last thing go diagonally.
And that way, when you pull ,
it... it doesn't allow for any lateral forces.
Yep.
Go! Go, go, go!
Go, go, go, go!
[Vernon] Not everything is just perfect every minute of the [bleep] day.
No, you gotta stick your nose into it,
wiggle around and try to find a way to do it.
Now I have hope.
[Zeke] Pump engines are all hooked up.
All that's running, water flowing through the sluice box.
Water heater's been running all day.
And we have all the pumps running.
Everything's running great.
We should be able to dive.
-All right, sounds good, man. Come on. -Whoo!
[narrator] After striking a deal with Vernon to mine
on Claim 56,
new daddy, Zeke Tenhoff, is ready to begin the war for gold this winter.
[Zeke] I had this memory from 15 years ago.
I was wandering around in the west end and I got into some good gold,
and I got, like, 20 ounces of gold in a few days.
I just feel like it's kind of fortuitous that I remembered this now,
and, like, I hadn't remembered it for a long time.
This is kind of an out of the way area
that dredgers don't usually go,
that could work to our benefit.
I worked this area a long time ago, like, 15 years ago,
and I remember seeing some good gold.
Since it's so far off the beaten path
of where everyone usually dredges,
maybe nobody has hit it yet.
I really hope that the gold is still hot here
because I need to stack some serious bank
to get my yurt ready for my wife and kid.
I'm just gonna smash down there and just start punching holes.
There's the possibility that we're gonna run into
a bunch of frozen ground. If there's a bunch of frozen ground,
I'll know pretty quick that we're not gonna to stay here.
See, I don't wanna burn any time if it doesn't look good.
I'll be able to know after, like, a couple hours,
whether or not we're gonna stay here.
Right, this should, uh, tell us what we need to know.
[man over radio] Everything's looking great.
[Zeke] That's great. Awesome, awesome. All systems go.
Whoa!
You guys got me up there on the comm?
[man] Yeah, I got you.
[Zeke] Yeah, super not ideal.
Dude, I don't like the ice here.
It's like, there's this big, like,
overhead ice feature right behind the dive hole.
It goes through, like, three feet of ice to, like 10 feet of ice.
And and it looks really sketchy
because it's, like, all super loose blocks, dude.
If these loose blocks were to just, like, come loose...
they would plug up my dive hole, like, instantly.
Hopefully, I can still get through it.
I mean, they're, like, kind of, like, slushy.
It's like a big chandelier of ice.
All right, well, I'm gonna start digging holes here.
I don't see any cobble around.
It's just like all, uh, sand.
There's probably rocks under the sand.
I'll find a layer that the gold would be at,
but, you know, and we'll see if there's gold on that layer.
[man] All right, that sounds good.
[Zeke] Uh, you wanna spool up both of those pumps to about three-quarter?
-[man] It's ready for suction. -[man 2] Okay.
[man] How's it looking down there?
Have you hit cobble yet?
[Zeke] I got a bunch of sand here.
I think what we'll have to do is just dig a big hole in this sand
and it'll take me a while to uncover wherever the pay layer is.
Well, I'll give it a try here.
[narrator] While Zeke fights on...
across the ice...
[Vernon] It's a beautiful day today.
The only problem is it's about 15 degrees below zero.
[narrator] Vernon Adkison is looking to get orders to his troops
and start heating up on the ice.
[Vernon] Well, what do you think, Gary?
We about ready to kick it off?
Yeah, we've probably got another half hour of unthaw and everything,
running water through it.
But other than that, yeah, we're getting closer.
Damn near, I mean, I think we're about ready to go.
[Vernon] So we had a rocky start today,
but we're finally ready to fire up
and get on some of the millions in gold
that's under our feet.
[Chris] We're good to go, man.
[muffled chugging]
So it's quite cold.
When it gets this cold, equipment breaks.
[Gary speaking]
I think so. Yep.
Fuel is off, but you can turn the fuel back on.
[scratching]
Well, actually, it has better compression.
-[muffled explosion] -Whoa! What the... [bleep]
Something's not right in there, dude.
Nothing is working.
[sighs]
So, the generators blew up?
[Vernon] So, uh, we're dead in the water.
I got to go dig up another generator.
I just got to get on the phone and start working the phone.
We're done here, there's not a [bleep] thing we can do here.
All our equipment is dead.
We're going to pack this scrap up,
go back in and find a generator.
Nothing's [bleep] working.
[narrator] As Vernon hopes to generate some gold,
five miles west...
[machine whirring]
[Kris] Right now, let's worry about getting a paycheck.
Gold is the most important thing.
[narrator] Once again,
Reaper Nation has dug themselves into a foxhole,
and they're down to their soldier's last coordinates.
[Kris] Come on, John!
We can't keep moving and moving. It costs money.
And we haven't seen anything promising on this claim so far.
We have to make something happen on this claim right now.
If we don't find gold on this hole, we're done.
I'll pull the plug.
I'll be forced to admit defeat.
Go get some gold.
-[John] Yeah? -[Kris] Yeah.
Got the engine idles up, John's down there starting to prospect.
I'm gonna get on the comp.
[static scratches]
[over radio] John, how's it going?
John, status report.
[laughs]
[in sing-song voice]
Yeah!
Good job, buddy.
That's why I let you take this lot today.
PJ, we're on gold.
About time, baby.
[John speaking]
Yeah!
Yeah, baby!
[upbeat music playing]
[Shawn] How you doing down there, partner?
[Joe speaking]
[Shawn over radio] Get it, Joe, get it!
[narrator] After four hours,
it's still "all systems Joe"
for Team Pomrenke.
[Joe speaking]
What's even better is there's no royalty here. [laughs]
[Joe speaking]
[Shawn] Joe went down and crushed it.
And with all the gold I need to start this inland mine,
it couldn't have come at a better time.
[Joe speaking]
[Shawn] Hell yeah. Good job, Joe.
[Joe speaking]
Seeing good gold falling out of the loose material,
good news.
Time to clean the box.
Payday.
That's what we call this. Payday.
[Joe speaking]
[Shawn] Time to clean some gold.
Ooh, yeah!
Payday!
[narrator] Across the battlefield...
[Kris] Hey, so what kind of gold are we on? Tell me about it.
[John speaking]
[Kris] That's exactly what we want.
Good job, buddy!
[narrator] After three hours,
Yukon John is still on the gold,
and Reaper Nation is enjoying their first successful day of the season.
I'm real thankful. You know, God loves us.
Sometimes.
[Kris over radio] Okay, come on, let's get out of here.
[John speaking]
[Kris] Okay, he's coming up. Get ready.
Stand by to burst into action.
Start pulling the umbilical light in.
Grab him.
How'd it go?
[both laugh]
Yeah! [growls]
[John speaking]
Good!
Good things come to those who wait.
And we've been waiting a long time.
So I hope that scale tells me something good today.
Okay, good job, everybody!
Good job, John, mainly.
Let's go.
[narrator] Reaper Nation tastes victory for the first time.
But three miles east...
[Vernon] So once you put those in there,
they're gonna stay in there, right?
[narrator] ...the Adkison team
is still struggling to join the battle.
We, uh, roused up some more generators,
and spent the rest of the day getting them back up and running.
And the reason all these things have been...
[coughs]
...malfunctioning, [clears throat]
is because of this cold weather.
[exhales, inhales] All right, so,
if we can get in the water today,
get all the systems tested out...
[Chris] I heard you last night coughing and sneezing.
I heard him getting sick last night,
and I was worried that you both are now sick.
[Gary speaking]
Well, I'll tell you what.
If you feel like you're coming...
If you're on the verge, you're not going down, that's 100%,
until you get well.
[narrator] Why is congestion such a serious issue for divers?
-[reel clicks] -[serene music playing]
Let's get a BSG schoolroom lesson
on why a cold isn't so hot.
While it may seem harmless to us folks on dry land,
the cold can be a major complication for divers...
[groans] Damn it.
...causing congestion that blocks ears and sinuses,
preventing equalization of air pressure in their head.
[diver speaking]
Yeah, yeah, come on up. Come on up.
There's blood.
[narrator] And in extreme cases,
can lead to ruptured eardrums.
Something's wrong.
I will not send anybody down if they're sick.
It ain't going to happen.
You, on the other hand,
still need a familiarization dive.
We could get that out of the way today
-and coach you through the process... -Yeah.
...and get you comfortable down there.
So, what do you think, Gary? Can you roll with that?
Well, wait a minute. What the... [bleep] Gary?
-Well, what do you want? Okay, let's... Let's do it... -[Gary speaking indistinctly]
[Vernon] Let's do it the way you want. How you want to do it?
You tell me how you want to do it.
[Chris speaking]
[indistinct chatter]
Okay, all right, let's just shut everything down.
Shut it down. We're getting off the ice.
-Shut it down. We're getting off the ice. -[Gary] We're doing it!
[Vernon] [bleep] ...me.
Uh, I'm sick and tired of this... [bleep]
It's costing me money.
Hey, Chris, I need you to take me back over the road.
[Chris] Okay.
[Vernon] I got to get the [bleep] out of here, before I...
before I lose it.
I got to get out of here before some things start exploding.
Tomorrow, if [bleep] doesn't happen,
they will explode, I guarantee you.
[engine starts]
Put divers in the water or somebody's going.
[Kris] Come on, come on, come on!
Hell yeah!
Three, four ounces.
-We'll do a fist bump. -Yeah!
[narrator] So how does gold from the sluice box
wind up looking like a glistening mound of...
well, gold?
[man] It looks like a fat cleanup.
[narrator] Miners clean out the sluice box
by removing and washing mats
that collect gold and heavy minerals
in a mixture called concentrates.
[rumbling]
Those concentrates are run through fine filters...
Gold rolling up the wheel.
[narrator] ...like gold wheels
to separate the gold from the other minerals.
The miners then cook the gold
to remove impurities, such as mercury.
And, finally, the gold is put on a scale
for miners to weigh their new fortune.
[Shawn laughs] That'll put a smile on his face.
[man] Oh, yeah.
[Zeke over radio] All right, yeah, so it looks like
a lot of deep silt and sand here.
The kind of silt and sand
that's just gonna murk us out, like, way too bad.
[narrator] After three hours with little sign of gold,
Commander Zeke Tenhoff is still fighting the fight.
[Zeke] I'm able to expose, basically,
the clay underneath the sand.
But, I mean, I'm not even seeing any specks of gold on it, either.
Yeah. I don't really have any more business down here that I wanna do.
I'm just seeing, like, layers of silt and, like, boring gravel.
Uh, I don't know, guys. I think we might have to
go find somewhere that's not quite as sandy
and where there's deeper water.
Yeah, roger that. We can do better.
[Zeke] Ah, I mean, like, yeah. I mean, it sucks having to move all of our gear.
But, you know, we're going into this knowing that we have to prospect,
so I think it's reasonable that we're going to have to dig a couple holes
before we get on something we like.
Yeah, that's just the name of the game, man.
Comes with the territory.
[Zeke] All right, I'm gonna head up.
[over radio] Yeah, roger that.
Grab him up.
[blows nose]
I saw, like, three specks of gold.
-Not good enough. -[man] All right.
You know, we're just getting gold.
We need to get something where it--
Find something we're excited about,
even if it takes a couple of moves to do it.
Yeah.
I'm not looking forward to moving again, but I'm prepared to do it.
Somewhere around here, there's got to be more gold than that.
Yeah.
[Zeke] I know there will be.
[Shawn] Oh, yeah, ready to see some nuggets.
The fruits of our labor.
[narrator] With Vernon's royalty right around the corner,
the Pomrenke team is looking for an army of ounces on the scale.
Well, we've got one more week of no royalty.
[Joe] We better get back out there and suck up some more of this gold, eh?
[Shawn] Yeah. Yeah.
We better take advantage of it while we can.
Here you go.
One...
two, three, four, five,
six, seven...
eight...
-Damn near nine. -Heck yeah.
[narrator] 8.9 ounces is worth over 20 grand.
And just like that, there's a new gold leader in Nome.
[Shawn] I'm excited.
Oh, yeah.
[Shawn] We're gonna go get some more dives in.
It sounds like we're coming into something pretty hot.
-Yeah-- -Hopefully, this week,
because we got this last week of no royalties, so...
Otherwise, we'd have to give Vernon
and his greedy little paws in there.
-Let's keep this to ourselves, right? -[both laugh]
[narrator] Across town...
Very cold over there, eh?
[laughs]
[Kris] You'll be fine. We're not gonna be too much longer.
No matter what this cleanup says right now,
things are going to get better.
[narrator] The soldiers of Reaper Nation
look to reap gold for the first time this season.
Note to editing team...
We really want to go from...
Skip all this [bleep], and just do the clean... the weighing at the end.
[upbeat music playing]
-Here we go. -[box thudding]
Come on, baby.
Come on!
Oh, we almost got five. Come on, baby!
4.99...
So we got five ounces.
Good job, everybody. That wasn't bad.
Yeah, good job.
[narrator] This haul is worth over $11,000,
and the Kelly team's relentless combat finally pays off.
[Kris] I know we're gonna make more. This is just the beginning.
Five ounces, it's a great start.
You know? Like, we know we're on great gold.
We know that we're gonna kill it.
Everything is gonna work out for us.
-Should be a really nice week. -[spits]
-You okay? -[all laughing]
Andy's having a little trouble over there.
-Andy... -Where's your paper towels?
[Kris] Andy's very excited we got five ounces.
We know where the gold is, so watch us.
[narrator] Shawn Pomrenke takes the lead in the gold count,
while the Kelly army marches onto the scoreboard.
Next time on Bering Sea Gold...
[Vernon] Today is D day.
Either we get this straightened out
or he gets on a plane and gets the hell out of here.
Pull him in! Pull him in!
[Joe] She's locked up solid.
She's done for, boys.
We're... [bleep]
I can't feel my left hand in this.
[Vernon] Come on, baby.
We're getting a lot more gold than we thought we were getting.
[man speaking]
[yells]