It's gonna flood.
Holy [bleep]. Dude, look at that.
It's pickin' up quick.
Holy [bleep].
Look, this big ass boulder.
It's comin' over.
Holy [bleep], dude.
Come on.
I'm about to lose a [bleep] dredge
to another flood!
Start liftin' up.
As soon as he gives me the thumbs up,
we're tyin' off.
It's done.
Dude, it's comin' in.
Oh, yeah. Come on.
- Get over here. This [bleep]. - Oh, yeah. Come on.
This is gonna blow.
Come on!
Let's go!
This is gonna be a little more dangerous than I thought.
It doesn't look like there's much up there
to tie off on.
Everything I'm standin' on moves.
This is freakin' me out a little bit.
That looks pretty sketchy.
Holy...
Prep work is what's gonna make this place right.
Step one, diversion.
Let's move some rock. Three, two, one.
- Holy [bleep]. - Oh, wow.
Yeah!
Step two, skyline.
We're beaten, but God dang,
this is what it's all about.
- Step three, mining gold, baby. - Yeah.
That's what's down there.
We are the first one here. This is the safety seal.
Everything is falling into place.
And I can't wait to see how much gold is down there.
All right. How we livin'?
Dustin and his crew
have less than a third of their five month season left,
but are on the best gold of their lives.
Dude...
- We crushed that last leg. - Yeah.
- I mean, look... - Aw, man.
That just hits too much of a standard, bro.
It doesn't seem real, does it?
Beautiful, dude.
So we know that there's gold down there, right?
Yup.
There's no two ways about it.
- Big nuggets out there. - Mmm-hmm. Big nuggets.
Last week...
Oh, my God!
Carlos uncovered the largest nugget they've ever found...
- Oh, my God. - This is happening for us.
...weighing in at six ounces.
- That's what's up! - That's about a $15,000 or $20,000 nugget.
That's the biggest nugget in Gold Rush history right there.
- But... - I think that's it.
By the end of the week,
they'd cleaned out every last flake of gold.
I think we tapped this thing out, man.
Now, they need new ground.
- Nugget Bend is done. - Done.
So where are we gonna go?
We have about a mile of this claim.
There's big gold.
Bigger than we've ever thought.
But...
We're gonna go back where we were last year.
Really?
Holy moly, man.
Yeah, I don't like that.
Here's the deal.
What I want is to go see what's below Big Ass Boulder.
I think there's gonna be big gold.
- I mean, we're here to get gold. - I...
I believe there is gold there.
We know that size gold is there now.
Oh, my God. Why did we leave?
Last year, Dustin's crew discovered
the perfect dive site.
Just seeing that boulder makes me think
of how much gold's underneath it.
They attempted mining
under the 50-ton boulder.
But just as they hit the pay streak...
Mother Nature wreaked havoc.
This is a freakin' nightmare.
...destroying the dredge...
It's lookin' hopeless.
...and robbing them of the chance to pull out
millions in nuggets.
Yup, this is a fubar.
I wanna get up there.
We were there last year and I missed my opportunity.
That was my fault.
I wanna go forward.
We got the skills now to do this.
I'm hopin' we can stop the water.
See what's down at the bottom.
It's gonna take a little extra work.
But we all know that the prep
- is worth it in the end, right? - Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
The other thing we're gonna have to do
is put up another damn skyline.
- Hmm. - The reason for that is...
we will never leave my dredge in that water overnight.
- Mmm-mmm. - It will not happen ever again.
No, we learned our lesson
- on that last year. - Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Three dredges last year.
Yeah, but it's probably faster to put up a skyline
and pick the son of a bitch up
- to have to rebuild the dredge every time. - It is.
- I agree. - Yeah. Yeah, okay.
- That's way smarter. - Yeah.
- We know there's big gold here. - Yeah.
We have to find the gold line on this next section...
and haul ass with it.
After last year, we could've all given up.
But, we're so tied in it together.
And none of us are quitters.
Every year we think that this year is gonna be our year.
I mean, persistence pays off.
That's what it boils down to.
We made it back to the Big Ass Boulder.
This is our rematch.
Let me start with...
I believe the gold is right up in there.
And it goes up through the left side of that big boulder.
I hope there's gold underneath it.
Let's go.
Despite the 50-ton monster
nearly claiming the lives of his whole crew last season...
- Grab that. - Got it.
The promise of more six-ounce nuggets
pushes Dustin back
into their most dangerous dive site at Nugget Creek.
A little sketchy. I know.
We gotta be methodical this year.
- We can't just run at it like I did last year. - No.
The prep work is what's gonna make this place right...
and we'll be able to knock this out the park
if we put enough prep work.
Oh, God, yeah.
So, step one, diversion.
Step two, skyline.
- Step three, mining gold, baby. - Yeah.
Game on, man.
Moving back to the site
they dubbed Big Ass Boulder...
the crew will target an area
in the shadow of the 50-ton giant.
Dustin's plan?
Divert the creek to protect the dive area...
so they can dig down to bedrock
and the golden pay streak.
Holy [bleep].
I didn't know it was that deep.
That'll swallow you up.
So what we're trying to do
is we're gonna divert across there.
If we can cut off half of it or more,
just goin' over the Big Ass Boulder.
It's gonna help us tremendously.
- Beautiful, I like it. - Right there?
I like it.
Learnin' how to control this water
is definitely gonna make it where we can conquer Big Ass Boulders.
We'll be able to dry this area up...
and get that gold
that's still sittin' underneath that boulder.
- Try and roll it over one more time, you think? - One more maybe, yeah?
Don't let that water take you.
Woo-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo.
- Oh, [bleep]. - Yeah.
It's fast.
It took my legs.
Can you get another flip or no?
Probably not, huh?
- I think I'm gonna go if I try. - All right, don't.
Ah, I feel like I'm ten years old
playing in the damn water.
While Wes, Carlos and James divert the creek...
Copy that.
Dustin and Paul head up
for a more treacherous mission.
You ready for this, man?
Holy [bleep].
This is gonna be a little more dangerous that I thought.
Trying to find a set of anchors,
but we gotta do it...
way up high.
I wish we could put 'em down low like this,
but we can't.
I need to be able to pull the dredge out of the water.
So we're going on a bit of an adventure.
We're gonna climb. We're gonna cut.
We have to go find some decent rock.
Dustin and Paul will scale
the 500 foot crumbling cliff face
up creek of Big Ass Boulder...
to scout out rocks strong enough
to support their 550-foot cable...
they'll use to haul up their 2,000-pound dredge...
clear of the raging white water
of Nugget Creek.
It doesn't look like
there's much up there to tie off on.
So we'll see how this goes.
If I have to back down, I'll back down.
But...
be confident.
Come on.
First, Dustin will scale the mountain
with some safety ropes they put in last year
above Kayla's dive site.
Right now Dustin's trying to set us a line...
so we can get up and over that, uh...
that fin.
You all right?
Who the [bleep] does this?
It's definitely not normal gold mining.
I have this weird [bleep] drive
to do adventurish [bleep].
And I have an undying hopefulness
that I'm always gonna get rich out of my goddamn mind.
Okay, it gets really bare up here, man.
You think it's gonna work?
Well, I might have to keep going up.
From here on,
Dustin must free climb...
200 feet above the raging creek.
Whoo!
Whoo-hoo!
Oh!
Yeah!
That looks pretty sketchy, doesn't it?
Yeah, man.
All right, Paul.
There is nothing to tie off on.
I mean, nothing.
Holy [bleep].
Oh, this is a mess.
Never really goes the way I want it to.
Goes the way it has to.
Stand by.
A fall from this height
would mean certain death.
This is freaking me out a little bit.
Dustin's search for a place to anchor
is now a matter of survival.
The whole thing moved.
Holy [bleep].
Everything I'm standing on moves.
Holy!
The whole thing moved.
Hundreds of feet above Nugget Creek...
Everything I'm standing on moves.
Dustin clings to an unstable shale ridge...
This is not what I thought it was gonna be.
Risking his life to find an anchor point for the skyline
that's critical to mine the creek below.
This is still not how I die.
Hey, Paul,
pick up some slack, buddy.
Um, I'm starting to downclimb a little ways.
I'mma see if I can get back down to the alders.
Copy that.
All right, Paul,
I'm tied off on a little bit alder.
It may hold me.
Copy that.
So I'm rappelling down to look
for the perfect spot
for the perfect anchors.
Let's just get a big pile going. it.
Down at creek level...
Whoo!
The rest of the crew
are making great progress on the diversion.
Hell, yeah.
Startin' to slow this side down.
We got the water halfway... closed off
but, uh, we wanna get it closed off
more than this, so, now, we got the capstan up
and we're gonna go across the creek again
and just start pulling these boulders
in the same line that we started earlier today,
and see if we can get this water completely blocked off here.
The gas powered capstan
is a mobile rock moving unit the crew can quickly deploy.
That's gonna work great.
Until they have a skyline,
it's all they've got.
But it's capable of over one ton of pulling power,
a vital tool for conquering the creek.
Whoa.
You all right?
Holy [bleep].
Whoo!
Perfect, eh.
Oh, yeah.
Now we're gettin' somewhere.
Fit right in there like a glove.
Yeah.
We're, uh, probably starting to get
some movement on some of these rocks.
We're actually slowing down the water pretty fast
going over the Big Ass Boulder.
Their dam now deflects
70% of the creek water away from Big Ass Boulder...
Hell yeah. That's workin'.
...in an attempt to make it safer
to dive for gold.
Oh, please work.
Up on the mountain,
Dustin's hunt for an anchor point continues.
Oh, this is gonna work, man.
Dude, I'm hittin' it
and it seems pretty much it.
That sounds good.
The rock looks good enough.
We'll call it.
Copy that.
Dustin, Wes. Dustin, Wes.
Yeah, go ahead.
I need you to stop what you're doing for a minute.
I need eyes.
Got ya. I see ya.
I don't know where I'm at exactly.
So I need you to line me up with the anchors in the back.
Hey, Dustin, do you see me?
Yes, I do. Are you directly underneath him?
Pretty much. Just about as close as I can get.
There's the anchor spot right there.
It's perfect.
Ah, I was hoping
you were gonna say that.
Yes!
Hey, Paul, this is it, right here.
Awesome, man.
I'm looking straight down the center
of where I wanna go.
Come on over, buddy.
This is gonna be absolutely perfect for us right here.
The outside is trash
but it feels like pretty good rock.
Keep comin'.
You're almost on good land.
Let's do this, man.
I was startin' to doubt
that we'd find anything here. We're straight.
All right. Yeah, I'm glad you came across
- and found me. - Man,
I just didn't know what else to do.
It just looks like a pile of rubble out here.
It's insane.
We're gonna put bolts in right here.
- And we'll rappel out of here. - Oh.
All this searchin', we damn...
damn well found it.
Holy frickin' moly, man.
That's a lot of frickin' cable.
Yeah, you got a workout comin' your way, Carlos.
Today, Dustin's crew are installing
their longest ever skyline.
[bleep] That is him.
They must manhandle a 550-foot,
nearly 500-pound cable...
...across a quarter of a mile of steep terrain
into the new dive site.
Come on.
Stand by, come down.
Four hours in, with a temperature of 80 degrees,
Dustin's reaching his limit.
That was something.
30-year-old me would be laughing at how hard I'm trying.
Whoa. This is old man right here.
After six hours of back-breaking work...
Doing all right?
yeah!
I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I made it.
The crew finally have the cable beneath
Dustin's new upstream anchors.
He made it!
Well, we got the cable here.
Good job.
James, you got the juice to go do this now?
Yeah.
Let's get this going.
Time to get the upstream cable installed.
James needs to climb 150 feet up
the crumbling rock wall to be ready to receive
the cable that Paul is wrestling up the other side.
See me now, James?
Yeah, I see you. Copy that.
All right, shoot a rope over to Paul.
See if you can hit Paul with the rope.
All right, you ready, Paul?
Yeah.
perfect!
yeah.
Nice.
All right, James, take her away.
Copy that.
I got it here.
Atta boy.
Heck yeah, man.
Good job, guys. That went really well.
Up ahead...
Mud rain!
Go, go, go.
Holy [bleep].
That's the last clamp.
It took the crew eight hours, but the skyline
is now anchored up creek.
- Looks good. - 550 feet away,
Dustin, Wes, and Carlos must tension it
to the downstream anchors.
So we pulled the skyline up.
Now that we got it up, we'll do all the dangerous stuff
by tightening it up.
It's actually probably the hardest part.
Every time you click it, you think it's going to rip out the wall.
It gets a little spicy, we'll call it.
To tension the skyline tight enough to lift
the dredge and half-ton boulders clear of the creek.
Just hold the [bleep] ladder.
Dustin must enter the kill zone using
a monster come-along with the pulling power of over four tons.
Carlos be happy when he's down off this ladder.
Too tight, and the anchors could break,
or the skyline snaps, and Dustin risks
being sliced in two.
That's [bleep] dangerous right there.
Carlos, I'm running out of juice, man.
Oh, [bleep].
- Runnin' out of steam. - Okay.
I need to finish that.
There we go. Don't look down.
Don't look down.
Holy [bleep].
All right, brother. Let's go rock and roll.
Dear Heavenly Father, please protect us. Please keep us safe.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Holy frickin' moly, dude.
You good?
Two more clicks.
Two more and that's it.
Yeah, buddy.
Looks good, y'all.
It's taken the entire day to get the skyline in place
and tension.
I deserve a god dang raise, man.
But to install the pulley system to lift
the dredge could take another two hours.
Right now, I think we're too tired to do this.
Yeah.
I know we might be better off if everybody just fresh start.
Said I'd never do it, but let's tie this dredge off
and get the out of here.
Gotta know when to say when.
Overnight, out of nowhere, an extreme Alaskan
weather front hits Nugget Creek.
... We made a mistake.
This was a mistake to not put that dredge in the air.
Come on!
Dustin's decision to leave the dredge exposed...
Look at that one!
...now threatens to end his mining season.
... Go, go, go, go.
Holy [bleep]. Dude, look at that.
It's picking up quick.
Holy [bleep].
To save the dredge before it's ripped away by
the torrent,
the crew must connect the upstream winch
to a lifting pulley.
What?
I need slack.
Can you get this to me?
The rope needs to go back over this other way.
Okay.
It's off track.
... Flip it. Flip it so it's in track.
Oh, [bleep]. Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Figure this out.
We got to get... Yeah, yeah.
Over the top and pull.
See if you get it to flip right.
Almost, dude. Get it.
- Ooh, you got it. You got it. - Got it. You got it.
Paul, put it on the winch now.
All right.
Start that winch up for me, please.
Just turn it off and start it again, man.
See if that [bleep] works.
Get this done.
Hurry up.
I can't hold on much longer.
... Watch your shoulder.
I'm slipping.
Oh, come on. Go in there.
Flood rain.
Holy [bleep].
- You got it? - Hang on.
- You're in? - Yep.
Let go!
Ooh, [bleep]. It's gonna blow.
Rain!
Come on.
The winch connected.
They can attempt to lift the dredge clear of the torrent.
Dude, it's coming in!
Paul, come on! Get over here!
Hurry up! Come on!
Come on!
We're about to lose that dredge to another flood!
Come on!
It's us!
Dude, it's coming in.
Oh! Come on, get over here.
Hurry up.
Hey.
Come on.
We're about to lose that dredge to another flood!
On Nugget Creek,
a storm surge threatens to sink Dustin's dredge.
Holy [bleep].
His only hope of saving their season is
if the untested skyline and anchors will hold
as they try to lift it from the torrent.
Go!
Make it work!
Y'all need to stand on the back.
Can y'all stand on the back?
Go, go, go, go. [bleep].
It'll bounce, hopefully. No, it's not gonna bounce.
Stand by!
Come on, baby.
Don't fall. Don't fall. Hold on.
Oh, [bleep], that hurt.
Hot!
Hung up! Stand by!
We got to untie that rope, but I'll cut that bitch.
Yeah! [bleep].
lift it. See what happens.
- keep going. - Get out of there.
Get out of there.
It's because that's so I can go.
Get off of it and push on the back of the plane.
Come on, babe. Get up there.
Keep going.
Almost.
Here it goes.
Oh, [bleep].
I hope that holds.
Get the [bleep] out of here. We're good.
Morning, fellas.
Last night was a panic.
We haven't been out there yet.
We're gonna check it out right now,
and we're gonna go see what the damage is.
Moment of truth, folks.
Without the skyline, we're dead in the water.
Anything this creek throws at us,
we're gonna have to handle it.
I'm not letting it get the best of me this year.
held up?
Yep.
I can't believe it held up.
Good job, guys.
Our job today is cracking drag rocks all day long,
so we don't have to do it from underwater.
If you're not drilling, you're putting together blasters.
The more rocks you crack, the faster we're gonna be
in the water.
Yeah, yeah, I'll be the powder monkey.
All right, everybody knows what we're doing. Let's go.
Let's get her done.
The entire crew set to work.
This all has to get the hell out of here.
Executing Dustin's new mining plan.
All right, going hot.
Three, two, one.
Oh!
Holy moly, that was some major fly rock, dude.
We're gonna have fun with this dig.
It's a lot of work, a lot of effort,
but we'll make history because of it.
Last year, we were at the mercy of one person
trying to drill underwater, trying to blast underwater.
Going hot.
We've got a much better method this year.
The more rocks we can get moved that aren't underneath
the water, the faster we're gonna get down to golden.
Three, two, one.
Oh, wow.
Dude, you blew it to pieces.
That's what we wanted to do.
Hook and go, hook and go, hook and go.
Yeah!
This is awesome.
This is going exactly the way I want her.
Over the next five days, the crew clear
100 tons of boulders.
Three, two, one.
Getting the hole down 10 feet, and now they're ready to dive.
Got the dredge.
Get some gold.
Yeah, I think we're ready to rock the road.
Dustin has gambled his entire season on finding
a pay streak of nuggets downstream of Big Ass Boulder.
Let's get some digging done.
Now, it's time to discover if this huge risk
will pay off.
I think this is going to be a turning point in life right here.
- Testing 1-2, 1-2. - Testing.
Copy that. We got comms?
We got comms.
Carlos, it's coming together.
I got it, brother.
I'm all dressed up and nowhere to go.
Might as well get in the damn water.
Yeah.
Check air, then we gotta check water.
Okay, good to go?
- Just dig as much as you can. - Yeah.
Gotta get back on track, dude.
- All right, man, you're in. - All right.
- Find the dredge. - All right.
This is what it's all about.
Last year, a storm beat them
before they could get down to the gold on bedrock.
This year, with the massive diversion,
they're in with a fighting chance.
We finally got a diver in the water.
Pretty psyched about that.
Carlos is going to make a ton of progress.
I bet he gets gold today.
I am so happy we've learned to control this water.
We've moved more rock in the last couple days...
than we would have all season underwater.
This is the way to dig this creek.
Yeah.
I am certain of it now.
Finally got Carlos in the water.
Hopefully he'll have a great dive today.
I don't know if he's going to get down to any gold.
Hopefully he does, because if he gets gold this fast,
it's going to be awesome.
At Big Ass Boulder, Carlos is an hour into
his first dive.
How's it looking, Carlos?
I can do it, man.
All eyes are on you.
I need this to go right.
Yep, I got you.
Dustin has gambled his entire season on finding
a huge pile of six-ounce nuggets...
at Big Ass Boulder.
Lot of boulders down here, man. Lot of boulders.
It is packed.
Yeah, I was worried that that's what was gonna be
our slow spot.
Yeah, man.
I'd stay focused on getting around them
and freeing them up and all that stuff.
This is something different, man.
I've never seen nothing like this before.
I'm dredging between boulders, man,
I'm just breaking up hard pack.
Carlos has found hard pack.
Over thousands of years, the weight of boulders
compresses gravel into a densely packed barrier
at the bottom of the creek.
This layer above bedrock should be the last thing
between the crew and a massive deposit of gold.
You know, all the stories that we've heard,
all the gold starts in this red hard pack,
and from there down to the bedrock is
where the gold is laying.
Give me that sprayer, please.
Thank you.
Faced with an impenetrable layer of hard pack...
All this is locked in, dude.
Carlos attempts to break through with a water hose
running off the dredge.
All I can do is just chip away on the pieces.
That's it.
It's literally hard as a rock.
This conglomerate, it's just amazingly hard,
stuck together.
A lot of time has gone by for this to get this hard.
That's all I'm asking you to do today.
Chip, chip, chip, and keep chipping.
I can't believe it, man.
- Don't lose heart. Just one rock at a time. - No, no, no.
One little piece at a time.
It takes Carlos another five hours
to get just six inches into the hard pack.
Hey, Carlos, you ready to pull this back a little bit?
Nah, I'm good right here.
- You good? All right. - Yeah.
Yeah, I bet you I make it in big time.
God.
Oh, it's right in here.
Can you put a curtain bar right here, man?
I got a big boulder right here.
Got to bunch it that way. Yeah, that way.
Maybe it's a nugget. I don't know.
You just gotta lift it up.
Ah.
That's what's down there, dude.
That is awesome.
Made it in, dude.
All right.
It's all locked in, man.
All hard pack blocks, just like that,
going all the way down.
Dustin's new technique has got them down
to hard pack in record time.
But there's no way Carlos can get through it today.
It's rough, man.
- But we needed a start. - Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Let's come on up. Diver up.
I didn't get my bonus.
My bonus is gold. Not yet.
We got our first dive done.
We learned something, but we didn't get it.
All right, Wes, we're good to go.
We have to bust through the hard pack
before we can get to the prize.
Our hopes and dreams are tomorrow
to make it to bedrock.
That's where the gold sits.
On the next Gold Rush: Whitewater.
Welcome to my nightmare.
We need those airboats. We can't get to work.
We can't get gold.
Today, I'm going to crush it.
We are dredging!
- Hey! - Oh, [bleep], you all right?
- You got me worried. - You got blood everywhere.
I guarantee you, James with that pressure washer
will get us back on track.
- Is it working good? - It's working great.
There better be some gold.
If not, we are in some deep trouble.