[narrator] Previously on "Blind Frog Ranch" --
[Josh] See, people were working out of this.
-[Ron] Yeah, right, right. -This was a working journal.
After decades of searching for Aztec treasure...
This could very likely be the way into the Keyhole.
-[bleep]. -[boom]
...information in a lost Mormon artifact ignited a trail
of discoveries...
Guys, this has to be the Keyhole Chamber.
...pointing to an explosive truth.
-Whoo, whoo, whoo! -[Josh] What do we got?
[Eric] It's [bleep] gold.
[Josh] There could be six more chambers out there.
This chamber existed, and that tells me that
the other ones probably do, too.
After confronting the ancient protectors of
Blind Frog Ranch...
This is a prayer sack.
We ask that you put blessings upon him.
There's a lot of things going on in this ranch that people
don't understand.
[Don praying in Native language]
...the team has a new cache of Aztec gold in sight.
[man] The Golden Staircase could be the big resting place.
Big, I would imagine, means important.
[Josh] It could lead us in a direction that we have
never been before, and that is what excites me the most.
But the land will not give up its fight to keep
its secrets safe.
The stormy season is here, and winter is right behind it.
-[Josh] Get down there, Eric. -[Eric] Yeah, we are.
-[Eric] Whoa! -[Josh] Yes!
We're in the void, brother.
This is our window to get into the underground.
Legends of ancient treasures...
It could go thousands of years back.
...and unexplained phenomena...
Oh [bleep], I'm not messing with that.
...meet at a 160-acre property in Northeast Utah
known as Blind Frog Ranch.
For decades, teams have searched the land for
long lost Aztec gold. But the closer they get...
-[Josh] That's it. -[Eric] Look at that!
-[Eric] That's gold. -...the harder the land fights back.
[Josh] Whoa! What the hell's going on?
Now, a prolific miner...
We're standing on a pile of gold.
...and a legendary treasure hunter...
There must be another tunnel entrance, something.
-...armed with new evidence... -[man] Where'd you find it?
...and a fabled artifact...
[Ron] There's a date on that, 1912.
...will take on a 500-year-old curse...
-Fire in the hole. -[boom]
...and a land littered with traps...
[all] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
...to find a three-billion-dollar treasure.
-[boom] -[man] Whoa.
They won't stop until they uncovered
the mystery of what lurks below...
Guys, it's caving.
Oh, [bleep]. [indistinct].
...at Blind Frog Ranch.
Seriously, stay away from the rim of this.
It's very loose up here. It's very unstable.
That's why we're putting the casing in.
-[Josh] All right. -[Eric] So let's roll it over,
and then we'll roll it, drop it, tip it up, and put it in.
[Josh] OK, we'll keep that flush end down.
[Eric] Yep.
[Josh] Let's do it, man.
Two weeks ago,
Ron uncovered a passage in the Rhoades Journal
that he believes points to a hidden chamber containing
Aztec treasure known as the Golden Staircase.
Maybe this Golden Staircase that holds this treasure.
Following the journal's clues, the team discovered
a mysterious stone doorway.
[Josh] I think this rock was put here on purpose.
How in the hell do we get in here?
But when they were unable to open or move the obstruction,
they turned to SAR imaging technology...
We got what we need.
...revealing two underground voids that could provide
a path to the caverns below.
-[Josh] Get down there, Eric. -Yeah, we are.
After drilling through 70 feet of dangerous ground...
-[clattering] -Ho!
...they finally breached the underground cavern
that could contain the treasure
they've been chasing.
We're in the void.
-[all] We're in the void. -Yes.
Just let it walk down.
[Eric] There we go. Perfect.
Hey, that's pretty good right there.
-[Eric] Right there. -No, that's set well.
[James] What are we setting up to tie off on?
[Eric] A-frame.
Put these boards across here and screw them in,
get a good base, and then we'll bring that in here,
put some anchor points, and drop in.
We're going to be going in and out of here, I'm sure.
So we've got to make sure this portal is awesome.
Yeah.
This is a pretty big complex.
We don't know where it goes, what it does.
But I think we're right on the road to
that Aztec treasure. -This is it, man.
[Josh] We could be right on that Golden Staircase.
Man, I can smell it.
We're really close to Aztec treasure right now.
Now what we've got to do is we've got to secure the top of
this hole, we're gonna place a casing up there,
so that'll hold all the dirt, anything from falling in
from above on top of us.
-Here we go. -[Eric] OK.
[Josh] Once we get that thing in,
we're gonna build a frame around it.
And then we're gonna rappel right off it.
It's looking like it's about 75 feet to the top of that hole
where the drill broke through.
But we don't really know where the floor is past that.
Ready.
Oh, it's easy. No problem.
So I don't know if it's 80 feet to the bottom
or 100 or 150 feet to the bottom.
But we're going to have to find out.
[rattling]
It's not going anywhere.
It's good.
[Eric] All right.
-This is it, man. -This is it.
-This is it.
-[Eric] This is good stuff. -It's coming together.
So Chili, you got the most experience on a rope.
-You going to go first? -[Chili] Yeah, I'll go down.
I'll check everything if you want.
There are people watching us.
We've had this happen before. We're vulnerable here.
Charlie, we need you to keep a sharp eye out here
for anybody coming in.
I've always said that somebody's got eyes
on you out here.
That's why we got to get this done right now.
[Chili] Let's get down in there.
[Charlie] I'm not a young buck like I used to be, so I won't be
going down with them.
It's always been my job since day one
to secure this ranch.
We've had some issues with intruders recently, so I'll be
watching their backs up here while they explore underground.
There's no quit in us.
We're not gonna back away from anything or anybody out here.
-[Josh] All right, you ready, buddy? -[Chili] Yep.
-[Eric] Be safe. -[Josh] Enjoy.
-See you down at the bottom. -[Josh] See you, buddy.
See you down below. Yee-haw!
How's it looking?
It's a little tight right here.
[Josh] He's going. He's still going.
-[Eric] How's it look, Chili? -What do you got, bud?
-I just got to the bottom. -Pretty stable?
Yeah, it looks pretty good. This thing's huge.
Go ahead and come down, guys.
Just watch the top coming into it.
It's a little tight.
All right, guys. Here we go.
[Charlie] No unnecessary risk.
[Josh] OK, coming down, Chili.
[Chili] Looking good.
[Josh] Bag coming!
-[Josh] Oh my God, Chili. -[Chili] You see this?
Chili, this is freaking it, man.
This is incredible.
-Holy [bleep]. -[Chili] Right?
[Chili] Look, go that way. Look, turn around.
Look at this.
We got so much more to explore in here, man.
There's the passageway going this way, just like it
should be.
We got a passageway going this way, just like the SAR showed.
That's incredible, man.
[Eric] Yeah, I'm coming down.
-See you down there. -[James] All right.
[Josh] As soon as I hit the floor of this cave system, man, I was
convinced that this must be the tunnel system that leads to
the Golden Staircase.
And we just came down an 80-freaking-foot shaft
and rappelled into this thing.
I don't know that anybody's been in here for centuries.
We could be the first people in here, and God only knows what
they left behind, and I'm hoping treasure.
Oh!
-[Josh] Got you, got you. -Yes.
-Yee-haw, man. -What do you think, man?
-Yeah! -What do you think?
[Eric] James! Come on down!
You gotta see what we got here.
[thunder crashes]
Hey, how y'all doing down there?
[Josh] We don't know what's ahead of us.
There's a lot of risk down here, but we're also right in
the rainy season right now.
You get a flash flood coming through here, it could fill
this entire chamber up, and we're drowned.
We're 80 feet below the surface.
God only knows how much deeper we're going to wind up being.
Across Utah, flash floods are among
the most powerful forces in nature.
A storm dozens of miles away can send millions of gallons of
water surging through dry washes and underground caverns
with little or no warning.
What begins as a dry cavern can transform into a raging
underground river in a matter of minutes.
For the team working deep underground, every dark cloud
on the horizon could become a race against time.
[Charlie] This whole mountain system here really just creates
its own weather pattern.
-[Eric] Come on, brother. -[James] Ah, here we go.
[Eric] You got it.
[Eric] Here comes the storm.
[distant rumbling]
-[Eric] You hear that? -[Josh] Yeah.
-Easy peasy, all the way down. -There you go.
[Eric] There you go. You're in, James.
-[Chili] Look that way. -[James] Holy crap.
[Chili] Look at that way.
Look at this, it opens all the way up.
Look at how far it goes.
[James] OK, so the stone door is located north of here,
but this tunnel seems to also go south.
So it looks like we came right down in the middle.
-[Eric] Yeah. -Where we are right here.
[Josh] What I'm thinking is if we follow this path south,
there might be a chamber at the end of this tunnel.
And if there's a chamber there, that could be where
the Golden Staircase is.
But to me, the stone door is also of importance.
And maybe heading north towards that is where
the Golden Staircase is.
[Eric] So I think we gotta look at both passages, right?
So you want the two of us, we'll go south and you two
go north? -Split up.
[Josh] OK. Then this is our meeting point.
This is our safety room right here.
-[James] Yeah. -[Eric] Yeah.
-This is our shaft up out of here. -[James] Yeah.
Normally, we would all stick together
once we're underground.
Splitting up is not a good idea.
But we're up against the clock. We don't have a lot of time.
We need to explore as much of this cave as we possibly can,
so we're gonna take the risk of splitting the team.
So Chili and I are going to head this way.
James and Eric are going to head back that way.
We're going to be gone about 30 minutes each, and then we're
going to report right back to here, right below the shaft.
If you're not back here in 30 minutes, you're going to have
to come looking, because there could be an issue where
we're stuck or something.
Time is not on our side.
With the weather worsening, we don't know how long we have
before this tunnel starts to fill with water.
We don't know what's ahead of us.
There's a lot of risk. We cannot waste any time.
We got to get going. We got to get on it.
We got to get going.
[Chili] Let's figure out where these tunnels lead us to.
[thunder rumbles]
2 [Chili] Let's figure out where these tunnels lead us to.
-[Chili] Ready? -[Josh] I've never been more ready.
[Eric] Into the unknown.
Over 70 feet down the borehole, the team has hit
a winding tunnel system that branches off in
both directions. They'll split up in two teams.
Josh and Chili are heading north, towards the direction of
the stone door, while Eric and James head south.
They've agreed to search for 30 minutes, then head back
and meet at the borehole entrance.
[Josh] Look for any kind of markings anywhere.
Anything changed by man,
any kind of digging, anything like that.
[Chili] I'm looking.
[Josh] Most importantly, look out for anything that could be
considered a staircase.
There's a lot of risks down here.
We don't know how stable this rock is.
We have no idea what to expect underground.
We have to be very careful.
But we're also right in the rainy season right now.
And that means that we have to move quickly.
But there's never a reward without risk.
[Eric] This continues to the south.
-[James] I'm going to be checking inside the tunnels... -[Eric] OK.
...if there's any markings or anything
that we're just missing. -[Eric] Yeah.
[Eric] So James and I have split off from Chili and Josh,
and we'll be looking for anything significant
as far as our exploration goes.
Pretty solid.
There's a little boulder fall right here, broke off.
All the while, I'll be looking to see that it's safe.
We may get into a formation change.
We could have fractured zones.
We just have to proceed cautiously.
[James] There's these little offshoots, Eric.
Did you see this right here?
Look at this.
That looks kind of tight right back there.
-[Eric] Too tight to get through. -[James] Yeah.
[James] I mean, they could have cached [bleep],
like, anywhere up in here.
[Eric] Oh, yeah. There's such [bleep]
little hidey holes on this side.
[James] Look at this.
[Eric] Let's see what's in here.
[James] It goes all the way up and back, but [indistinct].
[Eric] I think you're never going to get in there.
[James] Yeah, I'd have to be on my stomach the whole way.
-[Eric] Let's continue on. -[James] All right.
[James] You know, while Eric and I are searching, we are going to be
looking through anything that we possibly can move,
push through, poke through.
We're talking about the Golden Staircase,
but really, what is that?
We don't quite know what we're looking for.
-[James] It's getting low again. -[Eric] Getting low again.
Every nook and cranny. I mean, it counts.
We could push something open that's just been collapsed for
1,000 years or 500 years. So here we go.
-[Josh] Got a couple ways here, Chili. -[Chili] Yeah.
[Josh] We've got one,
two,
three.
-[Chili] What are you thinking? -[Josh] I think...
I think we should go this way, right here.
And the stone door is due-northwest from here.
-[Josh] I think we stay left. -That would match everything.
-I mean... -It fits, doesn't it?
It fits. Let's get up there, buddy.
Come on. See where this leads us to.
Whoo.
This is a little tricky here.
[Eric] All of a sudden,
you think it's going to open up, and it gets tight.
There's a little something to the right here.
[Eric] It opens up a little bit.
[James] All right.
[Eric] I'm going to make a note here.
I'm calling this a room.
Not much of a room, but it's a room.
So it's definitely worth looking at.
[James] There's all these, like, formations,
like, this goes up there.
[Eric] See the iron and the clay right there?
-[James] Oh, yeah. -[Eric] Some mineralization right in here.
[Eric] You see all the sand deposited here?
So there's a major seep coming from up top there.
[James] That's where it's coming from?
Yeah, it's coming right down there.
It's eroding out.
[James] So all this up here is clay, so that's not really
super stable then, right?
-[Eric] No. -[James] Look at that.
[Eric] Nothing's super, super safe, but we really shouldn't,
like, disturb it.
One thing that's making me kind of nervous as we're
traversing through of this cave system is the water
in the walls.
If the walls are wet in here and it's getting to be more
and more like that, that just means there's more water
coming in from somewhere.
If there's water flow outside,
it's gonna come down on top of us.
So it's just something that we really have to watch
carefully because it could mean life or death.
[Eric] All right, let's keep going here.
[James] All right.
[Chili] Look at these walls, man.
They're just -- It's crazy.
[Josh] I think this cave is frequently underwater.
It just doesn't happen to be right now.
[Chili] This thing gets bigger and bigger.
[Josh] Yeah, it's opening up over here.
There's a drop-off here.
I think we can chimney down it a little bit.
-[Chili] All right, be careful. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Chili] Make sure you have a solid bottom.
[Josh] Yeah. [bleep].
-[Josh] OK. -[Chili] Good?
[Josh] Yeah, we're in.
-[Chili] Yeah, coming down. -[Josh] We're in.
[Chili] Oh, wow. Holy, look at this.
[Josh] There's a freaking lot of passageways here.
We've got a lot of choices.
Now what?
[bleep].
Which way? There's down that way,
behind you? That way?
[Josh] Which freaking way do we get?
We came in this way, right?
[Chili] I thought we came from there.
That's too tight, man.
That's not -- we didn't come through that.
-[Chili] Oh, man. -OK, wait a minute.
Which passage
we just came from? -[Chili] I'm not sure.
We cannot get lost in here.
We came from here, OK?
[Chili] We didn't come down that way.
Or did we?
[Josh] Oh, [bleep].
I hate to say it, but we might be lost.
2 [Josh, whispering] OK, OK.
[Chili] Are we lost?
[Josh] Possibly.
[bleep].
[Chili] That's not what I wanted to hear from you.
And we've dropped into this new junction.
We didn't come from here. We didn't come from here.
We didn't come out this way.
We came out this way, and we got turned around.
I think this is the main trunk.
So we're going to have this direction.
I mean, that's right, right?
[Chili] Was that all a question you were asking me, or was that
what you were telling me?
-Do you really not remember? -Do you remember?
-I think I remember. -You --
Yeah, I think, no, we're OK.
The way you started that sentence, I think, is not.
[Josh] We're OK.
We're running out of time, so we got to make that decision
and go with it. -[Josh] We're all right.
[Josh] Let's go. Let's go.
You're underground.
The easiest thing in the world is to get lost.
You're going to lose your sense of direction, your bearing,
sense of time, and then your mind
just starts playing tricks on you.
Your anxiety rises, and that is the thing that we're really
fighting the most.
We have to be very, very careful that we don't
fall into that trap.
[Chili] I'm trusting you on this one.
Listen, the worst that could happen,
we get stuck in here, I'll just eat you.
[Josh] Ha!
That won't take you very long.
[Eric] It just seems too tight to me. What do you think, James?
[James] Yeah, I don't think --
[Eric] I mean, aren't we looking for something bigger than this?
-This look just a little bit... -[James] Oh, yeah, yeah, this is a little...
On a slight left turn.
[James] How are we doing on time?
[Eric] Oh, hey, man. Let's check.
-[Eric] Oh [bleep]. -[James] Are we already at 30?
[Eric] We're almost at 30. We got to go back, man.
[James] All right.
OK.
-[Eric] Real tight spot here, James. -[James] All right.
[Eric] Oh, my hands and knees.
Our time's getting short.
Here's our gear.
No, they're not here.
Josh!
-[Eric] Chili! -[James] Chili!
[James] Josh! Chili!
[Eric] We gotta go get 'em.
We gotta continue this way, James.
[James] Yeah, yeah, we said we'd do it.
-[Eric] OK, we've been 35 minutes. -[James] Oh, OK.
[Eric] Let's go.
Hey, Josh!
[Josh] This is incredible.
[Chili] Whoa, look at this.
[Josh] What do you got?
[Chili] It's a little room here.
Look at this. Look.
You see that right there? And look at that one.
And another one there. And another one over there.
What's that look like to you?
-[Josh] Looks like steps, Chili. -Right?
I mean, they're not golden, but they're damn sure steps.
It's possible, man. It's possible.
You hear Golden Staircase, and you think steps
made out of gold.
But what if it's steps that lead us to the gold?
That would mean a lot of Aztecan treasure.
I've got steps going down this way,
and there's steps coming up this way.
Both directions.
And these are evenly spaced out.
I think somebody cut these in here.
Let's see.
Let's head up, see where they take us.
[Chili] I'm right behind you.
-[Chili] You ready? -[Josh] Yep, send me your bag.
-All right. -[Josh] Got it.
I'm coming behind you.
-[Josh] Come on, Chili. -[Chili] All right.
A little tight back here, but I'll come in closer.
[bleep].
-What? -[Josh] It dead ends up here.
[Chili] No, no way. Let me see.
-[Josh] It just goes back a little ways. -[Chili] You're sure?
[Josh] It stops right there.
[Josh] What the hell is this? I got something.
There's a frickin' marking right on the wall.
I don't know.
Why would somebody put that way back here?
[Josh] I don't know. It's a circle within a circle.
[Chili] It looks old, too.
-[Eric] Chili! Josh! -[Josh] James!
-Eric! -[Chili] Guys!
[Josh] Are you there?
-[James] Chili! -[Josh] James! Eric!
[Chili] They're coming up.
[Josh] I hear them. I hear them.
-[Chili] [indistinct], you guys. -[James] Are you guys all right?
[Chili] You guys got to come look at this.
-[Josh] Look down and in front of you. -[Chili] Look at that.
-[Josh] You see the steps? -[James] Yeah.
-They're right here. -[Josh] They're right there.
[Josh] We've got markings up here, James,
we need you to look at them.
-[Josh] Look at this. -[James] Holy [bleep]!
You guys, you know what this is?
This matches the Keyhole Chamber.
A few weeks ago...
[Chili] What do you think this is?
-[Josh] What the hell is this? -[James] What'd you find?
...the team located the Keyhole Chamber.
They discovered an identical concentric circle,
a petroglyph, etched on the cavern walls.
It could go thousands of years back.
But its meaning has remained a mystery.
Could the same people who left it have been in
this tunnel system as well?
[James] There's no question that people have been in here
before us.
That has a lot of different meanings, depending
on the culture. It could mean death.
It could mean location. It could mean a sacred site.
-[Josh] And that's old, right? -[James] Oh, yeah.
I mean, it could be several hundred years old.
It could be several thousand years old.
Look at this beside you.
It's like got six different ways off of it.
[James] You know what that is?
It's a polydactyl hand.
[Josh] Why would they draw six fingers?
Because the giants,
they go back thousands
and thousands of years before any of
the Native Americans were even here.
They had six digits on each hand.
Large feet are six digits on their feet.
A lot of the cultures and civilizations were
worshiping the giants at some point.
-[Josh] This is a sacred site. -[James] This is a sacred site.
I think Walkara may have brought the treasure here, because what
better place, their gods were here.
So that staircase led us up to a sacred site,
and it dead ends.
This could be the Golden Staircase.
If we follow it down, it could head right straight
to the treasure.
We could be so freaking close right now.
[James] You know, for me, this is incredible.
I've been telling these guys this whole time,
the giants, these people of large stature were polydactyl.
It's in the pictographs, in the petroglyphs.
It has got to be several hundred years old.
These symbols are important enough to have been left here,
and they've got to mean something was left behind
that's extremely important.
[Josh] All right, guys, let's head down this staircase.
We're getting to where we need to go.
Let's go find that treasure.
Hey, this keeps going down, down.
2 -[Josh] Can you see the bottom? -[Chili] No.
-[Chili] It keeps going. -[Eric] It keeps going down.
The team is climbing down what they believe to be
the Golden Staircase referenced in the Rhoades Journal.
At the bottom, a potential payday of
Montezuma's gold, hidden from the Mormons and lost to legend.
[Josh] These stairs are evenly spaced out.
Somebody cut these things in here.
[James] Be careful right there. It's a ton of clay.
[Josh] Yeah.
[Josh] We don't know what's ahead of us.
We don't know the stability of the ground.
You know, we're risking a lot.
But there's something important here,
and I'm hoping it's a pile of gold.
[ominous tone plays]
[Josh] This thing is just -- it's deep.
[Chili] Whoa.
Watch your guys' step here.
-[Eric grunts] -[Chili] Hold on, hold on, hold on.
-You all right? -[Eric] I'm good, I'm good.
[Chili] Slippery.
[Eric] Whoa!
Guys, look at this.
[Josh] OK, passageway's opened back up.
Oh, man. Is this what I think it is?
[Josh] Is that water up there, Eric?
[Eric] Yeah, it looks like water.
[Chili] It's a lot of water.
-[Josh] This is a problem. -Yeah, it's a problem.
[James] It's a huge problem.
[James] Look at that. It's full all the way back.
Look, the journal and the Golden Staircase
brought us here. We're not stopping.
-No. -Oh, no.
There's been too many clues that lead us all the way here,
and I don't think that's for nothing.
-Oh, no. -[Josh] We need to know what's underneath
this freaking water.
[Josh] Chili, can you dive this?
[Chili] It's not going to be easy.
You get me the gear,
get all the equipment we can -- yeah, I can dive it.
-We have the gear. -[Josh] OK.
We'll bring tanks in. BCD device.
I'll bring in the ROV with the side-scanning sonar,
the LIDAR unit. -I'll bring the magnetometers.
One of them is waterproof if we end up needing it.
We'll bring it all, man. We can make this work.
[Josh] Underneath this water could be a pile of gold
just sitting there.
Let's throw everything we have at this.
All right.
[Josh] We got a lot of work ahead of us.
I mean, that could just be a few feet down, or it could go
on forever. I don't know.
But we have to find out.
[thunder rumbles]
[James] There you go.
-[Josh] Watch out below. -[Chili] Got it.
[Chili] That's a good delivery system you got there.
Watching.
-I got it. -[Josh] Good.
We don't know what's under this water.
This is something that nobody else has been able to find
in hundreds of years.
And here we are.
And I think we're about to find it.
I mean, it's just what a, what a hell of a moment, huh?
What a hell of a moment. What a hell of a moment.
I'm just gonna pull a cord and get it ready for the rover.
Let's put the rover right down near the water's edge.
-[James] Put it down at the edge of the sump? -Yep.
Determine if there's any current in there when you put
that down in there.
Remote operated vehicles, or ROVs, are some of the most
advanced underwater machines on Earth.
They can navigate pitch-black environments, squeeze through
narrow passages, and map complex terrain in real time.
Equipped with sonar, cameras,
and precision controls, an ROV can see danger before it
becomes fatal.
And in a deadly underwater labyrinth, the ROV isn't
just a tool. It's a diver's only guide out.
[Eric] So the control unit is
all set. I'm gonna grab the LIDAR
and start scanning. -[Josh] OK.
I'll get this thing ready to launch.
[Eric] There's always an element of danger whenever
you go underwater.
I just don't want him to get into a tight spot.
There can be currents.
There can be really constricted areas.
There could still be the potential for
rock falls underwater.
And he gets pinned down by a rock underwater.
There's not much we can do to help him.
I'm doing the long-range magnetometer.
I want to go cavity,
sandy.
[device beeping]
So, look, right here, it goes deeper and into a larger cavern
in this corner right there.
[Josh] You need anything from me right now?
-Moral support? -[Josh] You got it.
We'll have some eyes, because we'll have
that rover down there, so
we'll be able to see a lot of what you're seeing, too.
But we don't really have a good way to contact you
in case of danger.
-So you got to be ultra-careful. -[Chili] Oh, I will be.
A lot of times, in these caverns, you get some
really, really constricted, really tight zones,
and the visibility is virtually zero.
And it's just a maze.
It's a labyrinth of small passages.
This is what the side-scan sonar looks like.
Traditional sonar just goes down, so it's able to
project out in front.
If I lose visibility, you still can see formation.
I can still see. Yeah, exactly.
-[Josh] OK. -[Eric] Yeah.
So we've got the ROV in there with Chili diving.
It's equipped with side-scanning sonar.
It's typically used vertically under fishing boats
and research vessels and military.
And it gives you a picture of objects or a picture of
the floor beneath where you are.
Side scanning, you take that and you put it sideways
and you can see what's in front of you.
And so it allows us to see through this murky,
murky water.
We need to be able to communicate with you
because we're seeing things that you may not see.
If that rover starts hitting you for any reason,
you get your ass out of there, OK? -[Chili] All right.
-Because we can't talk to you. -[Josh] OK.
Let's do it, man.
-[Eric] Sonar's ready. -Rover's ready.
[Chili] Diver ready.
-[Josh] Look for anything man-made. -[Chili] Here we go.
[suspenseful chord strike]
2 [Josh] Let's do it.
-Sonar's ready. -Rover's ready.
[Chili] Diver ready.
150 feet beneath Blind Frog Ranch,
the team has descended the Golden Staircase
and uncovered a flooded passageway.
They believe it may connect to one of the seven
Aztec treasure chambers.
Now, Chili prepares to dive into the unknown, hoping it
leads to long-lost gold on the other side.
[Josh] The journal led us right here.
That means something.
There's something important here.
I know there is underneath this water.
We just got to find out what.
[bubbling]
[suspenseful music plays]
[Josh] This gets narrow here.
I can barely get the rover through here.
[Eric] Does that look like artifacts or something there?
-Where? -Oh, maybe.
There is something round there, isn't there?
Doesn't look natural.
Here, let me position the camera down on it.
[muffled] Here, here.
Oh, it's like something right there.
[James] You see what that looks like?
That looks like the hip bone that we found years ago,
remember, at the Bead Site.
This is crazy.
They could have repurposed that into some type of
headgear, you know, and it would have been up here.
Obviously, this broke off.
Bones turned into face masks, and it would have been, I mean,
could have been like this.
[Josh] That's another one.
It's like identical to it, isn't it?
-Yeah. -That one's bigger, too.
[James] Look at that thing.
[Josh] James is telling me that that's a bone mask.
If that's the case, that's probably ceremonial.
That means that the chamber that Chili's in was very,
very important to somebody who was ancient.
So whatever they put in here is probably further in.
How the hell is he going to fit through there?
[Eric] What's he doing?
Oh, man, I don't like that.
He's got to be really careful. That's a tight fit.
[Josh] Chili's indicating he wants to go through that tight spot,
and he's actually starting to take his tanks off.
This is a very technical maneuver.
When you're underwater and you start taking your tanks off
and you're putting them in front of you,
that's extremely dangerous.
Oh, he's kicking up a lot of sediment.
[Josh] If he gets any move wrong in this,
he's gonna drown.
So there must be something that he's seeing through that
tight spot that is very important,
worth risking his life for.
And I just have to trust that it's that good.
[James] This is crazy.
[Josh] It opens up.
What the hell is that?
-Where? -You see? Look.
Let me get back to it.
I think that's a timber laying there.
[James] You think they were timbering
the top of whatever's down here?
[Josh] I mean, they brought this in here for something.
That's to say that they were working out there
without this water here.
[Josh] There's something important here.
I know there is underneath this water.
I'm seeing something here on sonar.
Looks like there's something behind that wall.
It's a little cloudy. I can see things on here,
that structure at least.
Yeah, let me look around a little bit more.
Looks like Chili's looking for a way in.
[James] Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Go back, go back, go back, go back.
Backing up. Backing up, backing up.
What's that right there?
[Josh] I'm gonna try to get closer.
I think that's a support structure.
That's man-made. You see that?
-Yeah. -Right there.
I'm on it. Right on top of it.
-Oh, yeah. -Look, it's long.
Yeah, yeah.
[Eric] Holy [bleep]!
This thing keeps going.
And the sonar is picking up something behind all of that.
[Josh] That's not natural.
That doesn't occur in these caves.
Guys, I think there's another passage back there.
Guys, we could be on the other side of that.
-On the other side of that -- -It could be the treasure.
Right through there, that could be where
the freaking gold's at.
That's got to be where it's at.
[Josh] Oh, my God, is this the end of this thing?
-This is it. -Whoo-hoo!
-Ha-ha! -Yes!
[Josh] There's got to be something behind that freaking wall.
There is definitely a filled area in the back
of this chamber,
and there is a timber that goes right underneath it.
So, I know this chamber goes on.
We don't know where this is gonna lead, but it looks like
nobody's been in here in centuries.
But if there's any way we can remove enough of that
to get in behind it,
that could be where the gold's at.
We gotta get Chili out.
I'm gonna turn the ROV around
and signal Chili to get out of there.
We've just started. This is just the beginning.
It's taken almost everything we've got to get here,
and we are not gonna stop.
We're going to get through that wall, and we're going to find
that treasure.
He's got to go through that tight section again.
I mean, we're on the verge of something great.
This is something that nobody else has been able to find
in hundreds of years.
And here we are, and I think we're about to find it.
-[hissing] -[suspenseful music plays]
[Josh] Oh, [bleep].
[Eric] We gotta get him the hell out of there.
[gurgling]
-Get him out of there! -Come on, Chili!
-[Eric] Come on, Chili, [bleep]. -Come on!