Original subtitles

The ice this winter is just really bad.

It's one week into the ice season,

and El nino has wreaked havoc on the Bering sea,

making most of the gold field unmineable.

A lot of pressure Ridge. It's really hard to get out here.

With ice so unpredictable,

the end of the season could come at any time...

Now is not the time to take my foot off the gas.

Living on the ice, dude.

Question is where are we gonna go next?

Sending the fleet hunting for opportunities

behind every door.

Right now, it's time to get in the water.

But can the miners seize what's waiting for them on the other side?

The price of gold's at an all-time high.

This is my shot.

Nothing's gonna stop us.

Man, the gold's good down here, Joe.

Or will the doors slam shut... We hit an iceberg.

Things are about to explode here.

On their plans for winter?

So now, I'm.

Time to go ice mining.

I'm looking forward to it.

Heck, yeah.

For years, Shawn pomrenke has been making a golden fortune

on his legendary claim, the tomcod.

Yeah! Hell, yeah.

But this winter,

the ice on tomcod is unworkable...

This is exactly where I wanted to be,

but the ice is just way too messed up.

Forcing Mr. Gold to do something unprecedented.

Come hat in hand to a fellow miner,

and make a deal to work another claim.

I'll give you two weeks. No royalties.

And then, after that, 15%.

Sounds like a deal, then.

Now, for the first time in almost 20 years,

Shawn's venturing into uncharted territory,

Vernon adkison's claim 56.

And the clock is ticking.

Right now, it's time to get in the water.

Joe's out here, picked out a spot.

Hopefully, we can get down, get on some really good gold,

and get right to mining.

I'm trying to fund a game changer this winter.

Arctic gold has two inland pits

that have over 22,000 ounces on 'em,

but it ain't gonna be cheap to get.

Excavators, labor, fuel.

Just to get started, it's gonna cost me a fortune.

That's why every ounce is critical,

especially when it's royalty free.

Beautiful day to get under water?

Hell, yeah.

Little windy, but...

- The price of gold's even higher today. - -Yeah.

Yeah, there's some gold down there.

There's a little bit.

I can... I can feel it. I feel it in my toes.

I'm gonna get suited up.

Vernon gave me some coordinates that were promising.

So, that's where we're gonna set up.

I'm sure he's not giving away where his big pay streaks are.

Good to go.

So, we'll go down and see if we can find one of 'em ourselves.

Yeah.

How do you feel?

Yeah.

Yeah.

- Mic check. - I got you good.

All right, loud and clear up here.

Lot of big rocks.

Lot of big rocks. Yeah, way different.

Little silty on the bottom here.

But, man, a lot of big, brown rocks.

Beautiful-looking material here.

The air is working good. Comms are working.

- Equipment's running. - Yeah.

So good, so far.

All right. I'm gonna do this.

Just take a look.

Looks like there's some fresh ground out in front of us here, Joe.

Yeah, nice, hard pan.

Here we go.

Let's see what's in this.

Seeing some color over here.

And I'm seeing puddles over here.

He's seeing some gold down there.

Come on, gold. Keep on coming.

Man, the gold's good down here, Joe.

Yeah!

Just pulling it out.

Across the ice...

We haven't even gotten to the bad part yet.

Yeah, there's a bad part coming up.

With threadbare flair,

reaper nation's headed to what they hope

will be the claim to jump start their season.

We hit an iceberg.

We're trying to get to our spot right now.

Nothing's gonna stop us.

As soon as we make a little money,

we might get more snow machines.

But at the rate we're going, we're gonna have to make this work.

We usually work on tomcod, but this winter, it's a no-go.

So, I picked out two claims, almost no one goes to, that have good ice.

Seventeen and twenty-three.

Let's do this.

They haven't produced much gold lately.

But I know, 40 years ago, they did.

We checked out 17 and it was a bust.

Did you see any gold at all?

Now, we're on to 23.

If that's a dud, too, our season will be officially a disaster.

We might not even have a mining operation anymore.

Help me push it up.

Come on, Andy.

Andy!

That's some three stooges right there.

Come on, get in the car.

We still wanna get in the water today, sometime.

Let's go.

I think the rest of it's gonna go pretty smooth.

- You okay? - Yeah.

I thought we were gonna flip over.

Tj fell on the corkscrew. Almost got a vasectomy.

Andy, come on.

Whoa! What about us?

Let's just keep walking.

We're getting close. We're only, like, a half mile away.

Well, let's just drill a hole

and drop the camera, and see what's going on.

Grab the auger.

All right. Right now, we're gonna get the camera down there,

so we can see the cobble.

I hope to god we're on cobble

for the price that we just paid to come here.

We'd better be on really rich ground.

What's it look like?

There are some rocks. It could be

sand on cobble?

That better be good cobble.

Okay, there it is. It's a little bit better now.

It looks... yeah. We're on cobble.

Lots of cobble. Big boulders.

And a little bit of sand covering everything.

- Okay. - -So, everything's on course.

So, now that we've found where we're going,

we're gonna cut a hole and we're gonna get a dive in today.

Let's go to work.

Outside town...

This winter, I'm... I'm back up here in nome.

The price of gold's at an all-time high.

This is my shot to, like,

have prosperity throughout the rest of my life.

The mad scientist of nome, Zeke tenhoff,

has always been on the forefront of innovation.

It'll be our first time running two sluices at the same time.

So, we're gonna have double gold today.

Anchor up.

From a sailboat dredge...

Dude, it's really fast. Yeah!

To a fully furnished mining shed on skis...

Everything's gonna be inside.

We're gonna have a big wood burning stove,

all our gear, all our tools.

It's gonna be sick.

But this past year,

he's also been on the forefront of fatherhood

as he's welcomed a baby boy, named boden,

with his new bride.

But mother nature won't be making Zeke's season an easy one.

I... I'm a little

I have some trepidation about what the ice is doing this winter.

It's gonna be a huge pain in the ass to be able to

find gold in the places where we know to look for it.

But I just really feel like now is not the time to take my foot off the gas.

It's not.

I mean, the position I find myself in now

is that I have a family to support.

I don't have housing in nome

that is acceptable for my wife and kid.

I mean, I would be fine living in a yurt,

out, you know, by the river out here,

with, you know, no utilities, no running water,

no toilet or anything. That's fine for me.

But it's not fine for... It's no place for a baby.

So I have to, like, start delivering some results.

So, now that I've got a family,

I really need to up my game and spend more time mining, 'cause I need more cash.

But I don't wanna spend a lot of time away from them while I'm doing it.

So, I need to stack up enough gold this winter

to make my yurt liveable for my family.

That means adding water and adding power.

The problem is, right now I don't have any place to go mine.

The past few seasons, I've been going all the way out to tomcod,

and giving Shawn a royalty.

So, not only do I need to upgrade my home, but I need my home on the ice.

Like, I'm trying to support a family now,

but I'm trying to juggle being up here and working,

while I'm supporting them remotely.

And in the meantime, me and the crew

are just gonna live in our weather port tent out on the ice.

I think that's gonna... That's gonna

help the mining operation a lot,

because there's a huge time sink that happens,

for guys ice dredging,

when you have to, like, commute, back and forth to town,

that we don't need to do if we're just living out on the ice.

We're setting up our old dive tent

as kind of, like, a clubhouse that we can live in.

And just live on-site for the rest of the ice season.

- So, we're cleaning it out. - We got a heater installed.

And we're building bunk beds today.

First and foremost, you need a warm place to sleep and cook food.

We're making a long bench that goes

along the entire side of the shack

that we can sleep on.

Behold. A bench!

I've got my good friend Nate with me again.

He was with us last winter.

And I've also got my brother, Sam.

So, between the three of us, I think it's gonna be a stellar team.

Party lamp!

It would be really cool to cut a hole in the floor and put a hot tub in.

We got a big bench built here.

We have, like, a little kitchen right here.

We have, like, a little pull out concept for the...

You know, for, like our food preparation.

- I mean, we're... - We're ready to move in, I'd say.

Our team is set, and I think this is gonna be an awesome place to live.

So, now we just need to find a place to go mining.

Don't come a-knockin' if the dredge is a-rockin'.

Back out on the ice...

Easy does it.

And under she goes.

Off to a hot start,

young Chris mccully is looking to stay on top.

Today, it's really cold and, everything is freezing.

So, it'll take me a while to get started, but we'll get there.

Once I get started, it's like a train.

You can't stop me, you know what I mean?

All right.

This season is a whole new deal for me.

You know? It's a new Chris, this year.

I have a ba... I just had a baby boy,

and, I got a crawler to build this summer.

So, I'm risking it all just to get this gold.

I'm building a custom crawler, and it's gonna be the biggest one in nome.

It's gonna double or triple my gold counts.

Now that I'm a dad, I need that big gold to support my family.

So, every bit of gold I get this winter is to get the crawler done.

Okay.

Mr. Dwight.

To increase mining time,

Chris is aiming for a two dive day.

First up is Dwight,

a diver brand new to the trials of the Bering sea.

So, I found a good spot and I really feel good about this spot.

So, I'm sending Dwight down.

And then... Yeah, hopefully, we'll get to more hours in the day.

Hey, no matter what you do, don't freak out down there.

Take it easy. Don't rush. Don't panic.

- Sound check. - Sound, check.

Contact, contact.

Can you hear? Check. Sound check.

- Yeah, I can hear you. - All right.

All right, man. Good luck.

We're here now. We got the good ground.

We're making money.

And yeah, it only, only gets good from here.

It's hard to hear you, bro.

The suction is good or bad?

Bad?

I'm coming up.

The suction is bad.

There was absolutely nothing when I got down there.

You put your hands in there, nothing?

Yeah, I could hold my hand, I could hold sand in front of the...

- Nozzle. - -Yeah, it wouldn't even pick it up?

We gotta clean that spark plug.

I'll pull the plugs out and clean it, and see if that works.

My spark plug's gun king up.

I can see it's all black.

It's gun king up bad.

Son of a bitch.

Damn it!

Some idiot

I told him to put the spark plug back in the, in the,

in the spark plug hole,

and then, stripped the thread.

And he just... He puts the thread...

He puts the spark plug in there.

It's... it's not straight.

And then, he, he cranked it up, like an idiot.

You know what I mean? Like now, I can't

put the darn thing in there straight.

This is the heart of your operation.

This is what beats.

This is what pumps water into your jet to make suction,

in order to pick up that gold from the surface.

You can see how the spark plug's thread hole,

it's all crisscrossed. You know, it's...

Like, who does that bull?

And now, I'm.

The definition of a show, dude.

Yeah, they stripped the damn threads.

Moron.

I swear to god, dude.

Chris mccully's hot start may have lost its spark.

Imagine getting paid top notch, and then...

And then for them to do a job like this. Imagine that.

My life has consisted of working with idiots.

You know what I mean?

Trying to make the outcome successful. You know what I mean?

That's really hard to do.

I really don't know what to do about this kind of situation

like, do I go in there and ask him

who stripped the spark plug threads?

Let me go ask those idiots.

Cam, who put the spark plugs in here last night?

The threads are stripped.

That spark plug is cross threaded.

Yeah, so that's where we at.

Yeah.

I didn't deal with the plugs.

Yeah. Who's the idiot here, then?

- Is it me? - I didn't deal with the plugs, Chris.

You guys don't even know how to put a spark plug back on.

I gotta be working with better people.

He knew very well. I saw it in his face that he's like, he was like,

"" you know.

I know from their...

Now I'm... I have a bad taste in my mouth.

You know, no one wants to own up with their.

I might have to go through a crew change.

UN real, dude.

As landlord over the claim with the best ice in nome,

Vernon adkison's decided to try to cash in.

One of the big benefits of owning your own claim is

you can let people work on it and collect royalties

if you've got a good claim, you know.

I mean, theoretically, I would not even have to work the claim.

I could just sit back and collect royalties.

But, that's not really why I bought it.

I bought it because I know there's a lot of gold there,

and I make more when I get that gold up myself.

Ever since I made the deal with Shawn, word's out on 56.

I've had miners coming up to me wanting to make deals.

And that's easy money in my pocket while I get my team together.

I need all the gold I can get this winter.

I'm buying a nitrox dive system

that will allow my divers to go down deeper and stay longer than ever before.

So let's make it rain.

- Larry! Larry! - Hey, how's it going?

All right.

So you tell me you've got something for me?

Yeah, I do.

I got the royalty of the ounces we've been getting.

Don't you...

Larry's one of the guys that came begging to work on 56...

Talk to me, baby.

All right. That's nice chunkies is in there.

So my plan to let these guys out there is already bearing fruit.

Well, in my case, gold.

What's the weight on that, Larry?

That there is four and a half ounces.

Four and a half ounces. Hey, you guys are doing pretty good.

Not too bad.

I'm sure there's more to come.

We'll produce a few more, we're hoping.

- You have yourself a nice day. - I really appreciate it.

- I'm sure I will. - You too. Don't spend it all in one place.

I'll try not to.

I'm digging this.

I'll take as many customers as I can.

Zeke reached out too.

I'm sensing more gold in my pockets.

Can I get a drink?

I would like a vodka and some club soda with a squeeze of lime.

- Vernon. - ! Damn, Zeke.

- Good to see you. - How you doing, amigo?

It's going okay.

Where we're at, vern, is we are looking for another place to go mining.

We were planning on going out to tomcod,

but we were wondering if you have space for us on lease 56.

If we could go over there, that would be ideal for us

because you've got a lot of flat ice in shallow water.

I'm in a bind right now.

I need to get my yurt outfitted so it's livable,

but I don't have anywhere to go mining.

Vernon really has me over a barrel here.

You're... you're one of the good guys. I mean, we've got a history.

- I appreciate that. I appreciate that. - So... and then

I mean, the main thing...

What are you, asking for percentages these days?

The good guy percentage is 15%.

Well, 15 is fair. I appreciate that.

56 is gonna be a full house.

As long as everybody stays away from the pay streak I'm on,

we'll get along swimmingly.

If not, things could get dicey in a hurry.

Okay, well, thanks again.

- All right, buddy. Yep. - I'll see you out there.

Yep. See you out there.

So what's your name?

Back out on the ice...

Are we good?

First time under the ice this season,

and I wish they would have cut that hole just a little bit bigger.

We're gonna make that bigger just for you.

I'm not body shaming you, but, I mean, you gotta admit

don't make me call hr. I did that seminar, bitch.

We need the, the plus size hole -get over there...

The double plus size hole.

Double plus size hole?

I've lost weight, mother.

You're making a hostile workplace.

Shut the up and get in there.

- Does it still fit? - It's stuck.

- Well, it looks good, is what I mean. - Yeah, it still fits!

Okay. Well, I mean, it looks good. It looks real good.

- You know, that's what I meant. - Pull this

zipper for me.

We're ready to start the pump.

Got it.

So the pressure's on.

If Andy comes up empty, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I don't have a backup plan.

Bottom-line, I have to find gold here.

Are you gonna get down there and get gold?

Okay.

All right!

Okay. You know what? Andy's a prima Donna, but he is worth it.

You know, if there's gold underneath there, he will find it.

He will tell us how much we're going to make.

And he'll tell me if we need to get the hell out of here or not.

Okay, the ground looks good.

- Okay, idle up. - Let's get this going.

Okay.

How's it going down there? What are you looking at?

Okay. The ground is frozen right there.

Let's go over here.

All ground looks frozen.

That really sucks. Try to find something that's not frozen.

Yeah.

And really try to go through it.

It might be just the first layer of that's frozen.

All right.

Everyone knows that freshwater freezes at 32 degrees fahrenheit,

but saltwater freezes at 28.

So when freshwater seeps up from the ocean floor,

it can freeze over sand and rocks,

creating a frozen ground despite the saltwater still being liquid.

He... he'll try.

He says the middle of the ground is...

So you know, there's overburden, and it's obviously over a foot,

he's saying the middle of that is frozen,

and that's the hard part to get through.

We're already off to a up start.

We're gonna probably have to give this a couple of pretty stiff yanks.

The tenhoff crew is making the big move out to claim 56.

Their new home for winter.

We've got to just turn the bombi around, you know, our little track rig.

We're gonna chain up to the back,

and then hopefully we can just pull it up

out of its hole that it's frozen into.

God willing, it'll pull right out of here.

Moving all the pieces of my operation out to 56

is going to take some time, probably all day.

And once it's there, that's where we're going to be living this winter.

We just got a long, slow trip.

Ooh! Come home with me.

Yeah.

After four hours, an opportunity is truly proving golden

as Shawn reaps the benefits from his new mining grounds.

Yeah, a little bit lighter here?

Little bit of gold showing up on the bottom.

That's what it's all about. It keeps you moving.

Seeing no gold down there will make you move even faster, though.

Hey, Joe.

I'm about done down here.

10-4.

Saw some good gold down there.

Come up and see what's in the box.

See what we got in here.

Got in the water,

got some gold. My face is freezing.

We've got some gold in the box.

I like it. I like it.

Got a good dive in.

Everything went well.

Gold in the box.

- Booyah! - Okay.

We'll talk after this.

That was a good day.

Now it's time to get the hell out of here.

First dive... I feel good.

Hey, I can hear rocks coming up.

My god. This is going bad.

After hours on the sea floor

reaper nation's gold haul is still frozen at zero.

Andy's finding frozen ground underneath here, which is bull.

You know, we're 22 feet deep

and because of groundwater seeping through the ocean floor,

it's freezing underneath the water.

Okay, explain the ground. Is it lots of cobble?

Okay. That sucks.

Yeah, it's kinda crazy we're at 22 feet and you have no visibility,

and the ground's frozen. That's pretty messed up.

We're gonna have to move.

There's... If he can't get through

the top layer to where the gold sits,

there's no point in being here.

Let's call it the end of your dive and let's get out of here.

Hey, idle down. He's coming up.

Dude, I walked over there, over there, over there.

Yeah, it sucks, dude.

If we kept going here trying to find a spot that we could get through...

We'd be wasting our time.

Well, that's what we're trying to avoid.

There can't be gold in every hole.

You know, it just doesn't work like that.

But we better get gold soon because this is bull.

Question is, where are we going to go next?

Believe it or not, you know, I've only

I've only reached high school education.

But guess what? I'm already making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Six figures.

Yeah., dude, that's... whoo!

And you know, that's something to brag about, really.

You know, you don't need to have all the educational...

Education to do this thing, all you need to do...

All you need to have is good attitude

and willing to learn and just have a positive outcome in life, you know,

and then... and then the rest will come naturally.

Look at that. Whoo! Like a little banana.

I learned this through YouTube, man.

My generation is YouTube university, you know what I mean?

I graduated from there.

Summa cum laude from YouTube university, dude.

That's what I got. Summa cum laude.

Gold. Yeah.

- Boy. - Already turning yellow.

The king of nome's already looking to make the most

of his royalty free clean out.

I always like seeing gold.

Got a nice little set up going here, so...

Looks like there's a little gold in that dirt?

Yep.

Yeah, we better get out... Back out there,

- stock up some more of this gold. - Yeah. Yeah.

We better take advantage of it while we can.

Man.

- Extra pickers in there? - Extra $2 right there.

First picker. Yeah, doing good.

There's gold. It's yellow.

I like it.

I always like seeing gold.

Let's see what we got here.

One, two,

three, four, five,

six, seven... Come on.

Eight point one.

Pretty damn good.

Eight point one ounces is worth over 18 grand.

And despite mining on Vernon's claim,

Shawn gets to keep every penny.

When I started out this winter and saw the ice on the tomcod,

I didn't think there was going to be a mining season for me.

But so far, 56 is doing just fine.

Now we've got less than two weeks

before the 15% kicks in, so we've got to push hard.

We're on the trail of something.

It's looking like it's gonna be good.

We just have to get back out there and get after it.

As night falls, back out on the ice.

Zeke tenhoff and his crew are finally home.

I've never seen this much snow on the ice for sure.

Like, hands down, it's more than I've ever seen on the ice.

I don't know how you describe this snow.

Yeah. I don't know what this kind would be called.

I think this would be like screw you snow, or, like, you snow.

It's, like, the good news is, we made it out here

and there's a bunch of flat ice here.

It's like not optimal because it's covered

with like four feet of this powder snow.

But you get down there and all this snow is pushing the moisture up.

So like, yeah, it's just like slush.

I think this is gonna mean that this ice is gonna be, like, nice and soft.

Yeah.

And so it'll be really easy to cut holes in.

Yeah.

I bet it'll just cut like butter.

Dude, I'm stoked not having to live in the harbor anymore.

We're home.

- Home sweet home. - Living on the ice, dude.

Tomorrow we'll pick out where our first hole is gonna be.

And then, spend the rest of the day shoveling snow.

All right.

Dude, they're celebrating our arrival.

Home sweet home.

As Chris mccully stumbles,

Mr. Gold gets on the board and the game is on.

Next time on Bering sea gold...

Yes, sir. Right here. Back in business.

What could be better than this?

Get ready to stand by to burst into action.

There's this big overhead ice feature right behind the dive pole.

Yeah!

All our equipment is dead.

Well, wait a minute. What the, Gary?

Not good enough. You can do better.

What the...

Let's get out of here.