Original subtitles

[Dustin laughing] It's moving.

Water's getting whiter and whiter.

[James grunts]

[grunting]

[Dustin] [bleep] water's coming up, son.

[Paul] Yeah, it's coming up quick.

[Carlos] Looks like Niagara Falls, dude.

[James grunts] [bleep] I can't hold it.

[grunting]

All right, you're done. Up and out.

[James groaning]

That was a hard dive.

[Dustin] Good job, James!

[Dustin] If we don't get any gold in this hole,

we're gonna be in real trouble.

[James] I wonder if there's anything in the box. Probably not, but...

Holy [bleep].

-[Paul] Hey... -[Dustin] You got gold, buddy!

[man whooping]

-[James] No way! -[bleep]

-[James] There's gold! -Freaking nugget!

Oh, my God. Awesome.

Oh, my God.

If we keep following the Wall down,

it's just gonna pile up into big fistfuls and handfuls of nuggets.

Just nuggets, nuggets, nuggets!

[imperceptible cheering]

It's amazing.

-There's gold! - Dustin] We know there's gold here.

It's everywhere. We just gotta dig it up.

-[Paul] Wow. -That just gave me gold fever up the ass.

It's back to classic white water.

[Dustin] This water is trying to stop us,

every piece of my equipment is trying to stop us.

-[man] Holy [bleep]. -Am I this high?

[people shouting]

Kind of stuck between irreparable damage to my hand or miss out on a season.

It's an easy choice to me.

I'll give up a finger for that.

[Carlos] I'm on the bedrock wall, man,

and it's just diving down, dude.

[Dustin] I like to hear that.

[James] Gold on my first dive.

We're gonna be coming out with hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions.

[Paul] Let that dry out a little bit.

Our umbilical will be nice and clean.

[narrator] Nearly a month into the gold diving season,

Dustin Hurt is MIA

and all work has ground to a halt.

For him to take some time off

to go get his hand checked out, man, it must be pretty bad.

The question is, how long will we be down a guy?

I don't know.

You know, is it just for a couple of days? Is it a week?

This kinda deal's gonna mess up the whole season, you know?

This is a dangerous job. Any of us could get hurt at any time.

[Dustin] It is beautiful up here.

[narrator] In this do or die season,

Dustin staked his future on the most extreme ground yet.

[Dustin] There are a bunch of waterfalls all the way up here

that could have piles and piles of gold.

This has to be the year.

I mean another season not hitting the jackpot?

I'm gonna have to think seriously.

What do I do with these claims?

[narrator] Out of money, if Dustin can't uncover Nugget Creek's proven riches,

he'll have to sell his claims to pay his debts.

[Dustin] It's not melting anytime soon.

If we don't get a bunch of gold, I could lose claim.

[narrator] Desperate for gold,

waiting for 80 feet of snow to melt, that isn't an option.

So Dustin shifted focus to prime ground down creek to jump start his season.

I've been looking at this spot, I think it'll be less dangerous.

-We can call it "The Wall." -All right.

-Whoo! -[man laughing]

[Dustin] Hey, guys, I found some gold over there.

There's gold, we just gotta get to the bottom of it, man.

[narrator] To double their chances of finding gold,

Wes and Paul made the deuce sluice

using parts from three dredges.

Oh, [bleep] it floats.

It better live up to its name because I got a lot riding on this right now.

[grunts] God [bleep].

[narrator] But before they could run it,

Dustin suffered an injury that could cost him his season.

[Dustin] One of my tendons has slipped over on one of my knuckles

and it hurts like hell.

[groans in pain] [bleep]

I've never, ever... All these years working with him,

ever seen him wanna go to a doctor.

So that must be pretty bad.

Hopefully, the doctor gave him a clean bill of health.

What we need to do is get as much work done as possible.

So when he comes back, he'll be happy with what we've got going for.

-[James] For sure, yeah, man. We know what to do. -[Carlos] Yeah, man.

-[James] All right, let's go to it. -All right.

The pain when I bend my finger is so agonizing

that it feels like I'm doing real damage.

[narrator] Thirty miles from Nugget Creek,

Dustin's in desperate need of medical attention.

[Dustin] At about three o'clock in the morning,

I must have just gripped into a fist

because I jumped up and I almost ran out of my little cabin

'cause I felt like I was being attacked.

That's how much it hurt from a deep sleep to me on my feet,

trying to run out of my cabin 'cause I thought someone was trying to kill me.

That's how bad this thing hurts.

Hopefully, with any luck, they're just gonna tell me to rest it.

I'll patch it up and we'll keep going.

[narrator] As claim owner,

if Dustin needs surgery, he'll be forced to shut down his entire operation

and end his Nugget Creek dream.

[Carlos] Whoo, look at that water.

[James] Yeah, it looks good.

[Carlos] That's a deep dive.

I have a good feeling about today. I can smell the gold.

[narrator] Back at Nugget Creek,

it's the moment of truth for the new double dredge.

[Carlos] Two divers on that freaking deuce sluice,

that's gonna be mountains of gold.

I wanna see gold in two boxes at one time.

[Paul] Oh, [bleep].

-[bleep] -[Carlos] Holy freaking moly.

That [bleep] dropped.

What a [bleep] nightmare.

[narrator] The 2,500-pound dredge

has dropped dangerously close to the water.

Another inch, and the brutal current would tear it apart.

[Paul] Looks like our dredge sunk overnight.

Where it is right now,

if we had a massive rain and we got flooded, that dredge is gone.

[narrator] Two years ago...

-What the hell? -Dude, the water is coming up.

[narrator] ...Catastrophic floods wiped out their site and their dredge.

The water took everything today.

This is, uh, fubar.

[Paul] It's barely off the water.

I don't know if the water is up a little bit more or what.

Or if the dredge came down, huh? But which of the two?

[Paul] We need to check the skyline anchors.

[Carlos] I'll go take a look.

[James] I don't know.

[Carlos] You have to go up there, dude. Let's see.

[James] Be careful, man.

[Carlos] Oh, [bleep]!

Yikes!

[James] Is [bleep].

[Carlos] Ugh [bleep].

-It's ugly, dude. -[James] Is it all [bleep] up?

[Carlos] Yeah, it's ugly.

Every anchor, it's been pulled out.

[James] Oh, [bleep], that's not good.

[Carlos] Oh, my gosh.

Oh, dude, it's not good.

Those cracks are made by every anchor that's in there.

-It's ready to rip out. -[James] Oh, [bleep].

This year, this skyline is to keep that deuce sluice,

the biggest dredge in the world, up in the air, safe.

The only thing we can do is just tie it back up.

Go really big, three-quarter-inch bolts

-and all that, with anchors. -[James] Yep.

[Carlos] And just hope the rock stays together.

That's all we could do.

[narrator] The 550-foot skyline

was secured by a set of primary anchor bolts.

But the weight of the 2,500-pound dredge

has overloaded the rocks, causing them to fracture.

Carlos and James' plan:

Find solid rock

and install another set of four anchors to act as a backup.

[James] I found a new spot.

I mean, holy smokes, this is...

solid.

And it's gonna be holding like this.

All four anchor bolts straight at that line. Bam.

So I ended up having to go to the doctor

to find out what's wrong with me.

It's not good news. I thought, "Man, I got another broken finger, no big deal."

But then come to find out I ruptured a tendon pulley.

I mean, I can back out and go get surgery and my hand would be great,

and my season would be destroyed. Absolutely annihilated.

So, I would have to give up on basically gold mining for the year,

if I go get my hand fixed.

The other choice is to just keep going.

I'm kind of stuck between irreparable damage to my hand...

or miss out on a season.

It's an easy choice to me.

I'll give up a finger for that.

-[Carlos] It's working. -[James] Good job, man.

If the top anchor bolts blow out,

these four will be the backup.

I feel better about that. That looks good.

[narrator] Even with the backups in place,

there's still a deadly threat from above

if the primary anchor bolts break loose.

If we break the skyline with this thing,

then we can't pull boulders and we still can't pull the dredge up.

So, I mean, we're just gonna shoot ourselves in the foot

if we keep putting this thing to the max.

[Paul] I think we need to figure out a plan B or something.

I'd almost say it'd be safer to pull the dredge up here every day and tie it off.

-[Wes] I would, too. -[James] We could build a nice little ramp.

[Dustin] 'Sup, fellers?

[Paul] How's your hand?

I just wanted to let y'all know what's happened.

I'm here. I'm back.

That looks bionic.

I made it myself.

[James] Is that what the doctors want you to do, is put a splint?

They want me to go get surgery.

I'm not gonna do it.

It's a six-month recovery.

So I made the decision, I'm gonna come out here and work.

Just gonna be on light duty, I won't be diving with you.

If there's a broken bone, wrap it up,

by the end of the season, you'll be diving again.

But this one's a bigger injury

that just won't allow me to dive this year at all, and I'm sorry.

That just means one of us is gonna have to dive every day.

And maybe we can figure out some kind of rotation.

[James] We did it before. Two days on one day off.

[Dustin] Thank you, guys, appreciate that.

Being that Dustin's got a busted hand right now, we've got to do a a rotation.

So everybody's gonna dive two days in a row,

get a day off, two days in a row.

I'm sure it's gonna get tiring. We just gotta pace ourselves.

-Welcome to the human condition, man. -Yeah, I know.

-You could check out those anchors right quick. -Yeah. Let's take a look.

You can see that one anchor bolt came completely out,

it's just hanging.

I don't think we can pick that dredge up any more with that system.

We're gonna lose it.

We've got our backup plan for getting the dredge up on land--

[Dustin] You'd do that every day?

Until we can get that fixed, we have no choice.

Here's the equation.

Time to fix this thing, to go reset the anchors,

what are we gonna spend? Two days?

[Paul] I'd probably say a couple of days.

-At least two days, right? -Yeah.

In three weeks, we'll be done with this area.

My brain tells me,

"Just tighten that sucker up and it's gonna keep crumbling

and just tighten the hell out of it

until that whole mound is gone."

That's not going to allow that to slip over the edge.

That could only take less than a day of work

opposed to a couple of days to do it the right way.

That's going to be risky. We can't afford to lose the skyline.

My plan is to keep tightening the damn skyline up.

Then the rock breaks, tighten it up again.

Just keep tightening the hell out of it. Break it.

[narrator] Dustin's radical break-it-to-fix-it-plan:

Crank the skyline so tight

that the primary anchors blow out the unstable rock

and transfer the load to James' secure backup anchor bolts,

allowing them to retention and raise the dredge clear of the water.

Just take your time, bro.

For real. Just clicky, clicky, click.

Right now, intentionally, we're gonna break some stuff.

We wanna see the mountains come down.

I think that's it.

Copy that. Hey, should I go check those other anchors?

Not a bad idea. It feels like it might be pulling pretty hard.

James tightened it up. I'm talking about banjo tight.

I mean, you can't get any tighter than this.

[Dustin] It's still holding.

We've got the cable so tight that I'm gonna put something heavy on it

and see what I could break.

[narrator] The primary anchor bolts won't come out,

so Dustin resorts to extreme measures.

[Dustin] All right, guys, let's find us a rock. I need a rock to pull on.

What about that one you're standing on right now? Would that move?

[Wes] Who cares if it moves? Put an anchor in it, pull it.

-[Carlos] That's right. -[Wes laughs]

You want to put a little bolt in it? Let's do it. [bleep] it.

[Carlos] Bingo.

Break it!

[anchor creaking]

That cable is not even flexing.

[Wes] That cable is [bleep] tight.

Whoo! We're putting a pretty good pull on it right now.

Cable's not really even dipping.

We can't get the rock to move yet.

[Dustin] I'm just gonna wiggle it upstream a little bit

and see if that'll grab it.

[narrator] The winches generate 60,000 pounds of pulling force.

If the skyline snaps, it could slice a miner

like a hot knife through butter.

Holy [bleep].

-[voice 1] Look out! -[voice 2] Get out of the way!

That cable is not even flexing.

[Wes] That cable is [bleep] tight. Whoo!

-[voice 1] Look out! -[voice 2] Get out of the way!

[James] It just blew out. I just saw all the rocks come down.

[Dustin] I saw that.

[narrator] At the Wall dive site,

Dustin's attempting to remove

the failing primary anchor bolts on the skyline.

[Dustin] All right, Carlos. What's the situation up there, buddy?

[Carlos chuckles] Oh, my God.

[narrator] For his plan to work,

he needs the cable to stay firmly on the ridge.

[Carlos] It blew out the face of it.

There's no anchors. No anchors attached.

Nothing's gonna flip, shift, and jump except for the rocks.

[Carlos] It looks that way, man.

Looks like it's pretty solid right now.

It buried itself into the dirt,

and the backups look beautiful.

-Yes! -[James] Oh, my God.

[Dustin] That's kind of what I was hoping on right there.

[narrator] The skyline is now anchored with James' rock-solid bolts

and resting on the ridge strong enough and high enough

to lift the 2,500-pound dredge clear of the raging creek.

It's not our original anchors,

but I don't see any difference.

-No. -Not if it's solid.

My plan actually worked out to fix it by breaking it.

I know that sounds weird, but it worked.

One single good day of diving would set this all right.

It's got me a little bummed 'cause I don't have any gold in my hand yet.

I'm ready. Let's do this!

Today, I want the dredge running perfect.

Everything has to be on track now.

I've busted my hand and I'm sorry I'm letting you all down with this,

but It is what it is, we're gonna have to keep going.

I've got no choices in the matter here.

I'm counting on the two-diver thing to catch us up.

I think two-divers are gonna make exponentially more--

[Dustin] I'm banking on that, by the way.

It's going to. It's gonna make all the difference.

All right. Well, let's get out there.

I need something to work out. We need a win here.

I expect to see gold on day one.

We have to work during the winter

as hard as we can to fund our life.

Why do it if it's not paying for itself in a big way?

I need to know if there's any gold down there.

[sighs grimly]

Look how high the dredge is.

Yep, skyline's better than it's ever been. The best it's looked.

[bleep] yeah.

A couple of hose clamps to go on, put the foot valve on,

then we'll be ready to fire this thing up.

[narrator] Paul and Wes spent two weeks building the deuce sluice.

The season rides on its maiden voyage.

[Wes] This is a new dredge built with a bunch of old parts.

I mean, getting two divers in at the same time

is something that we've never really been able to do.

Hopefully it works like I planned it.

Getting frustrated.

We need some damn gold to show our labor.

I need this to start happening because we're just working.

There's no money coming in, but there's a lot of money going out.

-You ready to give it a try? -Yep.

[Wes] Are you [bleep] kidding?

Wait a minute.

Okay.

-She's running. -Whoo!

Look at that.

-The water's great. -I love it.

[Carlos] Two sluices running. You wouldn't believe it.

Can you imagine, at the end of the day, shutting those babies off

and seeing both sluices chalked of gold?

[James] All right. I'm gonna go get ready. I'll see you in a minute.

[Carlos] This is a big moment, man.

[Paul] This should be a fun dive today.

First dive of the year, first time having two divers.

Now it's time to bear down, get going, and just bust ass.

[Carlos] We need to get to work, you know?

Lot of people back home is counting on this, you know?

Just not the team,

man, there's people back home that's counting on this as well.

So, gotta do it. Daddy gotta do it.

[Dustin] Carlos and Paul are about to get in the water, they're getting geared up.

It's go time.

You remember how to do this?

-[Carlos] You got me? -[James] Yeah, we got you.

-[Dustin] How's your air? -[Carlos] Air is good, dude.

All right, man, I think we're ready to rock and roll.

There he goes.

[Dustin] All right. Moment of truth.

[Carlos] All right, guys, let's make a living.

[Dustin] Diver in the water.

-[Dustin] All right? -[Paul] Oh, yeah, good, warm water.

[Dustin] Two divers in.

Well, here it is. Two divers.

Two. Two divers.

-Two divers. -Yeah, finally.

[Dustin] We have two divers, everyone.

[Carlos] Whoo, two divers!

The race is on. Who can dig the fastest?

[narrator] After nearly a month of work,

the hite Water gold diving season has officially begun.

And with two divers in the water,

they have doubled their chances of a massive payday.

[Carlos] I'm on river's left, man.

-[Paul] I'm on river right. -[Carlos] All right, man.

It's the first time I've ever seen a deuce sluice.

One machine that runs two divers.

Hopefully this pays off.

Finally, we are in the water.

Now let's see what they can do.

[Wes] This deuce sluice, I think, is gonna do the trick.

We can get two guys in the water, you know,

and get twice the dredging done in one day than we normally do.

That means at least twice as much gold this year.

[Dustin] Hey, fellas, how's it looking down there?

[Carlos] Going good, man.

[Paul] Got a good hole going.

He's already digging pretty good. We'll see what he's got.

[narrator] Dustin's convinced the Wall dive site is the perfect nugget trap.

When the gold travels down creek,

it hits the vertical rock face and drops to the deepest point.

If they can dig deep enough, they should find a bedrock bonanza.

The water's pretty fast right here.

It's only coming up. It's raining upstream right now.

[Carlos] Did the water turn dirty?

[Paul] Yeah, it got dirty, didn't it?

[Carlos] Holy crap, this water got hot.

-Look out! -Get out of the water!

[Carlos] Holy crap, this water got hot.

-Look out! -Get out of the water!

-Just in time! -Yep.

Did I call that or what?

Son of a gun, dude!

[narrator] At Nugget Creek, after just two hours,

the deuce sluice's debut run hits a wall.

The foot valve is completely jammed with stick right now,

so give me one minute.

At least the boil-over valves are working.

It blows out when it gets too hot. That's how they were designed.

[narrator] Debris washed in from up creek

clogged the filter basket on the water intakes, restricting the flow.

Superheats the hot water supply into deadly steam.

Fortunately, the boil-over valves opened and released the steam

before it could get to the divers.

[James] Oh, there it goes. Okay, that's good.

-[Dustin] Carlos, you good to go? -[Carlos] I'm good to go.

[Dustin] Hey, James, can you tell me how hot this water is?

[James] It's warm.

[Dustin] Paul, how you doing?

[Paul] Right now, it all feels good.

Ugh, about time we're back in the water.

We need to get down to the gold.

The gold gods are teasing us right now.

[narrator] To keep his Nugget Creek dream alive past this season,

Dustin needs the deuce sluice to work as promised.

[Carlos] I'm on the bedrock wall, man,

and it's just diving down, dude.

-[Dustin] Is it going straight down? -[Carlos] Yep.

It's getting down, it's getting deep.

[Dustin] Yeah?

[Carlos] It's probably like 3 feet, 4 feet.

[Dustin] I like to hear that.

So it looks like the deuce sluice

is gonna turn out to be a pretty good dredge.

It's been a lot of work, but we're gonna get caught up to where we should be

and surpass where we need to be.

So this year is gonna turn out to be good.

All right, guys, you're almost on four hours right now.

[James] What was that?

[Dustin] It turned milky.

Yo, hey, if this goes chocolate milk, I'm gonna stop you.

I don't want your machines to stop off.

If the foot valve stops up, the water stops up.

The water stops up, you steam up.

[Carlos] Gotcha. Copy that.

[narrator] The sharp right angle at the Wall dive site

makes it an excellent nugget trap.

But when it rains in the mountains above,

it's slammed by the full force of the raging creek.

[Dustin] You guys doing all right?

[Carlos] No!

I don't think this is gonna pass.

[grunts] Did this turn up or what?

[Dustin] Yeah, it turned up a lot.

All right, guys, we have to call it.

I'ma call it. I'm calling it.

Let's do diver up. Do diver up.

We're about to get so much debris in this machine

that it's gonna mess with the hot water.

I can't take that chance right now.

[Carlos] That's dirty, dude.

Damn it!

[Carlos] Holy crap, dude. White water sucks. I couldn't see anything.

-[Dustin] Anything? -[Wes] No, nothing but pyrite.

That's disappointing.

[Dustin] We got a lot to discuss about today.

[Paul] We got a few bugs we gotta work out.

[Dustin] Yeah, it's our first day.

[Paul] But we still got some material moved.

-I like it. -Yeah, we got some holes dug.

Nice diving, man.

I didn't dig through others, but yeah, man, there was a bunch of pyrite in the box.

But at least you have pyrites there,

then there's gonna be gold around it.

It was a successful day in that we got both divers down.

There's a few things, the foot valves keep getting stuffed with with sticks.

As soon as you're having a problem with water, check your foot valve

because that's probably what it is.

-Right? -[Wes] Yep.

All right. We'll do better. Somehow we always do.

It sucks that I can't do my job, I can't dive again.

So are you okay to go back in tomorrow?

Yeah, sure, I can go back to it tomorrow.

We'll do better tomorrow.

Good job today, though.

Today was frustrating. White water, man.

White water won't give you an inch of mercy, man.

It does not care if you're miserable.

I'm not gonna sleep very well tonight.

I'm gonna be on my inner chalkboard in my brain,

trying to figure out how to fix all these issues.

[Carlos] Let's do this.

[James] Check it out. Look at all the rocks coming down. Holy crap.

It's moving today.

[Carlos] That's some harsh water.

[narrator] At the Wall dive site,

a disappointing maiden voyage for the deuce sluice

piles on the pressure for Dustin's make-or-break season.

[Dustin] All right, James and Carlos, you're going in today.

Everybody be safe today, all right?

With the water being up this high right off the bat,

-what's it gonna be this afternoon? -It's gonna be awful.

All right. Let's go get the dredge in the water.

We'll dive as long as we can. We need to see some gold, though.

[narrator] On the last dive,

Carlos discovered the bedrock wall dropped straight down

into what could be a deep nugget catch.

I've been waiting to dredge against the wall.

I wanna follow it down, I wanna get gold.

With waters up, it's gonna be hard water to sustain.

I'm putting a lot of weight on today

because it's back to classic White Water.

[chuckles] Now I'm starting to get excited.

We got the dredge in the water real easy.

It's like we're getting better at this or something.

There she goes.

Here we go.

All right, go. That's it.

Hold on now, a little bit.

-Hold on. -It's gonna work.

-Hold on, hold on. -It's gonna work.

-We got a big old air bubble in here, still. -That's all right.

Yep. Okay.

[yells in pain] Oh, [bleep].

Holy [bleep].

-What the [bleep] was that? -You all right?

It blew the foot valve off.

[bleep] grab the foot valve?

That's long gone.

The whole problem is this [bleep] water.

We need it dammed off like when we used to

so we can actually dredge in this [bleep].

[narrator] The raging white water

has ripped one of the dredge's intake valves clean off.

It just snapped that like it was nothing.

Wow.

[narrator] Without a replacement foot valve on site,

the deuce sluice can only operate with one diver.

Starting to lose my cool, Carlos.

Already sick of this [bleep].

[Dustin] I wish I'd have never let this happen...

Double dredge [bleep].

I mean, that dredge is starting to part ways right now.

[Dustin] I hate that dredge.

The stress levels are reaching a dangerous level for everyone else here.

Just need a [bleep] break.

Stop wasting my [bleep] money.

This is turning into a waste of cash

if we just keep messing with little parts.

It's not even big-picture stuff, it's like a foot valve.

We've all worked too hard for this not to work.

I need a successful season, which I haven't really had yet.

We had some big nuggets, but we haven't had any real success.

Today, I need this.

All I'm asking is find some gold.

Is that so hard to ask?

It's sitting here. Are we just too incompetent to get it out of the ground?

It's right there.

We've got one half rocking.

[Paul] One of those could be enough to heat a diver.

[Wes] It's gonna be a one-diver day today.

So you want me to dive?

-You sure? -[James] I'll do it.

-Why don't you get dressed up, man? -[James] Yep.

[Dustin] Get a suit. Suit up.

[narrator] Their chances of finding gold cut in half,

Dustin's faith in the new dredge is fading fast.

[exhales]

We need a high. I'm tired of lows.

I sure hope this all pays off after all the chaos.

[Carlos] This is not a hobby.

Gold is not just some shiny thing

you just put around your freaking neck and put it in your teeth, man.

It's what put food on the table.

If we come up zero today, you know what that means?

You're falling behind your bills, bro.

Then you start wondering, "What the heck am I doing here, man?

I put all this freaking work and effort into all this.

And what are you getting out of it?" You know?

-[Dustin] Can you hear me? -Yes, sir.

I need a good, solid day of dredging after all this nonsense.

Let's get it right.

-All right. -Let's find some gold down there.

[James] I'd love to, man.

[Paul] Good luck, James!

-[James] Yeah. -[Wes] Have a great dive!

That's definitely white water, fellers.

[narrator] James Mission:

Follow the bedrock wall,

dredging out material to get down to its deepest point.

[James] I'm diggin'.

[sighs] I'm diggin'.

-We're diving. -[Paul] We are diving.

It kind of comes down

and then it goes back in, it comes down, it goes back in.

So the wall is doing this.

[Dustin] I love hearing that.

[Paul] What's the material looking like?

[James] It's all dirt so far.

Material's starting to get a little tougher as I go,

but I'm digging quick.

[Paul] Be careful, that water's shoving you back.

[grunts] I got rocks coming at me right now.

[grunts]

I mean, big rocks coming at me.

What starts to happen is these rocks start rolling.

It's a hell of a fight.

It's almost filling in as fast as he's digging it.

[narrator] For the next two hours...

[Dustin] The water is getting whiter and whiter.

[Dustin] The water's coming up, son.

[Paul] Yeah, it's coming up quick.

[narrator] ...James fights the fierce current...

[James grunts]

[narrator] ...as he dredges down towards bedrock gold.

[James grunting loudly]

It's moving.

You got about a 4-foot-ish hole right now.

I'm trying to find out which way the bedrock's going,

what's the material look like, stuff like that.

Pretty important dive.

It's tough diving today, you guys.

[grunting]

[grunting]

[Dustin] We got you.

[bleep]

[James grunting]

[Dustin] Pull him up!

[bleep] I can't hold it.

This one spot in the wall, it's freaking, really scary.

I mean, this is nature's booby trap,

and it can go at any freaking time.

You gotta remember, right here where we're diving at,

that's the focal point of all that water coming down hard as hell.

That's it. We're in the freaking danger zone.

[James grunting]

It's tough diving today, you guys.

[Paul] And you're moving some material, that's good. Love it.

[narrator] On his first dive of the season,

James is struggling against the raging white water.

[James grunting]

[grunts]

[grunts loudly]

-We got you. -[grunts]

[grunting] I can't hold it.

As soon as I get the current, it turns me away.

[Dustin] All right, you're done.

Up and out.

[Dustin] [bleep] water's coming back up again.

I don't feel comfortable leaving him in there.

[James] That was a hard dive.

-Not gonna lie. -[Dustin] Good job, James!

[groans]

Just need a break.

I just need you to calm down for a day or two.

Is it so much to ask to just chill out for a day, water?

[James] I wonder if there's anything in the box. Probably not.

[Paul] There is so much material in here.

A lot of [bleep] pyrite.

Holy [bleep].

-Hey. -[Carlos] No way.

No [bleep] way!

[Dustin] You got gold, buddy!

-Yeah! No way! -It's not even that small!

-[Wes] That's not even small, man. Oh, my God. -[James] Look at that.

Holy [bleep].

-[Dustin] That's gold! -Freaking nugget!

[James] Oh, my God. Awesome.

-[Paul] Wow. -That just gave me gold fever up the ass.

[Wes] That is [bleep] spectacular dude.

There's gold down there, so thank you for proving that

because now we know we're in the right spot.

Good job, man.

[Wes] This is what we needed because we started getting down a little bit

with all the issues we've had.

I mean, the deuce sluice is badass,

but getting it here, getting it set up,

getting in the water to start dredging,

it doesn't get any better than that.

Gold on my first dive.

Gold on my first dive, dude.

Right here at the wall proves that if we keep following the wall down,

it's just gonna pile up into big fistfuls and handfuls of nuggets.

Just nuggets, nuggets, nuggets.

This is what we're here for.

That's not a small piece of gold,

that is a large piece of gold right there.

All the work that we put into this, that makes it all worthwhile.

It's a golden day.

Good job, James.

You're gonna be tired tonight, buddy.

Oh, man. That was one of the hardest dives I've done in a while.

This year, we're gonna get more gold than we've got from last season.

-Oh, yeah. -That's what I think.

This is gonna be the most gold we've ever seen in our life.

But good job, everybody. Just keep trudging, all right?

[Wes] This is the start to our season, boys.

Right here, today, is the start to our season.

[Carlos] Yeah, man. Oh, yeah.

-[Wes] Awesome, James. Way to go, man. -[Paul] [bleep] yeah.

[James] We're gonna be coming out with jars full of nuggets.

Just handfuls.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Maybe millions by the time we clean all this out.

Whoo, what a dangerous job,

but I love it.

We dredged, we found gold. That's amazing.

We did what we came to do, it's a great start.

We know there's gold here. It's everywhere.

We just gotta dig it up.

[narrator] On the next Gold Rush: White Water...

Let's get ready to dive!

I'm standing on a hard path, and bedrock's somewhere underneath, getting close.

We're rocking now, dude.

[Carlos] This whole area is freaking good, dude.

It's loaded, bro.

Whoo!

We're gonna have tons and tons of gold.

-You ready? -Hell, yeah.

[engine stops]

Gosh dang it. We have no power.

It's spitting and sputtering, backfiring.

Mayday! Mayday!

-[Wes] Whoa! -Wes!

[Wes] Oh, [bleep].