Original subtitles

What in the hell? Look at the water.

Hey, Paul.

Coming up a little bit, a little bit of sticks, man,

a little bit of debris.

Happy birthday! Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Fred! Happy birthday, Fred!

75 years old. You're old.

75 years old, still diving in Alaska?

That's pretty impressive.

He started to panic down there..

That's how dangerous this is.

We're going to do our first fuel drop down the mountain.

The crazy that we do to mine in Alaska.

We're that close to the gold.

We're in business, boys. A little nugget.

...captions by vitac... www.vitac.com

captions paid for by discovery communications

Well, the water is not perfectly clear this morning, but...

It's nice. It's not milky.

All right. About a foot, foot and a half of visibility.

The Dakota boys are 10 weeks into their mining season,

dredging for gold in one of Alaska's

most remote and dangerous creeks.

Hey, guys! Right here.

This is our entire reason for being here, right here.

So you know how the crack goes all the way down,

if you were trying to build a nugget trap,

this is what it would look like.

I just believe it's going to be chock full of gold,

and now we need to clean it out.

So the hole has to go forward in order to do this.

Well, I can't wait to get into this.

Man, this is... it looks like a good day to dive.

Last week...

...Dustin discovered a crack in the creek wall...

Yeah! Yes, it is!

...that gave them their biggest cleanup yet.

Now we're getting into gold, baby.

Now Dustin needs his crew to dredge down through the rocks

and gravel to the pile of gold

at the bottom of the bedrock crack.

We're throwing the dice.

This is what we're going for.

This is our focus. All right.

Let's get to work, guys.

So, today, we have to open the hole up more

so we can get down to the crack.

That promise of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,

I think, is in every man's heart.

That's what drives you on.

Some men have more of that drive than others.

Dustin and I have got it.

Dustin has invested $75,000 in this season.

He needs it to pay off, or he'll lose it all,

and none of his crew will get paid.

I'm going to get the gold out of this hole.

Diving alongside him is rich Webster.

I'm ready to rock and roll. Start getting back to digging,

see if we can get down to some good ole yellow gold.

After 4 hours, Dustin and rich are 12 feet down,

just 3 feet from bedrock.

Whoa. Was scary.

I was out of air, dude.

That's the most scariest thing that's ever happened

to me diving. Yeah, I bet.

Thank god you were pulling me, dude,

because I couldn't get up fast enough.

I was yanking as hard as I could.

That was good because I wouldn't have got out in time.

That thing smashed against my face so hard

when I went to take a breath.

Panicked?

I started to.

I know.

Casey saved my ass.

He saved my ass.

Yeah, that was bad. Sorry, man.

Glad I got you out. Thank you. Thank you.

I know. I owe you one.

You're all right, dude.

That's probably one of the scariest rescues

we've ever had to do.

He started to panic down there.

That's how dangerous this is.

We got to check that pop-off valve.

The hose clip connecting the air lines

to the compressor has blown.

Before anyone can dive again,

Wes switches it out for a threaded brass coupling.

Yeah.

This is the lifeline to the diver right now.

We can't afford for this hose to come off of there like that.

I'm going to give it a shot and squeeze it down some more.

We'll run it for a little bit and see if we can get it

to continually run without popping up.

Luckily, we just happen to have a tool here to crimp this stuff.

So I think I got that crimped tight enough

that maybe it will stay on here this time.

I'm hoping, anyway.

Let's see if that does the trick right there, a quick fix.

Hopefully, that's going to take care of it.

So, Fred, is it back working again?

It's working fine.

The pressure-relief valve is working perfectly.

Did we double-hose clamp that?

Yes. I did.

Awesome. You're the man.

Sorry to ask.

It happened to me in the Mississippi river at 80 feet.

I made it to within 5 feet of the surface before the guy says,

"oh, okay. Here's what the problem is."

One breath, and there was nothing.

Believe me. I was coming up.

I think they call them near-misses.

So I'm going to go back down.

I'm going to get back in the saddle.

I don't think you should.

You need to get your head right for this situation.

You had an event today.

I don't think you need to be back in the water no more today.

Come on out.

You all right, man?

When I heard, "diver up! Diver up!"

I just turned and started to come up the wall,

and it was like

That mask went to my face so hard,

and it's the first time that I seriously

Started to panic.

It is terrifying.

The best medicine is to get back in that damn water.

Up next...

Nugget! That's gold, buddy.

We're getting closer.

The best medicine is to get back in that damn water.

All right. I'm going.

I'm going.

On his last dive, rich panicked when his air supply failed.

Now he's bucking his fears, getting back in the raging creek

and down to the nugget trap.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous,

but I'm going to go back down.

I'm going to get back in saddle.

I just got to get through today.

Richard, you're clear to go down.

Dustin heads back into the creek with rich.

Over thousands of years,

gravity compresses gravel on the creek bed

into a dense layer known as hardpack.

This is now all that stands between them and the gold.

The hardpack is too tough for the suction hose.

We're coming up.

We got the air chisel.

We have it. It's ready.

We should stick it down there today, actually,

but tomorrow we're going to hit this really hard.

Good job today, fellows.

All right. Let's get the hell out of here.

Tomorrow, we'll be digging through hardpack.

I don't think that that hardpack is more

than 2 or 3 feet deep at the most.

We're that close to the gold.

They mined in this area about 100 years ago,

and it takes over 100 years to make this rock like it is,

so we know that no one has mined here before.

In order to make this rock this way, you have

to have thousands of years, and that's what it took.

A lot of people call this false bedrock.

Right below this is where the gold is sitting.

We just got to get through it.

That hardpack has got that prehistoric cement.

Caveman concrete, brother.

To break through the hardpack, the crew will use

a pneumatic hammer powered by an air compressor.

Each strike delivers 150 pounds of pressure

to the hardened steel chisel 3,000 times a minute.

So when he gets down there, underneath the water,

he's going to essentially get all this hardpack,

and he's just going to try to break it up,

pulverize it where he can suck it into the dredge.

There's a lot of golf mixed into that hardpack,

and there's a whole lot of gold underneath the hardpack,

which is what we're after.

Diving with Carlos today is 74-year-old Fred.

He's going to use the air chipper.

As he chips, I'll be sucking up the debris on the bottom,

and we're going to get after that thing.

Ready? Let's dive!

We're in business, kids.

Right there. Yep.

Okay. Here it comes, brother. Let's do this.

Bright orange hose.

Perfect. All right.

Let's see how he does.

Wow.

We're getting desperate for fuel.

I think we need to check all these fuel barrels.

Oh, my. We ran out of fuel.

I have no idea what we're going to do.

Ah!

Oh, Dustin, man. It was a rookie mistake.

We're in trouble.

We don't have a single barrel left of fuel,

and I don't know how I missed this, but I missed it.

I think I'm going through about a barrel and a half

per week right now, maybe two barrels.

Between the engines on each dredge,

generators, and the compressor for the air hammer, fuel costs

Dustin $1,500 a week.

Without any fuel, these things don't run.

It's just that simple. We need fuel,

otherwise everybody take a big long vacation.

No fuel, no gold.

In the back country,

35 miles north of Haines, Alaska,

the Dakota boys are shut down.

No fuel means no gold mining.

Getting fuel to where I need it is really hard.

The helicopters kind of jacked up their price

a little bit on us,

which I don't have the money to start throwing at fuel

like I used to.

To avoid a $2,000 heli lift, Dustin risks a bush resupply.

How about we hook it up and then run a zipper across it?

We can do that.

What I'm trying to do is get this 55-gallon drum

400 feet across this ravine that's about 300-feet deep,

and we don't want to drop it.

Watch your fingers.

That's going to have to be enough.

All right. If that rope gets stuck, it will untie itself,

so I didn't think that through.

Come on, baby.

Is that where you want it right there?

Dustin helied in the ATV at the start of the season...

But when the dirt road dead-ends,

there's no way to lower the 380-pound barrels

safely down the canyon to the mine site.

Now, we want to build this long, long pipe

down to another barrel.

Super simple, right?

They've already taken the barrel over the zip wire from the camp,

along the ATV trail to the top of the canyon.

Now, they'll connect 4510-foot steel pipes

to get the fuel down the 450-foot drop to McKinley creek

and directly into an empty barrel at the bottom.

Yeah, I've got to put sealant on this... these,

before I put them together.

I can't have gas leaking out of any of it

because it's gonna have a lot of pressure by the time

it gets to the bottom, so all these joints have got to

have some kind of compound on them so they won't leak.

Now the trick is going to be,

"can we put them together going down the hill?"

Yeah. We definitely can.

Ready?

Okay. Right there, it's good.

We decided to go with the metal pipe

because of the bears and all the porcupines.

They love to chew up anything that's plastic,

so the only way to keep them from poking holes in our pipe,

we had to go with metal.

All right. Ready to go again.

Standby.

Copy.

Here it comes, Paul. Copy that.

So far, so good.

We're about a foot from the edge.

Paul! Can you send me down a piece?

It's going. We got this.

We're on a roll.

Talk about relaxing today.

It was a pretty chill day, though, right?

Come on. Not bad.

Not bad at all. Pretty chill.

Hanging from the side of a mountain.

The crazy that we do to mine in Alaska.

We got our pipe in.

Well, this is the last connection that I've got to do,

and we're going to do our first fuel drop down the mountain.

So like this, now we have a barrel at the top.

We'll have a barrel down at the bottom.

All we've got to do is open our valve,

and it should fill our barrel down up here with fuel.

Once we have this barrel with fuel, then we can carry it

back and forth to the dredge site real easy.

This is going to be a lifesaver right here.

Dustin, you have a copy? Yeah, I got you, man.

What's up?

Okay. I'm ready on my end.

Are you ready to receive a little bit of fuel?

Yeah. Give me a little trickle.

Just let me know when you see

a little bit of fuel out of the bottom.

I am not going to let very much through to start.

Copy that.

I'll let you know when something happens, but nothing yet.

You should have a good flow coming down.

Still nothing, man. Still nothing.

What are you thinking, man?

I got my valve all the way open, and there's nothing happening.

I have all of my valves open, too.

That don't make sense.

Let's try something else then, huh?

We do have that gas-powered compressor down there

that will put out 120 pounds

if we can hook a line to it

and just blow this right out.

The compressor will fire a jet of air down the 450-foot line.

Whatever is in the line, we're going to push it out.

All right. I'm going to fire this thing up,

and let's see if we can get a flow through here.

Okay, I'm going to send you some air.

I have about 90 pounds of pressure on the compressor.

Let's see what that will do.

Well, I'll find out shortly.

Okay. Keep your fingers crossed

that this is going to come down this time.

I've got everything hooked up,

and I'm going to try to send you fuel again.

Copy that. Here we go.

Yeah, got fuel. I got fuel.

That is amazing.

This will save us a lot of money.

It's a great afternoon.

We got it cleared, got fuel going down.

Now we can just concentrate on getting past the hardpack.

It's all about finding the gold now.

I like it when a plan comes together.

Dustin's new system will save $500 on every barrel of fuel.

Now we can get fuel, get it up there.

This is so much cheaper, and we're done with it.

We got it.

And it's got the Dakota boys back smashing

through hardpack to the bedrock gold.

We're getting deep finally, finally.

The crew is just 2 1/2 feet from bedrock.

We're finally getting our depth that we need.

Once we get through that hardpack,

it should be gold city from there.

Tomorrow should be the day.

We should be able to get through that hardpack.

Hell, yeah.

It rained like hell last night. I didn't sleep a wink,

so I've been thinking about it all night.

So the guys made it down there,

and I wanted to know what happened.

That rain is something else.

Overnight rainfall high in the Chilkat mountains

has raised the water level in McKinley creek by 3 feet.

Getting pretty serious down there right now,

but mother nature never counted on guys like Dustin and I.

It could pick up even more today.

That's what I think it's going to do

because that big rock is our marker.

That marker right there always tells me where we're at.

Another foot high,

the boulders are going to start rolling into my hole.

As soon as you start hearing big boulders, I'm out.

That's it. We're done.

That's how it works. I mean, you get crushed

at the bottom of this thing. Right.

Conditions have gone from dangerous

to potentially lethal down in the dive hole

Dustin and Casey are about to enter.

Casey, how about you don't go down?

I'll go down.

I have so much experience in this stuff right here.

I just don't want you to get hurt.

I have the most to gain or lose from this,

and I'll be down there.

It will be me.

Aw, that would have been pretty bad.

All right.

Carlos acts as a lookout upstream.

Looking pretty, pretty hairy, brother.

Pretty hairy.

His safety zone is about as big as this right here right now.

That's why I'm looking, man.

I'm looking for any kind of debris,

like branches, logs, anything.

If you see that, that means there's been

a landslide up above.

If we start hearing that McKinley thunder,

what I mean by McKinley thunder,

those rocks roaring down.

You can hear it. It sounds like thunder.

The rocks hitting each other, rolling down,

got to come up, man.

Game over on that one.

Well, I'm going to get some measurements down here.

The guys seem to think they keep going down all the way.

Let's see how deep they've actually got this.

14 feet right there.

At 14 feet, Dustin is just inches away

from where they hit gold last season.

Oh, my.

Whoa.

Hey, guys. Hey. Guess what.

What? We got gold.

Little nugget! Look at that.

Laying right at the freaking head of the box.

I'll be damned. Oh, yeah.

There you go, dude. That's nice.

Look at that. It's starting to happen.

We're in business, boys.

Oh, yeah.

We're getting closer. Hot damn.

I almost want to dance, but not yet.

Not yet.

Yeah!

That's such a good sign.

It's letting us know that we're going in the right direction.

That's gold, buddy. We're getting closer.

When Fred hurt was born,

the United States was at war with Germany and Japan.

Hey, Fred. Hey, Fred. Happy birthday!

Happy birthday! Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Fred! Happy birthday, Fred.

Lord, have mercy. Happy birthday!

Hello. Whoo-hoo-hoo!

Whoo-hoo-hoo. My old goat.

75 years old. You're old.

I can handle it.

Probably have to rest a little bit more than the young ones do.

That's all right.

Holy cow! It is. Oh!

75 years old, still diving and hiking in Alaska.

Oh, man. That's pretty impressive.

If he wasn't working with us,

I'm pretty sure he'd be close to the grave right now,

but instead, we're keeping his ass in shape.

Let's see, I think I'll plan for about another 20, 25 years.

Bad, bad medicine, brother. Bad, bad medicine, man.

She looks really hairy today.

So the water came up a whole bunch overnight.

The floods are here.

Have we been talking about it?

It's happening.

I can take this just fine.

It's as muddy as the Mississippi.

I just hope a bunch of that

Didn't wash back into our hole.

Heavy downpour tonight means this hole is gone like

we never did anything.

With water levels rising,

Dustin's in a race against time to get through the hardpack.

He's inches away from a payday 2 years in the making.

It's been raining for a day and a half, 2 days,

getting pretty serious down there right now.

Weather like this, I'd be more worried about a Boulder

rolling down on my head than anything else

because the water is already up high.

It comes up anymore, and it could...

Anything that we have up here...

Right there.

...it could wash it right down on top of us,

and we're just asking for trouble if we do that.

All right, guys. We are so close right now.

I just got to get back down to it.

The storm, high in the mountains,

is sending 500 tons of water crashing down

above Dustin's head every minute.

Hey, Paul, it's coming up a little bit,

a little bit of sticks, man, a little bit of debris.

The water is getting high. It's getting dirty.

Getting Dustin out in time, that's what I'm worried about.

I can't believe Dustin is down in this.

I really can't.

What in the hell?

Look at the water.

My anticipation is that it had some sort of landslide

came up the side of the mountain,

probably built up a little bit of water behind it,

and finally just let loose.

This is the result.

Dustin! Can you hear me?

I lost comm. Dustin.

Dustin!

Oh, my.