On this week’s Devil’s Canyon, gold miner Boyce Goff risks his life in sub-freezing weather to venture into a fast-moving river in a bid to reach the other side.
He’s convinced there is gold “over there.”
Boyce says: “I’m gonna cross the river. I’ve got to do it soon. Wait too much longer and it’s just going to get colder and even more miserable.”
He weighs the risks and knows he must do something dramatic to score a win, saying: “There’s gold on the other side of that river. I know it. I tell by how the river flows around the sharp end.”
Boyce points to a bend in the river and says: “Right there is where I want to be. I just have to get there.”
He tries felling a tree in a bid to make a makeshift bridge, but that effort fails.
Frustrated, he says: “So now I have to swim across, it’s my only option. So today I’m going to figure out how to survive a swim across this icy cold river.”
Boyce could die doing this and yet he is determined. He says: “I can’t use my hands because I’m shaking so bad. This is not something I want to do. This is absolute last resort stuff going on here.”
He seems quite desperate in the exclusive clip and he says: “I need to find gold. I do not want to go home a disappointment to my family. [He points ot a calm sandy area] right there I’ve got my little beach. that’s all calm water across there right now. That is my only option.”
Boyce surveys the best spot for him to try this swim.
He says: “I can’t swim across that fast enough my body is going to freeze up and I’ll literally lock in the water and I’ll go from swimming flat like this…or I get pulled right down here in the fat deep water it just circle back and around.”
If Boyce hits a pile of submerged debris, he knows there’s no way out of it. He will freeze to death in the water.
Devil’s Canyon airs Tuesday at 10 PM on Discovery