On tonight’s exciting edition of Discovery’s Gold Rush: White Water, instinct, experience, and luck collide in what promises to be a perfect storm of a shiny cache of gold for Dakota Fred Hurt and his team.
Together they coordinate their efforts and use some elbow grease and a clever strategy to remove a large boulder in a promising nook of the raging creek. What lays beneath it will blow you away.
On the show tonight, Fred has his divers working to remove a boulder situated in an area where he believes gold sediment and nuggets have collected over time. The combo of gravity and the force of the water has done the hard work.
Now, if they play it right, the area where the boulder in question could be calm enough to suction dredge to see if mother nature left them a bit of treasure.
Fred knows it.
His enthusiasm is contagious in our exclusive clip as he jokes and says: “Hi-Ho silver” while directing his diver to the area where they plan to remove the boulder.
Watch as the moment of truth is revealed, and the expression on Paul Richardson’s face is the tell-all. There’s definitely gold in the four inches of sediment that collected under the boulder over time. It’s a natural gold particle magnet.
This season of Gold Rush: White Water served up a twist. Fred and his son Dustin Hurt split their teams up and are working in separate areas of the McKinley creek and Porcupine creek areas.
The split was amicable, with Fred joking with us in our exclusive interview that he and Dustin worked better apart.
Fred and Dustin agreed to split up and divide their efforts in a bid to double both of their chances of striking a considerable gold payday, and to keep the friction between them a comfortable low.
“I wish Dustin luck, but I wish us better luck,” Fred joked to us during our interview.
At 76-years-old, Fred is fitter and more agile than men half his age, a true testament to staying active and not letting yourself succumb to overeating and falling prey to the effects of a sedentary life.
It’s more than physical commitment; it is his keen mental interest and desire to chase the treasure that gold-mining offers. Where they are doing this requires dedication and a level of physical fitness that will help prevent injury.
Not everyone can do this extreme type of mining, and Fred is a real anomaly in the business.
Why is this so? The physics of vertical mining (versus the flat land mining depicted on Gold Rush) in frigid conditions with roiling raging waters are rife for disaster.
You have to have the ability to rappel and climb. You must be able to dive underwater. Bears and wolves add to the danger.
And it is freezing cold, and one wrong step could mean you fall into the creek with boulders and rocks waiting to knock you out and assist in your untimely drowning.
They have to bring Incredible amounts of equipment into these tight and dangerous confines. The heavy suction dredges must be brought intact down to the gorge base to suck up the remnants of glaciers, gravity, and time.
In our interview, Dakota Fred Hurt said it best:
Well hell, how many people at 76 years old are doing anything like what I’m doing now? Look, when you get that age, you’re supposed to be in a rocking chair with a little pablum dribbling down your beard, somebody wiping it off for you and changing your diapers at the same time. So I’m not quite ready for that. Eventually, I’ll get there, but not yet
Can the Dakota Boys and their team of miners handle the wilderness challenges of Alaska, strike a fortune, and make it out unscathed? Watch tonight and find out.
Gold Rush: White Water airs Fridays at 10:00 PM ET/PT on Discovery and Discovery Go