"My career as a miner is completely at risk right now.." "I need to get some gold." "I need to make some money if I want to keep doing this stuff." "I know where some gold is, but I need a tender." "And winter's coming fast." "Any day could be our last." "It's a real small window." "Desperate times call for desperate measures." "All right." "We're there." "When you're desperate, you do stupid things." "Drop the anchor!" " Aah!" "" "Save our season!" "I can't see 2 inches in front of me." "Holy cow!" " Just let me know." " Chunky chunk." "That's the sound of money!" "Finally things are going my way!" "Come up!" "Come up!" "What the... captions paid for by discovery communications." "The end of the summer mining season looms on the alaskan horizon as the first blast of frigid winter weather hits nome." "With veteran miners and newcomers far from their golden goals, desperation is in the air." "And while desperate times call for desperate measures, the wrong move could spell disaster." "10 miles west of nome..." "I need to take advantage of this great weather." "Sure is cold out here." "I mean, if I can clean up about 20 ounces out of this spot, then I'll be on my feet." "It'll definitely get me out of the red." "I need a payday really bad." "No one feels the screws tightening more than zeke tenhoff as he returns for a second dive at the penny river." "Going on all these prospecting trips," "I haven't seen any gold to speak of all summer." "But we're out in front of the penny river." "I'm starting to get into some real good gold." "So it's do or die for me." "It's been a rough summer for zeke..." "Whoa!" "As he and his business partner, emily riedel, set out on remote claims..." "I can't believe I've finally gotten myself out here." "I'm looking for gold." "But I'm not seeing any gold here." "Only to end up broke..." "Where is the gold?" "Dude, we got to take a break, maybe go separate ways completely for the rest of the season." "And broken up." "So zeke went it alone on a dangerous solo dive." "Yeah." "This is what I'm talking about right there." "And while he hit pay dirt..." "Thank god." "Diving without a tender..." "What in the." "Hit back." "When I'm underwater, there's a million and a half things that could go wrong." "And I would have no idea because I'm focused on the job at hand, which is dredging." "So if I'm going out to get some of that gold produced out of the penny river to keep me afloat, keep my business," "I need the help." "Zeke's plan to get that help?" "Just waiting for zeke to get to the "g" spot." "He always had trouble finding it." "Bring back emily riedel, naturally, who didn't fare any better after the split." "I'm broke." "And, zeke found gold." "It's very simple." "I'm here because I can see the opportunity in it." "And I'm an opportunist to the core." "So here I am." "No!" "On his last visit to the penny, zeke placed buoys marking a tasty configuration on the seafloor." "I'm seeing gravel and then a nice thick, cheesy layer of gold and then, under that, more gravel." "It's like a classic cheese sandwich." "Cheese is in the middle of multiple pay layers." "But now those markers are gone, sunk, moved or partially submerged by a recent storm." "I'm not surprised." "I mean, I still have my gps waypoints." "But now I'm probably gonna have to do a..." "Play a little bit of a runaround." "So if zeke is going to get back on the sandwich, he needs to head down, search for more cheese." "I need about 20 ounces of gold to pay the bills" "I've been putting off for the past couple months." "And I don't have much more time to achieve that goal." "Hey, what's the visibility like?" "What are you seeing down there?" "It's all these big rocks." "They're, like, big as basketballs." "Maybe over by this boulder over here." "Any gold in that crack?" "Not seeing any gold in that crack." "Let's keep moving." "Zeke said he found a really nice, hot patch of gold at the penny." "But if we can't find the gold, there's no reason to be here." "And it pisses me off." "If we can't find this payout, it's gonna be devastating." "Don't know where the gold is!" "No gold again." "It's like we're back at sledge island, no trace of gold." "10 miles east, at the nome airport, george young arrives to welcome a very special visitor." "There's the little right there." "Meet george's 18-year-old son, landon..." "Looks like he got a little bigger in the military." "Airman first class in the united states air force." " Hey, son." " Hey, dad." "How's it going?" "Good." "How are you?" " Good." " That's good." " Glad to see you, man." " Glad to see you, too." " How was your flight?" " It wasn't too bad." " Yeah?" " Didn't get any sleep, though." " Yeah?" " It sucked." "Well, you're not gonna get much here." "We got a lot of work to do, so..." " Yeah?" "We going out today?" " Come on." "We got to hit it." "You ready to work?" "Yep." "Landon will spend his leave on bonding time, facing the bering sea with his greenhorn dad." " Let's go, man." " Let's do this." "I am a miner!" "One month ago, george young entered the nome mining game..." "First-time celebratory cigar." "And quickly found out..." "Buck and a half." "Gold doesn't come easy." "I'm seeing gold!" "A recent dive on a honey hole known as the ditch..." " Hey!" " Whoo!" "Has the rookie captain feeling like a pro." "6.38." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Let's go get some gold." "But soon after his big score, one of george's divers had to take a leave of absence, leaving george a man down." "So now..." "That's when I brought my son out here." "I knew he would jump at the opportunity if he had enough leave, which I got lucky because he did." "Well, you're still the same cocky little fellow." "Yeah, pretty much." "I'm glad he come out here and helped me." "Timing couldn't have been more perfect." "I wouldn't miss this for the world." "I'm excited." "All right." "Well, let's see." "George and landon are heading back to the ditch..." "Go ahead and release the lines." "With hopes of packing their sluice full of gold." "There's nome harbor." "And we're heading east, where we've been finding really good gold." "So we're gonna keep hitting that spot, pounding it, until the gold runs out." "Landon knows how to dive, you know." "He knows..." "He knows the equipment." "He knows how it's supposed to work." "He's done a lot of suction dredging." "He's actually worked with my brother dave." "The kid's a rock star." "I want him out there as much as possible." "Sweet." "Let's do this." "All right." "We're there." "Drop the anchor!" "Okay, landon." "Remember safe." "I want you on this side." "Start over... be over here." "I dropped the long rope off so you got something to pull up if you need to, too." "Are you on the bottom?" "How is your visibility?" "You can move around." "Try to punch a hole behind the boat, maybe under the ladder." "Okay." "Sounds good to me." "All right." "Look around." "Where is landon at?" "Straight ahead about probably 15 feet." "He might almost be at the end of his hose." "To free landon to explore as far as possible, george waits to set the second anchor." "This allows diver and boat to circle on a wide axis, adding valuable feet to the diver's range." "We got some black stuff coming through the box." "And that's usually pretty good stuff." "So hopefully, you can find some gold in there." "Encouraged by what he's hearing and seeing from down below..." "Turn it!" "Drop the front anchor." "We're gonna drop it." "George okays dropping the second anchor to lock the dredge into place." "Aah!" "What?" "3 miles east of nome..." "Drop the front anchor." "We're gonna drop it." "Aah!" "What?" "Are you all right?" "Yeah." "I'm fine." "Watch that anchor." "It almost took me out down here." "Dude, I don't know, man." "Sorry." "Make sure you know where I'm at next time you drop that." "10-4." "That was hard." "But if there's one thing I know in life is that things can change at the snap of a finger." "If there would have been an accident, it's something a father doesn't ever want to think about." "Sorry about that, son." "Now keep poking around." "Doing it." "And hopefully, you can find some gold in there." "Yeah, crank it up." "Nome's gonna give me a heart attack." "9 miles west..." "You know, when you're desperate, you do stupid things, make desperate decisions." "I know." "Like, we're the only boat out here today." "It's cold." "And it's windy as hell, man." "I know." "It sucks." "Captain kris kelly, along with his father, brad, and brother, andy, are on a frosty journey." "Right now, we're going to the east-west claim." "We got to go over there." "And we got to find something worth working." "So far this summer..." "I was wondering if it'd be a possibility if I could get my..." "My family on your claim." "I just don't think I want to take a chance on you." "The kellys have struggled to gain access to claims." "And even when they have..." "I just want you guys off the claim, okay?" "The deals just don't seem to pan out." "They're depending on me to make money." "You know, my captaincy needs to make money for them." "And that's the only way I'll keep this position." "I have to show them that I deserve it." "And I'm gonna put money in their pockets." "Desperate, kris is looking to secure a deal with one of nome's biggest claim owners." "John keeley, he's irish." "We're irish." "And something..." "Sometimes, that, that holds a little bit of weight in this world." "He owns some of the best claims in nome." "There's a lot of gold on those claims." "So he doesn't have to do anything for anybody." "You know, you have to prove to him that you can make money." "And he's gonna give me a chance." "The claim owner is giving kris a shot." "If the kellys can prove themselves to be real gold getters, they'll get full access to his extensive claim holdings." "You ever known a millionaire willing to give up money?" " Okay." " He's not gonna pull that." "If we find good gold, we tell him." "He kicks us off." "No, this is a different situation." " All right." " This guy's not a scam artist." "He's an irishman.!" "Okay." "Yeah." "We're good, then." "But there's a catch." "They have just one day to show what they've got." "Fail and they'll be searching for new ground once again." "This is our last chance." "We need to hit it big out there." "We can show everybody in town, really, what we can do." "We're working for one of the biggest players in nome." "We just need one spark to start a fire." "And this is it." "How's it going?" "Visibility's super bad today." "All right." "Well, keep going." "This is the worst visibility I've ever worked in." "Silt drummed up by recent storms explains why no other dredges are working and leaves kris no choice but to scratch in the dark." "Can you imagine being blind?" "No." "But how's it feel?" "It sucks." " You're fine." " Okay, whatever." "Here, I'm working it." "I'm just gonna keep processing material." "And I hope I'm getting gold, even if I got to do it stevie wonder style." "I could be sucking up bricks of gold." "And I wouldn't know it." "While kris' search for gold is far from signed, sealed or delivered..." "There's the landowner checking up on us right there." "A few hundred yards to the south, another captain keeps a watchful eye." "Old john keeley's coming out nosing around to see what we're doing out here." "Hey, I'll tell you what, though." "John keeley's out here." "Man, just why does this have to happen?" "Straight out in front of us, he's obviously coming up to see what we're doing." "Look, man." "I'm already stressed out." "I have no idea." "While the boss merely made his presence felt, the message was received loud and clear..." "Find the gold." "Well, this is a situation." "All I can see are my white gloves moving around every time they hit the flashlight." " I have no idea what I'm moving." " This is bull" "I can't." "I can..." "This is the worst visibility I've ever worked in." "What a joke." "Hey, I'm gonna have to call it." "We can't dredge in this." "With only one day to show what they've got, the murky sea..." "Has delivered a potential death blow to the kellys' season." "We need to make this work." "I'm not gonna fail as captain." "If I fall, I have no one to fall back on." "There is no falling for me." "That's how you end up living in a cardboard box or some like that." "But I'm not gonna give up." "We got to make something happen right now." "Captain kris' idea to make something happen..." "Okay." "Lookit." "I can't stress the importance of this right now." "I know it's visibility." "But I need you to go down there and make some magic happen and get us some gold." "Andy is a lucky." "Pull rank and send in baby brother." "He's not really worth anything else." "He's a one-dimensional person." "I put him down there, and he gets gold." "Okay, andy, get in the water." "Talk to me." "Talk to you about what?" "Tell me if you're seeing gold." "How's everything going?" "What's the suction like?" "You like everything?" "If I look around, I can't really see." "No, I know it." "The best is all we can do right now." "Yeah." "There we go." "See, there's a little bit of gold right there." "And there's gold here." "You got gold already, bud?" "Yep, right here." "There's a little gold right there." "And I just keep covering it every 2 seconds." "But anyway, just right behind this rock right there." " Good job, andy." " Save our season!" "There's gold stuck on the clay." "There's gold falling out of the material in the walls." "And just like that, the fighting kellys are back in the gold-getting business." "That's the sound of money!" "Can you hear it?" "I hear it." "Finally, things are going my way one time!" "Now I just got to wait for the meteor to hit me right now." "Watch out for falling rocks from the sky!" "Everything's going too good." "3 miles east of nome at the ditch..." "Are you finding some gold?" "George young waits as his son landon scours the ocean floor." "There's a lot of sand down here." "I haven't even hit clay yet." "It's just a whole bunch of overburden." "We're in the ditch." "You know, we're mining the area that gave us the 10 ounces the week before." "I really thought we'd get 5, 6 ounces." "And so far, there's nothing." "We'll find it again." "We're not calling it quits." "The end of the season is nearing." "And I just got to take advantage of every good window" "I have, get as much gold as I possibly can on the good days." "I could stay down here for hours." "Good because you're going to." "Nice." "Are you finding gold?" "There's some..." "What's that?" "Iandon, keep talking to me." "The com box is going haywire." "Landon, can you hear me?" "It's the only lifeline for the diver." "And today, it's also george's only lifeline to his son." "I'm not hearing everything he has to say." "Losing com, it's a dangerous thing." "You don't get to communicate with your diver on anything that's going on." "He could lose air, and you wouldn't know it." "You know, that's the most important thing, is your air." "Your air's your life." "Keep breathing." "Can you hear me?" "Landon, can you hear me?" "Aw can you hear me?" "Yeah, I can hear you." "Right on, man." "Go get the gold, son." "Hell yeah!" "Suck it up, buddy." "Yeah, baby." "Suck up every piece you can out of there." "I am." " Good job, son." " Thanks, dad." "There's some gold in..." "What'd he say?" "I'll pull you some extra." "Landon, keep talking to me, please." "No sooner is communication restored..." "Than the come go out again." "It's weird as hell 'cause right now..." " This is a pretty good one." " I can hear him." "But then now, I can't." "You know, it's..." "Now george must choose..." "Keep his son on the gold and tempt fate..." "Or play it safe." "I need you to come back up." "We got to get this figured out." "Okay." "I got to be able to hear him." "And right now, probably nothing is going wrong." "But if something does go wrong," "I got to hear him the whole time." "Keep talking to me." "Dad, I'm coming up." "Even when he's on the ladder." "Keep talking to me, please." "I'm up." "Look what I got here!" "What do you got?" "What do you got?" "Holy cow!" "You pulled a nugget up, man." "That's a good picker, buddy." "Yeah." " Yeah!" " All right, man." "You seen a lot of those?" " You saw gold?" " There's a few down there." "The little he comes up." "And he's got a picker stuck in, one of his gloves." "It's a little picker." "Hell yeah." "That's awesome." "I think it's awesome." "I can certainly tell how my brother felt when I go down." "He's doing good, though." "He's doing great, man." "13 miles west..." "At the mouth of the penny river..." "Hey, do you see any cheese down there?" "Stumble into some cheese." "Four hours into his dive, zeke tenhoff is still looking for his hot spot." "We know that there is gold in this spot." "He's looking for it and not finding it, not even finding, like, a single speck." "I don't want the season to end simply with us not finding any gold." "It's gonna be devastating." "I had piled a bunch of rocks up here last time" "I was here that I saw really good gold." "A little cut here." "Good." "My god!" "Look at all that gold in this crack!" " My goodness!" " Hey!" "Whoo!" "Right on, man!" "That's awesome." "Look at all that gold." "That's beautiful." "No!" "No way!" "My god!" "Ho, ho!" "It's, like, going in every direction, all this juicy, delicious gold." "That cheese sandwich must be glittering down there." "Pouring right out, pouring out from behind these rocks." "Excellent." "It's up on top." "It's all through here." "Look at all those pieces." "Sweet that's what I'm talking about." "There's thousands of crazy little pieces of gold here, just delicious, nasty, greasy gold." "Hallelujah." "Thank the lord." "Amen." "After struggling all season and striking out and not finding gold anywhere, we finally found something." "Just, make as much money as you can today." "Hey, if you copy, can you check my hot-water system?" "It's kind of cold down here." "I don't feel any hot water come up in, you know, my suit." "Yeah." "Come up!" "Come up!" "10 miles west of nome..." "Hey, check my hot-water system." "Yeah." "Come up!" "Come up!" "What the..." "No!" "Man." "At the penny river, fire." "I don't know what's going on up there." "What?" "Okay." "I can't get it to go out." "Let's get it to go out or it'll explode." "There's a fuel tank on that thing." "Something in there is still catching on fire." "Yeah." "There's a fuel tank on it." "I don't know what to do about this." "Of all the dangers on the bering sea, the one captains fear most is fire." "And this call was too close for comfort." "40 gallons of gasoline right there." "There's 100, 110 gallons of gasoline up there." "Yeah, that would be the end of," "There's a bottle of propane right there." "Any time you have a fire at sea, it's really bad." "Any time you have a fire at sea on a tiny little dredge with a ton of fuel nearby, that could have been the end of emily and zeke." "It doesn't appear to be burning anymore." "Insane." "Another day, another mechanical failure." "For zeke and his dredge, the song remains the same." "This is the generator that would power the hot-water heater." "So there's no hot water." "I mean, I think I can finish it out, just finish out this one..." "Last little crack." "And then we'll get out of here." "How does that sound?" "There's just a little bit of really hot gold at this cheese-sandwich spot that I have to finish." "I'm sure I'll get a little chilly, but I can do it." "I won't get hypothermia." "I promise." "We almost had a boat fire." "I don't want you to get hypothermic, too." "And then I also won't have to come back here." "The human body cools 25 times faster in cold water than in air." "It's your hot water." "It's wintertime." "To survive the 40-degree waters of the bering sea, divers rely on a constant flow of hot water through their dive suits." "Shaking uncontrollably or feeling faint, come up." "It's all good." "Without it, hypothermia will set in in minutes." "At this point, there's not very much gold left here." "I just need to push through." "I need to finish pounding out the gold in this spot." "Whoa!" "Hey, how you feeling?" "Crazy little pieces of gold right there." "Can't say "no" to that." "The water is freezing." "So if zeke starts to get hypothermic and passes out," "I can try to, like, haul him up by his tether." "But that's really the most I can do in the situation." "He's a stubborn fellow." "Yeah." "It's full of cheese, full of queso." "I think we should call it, dude." "Hold on." "Every minute, zeke races to pull the last gold from the penny." "I only have a few minutes left." "And every second, his body moves deeper towards hypothermia." "I think I got it." "I think I got the last of it here." "I'm coming up." "I'm coming up." "I'm too cold." "It's not a whole lot warmer up here, but it's definitely better than down there." " How you doing there?" " I'm cold." " Freezing?" " I'm done." "Fighting the cold, you're just asking for trouble." "It's no joke." "But the penny river was pretty good to me." "I cleaned out a nice little chunk of change out of here." "All I have left to do now is clean up the sluice box." "I need about 20 ounces of gold." "So I guess we'll just have to see how things unfold." "If I didn't get it, I'd be sunk." "Dude, get into the cabin." "You'll have a nice cleanup tomorrow to warm you up." "4 miles east..." "Back on the reaper..." "How's it going down there, a?" "I can't see a damn thing down here." "I'm just taking a look around." "Captain kris kelly is desperate to unlock access to new mining grounds by impressing the claim owner in a 24-hour window." "Still, though, andy, you're doing a great job as long as we're getting gold." "But brother andy has made little progress after a grueling five hours of fighting through the murk." "Are you underneath the anchor line by any chance?" "I don't know, kris." "I can't see 2 inches in front of me." "I'm tired." "And now, andy and the kellys..." "I got to come up." "Have reached their limit." "Well, I'm glad." "You did a good job." "I could tell you were in a bad mood." "But, you did..." "Still did a good job." "It's a pain in the ass today." "We're one step closer to staying on this claim and making everything turn around for us." "Lots riding on this dive." "And I hope to god we get something so keeley will be happy and leave us..." "Let us stay on these claims." "If we don't make this happen and if it's not enough, then we lose." "Did you see okay gold?" " I can't tell, man." " Okay." "It's hard to see." "No pressure, no pressure." "What was the question, one more time?" "Let me think." "What is the good parts about being gold miner?" "It's definitely not the food." "Hold on a second." "It's not the health program, the awesome weather." "No, it's not the chicks, either." "I'm not too respected in this town." "It's not about all the exciting money that you make." "It's super dangerous." "Eight times, I've almost died mining." "Okay, I'm jaded." "I can't really think of too many things, to me, that's good." "In the city of nome..." "You know, for dredging in the blind, it's looking like we've got a little bit of something." "The fighting kellys are cleaning their hard-earned gold..." "John keeley's a busy guy." "We got to weigh this up, clean it." "And then we got to show him something by the end of today." "With hopes of impressing the new boss and gaining access to mining ground for the rest of the season." "We can only hope that we can just keep keeley happy." "He's a businessman." "You know, if we don't show him money, we don't have a spot on his claim." "There better be enough." "Come on, baby." "Come on." "Come on." "There we go." "There we go." "It's all you." "It's all you." " Whoa." "Calm down." " Whoa." "2?" " 2.8." " It's almost 3 ounces." "Almost 3 ounces." "15% of 2.8 is .42 ounces." "So it's a little under a half an ounce." "The claim owner's cut of the box is half an ounce, worth just over $600." "In the nome mining game, every last gram counts." "But for the kellys, the moment of truth has arrived." "Good morning." "Good morning." "Good morning." "Enter claim owner john keeley." " How you doing?" " Darth vader, how you doing?" "Um, so the gold is not that great right now." "There's only about a little under a half an ounce." "You know, I don't like to be disrespectful, guys." "But this is pretty shoddy." "It makes me concerned that I should even let you back out there." "You know, really, we got that gold when nobody else got gold." "I know." "And you know, we're gonna do that every single day." "If you're diving when nobody is out there, that I commend." "But at the end of the day, if you don't produce," "I don't get paid, really." "No, I know." "So but this is, like, this is the beginning." "And, it's gonna get a lot better." "I don't want a b.S." "It's not... it's not a b.S. Story." "You guys, this is your last shot." "All right?" "Make it happen." "I'm telling you." "We're just gonna do a lot better." "I'm not gonna take this with me now." " You fill it up." " Okay." "And, bring..." "Make it one or two." "And I'll see you guys in a week, right?" "See you later." "God bless, guys." "In the end, all we had was minor success, but minor success with a future." "He saw that we were the only people out there when really, we shouldn't have been." "So we have our last chance right now." "And then, as long as we keep making him money, this relationship will keep going forward." "I'll do what I have to do to make it work." "Across town..." "There's gold in them there seas." "George young and his son landon do a little 24-karat bonding over their haul from the ditch." "Yeah." "There's some gold." "Some chunk." "There's some chunky, chunky chunk." "We need as much as we can today." "Going into this cleanout with my son," "I really hope we get, you know, 5 or 6 ounces." "We'll see." "1... 2... 2.05." "2 ounces is worth $2,600, enough to pay for expenses and landon's plane ticket one way in economy." "I don't know if I'd have been able to work." "I didn't have a third person on my dredge." "So I sure appreciate you coming out, man." "With winter near, george's rookie season isn't setting any records." "But with landon's help, he's still moving forward." " And there you go, son." " Thank you very much." "It's been a blast." "I love you, man." "Love you, too." "And the chance to spend real time with his son means george considers himself, at this moment, a rich man." "When his dad needed help, he jumped up and he came out and he helped me." "That meant a lot." "I mean, having landon up here diving with me is a memory that, you know, I'll have forever." "On the outskirts of nome..." "Cleanup is looking a little better than I expected." "Zeke tenhoff cleans up his haul from multiple dives at the penny river." "I'm stoked about it." "I'm just trying to clean up the last of this." "This is a lot of gold for the amount of time I spent down there." "I am beyond thrilled." "After weeks of failed searches and empty coffers, this is zeke's best gold of the season." " Hey!" "How's it going?" " Hey, emily." "This is it." "We need to make a couple dozen ounces of gold." "If we can't produce decent numbers, then we just wasted a ton of time and money." "Nice little pile of gold right there." "Yeah, that looks really good, dude." "Respectable." "6 ounces, 7 ounces, 10 ounces, 11 ounces," "13 ounces, 14 ounces, 21." "21.1, man." "Right on." " Right on." " Nice, dude." "That goes a little way towards making up for all that time going out to sledge island, all that stuff." "21.1 ounces." "It's worth over $27,000, more than enough to keep hope alive." "I totally saved my day, turned my season around." "I can pay the bills, and I can keep going." "But I need to set my sights now on another target that might be a major discovery, something that'll pay for seasons in the future." "For both zeke and emily, money in their pockets means the treasure hunt will continue..." "If you have any ideas for any prospecting missions, I'm all ears." "Together again, for now." "I like working with zeke." "It seems like it's just pragmatic for us to work together." "But winter's coming." "We'll see." "Zeke and emily score after a successful run at the penny while the pomrenkes continue to lead the pack." "Trying to keep everything moving in the right direction." "Holy mother of." "Tear it up, man!" "Get the last of it!" "Something is wrong." "I want to see some gold." "That is not looking good." "I can't even see the bottom." "Emily, wake up!" "Wake up!" "Get the out of my house!" "You want to yell at me?" "!"