'Gold Rush: White Water' Season 3 premiere sees Dustin get off to rough start as best friend Paul deserts him for fiancé Kayla
Hunting for gold sounds like a ludicrous dream. Most would brush it off — after all, you can’t just leave your life and work behind and go off to the mountain and look for tiny specks of gold in the creeks. But there are a few who do exactly that.
In the first episode of ‘Gold Rush: White Water’ Season 3, we saw ‘Dakota’ Fred Hurt, his son Dustin Hurt and their crew in the mountains of Alaska, come back for the third year in a row to find what they have been looking for — the precious yellow metal.
But things were different this time. Dustin and Fred were now working on different claims, the father in “Two Fish” and the son in “Calhoun”. But things were shaky from the very start.
Dustin was accompanied by his dive partner, Paul Richardson, a man who has been a longtime friend of his. There was also Paul’s brother Wess Richardson and an ex-marine drill sergeant, Carlos Minor.
Carlos, according to them, was the most experienced diver of them all. Fred, on the other hand, brought in his stepdaughter Kayla Hurt. This was where things got tricky. Kayla is engaged to Paul and Dustin didn’t think it was appropriate for her to be there. And very soon, Dustin, Fred, Paul and Kayla got into an argument about bringing one’s girlfriend or wife to work.
Obviously, Paul was not happy about Dustin talking about his fiance in such a manner. And in the end, Paul decided he would stay with Fred instead of hunting gold with Dustin. A deep setback for Dustin right at the beginning of the season, this would only prove to be a trend for him.
As he tried to gauge how to drop his equipment on to his claim in “Calhoun”, Dustin realized that the water’s flow was too rapid to do anything. Dustin, who had dreams of finding gold in this unclaimed spot, was left between choosing safety and treasure.
A tree rapidly flowing down with the currents made him change his mind — he decided to look for a different spot. Not discouraged, however, Dustin led Wess and Carlos further ahead to where two creeks converged.
The spot looked perfect and Dustin hoped the slow flow of the water at the convergence would allow more glacial gold to settle at the bed. There was only one problem. Despite the difficult trek to this location, Dustin soon realized that this location had already been claimed by other gold hunters like them.
They could see the boulders were arranged in a manner that would only indicate that others had already finished their hunt there. So, at the end of the episode, Dustin was forced to admit defeat for the time being.
He went and joined Fred to see how they were faring. And boy, did it seem that luck was on the side of the 75-year-old. On their first drudge into the creek, Fred found some specks of gold.
The father had more luck in the first episode, but the duo still has a long way to go. ‘Gold Rush: White Water’ airs on The Discovery Channel every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.